Canuckistani
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Posts posted by Canuckistani
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I'm so torn on this issue, I can't decide where I fall.
On one hand, I don't think governments should tell grown adults what they can or can't put in their bodies. That goes for food, drugs, or nutritional supplements. On the other, I think we should do far more than we already do to keep harmful things from kids. I don't know what the middle ground is... you can do whatever you want to yourself, but it's still a serious crime to sell it to someone else (especially a minor)?
The other sticky part is our public health system. If we are going allow people to do whatever they want with their bodies, should we still expect everyone else to pick up the tab? For instance, part of me still thinks that perhaps tobacco should be outlawed because of the health consequences. If smoking were illegal, smoking ANYTHING would likely be covered by that, bring us back to where we are with pot, just for a different reason. Maybe the answer is to treat health care the way other insurance is done -- deliberate acts of "bad health" make your coverage get cancelled. For instance, we have socialized insurance for cars in manitoba, and people can and DO get their coverage pulled for bad driving.
Pot is easier for kids to access than booze, exactly because pot is illegal and dealers don't check for ID.
If prohibition worked, I'd be all for outlawing booze and smokes. They cause a lot of harm. But, it doesn't work, people still get their drugs, just in a less safe way.
As for the medical coverage argument - far cheaper to provide treatment than to deal with the fallout of of not providing it. And with pot, the costs are insignificant, as a BC study showed - all of the social costs associated with pot were for enforcement. Tobacco, otoh, has very high medical costs to society.
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I sure hope not. There would be a limit and it's for personal use only, just like it is with brewing beer or wine. I've brewed my own beer, I know lots of people who make their own wine, no companies involved. Those places are just for people that want the easy way. If you're stupid enough to grow pot in your garden, you are unlikely to have much of a crop left come harvest time, and the quality will likely be poor to.But not moonshine. You brew your own wine with companies. Would the government allow unlimited growth in someone's garden.
No selling without a license. Decrim is stupid - bust the producers but not the users? Note how neither WA or CO have gone that chickenshite route.What if you want to sell your stash tax free? Laws would still apply. Decriminalisation is a nice balance.
I'm not a user, I think using any drug is stupid. But many people seem to want to do so with little ill effect. Actually I'm for legalizing all drugs, tho regulations would be different depending on the drug. Drugs like crystal meth or crack, I don't now how you legalize them, but making them illegal certainly hasn't prevented their use. Would you or anybody you know (except Rob Ford) use those drugs if they were legal?
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I was wondering what everyone thinks of pot being legal. I think it should be, its less harmful than alcohol. Why should the government be able to tell me what I can and cannot do.
Pot is still can cause harm. But the harm of criminalizing it outweighs the harm of legal use, IMO.
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And have to pay ridiculous sin taxes like the alcohol and tobacco consuming suckers? No thanks!
Pot costs about as much to produce as tobacco. You would pay a lot less with legal pot, and the govt could still rake in a good whack of taxes. Plus growing for personal use would have to be allowed, just like you can brew beer and wine for yourself now.
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We should be providing more of the services I have described - ie community based supportive housing. That would prevent a lot of problems.
Wouldn't have caught Li tho, and I don't think anything we do, short of locking up everybody who acts a bit "weird" would do so. Many people look lost, almost none go on to kill and eat other people.
With Li, and other NCR people, I have no problem with releasing them back into the community if deemed safe to do so, as long as close support and monitoring exists in that community - ie make sure they take their meds every day. If they don't, or otherwise go off the rails, they should be re-institutionalized. Not for punishment because they are responsible, but for the safety of themselves and the community. As for something to lose by going for help, that was not likely his motivation. It's the stigma of being labelled, as well as his internal reality that tells him he's quite sane and how will he stop the aliens if he's locked up.
We do no punish alcoholics for being alcoholics. They are free to drink themselves to death. We punish them because of illegal actions they take that might be driven by their alcoholism. We do deem them rational beings able to make decisions. Which is kind of funny, because when somebody is blotto, they're not rational, not able to make good decisions, so maybe they should all be found NCR for killing somebody too. And in fact we do have the diminished capacity defense for just that. "I was too drunk to form intent, you're honor, so I'm not guilty of murder"
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No one is expecting them to assess their condition. What I'm referring to is others seeing something amiss and telling them that they should get help. At that point, the professional would assess their condition.
