Grand jury

[cherdano]

There were two recent This American Life episodes called "Cops see it differently". Very good.

[y66]

From What Came Before Baltimore’s Riots on yesterday's NYT editorial page:

 

The riots that devastated urban America during the 1960s were often ignited by acts of police brutality that inflamed poor African-American communities where the police were seen not as protectors but as an occupying force. These same tensions resurfaced last year in the suburban St. Louis community of Ferguson, Mo., where riots broke out after a white police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, a black teenager. They have now erupted on a larger stage, in Baltimore, after the death of Freddie Gray, a young black man who suffered a catastrophic injury while in police custody.

 

President Obama has condemned as inexcusable the looting and arson that spread across the face of the city after of Mr. Gray’s funeral. But he also implied that the Baltimore Police Department had “to do some soul-searching.” Indeed it does: A well-documented history of extreme brutality and misconduct set the stage for just this kind of unrest.

 

Proof can be found in a meticulously reported investigation by The Baltimore Sun of lawsuits and settlements that had been generated by police-brutality claims. “Over the past four years,” the investigation noted, “more than 100 people have won court judgments or settlements related to allegations of brutality and civil rights violations.” The victims included a 15-year-old boy riding a dirt bike, a 26-year-old pregnant woman who had witnessed a beating, a 50-year-old woman selling church raffle tickets, a 65-year-old church deacon and an 87-year-old grandmother aiding her wounded grandson.

 

The report, published last fall, detailed what it called “a frightful human toll” inflicted by the police: broken bones, head trauma, organ failure, and even death, occurring during questionable arrests. It found that judges and prosecutors routinely dismissed charges against the victims and that city policies helped to hide the extent of the human damage. Settlements prohibited the victims from making public statements. The Sun estimated that the cash-strapped city had spent $5.7 million on settlements and $5.8 million on legal fees since January 2011.

 

Baltimore residents were familiar with these and other stories of police abuse when Mr. Gray’s case fell into the public spotlight earlier this month. The police chased and apprehended him on April 12, allegedly because he had “made eye contact” with a lieutenant and then ran away. Cellphone videos of his arrest showed him being dragged into a police van, appearing limp and screaming in pain. The police have acknowledged that they delayed in calling for medical help. When he arrived at the police station, medics rushed him to the hospital, where he slipped into a coma and died a week later.

 

His family has said that 80 percent of his spinal cord was severed and that his larynx had been crushed. This account is at odds with a police report claiming that “the defendant was arrested without force or incident.”

 

The Baltimore Police Department has a particularly egregious history and has entered into a voluntary reform agreement with the Justice Department. But there is no reason to believe that it is unique in terms of its toxic relations with the people it is meant to protect.

 

Indeed, over the last five years, the Justice Department has opened 21 investigations into local police departments around the country and is enforcing reform agreements with 15 departments, some investigated by previous administrations.

 

Mr. Obama was right on the mark when he observed on Tuesday that tensions with law enforcement had simmered in African-American communities for decades and now seemed to be bursting into view once a week.

 

“This has been a slow-rolling crisis,” he said. “This has been going on for a long time. This is not new, and we shouldn’t pretend that it’s new.”

 

He also said that addressing the problem would require not only new police tactics but new policies aimed at helping communities where jobs have disappeared, improving education and helping ex-offenders find jobs. The big mistake, he said, is that we tend to focus on these communities only when buildings are burning down.

From today's Baltimore Sun:

 

Tensions remained high in Baltimore Tuesday as crowds again clashed with police, who patrolled city streets with National Guard soldiers to maintain order and enforce a citywide curfew.

 

... Other precautions were taken to reduce crowds downtown through the week. The Orioles will play the White Sox Wednesday in an empty Camden Yards as the public was banned from attending for the first time in baseball history. The long-standing FlowerMart fair in Mount Vernon, scheduled for this weekend, was postponed.

 

Rawlings-Blake and Gov. Larry Hogan, who moved his office and Cabinet to the city Tuesday after declaring a state of emergency, toured neighborhoods damaged in the riots and coordinated a massive law enforcement response.

 

"You can't ensure that there's not going to be any unrest. I'm not a magician," Hogan said. "What I can assure you is that we will put all the resources that we have at our disposal to make sure that disturbances don't get out of hand."

