The Coke Joke

by gurgle snuffle Wed Dec 12, 2007 20:58

Always was Ireland's problem too. For some reason not even the most glamorous in Ireland's society can score decent cocaine, smack, mdma or even hashish on their own home turf. A paucity of quality which would send & has no doubt before sent finer minds with more kicking feet to far far away lands where no-one would even dream of paying for the muck ye get in Eire.

Not only are you ripped off for the drugs you buy, (as indeed you're ripped off for most things) but you are sold adulterated crap. Even before the local dealer has got his paws on the shite sold at exhorbitant prices & cut it up with baby laxative or what-have-you (baby laxative is harmless) the drugs have generally been imported in contaminating conditions. Hence the stink of fuel of hashish, the baceria laden smack & the coke that kills you. Considering all those factors, & understanding them as "the norm" (= not even a street urchin on the continent would sell as crap coke as you get in posh clubs in Ireland) one presumes your average lad, ladette or stunning starlette socialite model is so used to shite that they just shovel it into their sinuses & down their gob non-stop for seven hours. Great - you may say : Work your high - you might muse : Do your buzz - you might mutter.

but what happens when some fellow or chapette brings back real drugs from their holliers?

Cardiac arrest is the answer.

yiz never had these problems when all ye did was pills. As usual it's the nouveau riche celtic tiger lords and ladies of muck with their cocaine house parties causing the problems..,

by . Wed Dec 12, 2007 22:31

http://www.ndc.hrb.ie/directory/news_detail.php?cat_id=...er=20

by Concerned citizen Wed Dec 12, 2007 23:05

Huston we have a problem. The use of narcotics is so pervasive that kids in every secondary school can buy through the trade network. Drug traffickers are being murdered regularly. Buyers from all backgrounds are ultimately paying for the deadly bullets.

by media watcher Wed Dec 12, 2007 23:55

"world weary" doesn't seem to read the newspapers or listen to the radio.

The unfortunate lads who ultimately died in the South East were headline news in the days before Ms French had her fatal encounter with cocaine. So much for his theory that the effect drugs are having in Irish society has only become an issue since middle-class kids began dying.

In fact, the growing toll of cocaine deaths have been the subject of editorial comment in the Mirror, Independent, and Mail in the past year. The victims whose demise gave rise to this comment came from all socio-economic groups. The increasingly vicious hoodlums who supply the drugs are constantly in the media spotlight.

We already have one legal drug that causes considerable havoc in our society. The logic which suggests that Irish society would be improved by legalizing other drugs is difficult to fathom.

I agree that concentrating enforcement resources on the supply side is not going to reduce the problem to manageable proportions (mind you, using the sort of laws and special courts which were so effective against the Provos might well be efficatious) . If we are going to get serious about the drug plague we will need to deal with the demand-side. If users think that they run a serious risk of imprisonment and a criminal conviction which would damage their future employment-prospects - and disqualify them from travelling to the US - they might think twice about the consequences of their social habits (ie feeding the vicious gangs who supply the stuff).

A mandatory minimum 7 days in prison for anyone found in possession of any quantity of cocaine would make users think twice - particularly the middle-class brats who think their social habits are without social consequences.

by World Weary Thu Dec 13, 2007 12:59

Where are all these hundreds of thousands of people going to be locked up for 7 days?
Because the reality is that hundreds of thousands of people are using cocaine every weekend.
Jail half the country?
Are you off your rocker or what?

by Straightface Thu Dec 13, 2007 15:03

If hundreds of thousands of people are using coke, and other things like heroin, every week, then Ireland is stoned. People are in thrall to the death-dealing drug trade. Their brains are being sapped at enormous expense. Their lives are prone to aimlessness.

Wake up people and start pondering life's mysteries. Where is the country going? What sort of society is this for children?

by super g Thu Dec 13, 2007 17:37

He's not off his rocker at all.

Thousands of people speed and park illegally every day. A couple of hundred are caught and convicted. One or two dozen middle class brats per week with career-ruining convictions and sentences should do the trick nicely. Come to think of it,. two days in the slammer would do just fine - and would free more prison space for the supply-siders.

by Mike - Judean Popular Peoples Front Thu Dec 13, 2007 20:47

"We already have one legal drug that causes considerable havoc in our society."

we actualy have several

"Buyers from all backgrounds are ultimately paying for the deadly bullets."

