Prompted by “Fixing neighborhoods”: http://www.drugwarrant.com/2015/05/fixing-neighborhoods/
“Few people discussing the recent riots and protests in Baltimore have bothered to question why young people would feel angry enough to destroy their own neighborhood. Some have suggested the unrest can be blamed largely on the ‘breakdown’ of the family structure in poor neighborhoods, particularly in poor communities of color, where fathers are frequently absent.
What that suggestion fails to address is why the family structure would be breaking down in the first place. The long and short answer is: The Drug War is tearing these families apart. People who suffer from addictions in poor neighborhoods don’t have access to the kind of treatment options that middle and upper class families do, meaning parents with addictions are less able to be breadwinners and look after their children. These neighborhoods also have markedly fewer job openings, and feeding oneself and their family doesn’t become any less imperative when you’re poor, so selling drugs may be the easiest way to keep everyone fed and a roof overhead, however minimally.”
“There are more black men in the penal system now than there were slaves in 1850…”
“Prohibition has only created more violence and made neighborhoods more dangerous.”
Of course, there was no mention of any of that key public information during the many examples of “unbiased” mainstream media reporting emanating towards me.
Let’s line that up with one of my favorite prohibitionist quotes…
“Researchers have long recognized the strong correlation between stress and substance abuse…” — U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (1995 Stress Bulletin) [emphasis mine]
Unhealthy stress is the source of drug abuse, at least by all sane measures to date.
Society-wide stress management (which cannot be righteously dictated by elitists) is key, though sadly the most passionate people towards ending the war on some drugs are traditional political leftists (always empowering elitists to impose their unequal definition of equality), so…
“Legalize and regulate drugs from a public health perspective, and put our cops back in charge of solving the nearly 40% of murders and 60% of rape cases that go unsolved.” [emphasis mine again]
Based upon relevant regulations to date (e.g. the many cannabis ones causing all sorts of unhealthy stress without any reasonably proven benefit), that means judicial regulations (not natural ones formed by being properly informed and leveraging the seriously powerful survival instinct). I can find many examples of dangerous and judicially unregulated risks against people of all ages, but common sense protects the vast majority of potential victims (not judicial regulations — shortened to regulations herein, so I don’t have to keep adding judicial against brevity).
Despite the illusion to the contrary, a regulation is a prohibition against whatever activity is directly or indirectly regulated (one or more micro-prohibitions, if you will). Replacing prohibition with regulation really means replacing prohibition with a different prohibition — with all of the same dangerous stressors that come from any prohibition (including “slippery slope” legal precedence from logically deprecated British common law and, based upon ample historical demonstration, abusive favoritism).
We can all understand Murder Prohibition (Rape Prohibition, etc.), if you will, but that’s not because such prohibitions are effective — it’s because we don’t know how else to protect the public from repeat rights infringement.
Of course, at least common sense dictates that researchers also can long recognize the strong correlation between stress and murder, rape, etc.
Resolving unhealthy stress (as opposed to healthy stress from working out at the gym, etc.) is the fundamental problem in dealing with abusive behavior. That behavior demonstrates no honoring of the judicial line, so wonderful common sense again presents the understanding that enabling law abuse (logically the worst form of abuse) to deal with other lesser spans of abuses is retarded (and leads to naturally serious consequences).
In the righteous effort to diffuse racial tensions as part of opposing the true evil of stupidity (e.g. stupidly believing skin color has any relevance regarding human value), continuing to identify race is problematic (even with positive intention), because it continues to prompt the innocently and wisely asked question for each new generation understandably confused by the matter — Why does anyone care about skin color?
Memory serving, Morgan Freeman (the popular actor) and I share the same view on the matter. If there would be absolutely no racial distinction expressed (e.g. race is not the issue, but poverty is), then a truly colorblind society would sooner emerge. In such a demonstrably more civilized society, can you think of any reason to bring up skin color in conversation? I cannot for all intents and purposes (i.e. the one seriously rare and benign example is not even worth mentioning).
We don’t need regulations to replace an “utter failure” (President Obama’s words) of a prohibition, because part of the ‘war’ on unhealthy stress is the logically continued American Revolution against abusive law (see the U.S. Declaration of Independence for more).
We as a species remain stagnant at tremendous risk from variations of the tried-and-failed ‘elitist rule equals mass suffering due to abusive favoritism’. The answer cannot be the exhaustingly ‘we need another form of elitism’ to continue that stagnation, but scientifically breaking that horribly dangerous cycle by way of reality’s demonstrated need for balance within itself (i.e. nobody can scientifically possibly get away with abusive behavior — even the elitists whom logically pay naturally agonizingly for the mass suffering caused by prohibitions — a.k.a. regulations). That supremely powerfully applied balance is called the Rule of Reality around the idea frontier here.
The Rule of Reality provides inherent justice within reality, and logically remains a critical ingredient towards civility.
That Rule remains the proper definition of equality, with one more nice nod to the serious power of common sense — i.e. natural regulation without judicial coercion to naturally avoid — for prime relevant example — leading to rioting.
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