 

...Baltimore has drawn international attention since the April 12 death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, who suffered spinal cord and other injuries in police custody. His funeral took place Monday hours before rioting broke out.

 

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama called rioters "criminals" and "thugs" even as he argued that broader social change was needed to address underlying tensions in the African American community.

 

"If we are serious about solving this problem, then we're going to need to not only help the police, we're going to have to think about what we can do — the rest of us," Obama said during a Rose Garden press conference.

 

"That's hard," he said.

 

Meanwhile, City Council members joined gang members to call for peace, and dance troupes entertained crowds in front of City Hall.

 

Rawlings-Blake urged people to share positive images of Baltimore on social media under the hashtag #thisisbaltimore. Unlike Obama, she backed away from her claim that it was "thugs" who had caused problems in the city the day prior.

 

"We don't have thugs in Baltimore," the mayor said. "We have a lot of kids that are acting out, a lot of people in our community who are acting out, and the bad part of it is, we all know that on the other side of this they are going to regret what they've done."

 

Earlier, the Rev. Frank Reid III of Bethel AME Church, said "there are no thugs in Baltimore."

 

"There are abused children, who are being abused by the cutbacks in education, cutbacks in housing. Abused people become abusers."

 

...A number of high-profile politicians and celebrities called for peace.

 

Former Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis released a video in which he animatedly urges an end to the rioting. He said he would delay a planned trip to Chicago to help stop the violence, and the Ravens canceled a Thursday night party for the NFL draft.

 

Across the city, residents pledged to do their part.

 

Volunteers from Empowerment Temple handed out slices of Little Caesars Pizza, bottles of water and bags of chips to the crowd gathered at the intersection of Pennsylvania and North avenues.

 

While some in the crowd danced and sang, others urged violence, shouting, "Light it up," and police used pepper spray to quell skirmishes.

From David Simon blogging at The Audacity of Despair:

 

Yes, there is a lot to be argued, debated, addressed. And this moment, as inevitable as it has sometimes seemed, can still, in the end, prove transformational, if not redemptive for our city. Changes are necessary and voices need to be heard. All of that is true and all of that is still possible, despite what is now loose in the streets.

From "The Wire" season 1, episode 1:

 

Kima: Fighting the war on drugs... one brutality case at a time.

Carver: Girl, you can't even think of calling this ***** a war.

Herc: Why not?

Carver: Wars end.

Bill Keller interviews David Simon at The Marshall Project.

[kenberg]

possibly it will become clear just how the young man died. Or maybe it won't. I'll make a guess that there will be a lawsuit leading to a very substantial settlement but no criminal charges. Of course it depends on just what is uncovered, but when the police take someone into custody, putting him in handcuffs and into a van, they assume some responsibility for his safety.

 

There is a massive problem. An excerpt from an article in the Post

 

In 2008, a lead-paint lawsuit was filed on behalf of Gray and two of his sisters against the owners of the home in which they grew up. Court papers described his difficult upbringing: a disabled mother addicted to heroin who, in a deposition, said she couldn’t read; walls and windowsills containing enough lead to poison the children and leave them incapable of leading functional lives; a young man who was four grade levels behind in reading.

 

Such lawsuits are so common in Gray’s neighborhood that the resulting settlement payments — which Gray lived off — are known as “lead checks.”

 

 

Close friends of Gray, who was 5-foot-8 and 145 pounds, described him as loyal and warm, humorous and happy. “Every time you saw him, you just smiled, because you knew you were going to have a good day,” said Angela Gardner, 22, who had dated him off and on over the past two years.

 

But Gray also had frequent run-ins with the law.

 

Court records show he was arrested more than a dozen times, and had a handful of convictions, mostly on charges of selling or possessing heroin or marijuana. His longest stint behind bars was about two years.

 

 

Regardless of the details, known or unknown, of this specific case the broad fact seems to be that there are many young people who grow up in such an environment. What on earth can be done?

 

Cops have to be controlled, no doubt about that. I don't know if they broke his spine and really, at this stage no one knows. Maybe they are criminally liable, maybe they hurt him more than they realized during the arrest and the trip in the van did him in, I don't know. But Mr. Gray's life was going badly.

 

A friend of Becky's had a frightened call call from someone in the neighborhood where the riots were taking place. Becky's friend Ann is, I guess some sort of mentor. The call was not about how awful the police are but how scared she was. And Ann's view of the neighborhood environment was pretty pessimistic.