Just like people do when they fill their tanks/buy a soft drink/lodge money in the bank /drink coffee/eat choclate/work for a company with links to the arms trade/holiday in Turkey/buy anything made in China and/or produced by a US company......

by Dr Nick Fri Dec 14, 2007 13:48

"Educate the users & honestly admit in the media that it is highly unlikely that cocaine of the usual European quality used properly alone would have claimed the deaths of so many Irish young people in such a short time. "

Educate yourself first.......http://www.independent.ie/national-news/doctor-warns-de....html

by John Fri Dec 14, 2007 20:29

IF THERE WERE NO BUYERS, THERE WOULD NOT BE ANY NEED FOR SUPPLIERS.

John

by Straigthtface Sat Dec 15, 2007 02:36

Demand fuels supply and drug baron greed fuels murder of defaulting dealers.

Buyers should examine their lifestyles and look for some meaningful things to do with their potential lives. Campaign against the world arms trade/become a volunteer aid worker in Africa or South America/support the Simon community/befriend asylum seekers/write letters to the newspapers about pollution/study for the religious life. The choices are vast. Taking dope is a hedonist cop-out.

by World Weary Sat Dec 15, 2007 09:54

"Buyers should examine their lifestyles and look for some meaningful things to do with their potential lives. Campaign against the world arms trade/become a volunteer aid worker in Africa or South America/support the Simon community/befriend asylum seekers/write letters to the newspapers about pollution/study for the religious life. The choices are vast. Taking dope is a hedonist cop-out."

Do you REALLY think an average young guy or girl who works 9 to 5, goes out at the weekend to get drunk, snort some coke and hook up with a member of the opposite sex cares less?

Get over yourself!

by super g Sat Dec 15, 2007 11:14

If they woke up in the morning with a prison record on their CV the little brats WOULD think again. A significant statistical risk of a day or two in the slammer would do wonders.

We could also have a drug-offenders register - just like the register we already keep for perverts. Embassies of foreign countries with a non admittance policy for druggies would have an up to date reference on whom to refuse entry. Employers could use it to screen prospective employees.

It would also have social benefits. Being on the drug register would probably make the brats unemployable in any position of responsibility. They would of course be able to get employment as janitors, petrol-pump attendants and the like. They would replace more deserving people from less priveleged backgrounds who could then move into the vacancies created by those who think that supporting the gangsters who are wreaking such havoc in our society is an inconsequential result of their lifestyle choices.

by Straightface Sat Dec 15, 2007 12:17

"Do you REALLY think an average young guy or girl who works 9 to 5, goes out at the weekend to get drunk, snort some coke and hook up with a member of the opposite sex cares less?"

Such lives are devoid of direction and meaning. If these "average" young guys and gals don't snap out of their aimlessness they'll come a cropper, ultimate victims of alcohol and drug abuse. They don't have to get involved in the activities I mentioned (only a fraction of one percent of Irish society does) but there are cultural activities like sports, hobbies, charity work and the like which any average person with an income and days off can get involved in. It's one way to avoid blowing their minds and bodies on drugs and alcohol.

With the collapse of the Catholic Church as a binding social agent it becomes ever more urgent for citizens to find socially fulfilling activity. Failure to do so will result in a yob-chav society, similar to large swathes of contemporary urban England.

In the early twentieth century in Ireland the Church, the Gaelic League and the GAA offered social ideals to average country and city guys and gals. Can you tell me what is going to replace them?

by Mike - Judean Popular Peoples Front Sat Dec 15, 2007 18:36

Judging by most of the comments in this thread I think there must be something wrong with my computer.

I was looking for Indymedia but seem to have found the Daily Mail ?

by white scumbag layabout Sun Dec 16, 2007 00:07

You probably have this sort of headline in "mind" -

HOW CANNABIS TURNED MY LIFELONG ASBO-RIDDEN, TRUANT, THIEVING, HEROIN-ADDICTED, CRACKHEAD, PSYCHOPATHIC, VIOLENT TEENAGE BOY INTO A MURDERER

by ThePowderOfNightmares Sun Dec 16, 2007 02:14

"Do you REALLY think an average young guy or girl who works 9 to 5, goes out at the weekend to get drunk, snort some coke and hook up with a member of the opposite sex cares less?"

