Yesterday at Anarchangel I read his piece on this misbegotten adventure. Which made me think on the current attention on no-knock raids as part of the WoD and all the waste that has involved over the years. Waste of time, waste of effort, waste of money, waste of lives.
My general view is simple: if you're an adult and want to take something and screw yourself up, go 'head. I refuse to put a large part of society and our legacy to the future in the can in order to save someone too stupid to live. When the subject of drug legalization comes up, I say fine, but I have two caveats:
First, anyone who sells or gives drugs to a kid gets either a minimum ten years at hard labor(real Hard Labor) or a long drop at the end of a short rope.
Second, there has to be passed a law that if you mess yourself up, your health is shot and you're broke and you can't get/hold a job and have no place to live, well, tough shit. You have NO call on the public purse for one damned penny. If a charity or church wants to help you, that's fine, but NOT ONE PENNY gets taken out of other peoples' pockets to take care of you.
Which is where it falls apart, because most of the legalizers insist we have to set up treatment centers and provide medical care and food and on and bloody on. I say no, you can't have both, either you say it's a personal matter only, or it's not. And if it's personal, the aforementioned druggie can straighten up or die on his own.
And please, nobody tell me that 'victimless crime' crap. This is no such thing, and you damn well know it. Friends and relatives are victims of the dumbass: sometimes just from watching them destroy themselves, sometimes robbed, and sometimes the dumbass decides he doesn't have the guts to kill himself or just die so he winds up taking someone with him.
All this comes up because I'm remembering something that happened at Med Fair. There's a girl I've known since she was a little kid. She's about a year older than my daughter, and they used to play at Scottish gatherings. I've only seen her once or twice a year for the last seven or eight: she's had problems, but I thought it was general stuff for a kid her age.
She showed up at the fair, not in garb, just visiting. She looked good at first glance: she'd lost some weight, seemed very up. After a few minutes talking while I worked on a piece I noticed she seemed a little too bright-eyed, a touch too up, but nothing I could really put a finger on. She mentioned somewhere in this she'd been working at/hanging around biker places, and that put a chill through me. Most bikers I've known were good folks, but some are nowhere near 'good', and I knew which she'd been hanging around.
We talked a bit, then someone asked a question and she went over to the table to look at the stuff on display. Friend of my daughter was helping watch the place and he talked to her a bit while I was hammering and talking. She finally said bye, she'd be back later and left. I'd finished the piece I was working on, the current crowd had moved on, and when she was a ways off in the crowd he looked over and said "She's on meth". No question in the voice, just flat statement. I had that flat 'part of your guts just fell out' feeling and asked how he knew? Daughter said that a couple of their friends had messed themselves up on it and he listed the points of note, including one I had never heard of: scratching. She'd been kind of aimlessly scratching herself as we talked but I'd not known it meant anything. Until I now got the explanation.
I didn't look after her, she was too far into the crowd, and I didn't know if I dared to. I just stood there for a minute listening to the information and diagnosis and feeling that dread. She was an adult- I've not seen her since, and don't know if she's still alive or not- and could screw herself up as she chose. But I'll tell you something:
If the one who started her on that shit stood in front of me and said "Yeah, I sold it to her", I'd shoot them and never miss a beat or lose a moments sleep over it.
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