Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Is the World Going Mad? Episode No 94
This is Richard Brunstrom. He is Chief Constable of North Wales. He's also quite barking mad. On his days off he likes to go catching speeding motorists 'for fun'. His latest wheeze is to sanction plans for a vending machine outside Colwyn Bay Police Station, which will dispense needles to drug addicts. He also wants to provide a steel bin for used needles. The scheme will be paid for by the Welsh Assembly (actually, it's the poor bloody UK taxpayer who will be footing the bill as usual). Why don't they just go the whole hog and provide free shots of heroin too?
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
58 comments:
So long as he is planning on spending time on cracking down on the local dealers too I dont see the problem with this approach
Heroin addiction -> theft, burglary, etc. By prescribing heroin, we could reduce huge amounts of other crime.
To your main point. Would you rather have addicts sharing needles, contracting hepatitis and HIV, etc, and dumping the needles in playgrounds and parks?
The quicker we supply drugs along with the needles the better. Benefits include:
- Fantastic drop in local crime rate.
- Police able to keep track of all addicts.
- Dealers put out of business.
- Nasty needles kept away from children.
There's the added benefit of later on, when all drug takers are using the new service, of upping the quality to a fatal dose: rapid increase in the IQ of the local population.
It could become a model across the whole country.
Think of it as evolution in action.
Isn't it bad enought that there are drug addicts in Colwyn Bay? Do you really want them to contract HIV too? Would that save the taxpayer money?
Besides which, their MP might find it a bit dodgy to wander arond hisw constiuency wearinghis £6,000 Rolex
They've also acquired from the Sun, the nickname "The Traffic Taleban" for over zealous persecution of motorists.
All in all this is sane in comparison to their other exploits.
As Alan pointed out people will shoot heroin whether we approve of it or not. Why not help to cut the HIV and hepatitis infection rate? Should we force these people to use dirty needles? They are going to shoot up whether we approve or not!
If they are willing to accept needle help from the authorities who says the next step is not to accept help in recovery and getting themselves clean.
To demonise a Chief Constable just because he has an idea that may be slightly radical or liberal is shooting oneself in the foot. He has an idea that may actually have a real effect on addicts and is not just paying lip service to the idea. Locking these people up probably would not help. Why not try the alternative. Just once!
If addicts can exchange needles they are less likely to dump used ones and that may remove the danger to non drug users from needles left where ever drug users go to get their fix.
I can think of worse things he has suggested.
We welcome all contributions to the local economy from our visitors. The police even kindly publish where and when the "Arrive Alive" speed trap vans are in our area, just so that we all know :)
God knows, drug addicts are the most important people on the planet and every other social consideration should take second place to catering to their fecklessness.
I have a better idea for this police chief/moron (actually this phrase itself is becoming an oxymoron, sadly) - start protecting the taxpaying citizenry and let the druggies take care of themselves. Arrest them. Bang them up. Forget therapy programmes. Getting over drugs is about the same as getting over smoking. Big deal.
How did these people get elevated over the rest of society? Not through their own efforts, that's for sure. Through do-gooder programmes run by lefty, destructive know-it-alls and financed by people who were being robbed in their homes and their streets by thugs wanting to buy drugs.
There needs to be less knee-jerk reaction and more creative thinking on drugs. I have never done any drugs. However, some people will always succumb to it's "attraction" - and sometimes are driven to it for reasons which we would never want to have to face. We just have to look out for these people until they either get off the stuff, or die. And if that means giving them free shots, of a quality that is medically supervised, through a proper registry, maybe that is the way to go. In the meantime, scare people shitless about the squalid nature of the half-life most of these addicts lead.
Oh, and pull all our forces out of Iraq and send a sufficient force into Afghanistan that isproperly equipped to go into the poppy growing areas and sow enough salt to ensure that nothing will grow in them for a hundred generations. That would soon stop the flow of the evil, illegal alternative supply. It would scupper the funding of the Taleban too. Sometimes we are just too squeamish about doing what has to be done.
I am with you on the TopCop though. He is an embarrassment. He needs to rememeber that policing is about carrying that great bulk of the population on his patch who eschew crime - and not about constant surveillance to ensure no-one does 31 in a 30 zone.
Verity said…
‘Money's better spent apprehending offenders against society and banging them up. Let the druggies attend to their own health’.
