Gateway Drug Myth (satire)

A few days ago, I noticed a couple with their child.

What brought them to my attention was the fact that the mother was drinking from a can of beer. This was after hearing their baby cry non-stop for about fifteen minutes on the bus.

Nobody dared challenge the couple lest harm befall the child.

Yet harm has already been done, because the baby was earnestly trying to attract the attention of its parents, both of whom displayed overt neglect of their child.

When I got off the bus, I was slightly upset. When I was about to report the intoxicated couple to Skytrain attendants, the Skytrain arrived.

Rather than do the right thing, I boarded the train.

At that moment, I failed a child who is being neglected by its parents due to their addiction issues.

My hope is that karma does not bite my ass when this child grows up.

Even so, I justify my inaction by stating that a worse fate for that child might be the alternative to neglect and later abuse by birth parents: being removed and placed in a foster family and the additional complexity of that outcome.

It does not matter if the child removed due to neglect in its birth family. That child will still face the risk of neglect and perhaps abuse in a foster home. Adoption is no better because the same risks in an adoptive family.

In fact, BC's Ministry of Children and Family Services (MoCFS) has consistently failed children, mainly because people behave differently in front of authority. They sometimes put on an act to look like a caring family when under scrutiny.

A case in point: a child was born to an alcoholic mother. MoCFS officials removed the child as "at risk" but made the mistake of placing the child in the care of the mother's brother, a man who was known in their community as a violent alcoholic.

Within months in the care of the brother's family, the child ended up beaten to death because, while drunk, he beat up the child because it desperately sought care and comfort by crying non-stop for hours.

It is also likely the child was placed in that family because they lied to Ministry officials in order to collect additional benefits to support their social drinking, which they may have claimed was under control.

In another case, MoCFS officials threatened a single mother with a child with removal of her child if she did not give up her recreational use of marijuana. The mother never neglected the child and family members could vouch for her caring behavior even when under the influence.

Yet Ministry officials considered marijuana to be more dangerous than alcohol, despite the previous scenario in which a dangerous alcoholic killed his niece.

In yet another case, a two year-old girl was released in care of an uncle, who hitchhiked all the way to BC from Saskatchewan and managed to convince MoCFS officials to given him airfare to return to Saskatchewan. Rather than buy air passage, the man spent it on recreational drugs, which he had been under the influence in the presence of social workers! Instead of being a proper caregiver, the uncle beat her and locked her away when he was out abusing drugs. He even mentally abused her by calling her an "evil child".

IMO the BC Ministry of Children and Family Services exercises legal form of child abduction based on its premise regarding illegal drugs and alcohol i.e. that marijuana smokers put their child at risk which is greater than the risk that chronic alcoholics pose to children under their care.

Furthermore, the Ministry abducts children based on information that parents are using drugs and/or alcohol reported to them without doing an assessment to determine that the parents are addicts. They also allow fail to do a background check on out-of-province relatives of children in their care.

Indeed, it is possible for a concerned busybody to call up the emergency hot-line and state falsely that the parents are chronic alcoholics or drug addicts, when in actual fact the parents use alcohol and/or marijuana recreationally but not in front of their children. Usually the concerned busybody may report false information due to malevolence towards the parents, sometimes because it helps their court case regarding heroin and/or methadone.

Additionally the RCMP are also complicit in the legal abduction of children by the Ministry, since they accompany Ministry officials to help remove child-at-risk.

IMO the BC Ministry of Children and Family Services operates a form of legalized child abduction and adoption service. It does so while promoting the illusion that the BC cares for at-risk children.

In fact the Ministry of Children and Family Services has shown that legalized child abduction has consistently placed children at greater risk because there is no way of closely scrutinizing foster and adoptive families without violation of privacy rights.

Also, the Ministry is unable to closely monitor certain social workers who recreationally use alcohol and/or cocaine with the aim to reduce the risk of errors in judgments made in cases where an official with a substance use issue is biased against families who recreationally use marijuana.

This is because of federal drug laws and the false assumption that recreational drug users are placing their children at risk.

IMO Ministry officials also carefully scrutinize everyone with kids who regularly drink socially, rather than just going after chronic alcoholics and drug addicts.

It is so simple to implement this policy. All a social worker has to do is closely monitor social drinking after hours and anonymously report the most chromic of alcoholics in a special whistle-blowing program that protect the rights of the whistle-blower.

Since research has discovered that food is more addictive than drugs, health officials should closely monitor obesity because food is the gateway drug to illicit drugs and alcohol.

Of course, we know food isn't a gateway drug.

I merely followed the same simplistic logic used by Ministry of Children and Family Services to subject parents to the same scrutiny the RCMP uses to ensure illegal drugs remain under close scrutiny due to drug laws that only lead to enormous profits for criminal gangs.

Legalizing drugs would solve this problem by causing the price of most illegal drugs to drop so low that most crime gangs would buy it for cheap to peddle in countries with strong drug laws at enormous profit. Thus, global drug legalization could save more lives than the current "war on drugs" ever has.

As for crime gangs who would turn from peddling drugs locally to selling it globally, that can be stopped by licensing drug use and limiting supply to the licensee. If the licensed user is known to be selling his drugs, selling it at a higher cost wouldn't be feasible since almost anyone could go to the government-approve drug dispensary for cheaper prices. It would be impossible to sell the drugs in Canada. In order for him to resell his drugs, the drug user would then have to buy a vendor's license and a business license. The RCMP would then have to monitor sellers of the drugs for selling drugs without a license.

IMO the reason why the RCMP believes recreational drugs should remain illegal (drugs are dangerous when abused) is actually a smoke screen for the true reason why such drugs remain illegal (drugs are more profitable when illegal and thus should be policed). In essence then, the powers that be wish recreational drugs to remain illegal because then taxpayers' money is best spent in policing the drug laws. The criminals win and the justice system wins.

Such drug policies look like they are made by narcissists to protect their interest in alcohol and tobacco.

Such policies also harm single mothers' mental well-being via the gateway drug myth that determines the use of emotional blackmail to pressure said mothers simply because they recreationally use marijuana while not also carefully scrutinizing mothers who drink recreationally or are former heroin addicts on methadone. That is a potential human rights issue.

IMO the propaganda against marijuana was designed to dupe the people of Canada into believing that marijuana is a dangerous drug simply because it looks like the RCMP policing marijuana is a good use of taxpayers' dollars.

Yet billions of dollars of profit are made annually by crime gangs due to drug laws, profit that would dry up when our drug laws are abolished and returned to being the health issue of addiction.

Once that is done, we can spend taxpayers' money wisely through harm reduction and addiction research.

For the cheapest way to solve addiction , research the most addictive substance in the world: high fat, high sugar food.