"Such lives are devoid of direction and meaning. If these "average" young guys and gals don't snap out of their aimlessness they'll come a cropper, ultimate victims of alcohol and drug abuse. "


Er...Maybe being trapped in the meaningless 9-5 wage slavery day in day out to generate profits for their lords and masters IS what drives them to want to get out of it for a while. And would you blame them?

If people are to lose interest in quick fixes (sic) like cocaine then society needs a complete restructuring from the profit driven morally bankrupt vacant meaningless treadmill it is becoming to a more people centric model.

Not going to happen. Too many vested interests like it the way it is. Get used to drugs and gun crime. it ain't going away any time soon.

Any sensible voices suggesting legalisation of hard drugs (because prohibition doesn't work), and taxing them and selling them from pharmacies ('cos johnny is better off buying his drugs from the local pharmacy than the local criminal, of consistent concentration and quality and not cut with who knows what) and using the money (from taxes, law enforcement savings / savings on petty crime / insurance etc etc) to build infrastructure and drug programs if people need them are poo pooed.

Alas, nobody has the balls to grasp this nettle. And Millions more taxpayers money will be wasted on ineffective enforcement. More will die in drug turf wars. More young people will die because they don't know what their drug concentration is from one fix to the next. And epidemic levels of petty crime (for drug money) will continue to make Dublin one of europes most dangerous cities to walk around in.

These drug profits will be re-invested in building up the illegal network and corrupting both our enforcement and our government (not hard!!) to further facilitate the trade. It is the pattern across the globe where prohibition is taken as the only possible approach.

Drug Treatment facilities will continue to be hopelessly inadequate of course under Ms Harneys daft neo-liberal ideology driven systematic rundown of the health service. Well, there's no profit in helping junkies, is there?.

Drug taking is a choice but it has consequences. every drug user knows this. So why not let people make this choice but in a safer environment where the government makes profits from this free choice and uses them to benefit the citizens themselves , not a cabal of criminals to the detriment of our society.

Also, as we face into the dark unpleasant arsehole of recession, think of the potential tourism boom!

Katy french died because she did not know what concentration of cocaine she was stuffing up her pretty nose and because she treated snorting a particularly pure variety that was doing the rounds like snorting the marvel milk substitute that people here are normally used to getting. Not a good idea. We could address this and prevent further deaths. But not by pushing it further underground with big talk and sabre rattling.

So here's an alternative:

Legalise it and take away the criminals livelihood,

Support the poor third world coca farmers directly with a large government fairtrade contract

Protect our vulnerable users by supplying reasonably priced cocaine of consistent concentration and quality.

Use the tax to create better drug rehab programs / sports facilities / libraries / parks / public transport / housing / whatever

Think of the Tourism boom!

It's the difference between turning a blind eye to illegal street prostitution, where poor unfortunates get abused (and sometimes killed) with no recourse to law, and allowing legalised brothels who pay taxes, arrange regular medical check ups, and have a large bouncer on the door.

These things (drugs / prostitution) will never go away but you can accomodate human nature and make it safer. Surely that is the more humane approach. Isn't it?

But no, we prefer denial and hypocrisy don't we readers?

by Straightface Sun Dec 16, 2007 09:05

Even if your scheme for government takeover of the drug industry were adopted we would still remain with the fact that snorting coke, mixing exotic tablets with booze or progressing to heroin and other addictives does not amount to a rationally fulfilling lifestyle. Coke and other strong drugs sap the minds of young people; therefore no amount of government control of supply is going to compensate society and the individuals concerned for mind depletion.

Mens sana in corpore sano was the motto of ancient Rome, which in turn got it from ancient Greece. The young bronzeskinned athletes quaffed wine at occasional parties near the Forum and the Acropolis and schmoozed around with their pretty boyfriends or girlfriends, but they never became slaves to the fruit of the vine.

We can debate healthy lifestyles that have no mental and bodily debilitation as side effects. The drug-booze scene is not healthy.

by ThePowderOfNightmares Sun Dec 16, 2007 21:45

neither does working 9-5 in the modern version of indentured slavery. People have no time or energy left to do much else after wearing themselves out making money for rich people. They need to reclaim more of their lives.

I agree, legalisation is only the lesser of 2 evils. nothing more. It does nothing to address the underlying problems of existence. Life has to be fulfilling in some way to be worth living at all. A life which consists of slavery, shallow relationships, no sense of belonging meaning and community, advertising and media induced dissatisfaction and consuming (drugs or products), is not much of a life.

