It Doesn't Seem To Work
In Ireland they seem to be reviving the popular sport of tarring and feathering. It seems the miscreant in this case was a drug dealer.
This man was subjected to the painful tarring and feathering on the Taughmonagh estate, a loyalist stronghold in the city.You have to deal with root causes.
Locals had accused the victim, who is in his thirties, of being a drug dealer. And when police allegedly did not act, they took the law into their own hands.
Two masked men tied up the accused victim, poured tar over his head and then covered him in white feathers, apparently from a pillow case.
A small crowd including women and children looked on as the men then adorned their victim with a placard reading: "I'm a drug dealing scumbag".
Pictures of the punishment were sent to a local newspaper.
Why do people take drugs?
Schizophrenics are well known to use tobacco at rates well above average.
So instead of treating the cause: people getting insufficient medical treatment, we go after the result - a market for unapproved treatments.
This is craziness.
It doesn't seem to work.
We want more.
Sigh.
H/T Instapundit
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4 comments:
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"And when police allegedly did not act, they took the law into their own hands."
One of the main reasons police don't act in a case is insufficient evidence. It is nice to know that when evidence is lacking there is a group of concerned slack-jawed types to fill in for due process. I know that drug dealers in Ireland are some of the vilest but I do not trust average type people at the neighborhood level to get anything right - least of all the administration of justice.
With so many promising medical avenues opening up for research into addiction and general mental health (such as small molecules like non-coding RNA and their role in mental illnesses that don't respond completely to medication and vaccines against addictive drugs), the diversion of some of the money used to "enforce" drug criminalization to such research could have a far greater impact on society.
On a side note, if these people got someone who was really connected to the drug trade rather than just a local who buys for a few people then they would be wise to start up a neighborhood watch before his friends make an example of the neighborhood with a few fire bombs. This is Ireland after all - the land of IRA and Marching Freaks of the Orange Oder whose only accomplishment in life has been to teach me not to identify myself as being of Irish descent.
When I say: "but I do not trust average type people at the neighborhood level to get anything right - least of all the administration of justice."
I should also not that I don't trust anyone at any level to get anything right. At least not consistently, which is why we get second opinions from doctors and appeals courts and such. I don't want to pick on the neighborhood level folks (especially since they have tar and feathers).
Well I'm from Ireland and I'd never heard about that case (though it brings a smile to my face knowing what Irish drug dealers are like), though I know that some former IRA members in Northern Ireland are involved in what the press coined as "punishment beatings", and they're quite inventive about it.
For example: barbed wire inside a plastic tube, inserted where the sun don't shine... then they remove the tube leaving the barbed wire...
I know that there have been several vigilante beatings in my own town (or just something very ilegal to scare them out of the area) against local dealers (nothing to do with the IRA). The rumour is that a local Garda was involved in one of them :)
Of course now you think Irish people are just mad :)
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