Where Does The Law Stand?
Sometimes you really do have to question where the law stands in this country, and just whom it aims to serve.
Over the weekend in Bristol, a batch of pure heroin reportedly caused the deaths of two drug addicts while leaving another two seriously ill in hospital after near fatal overdoses.
Subsequently, the police issued a city-wide warning to help raise awareness by calling for all Bristol drugs users to remain vigilant and take extra precautions when injecting themselves.
Since, in fact, the use of heroin is illegal, why are the police calling for criminals to be ‘careful’ when breaking the law? Perhaps the police should also be warning people to pay special attention when they speed on the motorway, or advising would-be murders to take extra care with knives or firearms in case they accidentally injure themselves in the course of a criminal act?
Will either bed-ridden Bristol addict be prosecuted for drug abuse? Highly unlikely, since the law no longer seems to condemn individual users, and quite often indulges them in their ‘illness’ as if it were similar to a common cold which can be caught without any individual responsibility.
Comparably, if you wish to break the law by using or selling drugs, then the likelihood of any retribution is so slim as to be almost negligible. On the other hand however, should you wish to stage a peaceful protest outside the home of Government in the nation’s capital, then you’ll be met with unbridled force and the full fury of the criminal legislative system.
So long as the authorities and the Government continue to believe that drug abusers, like criminals, are themselves victims of social problems caused by relative poverty and the state’s inadequacy to nanny them into submission, then Britain’s drugs problems will only grow, and public trust in the police will only decline yet further.
