Future Crime Against Somebody

3. Future Crime Against Somebody

Now that we have examined the “medical”, “psychiatric”, and “moral” arguments of the opposition, comes the turn of the “crime prevention” arguments. It goes as follows: when a human begins taking illegal drugs, so immediately begins of a long chain of events, which ends with him/her stealing, killing and raping. As this is considered to be scientific wisdom, it justifies the state intervention. According to this logic, in the end it does not matter where on the road to your future crimes you may be – you are on the road to them and that is all that counts - it’s not a question of “if” but “when”, and that is why it is the duty of the state to intervene and put you safely into jail, thus preventing crimes which would otherwise have occurred.

“Science” can not predict what the fashion will be in five years, it can not predict, what artwork or film will ‘change the world’ next season, it can not predict when civil unrest will erupt, or a new energy drink will conquer the bars, but it is dead certain, a 100%, that individual ‘A’ who smokes pot, sniffs coke, trips acid or injects morphine, will inevitably become a thief, robber, rapist or murderer[1]. And whenever you point out, that in the past science proved that its ok for children to work for 11 hours in a factory, or that opium and tobacco are beneficial for the health, they just say: ‘that was then. Now we know how things really stand’. Typical arrogance. Every generation of scientists believe that it is them who have discovered the final truth. And how can you persuade the public that this is not the case, when the doctor and the policeman are breathing down your neck?

If science was that far advanced, that it could accurately predict the life of any human being, just from examining his or her blood or urine – we would not be living in the world we do. We would be living in a Brave New World of totally controlled perceptions and emotions, or in a Mystical Fragmented Utopia. As things stand – we just don’t know when a husband will murder a wife, when a bank manager will run off leaving ruins behind, or when the market or civil peace crash. And to claim that we do know, is pathetic. But instead of honestly admitting that there are huge areas of life in which events can not be easily predicted, people pretend that these dark holes do not exist, and fill them with imagined causes, effects, and characters. In my case, the imagined character is the vile junkie, the imagined cause is the vile drug, and the imagined effect is violence against another person.

I am caught in this dream which is not of my making, because the dream is enforced by policemen, doctors, politicians and ‘decent folks’.
True – a certain chunk of humanity is made up of monsters, but the group of monsters is not made up of drug abusers alone. It contains monster who are teachers, doctors, soldiers, policemen, salesmen, cleaners. Monsters, which drink alcohol, or coffee, or tea, or eat cake, who listen to pop, and who listen to classical music. Of the drug abusers a minority are monsters, a lot are just generally unpleasant. But then – the same goes for the rest of humanity. There is no ‘cosmic’, ‘natural’, ‘biological’, ‘psychological’ or ‘social’ reason for every pot-head, coke-fiend or speed-freak to turn into a robber, rapist or a killer. Some probably will – most won’t – just like with every group of people in urban and agricultural communities.
[1] Just like in the past (and in some contemporary societies) it would have come from reading Spiderman, watching Aliens or listening to Elvis Presley.