A few months ago, I read a long Chinese novel Red Prescription written by a popular female writer Bi Shumin. The story is about a female director of a drug addict rehabilitation hospital. Out of curiosity and with the help of the director, her best friend registered into the hospital as a faked patient and lived with various drug abusers. She found out their normal lives are greatly affected by drugs. As long as they started to take drugs, it would be very difficult to stay away from them. Some people lost their job or family; some people started to committee crimes, like robbery, breaking house, breaking bank machine, or even get into the illegal drug business to get money to buy drugs. Even rehabilitation hospital can not one hundred percent sure to help you out from addiction, since drug abuser are very likely to get addictive again after recovery in hospital due to the nature of drugs and the limitation of medicine for new drugs.
I didn’t finish summary up the story since it is such a long novel. The part that makes me connect this novel with Gloria’s blog is the distorted life of the drug abusers. Even though I agreed with Peter on legalization of drugs, I am still very concern about the use of drugs. What if this happens to our children in the future? They might easily become addictive to drugs since they can be legally purchased which will inevitably cause damage to their health and greatly affect their normal life. Is there better choice than legalization of drugs? How about extremely strong punishment on drug dealers? What do people think about introduce drug information into student’s classroom to avoid their contact with drugs?
This is getting more complicated. I would like to stop here and come back to comment on it later.
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
6 comments:
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June,
ReplyDeleteThanks for contributing another well balanced perspective on this topic. I agree that it's very complex, touching on so many very different areas and concerns.
Although June agrees with me that drugs should be legalised, she also suggests another possible solution: "extremely strong punishment on drug dealers" (¶ 2).
ReplyDeleteI am sure that this policy would be successful in reducing drug use; it would be even more successful when combined with much stronger punishments for drug users. For example, if all drug merchants were executed and all drug users sent to prison for at least one year, or perhaps whipped in public, or given some other physically severe torture, that really would reduce drug use and business deals. For support, we can look at the example of Singapore, where very draconian and barbaric torture, long imprisonment and the death penalty is used against mature adults who freely choose to use drugs and do not harm anyone else. As the low drug abuse rates in Singapore show, extreme punishments are effective in reducing drug use and related business and commerce.
They certainly seem to work, but are such extreme punishments moral?
Do Singapore's barbaric torture and abuse of its citizens (and other harmless people) actually prove that it is a grossly unjust nation, even positively evil?
Thanks for sharing ideas. I admit though I am against drug legalization, I still have no ideas about how to solve this problem effectively. The punishments in Singapore really work and their citizen are truly disciplined. However, when Thailand once let police murder drug dealers freely, there are many innocent people died because they had been accused. I am afraid that the dealing will develop into more violent like the drug dealers use weapons seriously in Columbia. We should find the exit from poverty. Providing work for them may partly help, but it's hard when people have a habit to get money easily.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, I think Thailand used to use extreme punishments already but it's not as effect as it could be. As a result, many drug dealers and drug users were killed by state drastically but drug problems has not decreased for long. After that government has gone, drug situations are more serious problem!! so extreme punishment might not be the best choice for solution.
ReplyDeleteNaya (August 12, 2011 6:53 PM), (and others)
ReplyDeleteWhy are you against drug legalisation?
Is it because you think that using drugs should not be used, that using them is alwys morally wrong (why would it be?), which would include alcohol and cigarettes, or for some other reason?
This question also relates to my previous comments about Singapore's obviously effective policy, which is unfortunately unjust and immoral.
I think that before we can start to look at what might be reasonable, and moral, solutions to the problem, we need to decide some more fundamental questions, such as:
- is using drugs always wrong? (everyone who enjoys a glass of wine with dinner or a beer with friends after work / study will presumably answer "No" to this question).
- when is using drugs wrong, and therefore something that may justly be made illegal?
- when is using drugs not wrong, and therefore something that governments may not justly make illegal?
- should mature adults have the right to decide for themselves whether to use drugs or not? Why or why not?
I don't think that these questions are easy, but if you cannot answer them, I don't see how you can support any law against personal drug use. And if the use of a product must be permitted, how can it be right not to allow businesses to provide the service and products that adult customers want?
(I say "adult" because I don't think that there is any particular problem with banning teh sale of dangerous things, such as cars, to children who are not mature enough to use them - we're talking about what mature adults should be permitted, not children who cannot reason or be responsible.)
This comment is relevant to the essay we have just finished. I've posted here because June's post and the comments on it gave me the idea.
ReplyDelete______________________
I'm answering the question: What is one solution to the problem of drugs in society?
The thesis statement is:
To solve Australia's drug problem, the government should execute all persons found using or possessing drugs in order to instil fear into everyone and permanently remove drugs users from society.
Supporting reason 1 (topic sentence is first):
It is important to scare people to make sure they know that drug use or possession will be a disaster for them. Therefore, the executions must be done in a public place such as Hyde Park in central Sydney, and the government should film them because they should be shown on the TV news every night. Finally, it is important for children to learn this strong message, so parents should take their children to see the killings and watch them on TV together.
Supporting reason 2(topic sentence is also concluding sentence):
People convicted by a court of justice should be shot by police officers after they are found guilty. Teh bullets must be made of silver, and at least fifty police officers must shoot every drug criminal so that it is certain they are dead. This will guarantee that these drug users will never be able to harm society again.
The questions to discuss:
Do the body paragraphs support the main idea in my thesis statement?
If I have not supported that proposal, what have I done in the body of this very short essay?
How serious a problem is this?
What could I do to keep the gory ideas but solve the problem?
What are the relevant language clues?
_________________
In fact, my proposal that executions should be televised has recently been suggested by a couple of American academics. In "Executions Should Be Televised", Zachary Shemtob, a professor of criminal justice, and David Lat, who previously worked as a government prosecutor convicting criminals in court, suggest exactly this. Unlike my failure in the short essay above which was written in a few minutes, Shemtob and Lat give some solid support for their proposal.
Where is Shemtob and Lat's thesis stated? (in which paragraph?) What modal verb is used in the thesis statement?
How many times do they use the modal verb should in their essay?
When they use should, is it part of a supporting reason? Why or why not? What are they not doing when they use this modal verb?
References
Shemtob, Z. & Lat, D. (2011, July 29). Executions Should Be Televised. The New York Times. Retrieved August 14, 2011 from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/opinion/sunday/executions-should-be-televised.html