Spot on. Perhaps we could also have a plain-clothes copper who can go behind the pub where all the meagre but personal belongings stolen from me and Mrs S., are being flogged, and pay a few quid (which I’ll gladly give him), so we can get ‘em all back.
If I go down there, I’ll be arrested on suspicion of ‘trying to be reasonable’.
Yes it would. It would mean safer streets due to a massive drop in all forms of crime and in the long run would be a bloody sight more economically cost effective.
See what he says in his blog:
"In Colwyn Bay Nimbyism has resulted in pressure amounting almost to blackmail on the local chemists, such that all have withdrawn from the scheme. The needle exchange bus has been subject of demonstrations which have descended into violence from the protestors, requiring police attendance. There is a very nasty streak of intolerance in the area, much of it led or orchestrated by a handful of local representatives.
The result is that there is no effective needle exchange scheme in Colwyn Bay, an area that needs it badly. So I am attempting to provide one, despite the Nimbys. "
How tolerant and how nice that he treats his public with such disdain! It is not public misgivings or the democratic will of the people that concerns him...
The website has removed the Q and A as well - wonder why?
Well summed up. I'm sure most people are unaware that needle exchange goes on across the whole of the UK and is essential.
Prohibition never works!
Read Brunstrom's, rather logical, justification:
http://www.north-wales.police.uk/nwp/public/en/blogs/viewblog.asp?UID=1&CID=43
I'd prefer him to have picked up an unsolved crimes file on his days off. It would actually assist him in the management of his force, by seeing at a detailed operational level what was going right, and what was not working.
To pillory a man for his honesty is not to my taste.
Question 1 - Is 'shooting' heroin a legal or an illegal activity?
Question 2 - If it is illegal, then isn't supplying the equipment being an accessory before the fact?
Question 3 - If the answer to Question 2 is "Yes", then Brunstrom should be so charged, surely?
Or are the police above the Law?
Hope all this equipment will have bilingual signage as is the norm in Wales.
Catching speeding motorists means that the law is enforced. If you don't like being caught speeding, don't speed. Or vote for a political party that will abolish the speed limits.
As for the needles, I'm suprised you take such a view Iain. The cost of the needles is minimal but the cost of treating a scumbag who's injected themselves with HIV is a lot higher. And the cost of treating a child who picks up a needle found outside their front door is a lot higher. Needle exchanges work, even if the state aiding drug takers is not so appealing, but the state treats many with self-inflicted problems from alcoholics, the obese. And the police can watch the dopers from their office window and monitor them.
Haven't enough coastal towns have been ruined by turning them into junkie service centres?
Oh and why not use all this taxpayers cash to fund the rehab facilities that actually get people off drugs?
Actually I know the answer to that one: It's because maintaining a growing population of drug addicts creates more job opportunities for parasites like Brunstrom.
Needle exchange in North Wales has been shown to be extremely successful over a significant period of time.
It is important that the provision of sterile injecting equipment is not made synonymous with drug misuse. The client group may be the same, but the objectives are quite different.
Needle exchange gives us the ability to prevent serious disease in a group which is itself (temporarily) unable to do so.
We need to eliminate English taxpayer funding for the Welsh language, though.
Yes, it might teach them a lesson.
Besides, I'm sure taxpayers wouldn't want their money spent on this.
For the record I actually favour total drug legalisation. But this use of public money is unacceptable.
Culni sydd wrth wraidd y peth. Dynion Llundain yn methu derbyn fod modd i rywyn fod yn llwyddianus ac yn ddyfeisgfar draw yma yn y gorllewin 'gwyllt' Ma nhw'n disgwyl i ni eu dilyn nhw ym mhob peth ac yn mynd yn grac iawn pan dy ni'n arwain i gyfeiriad arall. Mae dynion Llundain yn mynd yn fwy plwyfol bob dydd.
"Leaving Brunstrom to man the bridge over the weekend, I took the Missus up to the Lake District for a long weekend."
North Wales Police blogs
As for giving junkies heroin -- please do. It is cheaper and more pleaseant to pay tax than to get burglared or mugged.
Besides that, you cannot stop the drrug 'business' from happening, so, the state should take the monopoly on in and remove the large revenue for assorted mafias that stem from it (and OUR homes and cars)
Meanwhile, the people who need heroin to die in dignity instead of a rage of agony screams have their relatives go out on the street to score, because you can get a heroin prescription, but can't fill it in the pharmacies.