The public discourse needs to deepen and we need to start addressing some fundamental questions that we are all avoiding about the meaning of life itself. Only when we address these can we decide what we want out of life and design a new society along those lines.

instead , in the absence of such direction on our part, corporations, our own sociopathic profit driven creations, the children of our existential sickness, have taken on a life of their own and slithered into the vacuum we have left, to enslave us and shape our society in the most cynically profitable way for themselves. And they will ultimately destroy us if we don't do something.

by super g Sun Dec 16, 2007 23:06

Get a grip.

This isn't about oppression and the meaninglessness of life in capitalist society. This is about self-indulgent brats with too much money and too little imagination or insight. While I am inclined to the opinion that they should be allowed go about poisoning themselves without interference from the law, things ain't that simple. The behaviour of this small minority is supporting the murderous gangsters who supply their little indulgences. This gangsterism is beginning to impinge on all our lives and on the type of society in which our children will grow up.

In my hierarchy of values the lives of Irish children take precedence over the self-proclaimed right of club-culture brats to their narcotic thrills.

by Straoghtface Mon Dec 17, 2007 06:06

You say that it is only "The behaviour of this small minority is supporting the murderous gangsters..." I disagree that the "clubbing brats" in city discos are the only customers of the drug dealers. The coke and tablet distribution network is nationwide. Teenage children in any town (pop. 3,000 upwards) with a secondary school are offered tablets in pubs, outside pubs, outside schools or outside discos at weekends. Some village kids go to discos in bigger places in hired minibuses and get their stuff before entering premises. They smuggle gin and vodka mixed with fizzy soft drinks into the discos and take swigs after swallowing the tablets. All of rural society is vulnerable to the predatory drug distribution network.

Katy French was from the swinging upper echelons of Dublin's glitterati society and her death from drug snorting misadventure was publicised. The daily damage to body and mind among school children doesn't hit headlines in the same dramatic way.

We have a big moral and social crisis in our midst. The gardai can tighten their surveillance; interpol and other agencies can redouble their intelligence gathering; the courts can become more severe on sellers and buyers. We are still left with questions about meaningful living, about the debilitating effect of the reckless "dolce vita" lifestyle, about the sapping of social competitiveness in a globalising world.

by Straightface Mon Dec 17, 2007 08:30

In Monday's Irish Independent (17 December) a front page story begins:
"Deaths from drug abuse are rocketing in Ireland with heroin still the main killer, despite the popularity of cocaine.
Soaring death rates are outstripping the horrors of the 1980s when heroin gripped Dublin.
Almost 630 people have died from drugs in the six years since 2000, compared with 542 in the previous 20 years."

People start on soft drugs, then graduate to harder and finally get on to the deadliest stuff. It is a journey to oblivion.

by wren Mon Dec 17, 2007 09:58

Does anyone here question how the media functions and how it creates and leads debate?
Which is afterall what the site is about-
two things:

Bandying about jargon terms such as - 'gateway' drugs is wrong, because when you get to a certain
age and have experimented with drugs , it does not mean that you want to try heroin/coke/crack
etcetera- thats simplistic thinking. Those drugs may not float your boat. Do we all depend on the
media to begin debates for us- because we are so completely unable to formulate opinion?

The use of fear in serious issues like drugs only serves to make them more intoxicating
I agree with a previous writer in this thread:- someone is supplying them, someone is cutting
them with detergents and adulterating them for profit. Someone is letting them in- to put
it simply anyone who has undergone a 'drought' in smalltown ireland knows when the supply
routes are shutdown temporarily, they know who the Gardai speak to and they know
who the gardai let walk on by.

There are two issues in this;

Dealing-industry-profit.
Personal freedoms.

Media-led debate tends to swing from the mouths of over fed narcisstic lazy journos
who have nothing better to do that issue stock reports cos it means they can google the
shite , take a moralist position and never leave the house-thus endangering their arteries
with fast-food and lamenting their long begotten youths. indy was always better than that
and Tony O reilly was never quite intelligent enough to lead on opinion- he paid flatulent reporters
to accomplish that for him.

Yawn ;-0

We should all go to chapel now and pray for our leader's great wisdom in dealing with
these serious moral issues, nevermind the rumours and innuendo on the whiskey bottles,
the brown envelopes and the colonic irrigation-sure they only use prescriptives...

by super g Mon Dec 17, 2007 20:22

Wow!

