Gifts For Our Future

What will make things better? Here are some ideas.

  1. SOCIAL SUPPORT PROGRAMS: ADDRESS THE ROOT

When a person applies for food stamps, unemployment, Medicaid, or other tax-supported programs, they face a stack of requirements to prove they’re worthy of help. Each application and benefit comes with its own separate process. Part of the problem for such applicants might be a lack of understanding about how to fill out the forms.

What’s needed is an advocate to guide the applicant through the process but also, more importantly, to assess the person’s situation, capabilities, and needs and to assist that person in moving beyond their current status. Education, job training, mental health care, and/or medical treatment are among the needs often experienced by those seeking government assistance, but rather than actually helping people get the help they need, current programs throw out random packages of aid without any comprehensive effort at addressing the root causes.

An advocate for such applicants could assist in the process of seeking help whether gaining access to the full array of needed services, completing the application process properly, or assigning a counselor to help the applicant sort out his/her current life situation (in which case the advocate and counselor become a team). Without expert advocates to steer each applicant through an increasingly complex system, we risk wasting billions on systemic inefficiencies and do nothing to solve the problems that cause these people to need help in the first place.

Of primary importance is assisting recipients in teaching them nutrition including cooking lessons.

  1. DISPOSE OF OUTDATED LAWS

The drug war, like alcohol prohibition before it, frames the use of certain natural drugs as a moral failing. The result has been mass incarceration for private behavior.

All natural drugs should be immediately legalized, regulated like alcohol, and taxed. That includes marijuana, coca leaf, psilocybin mushrooms, peyote, opium, and Ayahuasca, among others. Persons wishing to consume any of these substances should be able to walk into a retail establishment like a liquor store anywhere in the country and buy a product that’s been certified for purity and dosage. Such products should not be controlled by pharmaceutical companies. Individual production of such substances for personal consumption should be allowed without taxation or regulation. Public venues which serve psychoactive drugs should be licensed in the same manner as establishments for consuming alcohol.

Anyone previously convicted or imprisoned for possession, “manufacture,” or sale of these substances should be released from incarceration and their convictions expunged from the record. Unfortunately, due to the massive numbers of persons involved, any compensation for their loss of income or other social costs is not feasible.

Substance abuse, like alcoholism, can become a serious problem for certain people. Currently, only the very rich can afford treatment programs that address the whole person through nutrition, counseling, and exercise, among other things. Tax revenues derived from retail sales should first provide for comprehensive treatment centers in every community where anyone suffering from addiction can be immediately admitted.

Performance testing for job safety should take the place of current drug testing. A brief interface with a computer terminal for tests tailored to immediately show competency to meet job requirements—attention, dexterity, coordination, etc.—should be part of the employee’s beginning of his/her work day. A test failure, no matter what the cause of impairment—hangover, intoxication, fight with the spouse—could become part of that employee’s record with appropriate consequences for repeated failure.

Intoxicated driving will be prosecuted.

  1. SEX LAWS

Prostitution should be legalized, regulated, and taxed as any other business. If a person wants to sell the use of his/her body for sexual gratification, it should be within his or her right to do so. Government licensing should include regular health inspections to ensure public safety.

Houses of prostitution could compete with luxurious settings, the most attractive employees, or the most innovative approach – for example, offer an immersive experience in an establishment with fantasy themes (medieval, harem, S&M dungeon, etc.). There should be no restriction on how houses of prostitution or individual practitioners might combine their services with other services such as massage, restaurants, intoxication venues (alcohol and/or drugs) or even mental health counseling.

  1. FACILITIES/ RESOURCES

Eliminating drug and sex laws will result in decreased need for jails and prisons as well as employees of those criminal justice systems. Freed-up resources should be redirected to improving public defender salaries and providing for persons prosecuted for other offenses.