Why do so many people want to blame drug dealers and not drug addicts?
Why do so many people want to blame drug dealers and not drug addicts?
I ask this question because of something I saw yesterday. I saw a police officer taking away a 6 year old child for dealing drugs (obviously not a prison...6 year old kid after all). And I thought to myself, his circumstances put him in a position where he had to do that but it's not like drugs are being forced down addict's throats (almost 99% of the time at least). They have a choice and they're choosing poorly so why does the law give them a slap on the wrists and dealers a 15 year sentence? Insert economic point about supply and demand here.- sheilamyersposted 11 years ago
0Because people are always looking for someone else to blame. No one wants to face the consequences for their own actions. Sure, some people are going to say that if the dealer didn't supply the drugs the other person would've never gotten addicted in the first place. That would only be true if the dealer forced the drugs down the other person's throat or held them down and gave them the injection. Once addicted, it's seen as a disease instead of a choice. I say it's always a choice. Maybe I just don't get it and I'm totally wrong.
Maybe it's comparing apples to oranges, but I don't get cut any slack if I get caught smoking a cigarette in a non-smoking environment. That's an addiction to a drug (although not as bad as some of the street drugs out there). I'm being told it's a choice I made and I can get fined. Why aren't they getting me rehab and locking up the cigarette manufacturers? Why don't they lock up the alcohol producers instead of the drunk driver? An addiction is an addiction.
I'm not saying I shouldn't get fined and the drunk driver shouldn't be locked up. We have to pay the price for breaking the law with our addiction. The same should apply to any addict. They're using an illegal substance so they should have to face the consequences. While that sounds harsh, it's the way I see it.In the uk roughly 30 people a year die after taking E. The majority of those cases involved unknown underlying health issues or other substances taken in conflict with ecstasy. Compare that to 440,000 deaths annually from tobacco smoking... thoughts?
- JThomp42posted 11 years ago0
I agree. It is all about supply and demand. If there wasn't such demand, and a large profit margin, then there would be no need for the suppliers.
We as a society aren't claiming that the individual addicted to drugs is without blame. Without question, these people made the choice to abuse them. However, that doesn't equate to the crimes committed by a dealer. The dealer is held responsible for making the addict's drug easily available. His sole purpose is to distribute an illegal substance to as many people possible. If there were no dealers on the streets, it would be close to impossible for a person to acquire most illegal substances. An addict is guilty of destroying his own life, as well as possibly the lives of those closest to him. A dealer is guilty of making that destruction easy for multiple people and constantly searching for someone new to make money from, therefore spreading the destruction.
Couldn't have said it any better, you truly narrow it down well and nail it strongly
It makes no sense!
I don't smoke and yet every store has cigarettes. Life is all about (choices). The same people who blame the dealers for drug addicts should blame liquor stores for alcoholics, casinos for gambling addiction, pornography for sex addiction, food distributors for food addictions, and so forth. If making something "available" is a crime then we need to build a lot more prisons!
My guess is these are the type of people who protest whenever their community considers letting a Wal-Mart be built. Just because it's there doesn't mean you have to shop there. Vote with your wallet. Instead they beg their town halls to "protect us from ourselves" because if they build it we will shop there!The solution to the problem is to make all drugs legal. After all if someone wants to ruin their life why should we tell them they can't? Why waste jail space for 15 years on a drug dealer when we have to have a list to keep up with sex offenders on the streets? The laws don't work. So lets treat dealer and consumer equally and leave them both alone.
Quite right! Add to this the fact that taxing the sale of narcotics would more than cover the cost of medical care, rehab etc... it's a no brainer!
I entirely agree. Most dealers do it for a living because they can and it's one of the easiest jobs in the world. Their product sells itself. They just have to keep good quality and have a supply. But a 6 year old? That I haven't heard of before. A grandma king pin? Yes, that has happened. Yet there are more questions to ask. How would we cut down the number of drug addicts? Drugs change individuals cognitively and behaviorally. Would it be possible to teach individuals to learn how to be cognitively and behaviorally stable? Drugs and alcohol are often a coping problem. Can we help them cope? Can we help them deal with the stresses of life in a positive way?
