I Don't Like The Drugs... But The Drugs Like Me

Something is pissing me off. Something is getting under my skin. Something is niggling me like a stone in my shoe:

Drugs.

Drugs and their unjust portrayal in the media as murderers, home wreckers, rapists, pimps and embodiments of evil.

Let us make one thing clear; guns don't kill people, people do. If you're a an anti gun person who thinks all guns should be banned because people get killed with them, ask yourself this; if someone murdered someone with a stone, would you try and have the handling of stones outlawed? No. The stone is just that, a fucking stone. Sitting there, minding its own business, doing nothing. Just as a gun is a series of useless lumps of metal. Put in the wrong persons hands, a stone is just as deadly as a gun.

Similarly, drugs do not randomly go around killing people. When no one is taking them, they are just inanimate objects. But even when taken, they do not instantly inspire evil. Pour example,if a young girl takes heroin one time, she does not suddenly go and become a prostitute. If a man takes crack, he doesn't instantly go out and shoot someone. Just as if a person has a beer they don't instantly get behind the wheel of a car, swerve all over the road and kill someone.

We came to the acceptance quite some time ago that alcohol is only dangerous when consumed to excess. Why will people not accept the same fact about drugs? I'm not even a drug taker. I've taken drugs, yes, but prefer not to use them. I'm not addicted just because I've smoked weed/taken ecstacy/snorted cocaine/whatever once or twice. Human beings are the weak ones. It is the man that goes out, drinks 15 pints, comes home and kicks the shit out of his wife and two young children that is evil/wrong/at fault. Not the beer he drunk. (His alcoholism usually takes the blame however, and he gets a free pass. But that's another rant).

None of my friends get surly/aggressive/confrontational when they're drunk. Not one. I find it offensive that responsible people that I know who do take drugs have to put up with the stigma from others who choose not to take them and refuse to do so because they're evil or bad. If you don't want to take them, fine, but don't cast down this holier than thou attitude just because you haven't taken drugs. Same as people that don't drink.

Since the inception of human civilisation, societies have invented or discovered substances that can be smoked, drunk, snorted or injected in order to change ones perception of reality. Why do so many believe the ones that we use in this society to be so bad? It is not the drugs that are wrong and deserve to be destroyed, it is the weak minded fools that over-indulge, develop addiction and ruin lives because they are not strong enough to know when their limit is reached and the line is crossed.

Drugs aren't bad, the people that abuse them are. If you want to find a real ruiner of lives, look to alcohol. It kills more people a year than all "evil" drugs combined. "But we couldn't ban that, too many people drink it." Fine, so let those people have their indulgences, and let the people that choose to take drugs have theirs. Either everything's okay, or none of it is.