 

There are always people who miraculously escape the worst possible environments. But statistically speaking, the results are predictable. Investigate what happened? Sure. Prosecute as needed? Sure. But as long as we have sizable neighborhoods where the kids are brought up, if that phrase can even be used, by drug addicted mothers living in poverty, the results will not be good.

 

Solutions are badly needed. I also think they are hard to find.

[y66]

There are some indications that momentum is building on the decriminalization of drugs, sentencing and criminal justice system reform fronts, for example:

 

NYT Feb 18, 2015 WASHINGTON — Usually bitter adversaries, Koch Industries and the Center for American Progress have found at least one thing they can agree on: The nation’s criminal justice system is broken.

 

Koch Industries, the conglomerate owned by the conservative Koch brothers, and the center, a Washington-based liberal issues group, are coming together to back a new organization called the Coalition for Public Safety. The coalition plans a multimillion-dollar campaign on behalf of emerging proposals to reduce prison populations, overhaul sentencing, reduce recidivism and take on similar initiatives. Other groups from both the left and right — the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans for Tax Reform, the Tea Party-oriented FreedomWorks — are also part of the coalition, reflecting its unusually bipartisan approach.

 

Organizers of the advocacy campaign, which is to be announced on Thursday, consider it to be the largest national effort focused on the strained prison and justice system. They also view the coalition as a way to show lawmakers in gridlocked Washington that factions with widely divergent views can find ways to work together and arrive at consensus policy solutions.

 

“We want to both do good policy work and try to improve the system, but also to send the message to politicians that we always ask you to work together, and we are going to lead the way,” said Denis Calabrese, the president of the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, who helped organize the coalition.

 

For groups traditionally considered opponents, working together has required something of a leap of faith. But they say that they see an opening and are giving the new coalition three years to demonstrate results.

 

“A lot of people throw a lot of things around, and then you try to get things done,” said Mark Holden, general counsel for Koch Industries, which has been the subject of fierce attacks from the left and has responded in kind. “We are just going to put it to the side and hopefully they will as well. We have said all along that we are willing to work with anyone and this shows it.”

 

Officials at the Center for American Progress said that they did not make the decision to join the partnership lightly given the organization’s clashes and deep differences with both Koch Industries and many of the conservative groups.

 

“We have in the past and will in the future have criticism of the policy agenda of the Koch brother companies, but where we can find common ground on issues, we will go forward,” said Neera Tanden, the president of the center. “I think it speaks to the importance of the issue.”

 

With the huge costs to the public of an expanding 2.2 million-person prison population drawing interest from the right and the conviction that the system is unfair and incarcerating too many drug and nonviolent offenders driving those on the left, the new coalition is the most recent example of ideological opposites joining together.

 

Last year, Senators Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, and Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, together wrote legislation aimed at helping nonviolent offenders seal their records. This month, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, introduced legislation aimed at cutting prison populations by allowing eligible prisoners to reduce their time.

 

The coalition’s goal is to leverage the broad reach of the group’s partners and financial backers to build public support for overhaul efforts through research and education campaigns, among other initiatives. The ideological spread should also allow them to reach out credibly to lawmakers of both parties.

[y66]

So why don't we have a rational drug policy? From Mother Jones:

 

So why don't we have a rational drug policy? Simple. Forget the Social Security "third rail." The quickest way to get yourself sidelined in serious policy discussion is to stray from drug war orthodoxy. Even MoJo has skirted the topic for fear of looking like a bunch of hot-tubbing stoners. Such is the power of the culture wars, 50 years on.

 

There is some hope. We have, at long last, a post-boomer president, one who confidently admits he partook back in the day. And while Barack Obama has said he's not interested in overhauling drug policy, his administration has made moves toward honesty—acknowledging that US demand fuels overseas production, that federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries are a waste of time and money, and that treatment should be our top priority; the Pentagon has even said that Mexico rivals Pakistan atop the list of states most likely to fail. There are other signs of a thaw: Those noted hippies at The Economist and Foreign Policy have called for ending "prohibition at any cost." Drug warrior Bob Barr is lobbying for the Marijuana Policy Project. And Joe Biden—who helped create the 100:1 crack-vs.-coke sentencing disparity—has finally issued a mea culpa.