If they are so incapable of making rational decisions, such as seeking help when needed, then they need to be forced to get help before something like this happens.
As I think about it, alcoholism is a disease, too, but we don't let alcoholics get away with drinking and driving and killing someone as a result because they are ill. I'm simply raising a question - at what point does a mentally ill person have to take some responsibility for their actions? Certainly a refusal to get help could be part of that determination.
We do let alcoholics get away with being alcoholics, we only intervene when they do something illegal. No forcing alcoholics into treatment just because they overdo the booze.
As I say, if we go that route, we'd better get busy opening treatment facilities and hiring community nurses because there are a lot of untreated mentally ill people out there. And that gets into a civil rights issue - Russia was big on forcing people into treatment, and we rightly criticized them for it. Finding the right balance here is not so easy.
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So what do you think about a situation where the family and/or friends recognized something is wrong - and strongly suggested that the person in question go for help - but the person refused to - and then ended up killing someone? In this instance, in a horrific manner? Do the mentally ill/challenged have no liability for what they do at all? Because that's a scary thought - if they have to commit violence before something is done, if they are then held not responsible, do they never have any responsibility for their actions - even as others see something is amiss? At what stage in the illness should a person be 'forced' to get help? At what stage does the person's refusal to get help make him culpable to some degree?
You're conflating two ideas. They're not responsible for their actions, so can not be held responsible - seems obvious.
That's different than being forced to get help. They're not culpable, but that doesn't mean we just let the wander about, doing as they please. The difficulty is the civil rights question - you can't pre arrest somebody, sane or insane, before they do something, and being mentally ill is not a crime. In fact as a group, the mentally ill are less violent than "normal" people. Someone who is obviously "weird" but hasn't hurt anybody and can function adequately, as was Li's case before he killed, do we really want to lock them all up (there's tons of them out there) or even force them all to take medications with their horrible side effects? This is the conundrum. Personally I would like us to be a bit more aggressive in forcing help on these people, but then we'd better get busy opening or building more mental institutions.
During the big purge, ie when mental hospitals were shut down, the idea was to open many small supportive homes for the mentally ill. That costs money, not something that tax slashing govts want to spend, so they were just dumped on the streets. Now we pay in justice system and healthcare costs that are far higher than providing proper care in the first place. We just had a year long experiment (was it longer?) where mentally ill people were housed with inhouse services. It was calculated that this program saved $20,000 per year per person vs these people being homeless, but the federal govt shut down funding. Always with the penny wise, pound foolish.
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I have to wonder - if a person who is mentally ill is told that they needs help, and has friends repeatedly offer to get them that help, and then they commits a crime such as this - should their refusal to get help be taken into consideration when determining whether that person is criminally responsible?
No, because they're incapable of making rational decisions, including accepting that they are mentally ill. If they can't differentiate right from wrong when cutting somebody's heart out, why would they be able to accurately assess their condition?
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The guy is under the care of doctors who decide what his treatment should be, including trips to the beach. If they decide he's cured, then he's free. (doubt that will happen very soon). That's the danger - there is no cure, and he should be watched for the rest of his life to make sure he takes his meds and doesn't go off the rails. He doesn't need to be locked up for that to happen, but there needs to be a structure in place that makes sure it does.
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you're not wrong, but you should look more into why they do this, when they use it, and where it is used. There's valid objections to be made, but it would only be fair if you recognized the purpose behind this without the implied strawman arguments. For instance, restorative justice is not something that's being pushed for in aboriginal communities alone and Canuckitani's post shows that it's not meant to be used in more serious offences.
But is has been, including manslaughter. It's used anywhere there are no minimum sentencing laws. It may not be a get out of jail free card, but it's certainly a get less jail time because you're aboriginal card.
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That is peculiar indeed.
I am speculating here, but I believe it may stem from currently-popular theories regarding alternative sentencing for aboriginals in Canada.
