Hey, Mick. I’ve been out of town and I’m only home for a couple of days, but I wanted to quickly correct your wrongheaded thinking. lol
[quote]Mick28 wrote:
EmilyQ wrote:
Were you an enterprising young man in the ghetto and your two choices were to put on a greasy uniform and take the bus to your job flipping burgers for 8 hours at McD’s for $5.15/hour or to stand on the corner joking around with your buddies and selling drugs for three or four times what you’d make working…I think you’d sell the drugs, Mick.
I already had that choice Emily. And I decided to take the bus and flip burgers. And I’m glad I did. [/quote]
Did you? That’s fantastic. You should be really proud, it isn’t easy to do. Do you think being white (you are white, right?) helped you succeed? Or do you believe it didn’t matter?
[quote]
The fact is MOST black kids DO NOT sell drugs. That means that MOST black kids choose wisely. What I’d like to determine is WHY the majority of black kids have chosen wisely. And HOW we can get more of them to do so. Keep in mind it has nothing to do with throwing money and special rights their way. [/quote]
Well, you’re talking about two different things here. “Black kids” are no different from white kids except that they’re far, far more likely to be poor and live in the inner city. Middle and upper class black kids are no more likely to sell drugs than their white counterparts.
Inner-city kids, on the other hand, are very likely to do so, whatever their race. It’s poverty you’re talking about, Mick, not race. It’s just that blacks are proportionately more likely to live in poverty.
Unfortunately, it has everything to do with throwing money their way, although not “special rights.” There are things that work. Having people like me in the schools, for one thing, for dropout prevention. My job was to help kids to get up and out of dysfunction and poverty.
Helping the really bright ones begin to believe in themselves and make community college plans, spreading anti-drug messages, making condoms available (illegally), teaching the teen moms parenting skills (as in how to give love; other people handled how to diaper), telling girls to find boys who weren’t abusive and teaching them about the red flags, finding tutors for the kids struggling with state testing…all of these were meant to enable kids to live less dysfunctionally and to ultimately raise their kids in less dysfunctional ways.
Another program that impressed me a great deal was a program for incarcerated parents. Once a month their kids were brought in to visit for two hours in a big, cheerful playroom. To earn the privilege of participation the parents had to attend parenting classes and group therapy (along with maintaining good behavior, of course).
Recidivism was significantly reduced for participants and though I haven’t seen data (and it may not exist) I can only imagine that those kids had much healthier lives as a result of the program. That will greatly reduce their likelihood of incarceration. Their families will be strengthened and the children of those families will be in a better position to choose wisely when their time comes.
Both programs have in common that they teach the targeted population about the power of goal-setting and ambitious behavior, the damage that drugs do, and how to have healthy relationships.
They give the people struggling with temptation and frustration someone to make proud (VERY strong motivator) and someone to emulate. So in a way, stepping in and doing the things a parent should have done. I know very well that the girls at my high school wanted to be like me, and they definitely didn’t want to let me down.
So that’s a couple of examples. But they cost money. Even do-gooders have to eat. The programs are both run on shoe-strings and rely heavily on volunteers. My former supervisor, with a graduate degree, works a second job at a department store to be able to support herself.
You’d vote against both of these programs, I know, because they’d seem like coddling from a distance. But they’re not. They’re attempting to do exactly what you say needs to be done. And they’re succeeding.
[quote] There’s a place for government, I never stated otherwise. But there is no place for crazy ideas like legalizing drugs. The easier it is to get them the more they will be used.
Ruminate on the alcohol example.[/quote]
Prohibition was not an effective strategy against alcohol consumption. Prohibition only brought the added horrors of gang-involvement (Bugsy Malone?) and black marketeering. Just like we have now, with the drug prohibition.
[quote]Really, shouldn’t you be against a giant money-sucking bureaucratic web of inefficiency? I can hardly take it in. This is all so very liberal of you.
Claiming that I’m liberal (because I said that you were cough cough) because I’m for law and order is asinine.[/quote]
I called you liberal because YOU define liberalism as foolishly throwing good money after bad for programs that don’t work and never have. Like the War on Drugs.
[quote]You want to concentrate funds and effort in the people who are addicted to drugs. That way those people can be helped, I see. And there’s nothing wrong with this part of your idea.
But what about the millions more who will be trying drugs? And the hundreds of thousands more that will eventually become addicted because drugs are now legal, making them cheaper and easier to get?
That’s the part that I don’t like…
I can tell that you’re well intended by your many posts. But this latest idea of yours is absolutely a BAD ONE. [/quote]
The money that’s being used to enforce and support the failed policy could be freed to be used for prevention. The largest growing segment of the prison population is women arrested for drug offenses. These are mothers, most of them. Imprisoning them helps no one. Try to find these same women a bed at a rehab center and…good luck.
There are no funds available for that. But there’s always a bed at the jail! Their kids are thrown into the (dismal, underfunded) foster system to survive as best they can. It’s just…ugh. A nightmare.
But okay, let’s not focus on that. I can see you shaking your head, thinking that my soft-heartedness is impairing my thinking.
Legalize drugs and you take away the black market. Take away the black market and you no longer have street corner pushers. Take away the pushers and kids aren’t being pressured to try the drugs. Hence, less use.
Decriminalize drugs and you free massive funds to educate kids and provide help for addiction.
It would be different if it were all working, you know? But it’s not.