There! Say-it-ain't-so-Joe has said it.

[kenberg]

Exactly what a rational drug policy would be is not clear to me. Marijuana is easy for me. I have done many dumb things in my life, somehow I avoided this one, but if someone else wants to partake I say let him.

 

Cocaine? I really know very little, but I gather it was once legal:

Some get a kick from cocaine

I'm sure that if

I took even one sniff

It would bore me terrif

ically too

 

Or maybe Mr. Porter was living in Paris, or somewhere, when he wrote that, I dunno. I gather that his parties were interesting.

 

In my mid 20s LSD was very popular. Not with me.

 

I very much don't wish to use any police resources, and certainly not any prison resources, for stopping potheads from doing their thing, but beyond that I am at a loss as to just what a rational policy would look like.

 

 

But focusing on Mr. Gray, I think that growing up with no father, no money, and a mother that is strung out on drugs is not what you would call an auspicious beginning.And then there was the lead. And the schools.

[Winstonm]

Exactly what a rational drug policy would be is not clear to me. Marijuana is easy for me. I have done many dumb things in my life, somehow I avoided this one, but if someone else wants to partake I say let him.

 

Cocaine? I really know very little, but I gather it was once legal:

Some get a kick from cocaine

I'm sure that if

I took even one sniff

It would bore me terrif

ically too

 

Or maybe Mr. Porter was living in Paris, or somewhere, when he wrote that, I dunno. I gather that his parties were interesting.

 

In my mid 20s LSD was very popular. Not with me.

 

I very much don't wish to use any police resources, and certainly not any prison resources, for stopping potheads from doing their thing, but beyond that I am at a loss as to just what a rational policy would look like.

 

 

But focusing on Mr. Gray, I think that growing up with no father, no money, and a mother that is strung out on drugs is not what you would call an auspicious beginning.And then there was the lead. And the schools.

 

I think a national drug policy is easy: if you've got 'em, smoke 'em.

[kenberg]

I think a national drug policy is easy: if you've got 'em, smoke 'em.

 

You include PCP in this suggestion?

[Winstonm]

You include PCP in this suggestion?

 

If it'll burn, sure. :P

[kenberg]

If it'll burn, sure. :P

 

I'm no expert on this stuff but I think it can be smoked, yes.

 

 

I looked up some stuff on

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phencyclidine

 

 

Pot smokers may be zoned out but harmless. Not so true of someone on PCP I think.

[blackshoe]

The problem is not the smoking, or the ingestion, or the injection, or whatever, of some drug. The problem is what people do who have smoked or ingested or injected or whatever. Or who are trying to obtain the means to support their habit. If they commit violence against another person, that is the problem. If they commit no violence against anyone, there is no problem. If they commit violence only against themselves, that's sad, but it's still no problem. There may be other considerations (for example, a parent who neglects his children, or a supplier who knowingly commits fraud — think tobacco companies) but the preceding is the basis in my opinion.

 

Another point: prohibition does not work. You'd think we'd have learned that in the short time in which the 18th Amendment was in effect (1920 to 1933). Our grandparents (or in some cases great-grandparents) did; that's why they repealed it with the 21st Amendment.

[kenberg]

The problem is not the smoking, or the ingestion, or the injection, or whatever, of some drug. The problem is what people do who have smoked or ingested or injected or whatever. Or who are trying to obtain the means to support their habit. If they commit violence against another person, that is the problem. If they commit no violence against anyone, there is no problem. If they commit violence only against themselves, that's sad, but it's still no problem. There may be other considerations (for example, a parent who neglects his children, or a supplier who knowingly commits fraud — think tobacco companies) but the preceding is the basis in my opinion.

 

Another point: prohibition does not work. You'd think we'd have learned that in the short time in which the 18th Amendment was in effect (1920 to 1933). Our grandparents (or in some cases great-grandparents) did; that's why they repealed it with the 21st Amendment.

 

My starting philosophy runs something like this: If I tell other people what they must do then I bear at least some of the responsibility for how it turns out. I really don't relish having the responsibility for anyone's actions except my own, so I figure it is best if I don't tell other people what to do. Up to this point, we may well agree.

 

But this is only for starters. Here we are speaking of drugs, and as I say if some pothead wants to puff away, I don't see why I need to get involved. But PCP is different. Let's just agree at teh outset that I have no personal experience at all here and so I don't really know much. Imagine "or so I understand" appended to each statement about effects.

