Junkies in city centre [MOD WARNING POST #331]

stomprockin

Degsy wrote: »

However,30 yards away there's always at least two guards standing at the GPO,sometimes four or five..why?
Are they worried there'll be another easter rising or something?

LoL that me laugh.

ruddellmander

It is a shambles when you actually think about it but nothing will be done about it. The guards aint equipped to handle the junkies,so the junkies will just roam the streets as if its normal. Well when ya think about it,these scenes are quite normal as we have all seen them for atleast the last 15 years. Yes its gotten worse,but its nothign new!!

arybvtcw0eolkf

ruddellmander wrote: »

It is a shambles when you actually think about it but nothing will be done about it. The guards aint equipped to handle the junkies

What equip'ing would they need?.

prinz

Darius Stocky Tulip wrote: »

What equip'ing would they need?.

Yoink.

ruddellmander

prinz wrote: »

Yoink.

That exactly

Degsy

Well if the guards wont do what about a private 'security' firm,pad for by local businesses,the tourism board and private donations?

Kinda like those big eastern european lugs that patroll the dart stations..

Degsy

Darius Stocky Tulip wrote: »

What equip'ing would they need?.

prinz

The best equipment they could get is Irish society turning a blind eye to some little scrote getting a few digs, instead as it is now all the papers, civil liberties types etc would be up in arms. Lay a finger on someone now and the garda on the street could be putting their job on the line.

Raedwald

Degsy wrote: »

No need for such violence, get them all together and throw them in the liffey doubt any of them can swim!. Problem sorted

On a more serious note, a more visible push by the Gardai on tackling these junkies in and around the City Centre would be great. Store Street station is about 100 yards from where most of these dealers do there business and you never see gardai around that area.

Degsy

The best thing of all is that the taxpayer is footing the bill for all this..we're paying for:
The dole

The medical card

Th methedone

The treatment centres and needle exchanges

The Social services to look after thier kids when they're taken into care

The Hospital bills when they OD or slash each other to bits

The prisons where thier habit is further subsidised

The solicitors who say how tough they had it as children and how they shouldnt be jailed for 10 charges of robbery with weapons,dealing dangerous drugs or assaulting somebody in thetreet.

The funerals when they're eventually found dead in a lane somewhere.

WTF..is the taxpayer the ultimate fool these days?Subsidising an illegal "culture"??
Are we entitled to nothing in return,not even the right to go about your business in peace?

ruddellmander

Throw them all on Lamb-bay island to make love with the seals!!!

arybvtcw0eolkf

Lads I know your just having the craic with the Clint picture and the baseball bat. But lets leave it at that now please.

Ordinarily people would be banned for suggesting illegal activities like giving someone a few digs etc.. This time I know your joking about, so just leave it eh!.

Back on topic please.

Degsy

If we black out faces can we post pics of whats going on??

yutta

Degsy wrote: »

The best thing of all is that the taxpayer is footing the bill for all this..we're paying for:
The dole

The medical card

Th methedone

The treatment centres and needle exchanges

The Social services to look after thier kids when they're taken into care

The Hospital bills when they OD or slash each other to bits

The prisons where thier habit is further subsidised

The solicitors who say how tough they had it as children and how they shouldnt be jailed for 10 charges of robbery with weapons,dealing dangerous drugs or assaulting somebody in thetreet.

The funerals when they're eventually found dead in a lane somewhere.

WTF..is the taxpayer the ultimate fool these days?Subsidising an illegal "culture"??
Are we entitled to nothing in return,not even the right to go about your business in peace?

Thank you.

I never give money to junkies/beggars. You'd think there was no social welfare system in this country.

yutta

ruddellmander wrote: »

Throw them all on Lamb-bay island to make love with the seals!!!

Lambay island is private property.

anplaya

gollem_1975 wrote: »

Just out of interest : In what way is our system a joke ?

how is the Australian system any better ?

eh?everybody knows the irish justice system is a joke.

dont know anything about the australian one but im sure its better than ours,ffs the justice system here basicallly needs a complete overhaul.