You have managed to include all the cliche bogeypersons of the self-righteous adolescent in your rather prolix sermon - without once lapsing into coherence.

Yup, its all the fault of small town Ireland, Tony O'Reilly, and supersize-me journalists who are far too stupid and self-satisfied to understand that this is about (gasp) drug dealers profits and personal freedom. I am humbled before your vast insights (but not by your facility with the english language (you will need to get daddy to send you to one of the dreaded grind-schools if you want to pass your junior cert).

What this is about is the growing number of young people who are dying from recreational drugs, and the innocent co-lateral victims of gangland assassinations.

There is a thread running through this discussion that claims that there is nothing to be done; young people will take drugs and law-enforcement is an exercise in futility. Exactly the same arguments were made in relation to illegal immigration and IRA terrorism. These arguments (made by apologists for both) were proven to be wrong. Law enforcement, while not capable of completely solving the problem, can reduce it to almost tolerable proportions. The IRA were driven to the negotiating table when their funds dried up after the US authorities got serious about enforcing their rules against fund-raising by foreign terrorists. Putting Irish immigration officials in foreign embarkation points, the citizenship referendum, and the fast-tracking of certain asylum-applications cut illegal immigration by two thirds.

Using the same legal machinery as was used so effectively against the IRA would sort out the dealers. Putting persons convicted of possession on a public register would dissuade a large percentage of the recreational users whose self-indulgent hobby is supporting the thugs would work wonders on the demand side. It would also save lives.

by Correction to that Tue Dec 18, 2007 10:12

or did the republican movement not mention that so involved are they in getting fat and
blowing bells on the stock exchange in NY?

I wonder if dissenters are fingered by the new bourgeois SF or does the state just pay a
fortune in putting down anything that does not agree with their well-heeled aspirations
which have nothing at all to do with being Irish and everything to do with greed and profit.

4 years of being a member of an illegal organisation on the word of a Garda sergeant.
Kids will do drugs if so inclined but the above commentator would trade everything in
for nanny state surveillance so he will not have to deal with the issue of why people get
addicted.

by super g Tue Dec 18, 2007 13:48

Most "kids" won't do drugs if it means they exclude themselves from quality employment and the possibility of getting into the US by having their names on a public register.

Drug dealing would be rather less attractive if it meant conviction before the Special Criminal Court on the (rebuttable) evidence of a police superintendent and automatic freezing of assets by the CAB.

None of the recent coke fatalities were "drug addicts" to my knowlege.

Drug addiction has many causes. Addiction is very democratic and effects pre-disposed people from every socio-economic group. It s causes are personality rather than social. Drug addiction needs to be addressed by appropriate treatments and support. Recreational drug-abuse and drug-dealing need to be "treated" in a rather different manner.

by Mike - Judean Popular Peoples Front Tue Dec 18, 2007 17:41

What’s with all these right wing cranks who reckon being excluded from the US (unless one happens to become rich and/or famous enough for the Feds to turn a blind eye to ones past/current drug use) is going to be such a big deterrent

Would it totally shock them to realise that Most people in this side of the Atlantic have never set foot in the USA and probably never will and are about as bothered about it as they are by the fact that they will probably never visit Uzbekistan either.

I know it is very difficult for rightwits to accept the reality that there are people out there who DONT spend every waking moment fantasise about being in their neocon dystopia and yet these are the people woo deride drug users as being disconnected from reality.

Funny Innit ?

