It has been a while since I have posted, mostly because it was the end of the year and who ISN'T busy, amiright?! I have 11 days until the next term and have been spending as much of that time with my daughter as I possibly can. Hubs has been working a ton.
Today has been a day of walking around the city, followed by documentaries. The first was "Being Elmo: A Puppeteers Journey". The second was "Russel Brand: End the Drugs War". I suggest you watch both of them. The Elmo doc is touching and if your child is as obsessed with Elmo as mine was, you'll probably find it as interesting as I did.
But really, the documentary I want to speak about is the Russel Brand docu. I have been saying this for a long time - it's time to decriminalize drug use. Now, I'm not advocating drug use. There are many hard-core drugs that people should not be doing. What I am advocating for is the treatment (and thus elimination of) addiction, instead of placing drug users in prison for personal drug use. It is costly to the tax payers and does nothing more than stick sick people behind bars. The rate of recidivism is high for drug users BECAUSE we aren't treating them while we have them. If you want crime to go down, treat the problem - addiction - don't just put a band-aid on it. It has been proven that institutionalizing drug addicts will not stop them from using or resorting to various measures (prostitution, burglary, larceny, etc,) in order for them to sustain their state of self-medication. It is not a means of prevention.
I will undoubtedly talk more about this in the future. But for now, if you have Netflix, watch the documentary.
Note: here is a report on the effects of decriminalization of drugs in Portugal.
Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: A Health Centered Approach
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