NOGMaxpower

For a solution look no further than Portugal

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html

Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze–filled "coffee shops," Holland has never actually legalized cannabis — the Dutch simply don't enforce their laws against the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

At the recommendation of a national commission charged with addressing Portugal's drug problem, jail time was replaced with the offer of therapy. The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is more expensive than treatment — so why not give drug addicts health services instead? Under Portugal's new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail.

See the world's most influential people in the 2009 TIME 100.

The question is, does the new policy work? At the time, critics in the poor, socially conservative and largely Catholic nation said decriminalizing drug possession would open the country to "drug tourists" and exacerbate Portugal's drug problem; the country had some of the highest levels of hard-drug use in Europe. But the recently released results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, suggest otherwise.

The paper, published by Cato in April, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

"Judging by every metric, decriminalization in Portugal has been a resounding success," says Glenn Greenwald, an attorney, author and fluent Portuguese speaker, who conducted the research. "It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the drug problem far better than virtually every other Western country does."

Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal's drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.

The Cato paper reports that between 2001 and 2006 in Portugal, rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug among seventh through ninth graders fell from 14.1% to 10.6%; drug use in older teens also declined. Lifetime heroin use among 16-to-18-year-olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8% (although there was a slight increase in marijuana use in that age group). New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003, and deaths related to heroin and similar drugs were cut by more than half. In addition, the number of people on methadone and buprenorphine treatment for drug addiction rose to 14,877 from 6,040, after decriminalization, and money saved on enforcement allowed for increased funding of drug-free treatment as well.

Portugal's case study is of some interest to lawmakers in the U.S., confronted now with the violent overflow of escalating drug gang wars in Mexico. The U.S. has long championed a hard-line drug policy, supporting only international agreements that enforce drug prohibition and imposing on its citizens some of the world's harshest penalties for drug possession and sales. Yet America has the highest rates of cocaine and marijuana use in the world, and while most of the E.U. (including Holland) has more liberal drug laws than the U.S., it also has less drug use.

"I think we can learn that we should stop being reflexively opposed when someone else does [decriminalize] and should take seriously the possibility that anti-user enforcement isn't having much influence on our drug consumption," says Mark Kleiman, author of the forthcoming When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment and director of the drug policy analysis program at UCLA. Kleiman does not consider Portugal a realistic model for the U.S., however, because of differences in size and culture between the two countries.

But there is a movement afoot in the U.S., in the legislatures of New York State, California and Massachusetts, to reconsider our overly punitive drug laws. Recently, Senators Jim Webb and Arlen Specter proposed that Congress create a national commission, not unlike Portugal's, to deal with prison reform and overhaul drug-sentencing policy. As Webb noted, the U.S. is home to 5% of the global population but 25% of its prisoners.

At the Cato Institute in early April, Greenwald contended that a major problem with most American drug policy debate is that it's based on "speculation and fear mongering," rather than empirical evidence on the effects of more lenient drug policies. In Portugal, the effect was to neutralize what had become the country's number one public health problem, he says.

"The impact in the life of families and our society is much lower than it was before decriminalization," says Joao Castel-Branco Goulao, Portugual's "drug czar" and president of the Institute on Drugs and Drug Addiction, adding that police are now able to re-focus on tracking much higher level dealers and larger quantities of drugs.

Peter Reuter, a professor of criminology and public policy at the University of Maryland, like Kleiman, is skeptical. He conceded in a presentation at the Cato Institute that "it's fair to say that decriminalization in Portugal has met its central goal. Drug use did not rise." However, he notes that Portugal is a small country and that the cyclical nature of drug epidemics — which tends to occur no matter what policies are in place — may account for the declines in heroin use and deaths.

The Cato report's author, Greenwald, hews to the first point: that the data shows that decriminalization does not result in increased drug use. Since that is what concerns the public and policymakers most about decriminalization, he says, "that is the central concession that will transform the debate."

ruddellmander

just throw them on any island!!

NOGMaxpower

ruddellmander wrote: »

just throw them on any island!!

I vote the Island that we know as England is used.

M.J.M.C

If you moved all these junkies to right outside the door steps of ministers and td's houses - then something would get done.