by Charles B. Tue Dec 18, 2007 21:28

Ah, but the prisons are already full, indeed overfilled, with people who have used/sold drugs (indeed and it's a loose term, although a few reputable chemists/pharmacy owners surely must have spent time inside Mountjoys terribly penetrable walls). As well as with those who did a spot of GBH while a member of the High Society.
Current policies against illegal drugs don't work, in fact they lead to a massively profitable business, whose main benefactors use the same tactics as those who peddle any material goods, although in an unregulated and quite buzzed market place.
Although not generally a fan of markets being left to regulate themselves (within a legal framework), I would propose that the drugs market would do as good a job as any other commodity.
The reason that they make such an impact is because of the very fact that they are ilegal
Also in a world where such emphasis is placed upon making money, how can We continue to keep illegal on of the two biggest money makers, the other being arms, which were, at the last count, responsible for a lot more deaths, and more horrible ones, and general bad experiences, and several less good experiences.
By continuing to criminalise the substances that we do, we continue to fund criminality. And we create a need for 'drug dealers' which seems to be word that most people spit out (one can usually tell if one has a dealer by the way one pronounces the word), and we fill the prisons, and also make criminals out of people who only use what ever is being dealt.
Prohibition of substances that people want to consume doesn't make sense, never did, never will, and no matter how much one says it will, it won't, and if you provide more law enforcement and 'slammers', and install a new generation of judges (who don't give suspended sentences for having a few kilogrammes of hashish, more like those who imprison obviously dim, multiple mothers, who didn't know their way round the capital, being Rebel colleens for longer than some sex offenders get), it still won't work.
As for inferring that substance users are comparable to sex offenders, that is a most scandalous remark.

by Straigntface Tue Dec 18, 2007 22:45

The "substances" include a range of soft and hard drugs. Their regular use saps the mind and I say therefore not good for young people. Discussions about legalisation and market self regulation miss the point.

by crackhead HepC HIV Tue Dec 18, 2007 23:20

to not only get themselves through college but score their gear too. If only they could see real life is worth more. The sex is shorter, the heart beats slower, the shivers only come from cold & the thrills happen once in year in Funderland.

Don't be a dlido. Don't do drugs. Go to Funderland instead.
http://www.funfair.ie/

by Catullus Wed Dec 19, 2007 05:08

Gladiatorial contests to the death or throwing a few dozen christians to the lions was the way they got kids' minds off drugs and adult citizens' minds off dangerous speculation about politics back in the good old days before Constantine.

by super g Wed Dec 19, 2007 12:56

So, legalizing coke is going to solve the problem!

Alcohol is illegal. It causes considerable havoc in our society.

In that context, the logic of legalizing yet more drugs is difficult to fathom. One legal drug is more than enough to be going on with.

by ThePowderOfNightmares Wed Dec 19, 2007 19:30

You think you can save people from themselves by enforcement but you can't. It only leads to the nanny state and ultimately repression and corruption such as we have now ("they don't need to know that."..etc).

I advocate that we take a new approach: stop treating irish citizens like children, encourage people to take responsibility for their lives and choices, but offer a properly funded (by the users own activities!) support network if they require it. Use the power of capitalism for our own good for once!

The current set up succeeds in neither goal (no government on earth has succeeded in prohibition!)
In practice It amounts to:
"eh...eh...drugs are bad and we need to stamp them out and provide help for addicts but eh...eh... we really don't care and want to fiddle all the money for ourselves and our friends so when the budget comes out, the addicts don't vote so they can fuck off"

and whatever money IS spent is a totally ineffective waste. Meanwhile nearly everyone in Dublin has had their house robbed at least once and its not safe to walk the street. Thats our norm.

Is legalisation and good use of the profits to provide a proper support network any worse? And It would wipe out the criminal part of the business overnight.

The Irish govt has for too long, successfully encouraged abdication of responsibility in its citizens for its own ends. It enabled them to get on with the business of making money without being bothered by too many active concerned citizens. Now that bad programming has come home to roost.

But perhaps the real problem is that governments need drug dealers in society. They need a bad guy to divert attention from what they are up to themselves, as an excuse for draconian measures and the removal of civil liberties. Its a great excuse to harass someone who is an irritant. In fact, thats the main reason nixon made such a fuss about drugs. He used it as an excuse to harass those hippie no good anti war protesters. It worked great too.

If they took the drug dealer as bad guy out of circulation, who might we replace him with? Crooked politicians? Property speculators? Global capitalists? Exactly. So alas, don't expect legalisation in our lifetimes!!

by GlugGlug Wed Dec 19, 2007 20:38

"Alcohol is illegal. It causes considerable havoc in our society. "

I presume you meant legal!.

Joking aside, If all the tax money garnered from alcohol sales were ploughed into rehabilitation facilities and anti alcohol education drives and programs then we would not have as bad a problem. Of course our enlightened government choose to spend it in other ways instead. Eh bertie?

Imagine the taxes that stem from the glugfest that is xmas and what you could do with them if you targetted them solely at the victims of alcohol.

Then think of a truly white xmas with lots of snow.....we could build the empire state of rehabilitation facilities!!