In the not-too-distant past there was great concern about why Canada's prisons are overflowing with aboriginal inmates, and an intensive study concluded that the way to reduce the number of aboriginals in Canadian prisons would be to send less aboriginals to prison. (This was the result of millions of dollars of research and years of study, as you can imagine.)
Since crime can't go unpunished, alternatives to incarceration were required for aboriginals convicted of crimes. One of the things they came up with was "sentencing circles". Basically, these are gatherings where the criminal, the victims, and the community get together and hug it out. When it was reported in the press that aboriginal offenders could be punished with group therapy, rather than prison, the idea was ridiculed by many Canadians.
"No no," the experts replied, "you don't understand native culture! For a native person, being reproached by their community is more punishing than a prison sentence could ever be! Rest assured, this is serious business."
And while I doubt most Canadians are convinced, Canada's legal community has to pretend they take this idea seriously so that they can defend alternative sentencing practices for aboriginal offenders.
So, that might be why this person's "aboriginal status" is an issue. I am just speculating, as I said, but the idea that sentencing native people is different from sentencing other people seems to have currency within the legal community.
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A Gladue report is a type of pre-sentencing and bail hearing report that a Canadian court can request when considering sentencing an offender of Aboriginal background under Section 718.2(e) of the Criminal Code.[1]
The process derives its name from "R. v. Gladue", a 1999 Supreme Court of Canada decision.[2][3]
In Criminal sentencing in Canada, a court is required to take into account all reasonable alternatives to incarcerations, with particular attention to Aboriginal offenders (s. 718.2(e)). This is not an automatic "get-out-of-jail-free card." Rather it requires the court to take into account circumstances facing Aboriginal peoples. Where the crime is relatively minor, the court should consider Aboriginal-based sentencing principles such as restorative justice. This incorporates community members and the victim in determining a fit sentence. However, where the crime is more serious, courts will generally find that the Gladue Principle is inappropriate and consider more traditional sentencing objectives such as protection of the public and deterrence.
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Ben Stein thinks life is not a set of chemical reactions? Or is Ben going on aout we don't know when or how? If the latter, well he's undercut any argument to claiming it required an intelligence right there - we don't know.
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I care more that a totally innocent person was decapitated and partially eaten than I do about Li's psychological makeup. Though the latter is more clinically interesting, mind you.
I would be far more interested in knowing what led up to Li's mental implosion and educating people on what to look for so they could help before a tragedy, rather than pretending the tragedy didn't happen.
Well people have been puzzling about that for ever, but there really is no way to know. As a group, schizophrenics are less violent than the norm, but as we see, individually they can be very violent. We don't know what causes schizophrenia, we don't know how to prevent it, really (don't do drugs) and we don't know how to cure it, only manage it. But, when people are recognized as going off the rails, if we were quicker to respond it might prevent tragedies like this. Of course then civil liberty issues are raised.
But if you're going to discuss a case like this, you really should have more knowledge about it than to say if a mountie had been there Li would not have acted as he did, as if he was making rational decisions.
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Are you saying that Li did what he did the same way he'd fry an egg or buy sugar at the store? Would he have tried to do it with a Mountie present?
Yes. Maybe the voices would have told him the Mountie was the alien. If you can make a statement like that, you really know nothing of schizophrenia. What do you think motivated Lee to do what he did - "kicks just keep getting harder to find?"
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Neither the age of the victims or perp is really the issue - he's sexually assaulting other people. If he's doing it because of senility, ie can't help it, put him in a proper facility, otherwise let him bear the consequences.
The sentence does seem harsh tho in comparison to an Inuit woman who was just given one year for setting a shed on fire that contained her, now dead, husband. Manslaughter seems like a more serious crime than grabbing somebody's tits to me.
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With ongoing treatment and assessment.
All I'm proposing is that we do that without being hard-boiled pricks about it.
But there's the rub. Treatment is only management, there's no cure for schizophrenia. Medications often manage the disease quite well, so when he's released he should be monitored for the rest of this life to make sure he's taking the meds and institutionalized again if he's not.