Nothing will be done about this for a long time

NOGMaxpower

M.J.M.C wrote: »

If you moved all these junkies to right outside the door steps of ministers and td's houses - then something would get done.

Nothing will be done about this for a long time

Only thing to do is legalise it, control it and tax it.

arybvtcw0eolkf

Degsy wrote: »

If we black out faces can we post pics of whats going on??

Post 'em up and see Degsy.

Your a bright lad, you know how to do it without provoking a response!.

But to be serious for a moment. I can't see the problem if face's & other indentifying information is edited (pixelled, blackout or whatever).

ruddellmander

I concur with the England vote

prinz

Darius Stocky Tulip wrote: »

Lads I know your just having the craic with the Clint picture and the baseball bat. But lets leave it at that now please. Ordinarily people would be banned for suggesting illegal activities like giving someone a few digs etc.. This time I know your joking about, so just leave it eh!.Back on topic please.

Wasn't suggesting anything illegal, moreso an armed Garda unit to patrol/tackle hotspots for a start or a recruitment drive to put proper numbers on the strees. As long as we expect ill equipped gardaí to tackle junkies and other assorted individuals armed with who knows what weaponry/diseased bodily fluids etc we're not going to get the policing needed IMO.

There's zero respect or fear for the Gardaí on the beat these days, compared to a lot of European countries. Even the uniform could be looked at for patrolling the city centre.

ruddellmander

prinz wrote: »

Wasn't suggesting anything illegal, moreso an armed Garda unit to patrol/tackle hotspots for a start or a recruitment drive to put proper numbers on the strees. As long as we expect ill equipped gardaí to tackle junkies and other assorted individuals armed with who knows what weaponry/diseased bodily fluids etc we're not going to get the policing needed IMO.

Could not agree more..

Dancor

cosmic wrote: »

Yeah, the Concerned Parents Against Drugs movement. An amazing idea that was really effective but they were up against it all and that's why they faded away really. The Gardai were against them, because they saw them as vigilante groups, the dealers were against them, for obvious reasons. Terrible shame. DCTV funded a really interesting documentary about them called "The Meeting Room" which also features Tony Grogory and Christy Burke. Definitely worth a watch for anyone interested.

Would you believe that in my area many of today's dealers and users are the children of the people who marched in the 80's and mid 90's. Mind boggling.

The parents are well aware but have an ''oh no, not my son/daughter'' attitude.

If anyone likes a bit of literature, I can recommend a book by Patrick Ryan called Distant Babylon. It focuses a lot on the anti-drug movement of the mid nineties.

http://distantbabylon.tripod.com/

Degsy

Darius Stocky Tulip wrote: »

Post 'em up and see Degsy.

Your a bright lad, you know how to do it without provoking a response!.

But to be serious for a moment. I can't see the problem if face's & other indentifying information is edited (pixelled, blackout or whatever).

Okies these three were hanging around Eden quay for a few minutes(the woman had a buggy with her)..some bloke arrived and they went to the laneway beside the record shop..money was handed over and the bloke(out of shot) retrieved something from his tracksuit bottoms and dropped it into the woman's hand.

Degsy

The two on the left were walking along when the woman on the right approached them.
They stopped and the woman in the centre pulled a crisp bag out of the baby's buggie..she produced two small objects and handed them to the woman on the right who paid with a 50 euro note..she received change and buggered off.
Maybe they were crisps that were bought but very expensive indeed.

Nevyn

I would suggest starting a google map with pins and time lines for every place someone sees dealing happening and junkies.

Something like that can be easily added to will turn up on searches about dublin and put some pressure on.

something like this one
http://spotcrime.com/ie/dublin

cosmic

Degsy wrote: »

Okies these three were hanging around Eden quay for a few minutes(the woman had a buggy with her)..some bloke arrived and they went to the laneway beside the record shop..money was handed over and the bloke(out of shot) retrieved something from his tracksuit bottoms and dropped it into the woman's hand.

That man's runners are very shiny. It always annoys me when I see bums begging in brand spanking new runners when mine have holes and let in the rain! Whetehr your runners are stolen or not, I obviously need my money more than you do mate so p*ss off and let me use the ATM in peace.