Sure, it's a traditional supply/demand market, but the demand (or addiction) begins because there was a supply to start with. These addicts didn't grow the drugs by themselves. Somebody started them, for whatever reason. Most of these dealers even give "freebies" to start you up. But either way, the discussion seems to simplify a very complex issue into a simple drug dealer vs. drug addict discussion, without taking in consideration that there are countless of socio-economic problems behind drug addiction, and it's not something as simple as black and white.
Actually some addicts are caught growing their own marijuana plant or creating their own meth. Sometimes around children of their own. Should this be forgiven as well because they aren't drug dealers?
I never talked about forgiving one or the other. I said that the discussion warrants more than a simple blame against drug dealers or addicts. It's a more complex problem than that.
"The Blame Game," is a very popular activity, for nearly any and every human behavior, excuse and explanation. It is also lame, futile and useless. With the exception of serious mental illness or severely low mentality, each and every human being, is morally, legally and realistically responsible for their actions.
"Marketing 101," and common sense, tells us that sellers & buyers are not an issue without one another. Correct?... (Technically speaking of course, when the subject is a "product.") Illegal drugs are not available, without an entire "chain of individuals," passing this product on down the line....not simply buyer and seller. In the case of synthetics, for instance, there's the producer, packager, transporters, suppliers......shall we keep going? Wouldn't it just make sense to think of them all as equally "guilty?"
Mind-altering substances of every type, shape, potency & effect, have existed since the beginning of time. Human beings have always made choices to partake of them and I don't want to be the one to state the "obvious," BUT, they always will. Can we stop the wishing, hoping and dreaming for the IDEAL world filled with Angels & perfection? The so-called "War on Drugs," is & will always be, a complete failure. The hard core facts are, it's a JOKE.
Whether seller, buyer, user, smuggler, etal......there's an enormous boatload of "BLAME" to go around. This is the ugly truth.We are taught to o tog the source of the problem, so whats the source of the problem?
In other words, what came first: the chicken (drug dealer) or the egg (drug addict)?I generally don't have a high degree of sympathy for drug dealers, as most of them are human trash. However, attempting to be objective, I try to look at this from an economic perspective. The FBI tells us year in an year out that the vast majority of drug related violent crime is committed from the dealer side, such as gang violence over turf. Most addicts who commit violent crimes do so to obtain cash to buy drugs.
However, from an economic perspective, the risk involved in delivering the drugs and importing them is what drives the prices up. If we opted to decriminalize or even possibly legalize narcotics, we would inevitably strip out a great deal of the profit margin. Making them easier to obtain from a price standpoint, would eliminate the majority of the violence. After all, nobody shoots anyone to smuggle liquor since the end of prohibition. Now legalizing drugs may make it more acceptable to a small number of people who are dumb enough to do it just because it is legal. By the same time, taking away the risky aspect of breaking the law may make it less appealing to the kid who is looking to be a rebel. Ultimately, I have never believed you can truly prosecute stupidity. And people who purposely inject a poison into their body are stupid. I grew up in a pretty poor area and watched kids I grew up with shoot heroin from a puddle of rain water under their finger nails. You can imagine what became of them.
I think legalization would free up law enforcement to do many other more productive things. And this issue is best addressed by education and good parenting. My only issue with legalization is that people who voluntarily choose to inject poison into their body are now classified as having a disease. Aside from being insulting to a cancer patient, I have no interest in having my tax dollars subsidize their stupidity by paying for rehab programs through gov't social services, which is something we already do. I have no problem with legalization, as long as the people who are dumb enough to poison themselves get help privately, and not on the tax payer dime. Either that, or go someplace and die quietly without bothering those of us who are attempting to live productive lives. I really don't care for the most part what people do, as long as they don't harm the rest of us. That means stay out of my pocket, and my neighborhood. I am more than happy to give them their little red light district to indulge their stupidity.Landmark, I always love your answers but I would pose to you: How do I keep that redlight district out of my neighborhood? I have enough trouble keeping up with sex offenders.