 

Significantly often, PCP leads to a psychotic break and/or violence. No person who is thinking of his own long term best interests would have anything to do with it. Put poeple do use it. Sometimes they hurt only themselves, sometimes the results are much worse. Of course usage will be a disaster for the user in the long run, but he doesn't think long term and he may well do a lot of damage to others before he eventually ends up in the morgue. For the rest of us, for society at large, it is our bests interest to prevent this if we can.

 

Sure, the "if we can" is an important caveat. But the analogy with prohibition is not quite apt. I drink wine. Many do. We don't have psychotic breaks, we don't go out and kill someone. And so we don't take kindly to someone saying that we cannot do it. Prohibition is probably relevant when we are speaking of pot laws. Lots of people smoke pot, and while it doesn't interest me I don't expect a pot smoker to go on a violent rampage.

 

Not all drugs are the same. Smoking pot is, imo, stupid but I can solve any problems that I see with it by not smoking it. PCP? It's a different story.

 

So I repeat: A rational drug policy may be a little tough to formulate. All of us forum posters are totally rational, and even here we don't agree.

 

 

And now back to Baltimore, the topic that revived this thread. The life of Mr. Gray, the lives of the many who live as he did, the lives of the officers who interact with them, all of these lives are far from my own experience. I have been handcuffed, I have been placed in a police van (I was once young, what alse can I say) but nothing at all like what goes on every day there. It is beyond me to have any really strong intuitive feeling for it all. My hope would be that some strong local leadership would arise and there would be concentrated sustained effort at making lie better. However real the problem is (or to whatever extent individual complaints are sometimes bogus) with police misbehavior, dealing with that will only be part of the solution and I would expect it to only be a very small part of the solution.

 

I gather they are making progress with the investigation of what really led to Mr. Gray's death. Whatever the outcome, there will still be many wasted lives in the neighborhood he lived in.

[y66]

It is news to me that people who drink don't kill or abuse more people than people who use PCP or whatever your favorite scarier than pot drug happens to be. It is also news to the World Health Organization that alcohol use is not lethal:

 

Worldwide, 3.3 million deaths every year result from harmful use of alcohol, this represents 5.9 % of all deaths. Edit: forgot this one.

 

The harmful use of alcohol is a causal factor in more than 200 disease and injury conditions.

 

Overall 5.1 % of the global burden of disease and injury is attributable to alcohol, as measured in disability- adjusted life years (DALYs).

 

Alcohol consumption causes death and disability relatively early in life. In the age group 20 – 39 years approximately 25 % of the total deaths are alcohol-attributable.

 

There is a causal relationship between harmful use of alcohol and a range of mental and behavioural disorders, other noncommunicable conditions as well as injuries.

 

Source: WHO Alcohol fact sheet

Let's stop getting hung up on the alcohol vs pot vs scarier stuff argument that produced our counter productive drug enforcement policy. And let's stop pretending that it's hard to come up with a more rational policy than the one we have now because it just isn't. Hamsterdam *was* created in a day.

[kenberg]

I am not pretending anything.

[barmar]

Another point: prohibition does not work. You'd think we'd have learned that in the short time in which the 18th Amendment was in effect (1920 to 1933). Our grandparents (or in some cases great-grandparents) did; that's why they repealed it with the 21st Amendment.

It's not clear that Prohibition and the War on Drugs are really comparable.

 

Alcohol consumption has always been extremely common. Most people drank in moderation, but some vocal moralists considered any use to be bad, and they managed to get Prohibition passed.

 

Drug use, on the other hand, has never been mainstream, even before it was criminalized. Marijuana is heading in that direction because of relaxed attitudes, but it's still nothing like alcohol.

 

Prohibition failed because they tried to ban something that practically everyone wanted. The War on Drugs continues because it primarily affects minorities. Although I should admit that this is also because of selective enforcement -- they don't go after rich people snorting coke, prisons are full of crackheads. But the result is that the people most influential in making laws are not the ones who need drug laws to be relaxed.

[Winstonm]

My starting philosophy runs something like this: If I tell other people what they must do then I bear at least some of the responsibility for how it turns out. I really don't relish having the responsibility for anyone's actions except my own, so I figure it is best if I don't tell other people what to do. Up to this point, we may well agree.

