Period as a semi-retired pensioner: 105 days
The topic of today’s Ruminant Pink Friday ™ is about the nanny’s out there and the nanny state and their desire to prohibit things. There is a significant contingent of people out there who get their jollies telling other people what to do and then punishing them if they do not conform. If they can have the law on their side, they can exercise their fantasies, using taxpayer’s money, and target people who they might not like and inflict suffering on them while self-righteously defending their actions. One could, for example, ban the sale of hot pies and chickens. https://www.businessinsider.co.za/lockdown-hot-food-2020-4.
For those of you not in South Africa it bears repeating that there is a curfew from 21h00 to 04h00 in the name of the Coronavirus pandemic. Its for our own good you see. If you are a doctor attending to an emergency during curfew hours and you do not have the “correct” paperwork and permits well then you can spend the night sitting in an unheated police cell with common criminals before posting bail the next morning. Its July in Johannesburg and while the northern hemisphere is enjoying heat waves it goes below zero in Johannesburg at night. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-07-20-blue-lights-and-red-flags-gauteng-doctor-on-emergency-call-arrested-for-breaking-curfew/. The actions of the police here are most likely illegal, but they are not apologetic and seek to justify their behaviour. Will there be any consequences here? It remains to be seen but I am not holding my breath.
On the other hand, if, like Edward Zuma, you are trashed out of your mind and inciting a mob to burn and loot during curfew, one needs to treat that with with empathy and compassion bearing in mind the suffering and lived experiences of the past. Best do nothing.
It’s a human obsession to prohibit things. I have been active on the Rosebank Community Policing Forum (CPF) since 2003. Every now and then a self-righteous Mother Grundy appears to ask what the police are doing about prostitution in Oxford Road which has been going on for decades. I have now honed my response over many years. First, I point out that the police are very stretched and that it is difficult and time consuming for the police to apprehend a prostitute in the act which is required for a conviction. Arresting prostitutes is therefore not a focus and priority for the CPF given other serious crimes. Having said that I recommend that they stand guard on Oxford Road with a camera and photograph the cars and the number plates of the patrons of the prostitutes. They can then post this on social media if they dare. Surprisingly, I have never been thanked for this thoughtful advice nor has anyone taken up my advice.
When our youngest son, Oliver, was born we initially adopted a strict no (toy) guns policy so that we would produce a delightful non-violent young man. When Oliver was four and we asked him what he wanted for Christmas he informed us that he only wanted one thing – “a heavy gun”. This then opened the floodgates and there was ultimately a wicker basket in his room filled with guns: assault rifles, BB guns, cap guns, nerf guns and super soakers. Later there were paintball parties and war games. Surprisingly, Oliver is a delightful non-violent young man.
When our boys were small there was much discussion about the evils of sweets and sugar and many other parents prohibited their children from eating sweets. Then there were children’s parties where, of course, alcohol was served and the parents, perhaps after having a few too many glasses of wine, did not notice their children gorging themselves at the forbidden sweets table until they vomited as a unique opportunity presented itself.
Prohibition of substances is still going strong and that’s where the iron law of prohibition comes in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_prohibition.
The iron law of prohibition is a term coined by Richard Cowan in 1986 which posits that as law enforcement becomes more intense, the potency of prohibited substances increases. Cowan put it this way: “the harder the enforcement, the harder the drugs.”
When drugs or alcohol are prohibited, they will be produced in black markets in more concentrated and powerful forms, because these more potent forms offer better efficiency in the business model—they take up less space in storage, less weight in transportation, are easier to conceal, and they sell for more money. Prohibition undermines the argument in favour of prohibition because the higher potency forms are less safe for the consumer.
So now we have people dying after drinking toxic and illegal moonshine. https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/three-more-die-in-eastern-cape-after-drinking-lethal-moonshine-alcohol-concoction-20210714. If only they had listened to the government regulations.
The ultimate example of this phenomenon is the development of fentanyl which is 50 to 100 times more potent than heroin. Synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, are now the most common drugs involved in drug overdose deaths in the United States. In 2017, 59.8 percent of opioid-related deaths involved fentanyl compared to 14.3 percent in 2010. One kilogram of fentanyl, which is extremely easy to conceal, can kill half a million people
Who is winning the war on drugs? The war on drugs is based on the fallacious notion that the nanny state can wage a successful war on humanity itself by staffing and funding the police and filling the jails with drug offenders.
The notion that users of drugs are poor innocent victims of greedy drug dealers and manufacturers is a pernicious lie that seeks to remove the vital component of personal responsibility. I am not suggesting that drug dealers are paragons of virtue, but you are responsible for yourself. The drug dealers, like the prostitutes, will always be there.
The fact that many drugs are addictive does make things more difficult but, in the end, it is only you who can face up to your addiction. Putting drug dealers in jail will not help you. Addictive and intoxicating substances have been with humanity for millennia and they are not going away. Every person has no choice but to learn to deal with them in their own way. It is part of being human and nothing the nanny state does is going to change that.
Thank you for all the helpful suggestions and comments. Please keep them up.
Regards
Bruce
Ruminant Pink Friday 