I think if it were legal they would gravitate away from the areas that are not zoned for this activity and towards the ones that are. No system is perfect.. But trying to ban people from consciously harming themselves is impossible.
A drug dealer normally does not overdose, but they supply the drugs that create this incident in others. While the drug user spending wildly is the reason that the drug dealer exists, it is the drug dealer that perpetuates the transaction.
Without the drug dealer, the drugs would never be made available to the drug user. Thus, the drug dealer is the number 1 criminal in this environment.
Those that harvest and manufacture the drugs are also viewed as drug dealers.
Until the world is rid of criminals in the drug environment, more users will surface to expand the criminal money flowing as drug users die.Without the users the drug dealers wouldn't exist though, but without the drug dealer the drug users would always find some other way to get more drugs (growing it themselves if they could).
I don't blame drug dealers. That being said, I think it is despicable that these evil individuals want to make the almighty dollar and not care about encouraging innocent people to "try" what they are selling. They don't care that person will become addicted. All they care about is the person returning over and over again to buy more drugs...making them rich and watching the drug addict ruin his/her life.
I blame the drug addicts. Why? Because of choice. No one HAS to take that first drug. It's the same with smoking, and other addictions.
My husband started smoking at age fourteen. It was a choice. He wanted to be 'cool'. His addiction to cigarettes almost cost him his life. He developed PAD (peripheral arterial disease) later in life, and he came very close to losing both his legs. The doctor said, 'You have a choice, your cigarettes or your legs.' My husband quit smoking and he has been fine since then, with 6 month checkups. (after 2-3 surgeries).
CHOICE, CHOICE, CHOICE. If people would say NO to these drug dealers, they would go out of business. End of story.
A close family member of mine is engaged to a drug addict. It has been a nightmare. Drug addicts lie. Her fiancé came to see me one day, said he needed a dental procedure right away, could he borrow $170? At that time I had no idea he was an addict so I loaned him the money. He has also stolen money and jewelry from other family members' houses, been in and out of rehab...it goes on and on. He has 'promised' he is done, then he goes back to shooting heroin, buying drugs, and lying.
I know there are cases where drug addicts become clean, but I would be very cautious about that. It makes me sick because it all started from a decision to take drugs. This person has no job, and his life is a mess.
So, no, I don't ever blame the dealers. The addicts go to THEM, by choice...and ruin their lives and take others down with them.
A good example is Cory Monteith, a phenomenal actor and singer on Glee. My husband and I have followed that show since the first day. The day he died he told his producer he was doing great, life was amazing. That same night he was found dead in his hotel of alcohol and heroin. He lied. Tragic. Enough said Sincerely, SparkleaI could feel your heart in that story and I'm so sorry you had to go through that!
As someone already said, it is a complex issue. However, to answer the question. Both, the addicts and the dealers had options, do it or don't. Why the law, in most cases, is tougher with dealers? Well, not only they are doing something ILLEGAL, but they are making a PROFIT from it. (They even sell to kids that, although chose to get it, have neither maturity nor age of criminal responsibility.) And, the cherry on top (what appears to be one of the worst crimes in the eyes of the government lol ) they pay no taxes from that illicit money.
Dealing drugs is illegal. Manufacturing alcohol is not. That's why the drug dealers need punished.
As for the six year old, can we say he/she learned it? I hope the parents are punished whether they are addicts or not. It's child abuse.
Drug addicts do make choices and they are the wrong choices. I'd rather focus on teaching children at school and at home before they even TRY the drug, to find coping solutions. While I don't think school is responsible for teaching children everything, I do think the programs in place are helpful for the children who don't get taught at home.
Teaching better ways to cope is a great solution and in this case, I would rather focus on the solution.