 

But this is only for starters. Here we are speaking of drugs, and as I say if some pothead wants to puff away, I don't see why I need to get involved. But PCP is different. Let's just agree at teh outset that I have no personal experience at all here and so I don't really know much. Imagine "or so I understand" appended to each statement about effects.

 

Significantly often, PCP leads to a psychotic break and/or violence. No person who is thinking of his own long term best interests would have anything to do with it. Put poeple do use it. Sometimes they hurt only themselves, sometimes the results are much worse. Of course usage will be a disaster for the user in the long run, but he doesn't think long term and he may well do a lot of damage to others before he eventually ends up in the morgue. For the rest of us, for society at large, it is our bests interest to prevent this if we can.

 

Sure, the "if we can" is an important caveat. But the analogy with prohibition is not quite apt. I drink wine. Many do. We don't have psychotic breaks, we don't go out and kill someone. And so we don't take kindly to someone saying that we cannot do it. Prohibition is probably relevant when we are speaking of pot laws. Lots of people smoke pot, and while it doesn't interest me I don't expect a pot smoker to go on a violent rampage.

 

Not all drugs are the same. Smoking pot is, imo, stupid but I can solve any problems that I see with it by not smoking it. PCP? It's a different story.

 

So I repeat: A rational drug policy may be a little tough to formulate. All of us forum posters are totally rational, and even here we don't agree.

 

 

And now back to Baltimore, the topic that revived this thread. The life of Mr. Gray, the lives of the many who live as he did, the lives of the officers who interact with them, all of these lives are far from my own experience. I have been handcuffed, I have been placed in a police van (I was once young, what alse can I say) but nothing at all like what goes on every day there. It is beyond me to have any really strong intuitive feeling for it all. My hope would be that some strong local leadership would arise and there would be concentrated sustained effort at making lie better. However real the problem is (or to whatever extent individual complaints are sometimes bogus) with police misbehavior, dealing with that will only be part of the solution and I would expect it to only be a very small part of the solution.

 

I gather they are making progress with the investigation of what really led to Mr. Gray's death. Whatever the outcome, there will still be many wasted lives in the neighborhood he lived in.

 

One aspect about drug use that seems overlooked is that for some (I think many) users drugs are self-medication. Hard core drug users are ill, not bad. I never realized just how few life choices some people have until I became a nurse and worked in a child/adolescent psychiatric facility where I found children and teens who were un-fixable, so emotionally and physically damaged as to have nothing but instinct in lieu of choice.

 

Most of us never see this level of humanity - at least not up close on a day-to-day basis. It is a much greater slice of life than most of us can imagine. For most of us it is almost impossible to believe that humans can be damaged to the point where they have no choice - it was for me until I witnessed it - but it is real and makes one understand that there are many who cannot think like we do, even if they could somehow understand it.

 

It is immensely sad to deal with this level of human damage. There seems to be no answer. Criminalizing their drug behavior seems somehow a waste of time and effort.

[kenberg]

One aspect about drug use that seems overlooked is that for some (I think many) users drugs are self-medication. Hard core drug users are ill, not bad. I never realized just how few life choices some people have until I became a nurse and worked in a child/adolescent psychiatric facility where I found children and teens who were un-fixable, so emotionally and physically damaged as to have nothing but instinct in lieu of choice.

 

Most of us never see this level of humanity - at least not up close on a day-to-day basis. It is a much greater slice of life than most of us can imagine. For most of us it is almost impossible to believe that humans can be damaged to the point where they have no choice - it was for me until I witnessed it - but it is real and makes one understand that there are many who cannot think like we do, even if they could somehow understand it.

 

It is immensely sad to deal with this level of human damage. There seems to be no answer. Criminalizing their drug behavior seems somehow a waste of time and effort.

 

We may be more in agreement here than you expect. I think that most of us have known people whose lives are simply a mess and seem to be unfixable. Sometimes it is impossible to understand how this came about, other times you look at their early life and you see that it would be a miracle if their lives were not a mess. In the case of Mr. Gray I follow Will rogers in only knowing what I read in the papers but good God, why would we expect his life to go well given what we read.

 

 

My view of life is that what we become is partly a matter of inherited genes, partly a matter of early environment, partly a matter of choices that we ourselves make and, truth be told, partly a matter of dumb luck. "There but for the grace of God..." is more than just a catchy phrase.

