A Personal Reflection and View about Life

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The Need for New and Different Aspect

We live quite in blissful century of hope and light than the former days and centuries besides the challenges and threats which humanity faces in its daily undertaking and routines.  Both light and dark events are happening in our earth as they are created by humans and they result in optimist and pessimistic views on the perceptions people have come about in their process of life.  Both hopeful and desperate events are the results of the products of the human mind, which results by the choices people make in their daily undertakings and goals which they set for life. 

Comparing to past centuries and ages—times of horses and mules—people were forced to spend most of their time in their lives in travelling than to this current age and century in which people spend less times that limits to not very long days, but to less hours depending on the places which they travel.  It is also a time where people can use their time in efficient and effective manner in which they do not have to use other people in order to send their personal and private messages to people or relatives whom they live in other places, due to the fact personal phones and other products of information technology are helping them so that they could not be victim of other peoples conspiracies as result of passing their their private information too.  Thanks to Information Technology !! 

The good old times are not good old times since the good new times are better in many aspects of the human undertakings.  The way human reality lives and thinks in former time is changed into these very days due to the fact that new and different ways of thinking and thinking are established and come since they are the exigency of the time.  In such fast fleeting moments of life, it is not possible to choose retardation or regression since the way forward and going forward is not only an alternate way of life but also it is inevitable to come. 

Hence, people always seek new, better and different thinking and way of life in order to make their life spicy and interesting as result of the fact they are bored of the existing ones which they respectively belong.  We do not have to blame for the making of such peoples choices and their search for newer and better ones due to the fact that it is very natural.  Otherwise, progress will not come.  When people and society get bored of the existing ways of life and thinking, confusion and frustration take place in such people and society’s mind which need to be fixed by remedying or solving their current stresses or frustrations which they face in their given life or it should cure with new, better and different thinking which should happen within their given mental setting and thinking machinery. 

Otherwise, boredom and stressful conditions of life will be the fate of such people and society and it will keep on taking few amounts of drugs or opium to perform its daily routines in normal way, which are results of the failures of existing ways of life which could not deliver energy and power that make their given daily undertaking to be performed without the use and help of drugs too.  Hence, such paradoxical settings and ways of life become normal way of life in which, it in one aspects, forbids to take usage of drugs, but it in another aspect permits its citizens to take certain amount of drugs in daily manner as legal. 

For Example, in the Czech Republic, until 31 December 1998 only drug possession “for other person” (i.e. intent to sell) was criminal (apart from production, importation, exportation, offering or mediation, which was and remains criminal) while possession for personal use remained legal.  On 1 January 1999, an amendment of the Criminal Code, which was necessitated in order to align the Czech drug rules with the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, became effective, criminalizing possession of “amount larger than small” also for personal use (Art.  187a of the Criminal Code) while possession of small amounts for personal use became a misdemeanor. 

The judicial practice came to the conclusion that the “amount larger than small” must be five to ten times larger (depending on drug) than a usual single dose of an average consumer.  On 14 December 2009, the Government of the Czech Republic adopted Regulation No.  467/2009 Coll.,  that took effect on 1 January 2010, and specified what “amount larger than small” under the Criminal Code meant, effectively taking over the amounts that were already established by the previous judicial practice.  According to the regulation, a person could possess up to 15 grams of marijuana or 1.5 grams of heroin without facing criminal charges.  These amounts were higher (often many times) than in any other European country, possibly making the Czech Republic the most liberal country in the European Union. 

The drug policy of the Netherlands is based on 2 principles: drug use is a public health issue, not a criminal matter; a distinction between hard drugs and soft drugs exists.  Cannabis remains a controlled substance in the Netherlands and both possession and production for personal use are still misdemeanors, punishable by fine.  Cannabis coffee shops are also illegal according to the statutes.  However, a policy of non-enforcement has led to a situation where reliance upon non-enforcement has become common, and because of this the courts have ruled against the government when individual cases were prosecuted. 

In Norway, on 14 June 2010, the Stoltenberg commission recommended implementing heroin assisted treatment and expanding harm reduction measures.  On 18 June 2010, Knut Stroberger, Minister of Justice and the Police announced that the ministry was working on new drug policy involving decriminalization by the Portugal model, which was to be introduced to parliament before the next general election.  Later, however, Storberget changed his statements, saying the decriminalization debate is “for academics”, instead calling for coerced treatment.  In early March 2013, minister of health and care services Jonas Gahr Støre proposed to decriminalize the inhalation of heroin by 2014 as a measure to decrease drug overdoses. 

In the late 2000’s and early 2010’s, advocacy for drug legalization has increased in Latin America.  Spearheading the movement Uruguayan government announced in 2012 plans to legalize state-controlled sales of marijuana in order to fight drug-related crimes.  Some countries in this region have already advanced towards depenalization of personal consumption.  Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos proposed the legalisation of drugs in an effort to counter the failure of the War on Drugs, which was said to have yielded poor results at a huge cost.  On 25 May 2016, the congress approved the legalization of marijuana for medical usage. 

In August 2009, the Argentine supreme court declared in a landmark ruling that it was unconstitutional to prosecute citizens for having drugs for their personal use – “adults should be free to make lifestyle decisions without the intervention of the state”.  The decision affected the second paragraph of Article 14 of the country’s drug control legislation (Law Number 23,737) that punishes the possession of drugs for personal consumption with prison sentences ranging from one month to two years (although education or treatment measures can be substitute penalties).  The unconstitutionality of the article concerns cases of drug possession for personal consumption that does not affect others.