All societies create an underclass, not of people in povery, such as happens in India and elsewhere, but of people who for one reason or another cannot be helped without massive intervention. It doesn't help that the more social darwinian a society, such as those who have fallen for the spell of "Anglo-disease", the more it creates a crueller society with larger groups of people who are beyond ready help.
It's the Social Darwinism which is the problem, not the drunks.
Who's a bigger binger - someone with a flat paid for with public money, or someone who gives public money to their friends to pay for a war?
One of the characteristics of Social Darwinism is this kind of moral inversion. You can see it everywhere - moral problems are framed as a single issue, usually along the lines of 'We spend money or we don't' or 'We prosecute or we don't' while much more fundamental systemic problems are barely mentioned.
Drug abuse is another one that rolls around regularly. Currently the scare is that skunk is 'up to fifty times more powerful' than it used to be.
I don't particularly like weed, and it does seem to push some people towards some combination of apathy and paranoia.
But its social effects are insignificant compared to coke, which is the drug of choice on Wall St, in the City, and in Washington and parts of Westminster, and in the media, and produces very obvious emotional and psychological damage very quickly.
In context coke abuse is a very much more serious social problem. I don't think we'd be in half the mess we are today if it were tackled seriously.
Inexplicably though, while police are always happy to raid a housing estate looking for weed farms, when was the last time a trading room was raided? Or an ad agency?
There is no equivalence between those two positions. It's apples and oranges. I have no problem with the first, but I'm not sure that was the question. It was more like "shouldn't we be giving street people flats as being cheaper than expensive medical intervention ?"
To which my reply was yes, so long as it gives them a step up into society, given the obvious fact that many street people just need that small help to entirely change their circumstances.
But with drunks and drug addicts I'm not sure we can help them, whatever we do. Short of imprisoning them until they reform, which is depriving them of their human right (to destroy themselves) keep to the Fen Causeway
farming opium is probably less environmentally destructive than extracting and processing oil, and contributes less to toxification and climate destab.
the drug addict ruins his/her health more quickly; but sedentarism (car-addiction) also takes its toll with WHO predicting that car-related deaths will soon outclass war and contagious diseases in worldwide premature mortality stats...
the drug addict presents no risk to others except when his/her need drives him/her to robbery to obtain money for the next fix. of course, the smash-n-grab raid on Iraq by the US and its jackals is the holdup needed to get the next fix of oil for all the SUV addicts, so...
addiction, generally, can make people dangerous to others as well as harming the addict him/herself.
some addictions we recognise, and can name (and stigmatise or feel sorry for or whatever). others we are not allowed to name, or are supposed to accept under false flags and consider their costs "inevitable" and outside the realm of moral or ethical discourse... The difference between theory and practise in practise ...
is a drug addict's habit morally distinguishable from a SUV addict's habit?
That was exactly my point.
We're so used to framing some behaviours as medical or moral issues and some as commercial opportunities that we haven't even begun to think clearly about causes, effects, and - most of all - priorities.
Oil addiction has turned into a cultural illness which is far more damaging to everyone's health than giving a few drunks a few flats.
This isn't just for internal consumption. Possibly the single most important that needs to be done to create progressive change is to start chipping away at the dominant moral frames and replacing them with more functional and relevant ones.
There is no equivalence between those two positions.
The point is that one issue is considered newsworthy background noise we're supposed to put up with, while the other has the tabloids shrieking about evil people stealing our money.
It's that 'stealing our money' that's the clue, and the baseline for the moral equivalence.
It's not so much apples and oranges as wood and trees.
Helen:
But with drunks and drug addicts I'm not sure we can help them, whatever we do.
There are programs that are at least reasonably successful, and other approaches could be developed if the funding were there. In context success rates seems reasonable, if not spectacular - comparable to some other kinds of medical intervention, at least.
Still - prevention is better than cure. People drink for all kinds of reason, but social stresses are surely an important trigger.
