be honest~

Nicked from _dracaena_

Please visit this page and pick the words!

And that includes you, oh-person-who-does-not-have-LJ-but-visits-my-page-regularly, you know I'm talking about you =P

Bali 9

If the news didn't mix up the result like they did for Lawrence last time...

Two people just got handed the death penalty, this hot on the heels of Nguyen last year. John Howard is exasperatedly deploring "young people" not to deal drugs "because of the risks".

Maybe it's about time the publicity department stopped portraying drug-dealing as a risk but as an actual crime, whether on a legal or moral level.

Statistics are comfortable to fall back on, but I'm too lazy to pull them out. Suffice to say too many people and families and relationships are destroyed directly and indirectly by drugs. It is a problem that attacks physically, emotionally, socially and financially.

It's useless to lay all the blame on the person who ends up buying the drug, useless to say that "oh, it's their choice, it has nothing to do with me". Each link in the chain from supplier to drug-user had a choice, and each is partially responsible. Would you hand a man a gun if you knew he had the intent to commit suicide? Or commit murder?

You're voluntarily facilitating a crime, even if the crime may seem a choice ultimately made by the drug-user. Unlike suicide, drugs have a broader and longer social effect. Suicide doesn't end in bankrupcy, it doesn't end in broken families, miserable health and the possibility of shuffling in and out of rehab for the rest of your life. Drugs can end in suicide, if it didn't end by overdose first.