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Unfortunately, I believe there is every intention of granting him eventual full unsupervised release. I think this is inevitable, and I believe if he is given his full freedom, it will be at the expense of public safety.
The is the problem - we have no mechanism to supervise him once he's released. And our current parole system wouldn't be up to the task anyway - most cons don't get enough supervision on parole.
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He hasn't been acquitted either, just legally found "not criminally responsibly". Given the severity of his actions and possible danger to the public, a conservative number like 15 years (or whatever it takes) to monitor long-term stability seems fair to me. If anyone were to be institutionalized for life, he would be a prime candidate, so I think a number like that is pretty fair.
I'm willing to go with the doctor's opinion that he has been stabilized with meds, however long that takes, and so is fit to be released. I wouldn't put an arbitrary figure on his being detained. But he should have lifetime parole with conditions, and that's not in place because he was not convicted. He was ordered held in an institution until docs say it's OK to release him - there are no conditions after that.
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See my post here in response to you: http://www.mapleleafweb.com/forums/topic/22733-bus-beheader-vince-li-should-be-allowed-to-go-to-the-beach-doctor/?p=901899
It's not right to put a blanket of "this guy needs to be kept inside the mental institution until the end of his days, period." when meds can work 100% effectively 100% of the time for some people. People should be judged on a case-by-case basis. If over a long period, say 15 years, he shows 100% stability while on drugs, it may be suitable for him to be released (though kept under surveillance and under strict conditionality).
Most humans are not 100% immune to committing cold-blooded 100% of the time. Does that mean we should jail everyone because there is a risk they will murder?
I agree with this, tho it wouldn't even take 15 years to assess his stability. Unfortunately, as has been pointed out, there are no mechanisms in place to monitor him once he's released, because he has not been found guilty. That's what needs to change.
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There is no parole... only supervised outings...
Currently yes. But he will be released at some point, with no conditions. That's where he should be on parole to make sure he takes his meds and goes back in if he doesn't. Until a doctor is willing to certify he doesn't need his meds anymore. (hell meet high water).
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This is an even more extreme position than letting him go to the beach. And parole for what exactly? He was not convicted of a crime. He was found not criminally responsible.
We should change it to convicted but not incarcerated because of a mental illness. Vince Li is not cured. His illness is being managed. It should be so for the rest of his life. Having to demonstrate that you took your meds every day is not an onerous parole condition.
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And you're qualified to assess this better than the doctors that have studied these conditions their entire lives and have made a different assessment?
We know how poor doctors are at predicting future behavior of the mentally ill. What should happen is that Li is on parole for the rest of his life and closely monitored once he's released. Someone should be making sure every day that Li is taking is meds, and if his behavior starts going off the rails again, should report that so he can be more closely assessed and confined again if necessary. We should stop pretending that these people are "treated" in the sense of healed. The meds keep them functioning reasonably normally, so we should be making sure they always take them. Many mentally ill people stop taking their meds (as did LI before he killed, I believe) because of the side effects and because they want to see themselves as "healed". We don't heal schizophrenia, we manage it until it possibly burns itself out.
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That's kind of my point. The more the bottom earners make, the higher all other wages and prices get, and they're still on the bottom. The only thing that works is getting out of the bottom.
Funny how that only applies to the people at the bottom. Everybody else seems to strive quite hard to get paid more. Of course there will always be people at the bottom of the income scale. What matters is how far that bottom is from the middle and the top. There's no reason it has to be so low they live in abject poverty.
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This is not a story about inequality - it is about poverty.
IMO, one of the best investments our society can make is in reducing child poverty, the key message is:
"A nutritious diet and access to opportunities for recreation could do more for health care than building more hospitals, Stanwich said."
In other words, an ounce of prevention...
And the best way to reduce child poverty is to reduce parent poverty. Higher wages for the working poor better support for people with kids on welfare if they can't work.
Canada lacks ‘quality’ employment: CIBC
in Business and Economy
Posted · Edited by Canuckistani
Further gutting of the Canadian middle class. Import huge numbers of people (250,000 immigrants, 400,000 temp workers) every year to drive wages down, while we ship the jobs overseas. Guess the top 20% will be content to be rulers of a third world country.