That's a picture of part of this article:
Who are the people who have to deal with drug addicts and the problems caused to and by those addicts because of their addictions every day? If you're not one of those people, then you shouldn't be deciding whether or not to legalize things that will make those problems worse.
Don't write, vote for or pass laws that enfeeble law enforcement and then criticize the police, the government, or a political party for not being able to protect you.
At least once a week, since marijuana began to move toward legalization, I am enveloped in the smell of marijuana, walking in the Boston area. People are already recreationally smoking it during the day, outside. The last time that this happened, I thought I might have to move to sit farther away from several people to avoid a contact high.
That wasn't in or around the homeless shelter; the shelter might soon be the only place in the Boston area where I know I'm not about to walk into or past a marijuana zone. No alcohol or drug consumption is allowed in or around the shelter.
Maybe there are people who need to see drug addicts sleeping on mats on the floor, hours before the lobby of a shelter is closed and guests are going upstairs to sleep, other guests walking right past them and having conversations around them because they are too inebriated to do anything else other than lie there, to know how devastating drug addiction really is. Maybe you need to see people who have no teeth, whose bodies look 60 they're 30, who live on the emotional level of children because they are mentally incapable of having adult responsibilities, whose moods may be up or down but whose main emotion about their own lives is one of despair or apathy because they know they have wasted their lives so far and they have no hope of being able to do anything about it.
Maybe the entertainment industry needs to know about those things so that it STOPS GLAMORIZING drug use. The entertainment industry also needs to stop misportraying recovery from drug use as something that only takes an epiphany, some tears, a few weeks in a rehab (where everyone who works there is nice to the clients, full of empathy or even possessing of a college degree; another harmful misportrayal), after which whoever the star is looks not a day older than he or she was when the movie started and all of the drug-use-induced problems that he or she had are resolved as soon as he or she walks out of the rehab and into the fabulous weather fade-out End of the Movie, without a plastic bag that has "PERSONAL BELONGINGS" emblazoned on its side, not wearing hospital socks and flip flops in February, and showing not the slightest hint of not having had access to dental floss, conditioner or acne treatment for a month.
I have never smoked marijuana or had other drug problems, but my years of homelessness and visits to psychiatric facilities have more than acquainted me with the suffering of addiction.
Copyright, with noted exceptions, L. Kochman, June 26, 2017 @ 10:53 a.m./No code, all policies operative, all the time. I'll publish my preliminary page and similar pages again.
