Another man has been killed by drunk children. This time the cheif of police has spoken out regarding the alcohol, murder link and called for action. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6947224.stm In Scotland 70% of murders are committed by people under the influence of drink. Also, "Figures show that almost half of Scotland's 7,000 prisoners claim to have been drunk at the time of their offence." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/6901303.stm How do you resolve this problem? If an illegal drug was causing children to kill or in general contributing to death on this scale there would be an outcry. But people love to drink and will defend Alcohol even in the face of such sickening evidence.
Replace all liqueur with pot and sell it for less than the liqueur, this will keep people high, money coming in and fewer deaths.
Its sad that so few people have replied to this thread as its such an important issues. It really does show how drinking has been given immunity from the public at large even those who pertain to be intelligent. I personally see the solution in Tax. If drinking cannot be stopped then it must pay for a level of police cover that makes it 'safer' for the innocent victim affected by this disease everyday. A high tax will also have a significant affect on children's ability purchase. Also, public drinking should be banned full stop together with the legal age to buy Alcohol being raised to 21.
kids are old enough to go off to war and kill people but not old enough to drink. kids are old enough to get gun licenses, but not drink kids are old enough to drive, but not drink. Its about responsibility, not the drinking.
How about you simply stop drinking alcohol? It is the most straight-forward and logical solution for these particular problems. Besides, I'm sure your liver would be delighted.
i saw it on the news last night and was disgusted, but the chief of police was on television blaming parents he was saying that perants should take more responsibilty for they're children behaviour, but that is unfair, you can have a well mannered, polite lovely child at home and when they are out with they're mates they can turn into little monsters who are beyond the law, and in most cases they are, they know that if they are under 18 they will mostly get a community order or an ASBO (anti social behaviour order), what good is that? It was the law that failed that man, if there were harder punishments for young children he would still be alivem because they would be affraid to say boo to anyone. The police are scared to face these young people and they shouldn't be. also they were talking about raisint the age of drinking to 21, what would that do? There are crimes done by drinkers who are older than 21,
Angel I think you have misunderstood what was said by the chief of police. He was saying that there are a number of parents who are turning a blind eye to their children drinking. You are correct that you cannot govern your children 24 hours a day but you should at least attempt to govern them 24 hours a day. You have said also said "he was saying that perants should take more responsibilty for they're children behaviour, but that is unfair". I stronlgy disgaree with you here the first line of control of any 'child' is the parents. If parents are not willing to take on this responsibility then they should not be parents. If your child comes in drunk on a regular bases you need to have the skills to confront this as a problem and put in place a solution. And the most important step in undertaking this is fully accepting that this is your child and that you have a duty to control them. It is people like yourself who think that someone else should sort out the problem i.e the Police, that are the cause of the problem. The police should be seen as a safeguard not a first line of defence, first and foremost it should be society's job to govern itself. Also, on raising the drinking age it would prevent immature individuals having easy access to a lethal substance, surely that cannot be a bad thing? Although it will more than likely take a huge amount of drinking out of pubs onto the street, which posses its own hazards. But maybe it would mean a mass of individuals becoming drinkers at an age whereby they are mature enough to form health drinking habits.
You need perspective (or valium to calm you down) Dozens more children are harmed by quite legal crappy diets. Where is the 'outcry' to ban crappy Scottish cooking? Ban sausages, cheese, crisps, milk. People will defend eating fish and chips even in the face of such sickening evidence. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Put that beer down and eat your fatty custard!Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Don't you know it's vital to 'ban' soft drinks to reduce levels of diabetes? 'Ban' butter and margarine..'ban'..'tax'...'ban'...'tax'...anything short of this is sickening evidence of your irresponsibility. Crappy diets kill more children than drunk drivers. Raise the age of ice cream consumption to 21...no 'ban' it all together!!!! the future of our children is at stake! Now, i'm going to pop open a beer and read a good book. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Oredont you have totally missed the point. What ever anyone eats it will not make you go out onto the street and kill other people for virtually no reason what-so-ever. The true victim of drinking are the innocent people whom happen to get in their way and pay their lives for it. And we are talking about 1000's of deaths.
Ahh, yes! But people don't want to accept personal responsibility, do they? If they murder someone, it's not their fault ...it's the fault of the booze, or the drugs, or their parents abuse, or........anything except their own fault. And now it's gotten so bad that we don't even think of blaming the murderers or the rapists, we blame anything and everything else first and foremost. "It ain't my fault! The Devil made me do it!" ....LOL!!! Baron Max
Sure, but that's true of every single crime or accident that's ever happened. That's just the way it is in life and in society. We want and fight for "freedom", but the minute someone else gets out of line, the very first thing we want to do is limit everyone's freedom. Baron Max
Can't be such a thing as a "safe" society if it's free. People are free to murder and rape and steal and...... How can you give people freedom to do such things, yet call it a free society? Murderers and rapists, etc aren't murderers and rapists, etc UNTIL they've commited the crime. So ...shouldn't they be free, too? And if they are, then you're giving them the perfect opportunity to commit those crimes. Sorta' like the chicken and egg problem, huh? Nope, "ultimate freedom" is a pipe dream for humans. It works well in the animal world, but humans can't survive without being limited in their freedom. Humans are too fuckin' mean and nasty to be permitted the "ultimate freedom". Baron Max
The usual stereotype for a drunken child is either a one parent home, or the parents themselves are young and never really learnt how to take care of their children properly. (Teenage pregnancies) I remember overhearing a discussion in a local off-licence, a lady came in talking about a group of boys that shouldn't be getting drunk because they weren't old enough, they weren't however serving the boys. It turned out the boys were actually getting off their parents, the parents were even known to go into shops buy the alcohol and then just outside the window pass it to the boys. The main problem is even if they raise it to 21, is it actually going to stop children from drinking?
