Wednesday 13 May 2009

Drugs

The discussion on the lower pages has made me go back to basics regarding my beliefs.

I'd appreciate your help in sorting these out with your reactions to the following because my actions will be dependent on these beliefs.

We all take drugs - well possibly one in a million doesn't.

Tea and coffee are drugs; herbal teas are drugs. We take others quite readily for illnesses.

The drug that causes the most concern in Britain is alcohol.

All drugs affect the behaviour of our body.

Alcohol has the property to help us relax. Some people cannot relax without it.

It leads to people's loss of inhibitions; they behave in a way that would not normally be their natural behaviour when they are "under the influence".

Encouraging people to drink excessively is irresponsible because as soon as they start losing their inhibitions, they can't see why they shouldn't drink more and more . . The result can be damage to themselves, to property and to other people.

If the result of activities in an establishment leads to people coming onto the streets out of control and this arises from them drinking too much (something they might well deny), we have a problem. More seriously people who are "not under the influence "- bar staff may allow them to drink.

If there are very rare occurrences where the Police have to be involved outside then this is understandable. If however Police are regularly required to bring order to irresponsible people then the establishment is not working as we would wish.

When people come out on the streets at times that non drinking people are around in quantity (during daylight) then these have a great influence on the behaviour of the less responsible. However when irresponsible come onto the streets in the middle of the night when the majority are in bed and the only other people that are around may be other irresponsible people. Then we a looking at "trouble". The only solution that we have then is the sober authoratitive Police.

The latter can do an excellent job but cost the taxpayer a lot of money especially if the have to operate regularly in the middle of the night. With limitted resources of cash there can be other work that we may want the police to do - in the day time.

Thus I conclude that if certain activities in the town regularly lead to irresponsible behaviour in the night then those activities should be stopped.

The onus is on the establishments - no one else.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Correct Geoff, the onus is on the establishments, and in Ulverston, the Landlords police their pubs very well, and Barwatch is a useful tool. Generally speaking "trouble" in Ulverston is quite rare.......except for....you guessed it...the premises of the Chief Hypocrite pictured below....the only reason why, I think, the cops don't come hard on him is that he's got all the idiots in one spot and makes their job easier. The Roxy has split them up for now, so the situation may become a bit more difficult, but I think Mr Robinson will soon sort them out and pack all the idiots back to the Sun, where they are assured of a warm welcome and be "encouraged" to "drink responsibly?".......hope this helps!!

Anonymous said...

Pubs have to take responsibility because no-one else is going to do it. Not the drinkers and certainly not the police.

I just think it's a shame that pubs are put in the position where they have to babysit adults who haven't learned how much drink they can handle without making a tit of themselves.

Maybe it's a society thing these days where it's become more acceptable, but when I started drinking you would be laughed out of the pub (or worse) if you were regularly drinking more than you could handle and making a fool of yourself or causing trouble.

Whatever happened to personal responsibility?

Maybe it's because people don't really have locals these days so don't have other pub goers they see day-in, day-out keeping them in check.

Geoff Dellow said...

Great thinking.

It's good to have people around who make us question what is happening!

It takes me about 24hrs to take in and process thoughts like these and try to understand where to go next.

Geoff Dellow said...

I guess the problem is that there are elements in us all where we need to be kept "on track".

If a high proportion of irresponsible people get together then the way we choose to deal with this is by having laws that then need to be enforced by officials (police).

There are still some remote societies that still manage without police. Small communities where most of the people exert what regulation in behaviour is needed.

Here in Ulverston we are slowly losing the courage to try to help others behave by talking to them. Instead we keep quiet and whinge about poor behaviour to our friends who then nod knowingly and do f**k all.