Next time a teen says "There is nothing wrong with pot," tell them what I do. "What about the fact that it's illegal?."Telling a teenager that something is wrong because it's illegal is like telling them to try it once so they can be a rebel and somehow act "cool". They need to have a clear, strong, and certainty of punishment to make them averse.
Do you think alcohol would be legal if it wasn't a culturally traditional drug? If it was a new drug that had just been developed it would be illegal too - the health risks are so high, the addictive qualities also.
I personally think it is absurd that the drugs are illegal at all. I'm not advocating a society of smackheads - but I am suggesting that it is not the right of government to prescribe what people choose to take into their own bodies. The legalisation of drugs and the introduction of regulation, better care for recovering addicts, better public awareness of the effects and taxation of the products would solve most of the societal problems that people blame on drugs. It is not the drugs that cause the surge in crime rates - it is the prohibition. This has been clearly demonstrated time and again. Take power out of the hands of smugglers and drug king pins. Regulate them, audit them, tax the shit out of them and introduce packaging for their products that lists percentages of ingredients and graded strengths with appropriate health warnings and sell them in liscenced premises.
The drug addict poisons his own body and pays the consequences. The drug dealers benefits financially for poisoning a society that he cares nothing about. When I was 11 years old a drug dealer acted as a friend and offered me drugs for free. Lucky I was smarter the the average 11 year old and quickly figured out his intentions, "Get the kid addicted." The drug dealer knows what he is doing is wrong but all he cares about is easy money. Would he offer the same deal to his own 11 year old son or daughter? I doubt it.
Unitify- you have a really good argument in the name of morality
It would depend on what we ourselves consider justice, and accountability. Is it just that both dealers and addicts get punished by the law, everyone would say yes since they have both engaged in criminal acts. When it comes to
fitting punishments it would be har to evaluate given the different definitions and application of the law in different places. I personally believe that dealers do have the highest degree if accountabily because their role has the most influence in the distribution of drugs. While addicts can act as loners or small groups of friends, drug dealers can affect and reach out to larger groups of people. People unvolved in the trade and use o drugs know what they are getting into, but who is the initial point of the pantemic? In my reasoning i believe its drug lords and dealers. Because they are the initial introductory agent that expand the reaches if drugs around the world. How else could addicts have acces to them. Basically I believe that being the initial agent of introduction and the subject that has the most reach in the distribution and use of illegal controlled substances, drug dealers should be indeed slapped with 15+ years for crimes against humanity, morality, bribery, extortion, blackmail, murder, and disruption if the well being of cummunoties around the world.The difference between a drug dealer and a drug addict, many times the drug dealer is in a state of conscious control consumed by greed, where as the addict is in an unconscious state consumed by desperation. At times selling their body, wife, children, kidneys, and belongings just to be able to get their next hit. While the drug dealer sleeps in their huge homes and drive their fancy cars, the addict is shivering away in the cold night begging for any change you can give him. Addiction is a disease, and yes many times it was a stupid choice for the addict to take drugs, but who are we to judge the life of someone which we haven't lived, circumstances we haven't experiences and tragedies we may have never tasted.
The dealer needs the user to be in business. The dealer can choose to stop dealing at any time. The user becomes an addict. Now, it all changes. Now the addict needs the dealer to obtain what they need; to satisfy the craving for the drug. He has lost the choice of stopping at any time. This is one of the main symptoms of addiction; loss of choice. At this point, this is where the dealers get them into a situation where they are needed so bad, the addict is willing to prostitute, steal or whatever to feed their need. The dealer is like a vulture, picking them clean. And all the while, they are recruiting new victims. You have to understand how powerful addiction is. I'm a recovering alcoholic and my complete life was consumed by my addiction. Sure, obtaining alcohol is legal, but if it weren't, I would have done whatever it took to get it. After all, alcohol is nothing more than a legal drug.
Along with all that, the main target of the drug dealer is the most vulnerable of people. Young, uneducated. People from dysfunctional families, runaways and what-have-you.
