Cocaine Destroying Rural Ireland

Young lads 18-25 just aren't into drinking and pubs. My nephew and his mates are in the gym all the time and play gaa, so saturday night they'll get a ball of coke, do lines in one of their houses and around 11 they're in the nightclub trying to pull. They'll drink water or minerals for the night. No beer, no crap food on the way home because they have a match to play next day.

It's hard to criticise them because our own habits and judgements are questionable at times and they're more fully clued up on the risks than we are. On the other hand, my nephew is saving for a car right now so he was able to knock it on the head but he found it hard for the first while. Others aren't so disciplined (or lucky) unfortunately. I guess all you can do is be there for them when it goes pear-shaped, which it invariably will in most cases.

My cousins family stilling the hospital now waiting for him to wake up over a week after a cocaine hit. They keeps saying its his first one - its not.

..again, peer pressure is extremely complex....

I'll make it simple for you, you're an idiot for taking it. Jump off a cliff just because jumping off cliffs is cool and my daddy and mammy doesn't like it.

I think it’s more than fair to say, the majority of people on this Earth are idiots.

People jump off cliffs if they're suicidal, they take coke for enjoyment, big difference. Legendary rock stars, Hollywood actors, supermodels, senior business people, high profile media personalities have taken it, there's evidence William Shakespeare took cocaine. Yeah right, complete idiots.

You really don't understand what an idiom is. I think we are done here.

Of course they're would, you just read that somewhere

I've a rough idea, "kicking the bucket" doesn't literally mean that. You don't seem to understand the definition of idioT, if you believe they're the only people who take cocaine.

Or mechanics, plasterers, printers, designers, architects & doctors. In fact people have no business taking cocaine. Farmers are no different.

It's a **** show. Thankfully not affecting my family or peers.

There is no such thing as rural Ireland. Small country, everyone connected by road and internet. Also, I am not sure we are even a nation. Just a dog eat dog economy, where everything is rosy so long as you are milking it.

Alcohol destroying Ireland for ever, long before cocaine, and it's advertised all over the place and flaunted and advertised as something to be proud of by various drinks companies who steal symbols of this nation.

Edit ...

A lot of anger in this post. But we are like babies as a nation. Any kind of addiction and we are on it like flies to ****. Any time there is money in the economy we piss it away.

Coke Zero doesn't taste bad at all.

I think cocaine is an awful drug and I have no intention of ever going near the stuff. That being said, I don't think judging or criminalising people who choose to take it is the solution. We've tried that. It's not working. Time to try something new. People need to be able to test their drugs or seek help for addiction without fear of being judged by their community or facing legal action.

Make it legal. Allow pharmaceutical companies to produce it to varying levels of effectiveness. Allow it to be then sold in registered establishments. Use the taxes raised by the VAT on it to fund treatment centres.

Or

Keep it illegal. Allow the criminal gangs to cut it with who knows what. Have it sold who knows where and by who. Spend millions every year trying to stop a tsunami with a kitchen towel. Keep viewing users as degenerates.

We're not losing the battle against cocaine and drugs in general, we've completely and utterly lost the war, we just haven't accepted it yet. Our policy is similar to Comical Ali saying everything is fine while tanks roll into the background.

And all because people decide to put something into their own bodies, a decision which should be theirs and theirs alone.

As for the argument, it's not them they do the damage to, well alcohol and gambling are as destructive and perfectly legal. I'd rather walk past a few lads enjoying a few joints than a few lads roaring drunk. You'd likely lose the house quicker to gambling than a drug debt.

We've tried the ban it and shame it approach, and the Irish public has emphatically said "FU*K YOU, we love our drugs", and that position isn't going to change. Drug use, prescription and illegal, are in every part of the country, in every family. You're likely to talk to or see someone today who by the end of this weekend will have taken cocaine or smoked a joint.

It's time to give the legislation, regulation, taxation and education approach a shot.

Yes, we'll see addicts, but we have them anyway. The country is so awash with drugs that legalisation won't change that much. But it might be the taxes we raise combined with the money we don't waste trying to stop the unstoppable might provide the services those addicts need.

And of course, the less jail spaces taken up by drug users can be filled by those who commit serious crimes against others.

At this stage, for every argument against legalisation, there's multiple arguments for it.