In some ways, alcohol is the worst of the popular recreational drugs. It gives many people a sense of arrogance, coupled with a sense of invincibility, impaired judgment, and often a rush of energy and enthusiasm. In short, it makes them more like adolescents. This is why they like it so much! Obviously, if this drug is adminstered to adolescents, reinforcing the worst of their immature behavior, the results can be catastrophic. Humans who have become the emotional equivalents of 12-year-olds are driving cars. The illegality of marijuana does not keep it out of the hands of teenagers but it does reduce their rate of usage, causing them to look for another intoxicant, like easily available alcohol. It's hard to conceal because it's bulky and smelly, the smoke is a dead giveaway in this era of smoke-free environments, and it shows up in a urine test weeks later, interfering with sports, job applications, and a wide range of activities. I don't advocate drug use of any kind by children, including the caffeine we pander to them shamelessly. Their hormones, emotions and attitudes have not finished maturing and they don't need the perturbation of extraneous chemicals. But if a kid is determined to get high, I'd much rather see him do it on pot than booze. It makes people lazy and contented, so they're more likely to sit around home playing videogames and having sex, or at least travel no farther than the nearest food source. It also induces a healthy sense of paranoia, so if they do decide to get in their car, they'll be in the right lane going 5mph under the speed limit, keeping a constant lookout for potential dangers including cops. The explosion of alcohol use among teenagers who want a brief escape from the harsh realities of life--as well as nasty but easily concealed drugs like meth--is, in my observation, one of the many second-order effects of the War on Drugs and its utterly illogical focus on marijuana, one of the world's most benign drugs. As with alcohol prohibition during my parent's youth, outlawing drugs causes worse problems than the drugs themselves.
Did prohibition(USA) work? I mean, I sure it was behind the Racketeering that spawned the Mafia. Actually I think the US has the idea now, you can't find a decent Ale though. Most alcohol doesn't have such a high percentage as Europe.
No it didn't. My parents were teenagers and young adults during the Prohibition Era and they spoke with disgust of its effects. Alcohol is too easy to produce. Neolithic tribes and perhaps even Mesolithic tribes figured out the technology of fermentation. Prohibition devolved alcohol production down to the household level. Amateur brewers made mistakes and often got poisonous methanol in their products. Alcohol is the most popular drug on earth and people didn't stop drinking just because it was illegal. (Or immoral: Islamic Jordan has its own national liqueur, arraq.) The effect was to turn tens of millions of otherwise respectable citizens into criminals. Once this happened, general respect for the laws began to erode. In a country that was founded on the principle of disrespect for authority, it suddenly made drinking chic. Women began patronizing taverns. Moving a popular commodity into the black market increases the risk and profit of selling it, which attracted criminals into the business. Children are less likely than adults to be prosecuted, so they were recruited as delivery agents by the bootleggers. Children saw criminals making more money than their hard-working parents, and began to doubt the wisdom of going to school and getting a real job. An illegal industry cannot settle its disputes in the court system, so rival bootleggers shot each other as well as deadbeat customers. They often caught innocent bystanders in the crossfire, turning inner cities into battlegrounds. The huge profits inevitably brought organized crime syndicates into the business. The Mafia, which had been merely a nuisance, became a major influence in American culture and politics, which did start to fade away until quite recently. It was obvious that Prohibition was a failure. Since the government respected the Constitution in those days, it had had to convince the citizens to pass a Constitutional amendment granting itself the power to tell citizens what they could put inside their own bodies. The citizens rose up to correct their error--with the blessing of populist President Franklin Roosevelt--and repealed the amendment after only 13 years. The deciding vote was cast by the State of Utah, the home of America's Mormon community. Even the Mormons recognized that it is not practical to enforce morality through legislation. How many of the above points do you see repeated in exact detail in the current War on Drugs? Marijuana is called "weed" because it grows anywhere. Other drugs are easily brewed in home labs. Respect for the law continues to erode. Children are recruited as drug runners. They see drug dealers wearing "bling" and driving Maseratis. Drug dealers solve their business problems with violence. Inner cities are battlefields. Otherwise respectable citizens who fail drug tests can't get jobs and end up in the underclass. New criminal organizations are getting rich off of drug profits, and many of them are foreign-based so the money isn't being recycled into our own economy. Drug use has not declined. The War on Drugs is an obvious failure. Unfortunately the parallel stops there and has a couple of frightening new addenda. The government propaganda machine is much more powerful and effective than it was 75 years ago, so many supposedly intelligent and educated voters believe that drug prohibition is both moral and effective. The government no longer respects the Constitution, so no amendment was passed and the War on Drugs is illegal. Opium poppies are grown in Afghanistan. Since heroin is illegal, much of the 13-billion dollar profit in the world heroin market goes into the coffers of the Taliban instead of considerably more scrupulous corporations, and is used to fund terrorism.