 

I am currently reading The girls who went away. It's a study of women, now in hteir 40s and 50s, who when young surrendered their children for adoption. For me it is fascinating, which is not the same as saying that I agree with all of the views of the author. She, the author, strongly feels that everything possible should be done to allow the young woman to raise the child rather than to surrender the child for adoption. There are many interviews with the women and in some of them I find myself thinking thank God for the adoption. But it has given me, an adopted child, a lot to think about.

 

I apologize for all the references to God, I am no more of a believer than you are, but I often find the metaphor useful.

[Winstonm]

We may be more in agreement here than you expect. I think that most of us have known people whose lives are simply a mess and seem to be unfixable. Sometimes it is impossible to understand how this came about, other times you look at their early life and you see that it would be a miracle if their lives were not a mess. In the case of Mr. Gray I follow Will rogers in only knowing what I read in the papers but good God, why would we expect his life to go well given what we read.

 

 

My view of life is that what we become is partly a matter of inherited genes, partly a matter of early environment, partly a matter of choices that we ourselves make and, truth be told, partly a matter of dumb luck. "There but for the grace of God..." is more than just a catchy phrase.

 

I am currently reading The girls who went away. It's a study of women, now in hteir 40s and 50s, who when young surrendered their children for adoption. For me it is fascinating, which is not the same as saying that I agree with all of the views of the author. She, the author, strongly feels that everything possible should be done to allow the young woman to raise the child rather than to surrender the child for adoption. There are many interviews with the women and in some of them I find myself thinking thank God for the adoption. But it has given me, an adopted child, a lot to think about.

 

I apologize for all the references to God, I am no more of a believer than you are, but I often find the metaphor useful.

 

Ken, I only wish I were as intelligent and wise as you. I posted as a "just so you'll know" kind of thing because it came as a shock to me that there are so many kids (in Tulsa, anyway) who never had choice, which we all assume (including me, until I found out differently) is universal.

 

These were not bad kids who also made bad choices - these were vacuums of empty neediness wearing human bodies. These kids prefer beatings, pain, sexual assault, or any other perversion rather than neglect.

 

And they never get well, only incrementally better able to cope.

 

It is when dealing with kids like this one wishes there were a god to fix it all, but the fact of these kids' lives flatly denies such existence.

[kenberg]

Ken, I only wish I were as intelligent and wise as you. I posted as a "just so you'll know" kind of thing because it came as a shock to me that there are so many kids (in Tulsa, anyway) who never had choice, w

 

So do I B-)

 

What you describe exceeds anything I have seen or wish to see, but I do think some environments are truly awful.

[billw55]

It is when dealing with kids like this one wishes there were a god to fix it all, but the fact of these kids' lives flatly denies such existence.

Or at least, one who is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent (?). The three seem to be mutually exclusive in view of facts in evidence.

[blackshoe]

Ken and Winston both make very good points.

 

The quote from the WHO misses the point. If people who drink harm only themselves, that's not, in general, a reason to prohibit them from drinking, or to prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages. People who drink and hurt someone else are a different story, but the WHO quote doesn't address them.

 

As for the "war on (some) drugs," it doesn't seem to me that putting a couple of million users in prison has done much to stem the tide.

 

In the end, the solution, if there is one, is to change the socio-economic conditions that lead people to try to escape their lives through drugs - whatever the drug. I don't know how to do that. :unsure: :(

[Winstonm]

Or at least, one who is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent (?). The three seem to be mutually exclusive in view of facts in evidence.

 

Quite. If there is on, he ain't our buddy.

[y66]

I inadvertently left out this item from the World Health Organization's alcohol fact sheet: "Worldwide, 3.3 million deaths every year result from harmful use of alcohol, this represents 5.9 % of all deaths."

[mike777]

I inadvertently left out this item from the World Health Organization's alcohol fact sheet: "Worldwide, 3.3 million deaths every year result from harmful use of alcohol, this represents 5.9 % of all deaths."

 

compared to how many deaths from prohibition proven causes?

 

If prohibition=fewer then we should know that.

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In any case those who advocate for other drug laws need to be clear on what they advocate.

 

At this point what they want seems to be all over the map and very unclear.

[Trinidad]

I think there should be some room between "harmful use of alcohol" and "prohibition".

 

Rik