It's a mad mad world!
(and please DO research heroin a little bit, you'll see that beneath the hype, there is no big deal at all. Heroin addicts on a legal supply can function normally and hold down jobs and have families, what creates the problem is the impurities mixed in by the gangsters, and that the mafias in the UK have a billion pound market, which then feeds back into Islamist pockets (since the stuff comes from Afghanistan).
Maybe because it gets him in the paper? - he seems to be the Tony Blair of Policing!
You're right though, the man's a whole victoria sponge short of a picnic - he declared not so long ago that speeding was as bad as murder.
Whatever the other arguments against I think it is certain that handing out needles costs far less than treating hepititas etc. Of course we could decide that the NHS shouldn't treat anybody responsible for their condition like drug users, smokers, those of us who don't exercise ... ?
Of course if we did start allowing cheap generic heroin to be freely available it is likely it would increase the number of addicts. So is that too high a price? I would say certainly not.
Also I think it's a matter of philosophy. Personally I'd rather live in a society that allowed choice and valued personal responsibility. You might differ from this and prefer a nanny state. In which case I expect you're pretty happy with Tony.
Sounds like a good idea, although smokers fund the NHS through taxation on cigarettes so I'd let them off.
I agree with what he is doing, and believe that drugs should be legalised , as nasty as they are and as stupids as those who take them are (I used to) they are a fact of life , contol elps prohibition doesnt , you can say the same about firearms.
What's wrong with letting drug addicts die out? Where does it say in the NHS charter, if there is such a thing, that the taxpayer is responsible for self-inflicted damage? If they get AIDS, they get it. So what?
Giving up drugs is no worse than giving up a 60-cigarette a day habit. All this fuss about checking in to clinics, etc is just to add drama to the lives of inadequate people. In fact, one famous drug addict whose name I don't remember because I really don't care, actually said he had a harder time giving up cigarettes than heroin. Why has the West elevated drug taking into some special, arcane problem?
And of course you, Carlos, have never, never, ever exceeded the speed limit, have you ?
Never been distracted for a moment, and drifted above the limit.
Never strayed a little beyond, just to make sure that you overtake a little more quickly, and perhaps more safely.
Never had to accelerate above it to avoid a risky situation.
B*llocks - if you drive then you have exceeded the limit at some times, just like we all have. If you don't drive then you don't understand the scenarios I have described above, and should not comment.
Self-righteous comments like yours irritate me hugely.
With regard to speed cameras, Brunstrom's idiotic quasi-religious fervour for their use is totally disproportionate to the problem of excessive speed, which (contrary to whatever you may have been spun) is the DIRECT cause of less than 5% of all accidents.
His excessive reliance on them draws focus, and finance, away from solving other significant transport and crime problems.
With your views, Iain, am v surprised your not shortlisted for a safe blue-rinse on sea seat.
You leaving the area would achieve that end more effectively you tosser.
You think you're funny, Parlicoot, don't you? We'll see if you're still laughing when your picture is - hopefully - circulated round the Colwyn Bay dealership fraternity.
I'm disappointed in you Iain, but pleasantly surprised by the posts of some of your more enlightened readers.
Cinnamon is spot on. His/her post brings to mind a HedWeb article called "When is the best time to take crack cocaine?". Authored by an English professor of psychopharmacology, it addresses the way the UK medical establishment with-holds - on spurious ethical grounds - painkillers from terminally ill cancer patients (for example).
The prof sums his piece up with the fine sentiment: "...one is conceived in pleasure and may reasonably hope to die in it." Nice.
This is the same man, BTW, that parked his caravan illegally with car and then went off his head when he was criticised, just after introducing the UK's most draconian traffic regime.
Anything you say about this idiot wouldn't be unbelievable, especially to those who have to live with his policies.
speeding motorists kill children
heroin addicts shoplift from department stores
as a parent i iknow which i prefer
The case has been stated within the comments here that people can get by in life perfectly well using a pure form of heroin. That being the case won't even more people be tempted to give it a go? Especially as its the case that if you lower the price of a particular item then consumption of that item will increase. Is that what we want?
I am in favour of legalising all drugs on ideological grounds(although not firmly commited to this viewpoint, in light of some evidence of the consequences), but providing them for free - madness!
AC
People have a bizarre notion of how life has been since and before 1971.