A drug addict is a person that is not operating with a sound mind. They are not capable of sound decisions while in the throws of their addiction. The dealer is. His decisions are sound, calculated and just plain selfish and evil, at the expense of a life that was probably at one time, quite innocent.
The addict needs help. The dealer needs locked up for a long time.Without the evil of drug dealers in the case of selling to young children with the goal of preying on the ones not old enough to know the out come to trying drugs just once there would be no drug addicts. I do agree also that if older people made a wiser choice with their lives there wouldn't be a market for drug dealers to profit off of.
Although it's easy to place blame on both the dealer and user for making these choices, at the same time, it can also be a function of their environment. In The Stanford Prison Experiment detailed in the researcher's book, The Lucifer Effect, it was shown that good people do bad things when they are placed in a toxic environment. It is difficult to escape the influence of situational forces and in many cases it's the situation that should be blamed and not the individuals.
People adopt habits and strategies that they believe will work best in the situation they are in. People deal or take drugs because that's the best option they see for themselves. Drug dealers get blamed more often than the addicts because they facilitate others to do drugs. Many dealers make their living enticing others to take drugs. The successful ones usually have strong influencing and selling skills that help them build their business through loyal clients (addicts).
Another way to look at it, is to consider whether you would blame a young child for acting out in public. Most people don't blame the child. They blame either the parents or teachers for allowing this to happen and not raising the child properly.Drug dealers rely on getting new drug users hooked and addicted. They give the new "casual" drug user the "good" stuff until they have them hooked. Then they sell them the "cut" or less quality stuff so they can't ever reach that same "high" they got with the good stuff. That way, the user is always chasing that "high" feeling by buying more and more drugs from the dealer. If you are wondering how I know all this, it's because I had a friend (now ex-friend) who turned out to be a drug dealer and he told me how he got users hooked. I haven't had anything to do with him since. The last I heard of him, he was in prison.
First blaming the drug dealer is an easy way out. a question should be asked. How do the drug continue to come into the country. How much of the money made on drug goes into the Federal treasury? How much money do lawyers, Judges and the entire prison complex depend on crimes such as drugs. Why are drug in such high concentrations in certain areas? and Is this the area of high police concentration. I am placing emphasis on the word concentration for a reason. Hope you pick up on it.
It is absolutely a good question. In my opinion, the drug dealers are more blameworthy than people around us. The aim of Drug Dealers is just to earn money even if it is at the cost of lives of the human beings. They are the real culprits and should be punished under law of the land. We know if a drastic step is not taken in this aspect by the competent authority, its going to harm the lives of the younger generation and ultimately it will be a huge burden on the authority concerned as well as the society itself.
Dealers are targeted because they enable a lot of addicts. The police are simply cutting off the head of the snake, thereby stopping a LOT of users from getting what they want instead of catching just one. The dealers know the risk (excluding 6 year olds...). The risk is what makes it so profitable. The sad thing is that there will always be another dealer to take their place. Addicts take a risk when they first start using. I don't blame either of them. It's their life and their choice.
They are both to blame. However, addicts are people who made a huge mistake that can't be undone by themselves but drug addicts are the ones who fuel their addiction, giving it power. A drug addict can't just stop becoming an addict. It might have been for fun, the dealer was around and the future addict said 'what the hell, I'll try it.' Simple as that, but if the dealer wasn't there, the future addicts curiosity wouldn't be aroused. Just because this child was 6 does not make it all right. There would be much less addicts if there were much less dealers.
Maybe because of the violence that is part of the business, maybe because they take part to destroying the health or the lives or both of many people. Now, i don't judge, it is just an analysis. Seriously, I have seen so many people die from drug violence...my own brother was killed by drug dealers that were bothered by a teacher that would help his students, friends and neighbors not get involved with drugs... I can assure you he hated drugs, alcohol and cigarettes ... anything that could impair someone's health.
So, problem with drug dealers, they make it easy to destroy your life and participate to violence to the level of torture, kidnapping and murder.
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