The
government seems to have a vested interest in keeping our society on
legal drugs otherwise our G.S.T or P.A.Y.E tax burden would be so
high the fermenting of revolution could outstrip the same process
with alcohol. It is a hypocritical stance for any government to
profit from drugs whilst at the same time attempting to reduce costs
attributable to their use, but then those we elect are supposedly a
reflection of ourselves.
I
find it very hard to accept that the local Publican is the legal
distributor of one drug whilst one of his patrons may be the illegal
distributor of another. Both drugs cause anger, abuse, accidents,
assault, robbery, misery, anguish, sadness, poverty and death yet
there remains this gulf between legal and illegal.
I
worry about the double standards of our community, that one accepts
the drunk falling in the gutter as someone whose just had a little
too much to drink and we might laugh at his mistake, but the guy
falling into the gutter with a joint in his hand is someone who
should be shunned, ostracised and imprisoned for having smoked old
rope and we ‘tut
tut’ about
our neighbours faults all the way home.
I
can quite happily smoke and go to a Christmas Party and drink that’s
OK but what would happen if anyone came to my office and found a
needle hanging out of my arm? Am I still not the same Warwick? Now
I’m not suggesting that the bosses suddenly get the idea of raiding
my little corner of the world, I keep it too well guarded, but merely
point out that we all, myself included, seem to find some drug use
acceptable and others an abomination and need to watch ourselves as
workers that we don’t get caught up in the same double standards
when taking young people into our care.
What
has this anarchical stance to do with the price of eggs? Who actually
determines at what age we can do or not do certain things? Why do we
keep engaged with such double standards?
It
is quite legal for a girl to have sex at 16 but a boy has to wait
until he’s 18. In this day and age, from what I know, the age at
which this activity is taking place is going down even though the age
of marriage seems to be accelerating in the other direction.
With
adolescence comes experimentation with adulthood and while we might
dread the thought that they are becoming young adults.
With
information and support we should be allowing our young people to
experiment and make mistakes provided that their emotional and
chronological age is sufficient to absorb what is being learned by
the experience.
While
our society is crying out to allow children to be children the market
economy is encouraging them to become adult as quickly as possible.
That market economy includes the legal and illegal drug businesses.
Establishing
trust with the people we work with, and children in our care whether
genetically connected or not, is paramount to building relationships
that can withstand the stress and strain of their daily lives. I am a
supporter of experimentation. Perhaps this is why I have unbounded
patience with children and adolescents yet the opposite when working
with supposedly mature adults.
We
should feel that we are doing our job well when young people can rely
on us to be there when the shit hits the fan. It certainly places
great stress upon us all at times but then we should not have signed
up if we were not prepared to sacrifice some of our time.
It
is sometimes my downfall when I allow young people to be free
thinkers, that I imbue my clients with intelligence automatically,
and certainly make some errors when I believe that what they are
telling me is the truth. But in my line of work, where I am employed
to give young people the right to decide for themselves what they
need, a consequence of that is becoming merely a vassal or
facilitator in achieving those goals.
To
this day and into the foreseeable future I will continue to avoid
determining a young persons ability to succeed based on some
chronological measure or educational level and rely on the fact that
by making mistakes we learn how not to make them again. From the time
of ‘self-realisation’ children are experimenting and learning and
I would like to be keep apace with that part of their experience.
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