Opinions - Heroin in return for a hard days work

[china cat]

A few years ago swim knew a dealer in Aberdeen. The dealer owned a house and wanted to turn the garden into a parking space or something. A couple of his punters blagged him and said that they could and would do the work in return for free gear each day.........they strung the dealer along for four or five days just digging a big fuckin hole in his garden, saying it was needed for foundations. Eventually they fucked off having kept their habits going for a few days and as far as I know the hole is still there.

What do you think the attendance record would be like if unemployed users were paid partly in heroin for working in useful community based projects that taught them new skills to help them find good jobs? Complete the programme and once employed then your heroin script would be continued.

There are no doubt some fairly hefty moral arguments against paying drug addicts with drugs but????

Reputation Comments on this post:

Great hypothetical situation and question. Props.

[Solinari]

Haha, i don't know about paying in heroin but that story was brilliant, that's the sort of story you could hear from a comedian.

[china cat]

Originally Posted by Solinari

Haha, i don't know about paying in heroin but that story was brilliant, that's the sort of story you could hear from a comedian.

I shit you not it's true. Swim used to go round to score and you had to watch out for the hole! Can't say I felt very sorry for him though, apparently his bags were always shady.

[Spare Chaynge]

it would almost be as bad a slavery

Spare Chaynge added 1 Minutes and 5 Seconds later...

It would be like willing slavery. Swim imagines everyone would show up, but what kind of work would that do?

[china cat]

Originally Posted by Spare Chaynge

it would almost be as bad a slavery

Spare Chaynge added 1 Minutes and 5 Seconds later...

It would be like willing slavery. Swim imagines everyone would show up, but what kind of work would that do?

Yeah, you're right......everyone would show and and try to get the maximum amount of gear for the minimum amout of effort.......Chaos. You'd have people asking for a little bit in up front, lay ons etc etc. Imagine trying to manage that workforce!!

Still think that it could be used as a strong motivator. Must be more of the fascist in me than I knew.

[Coconut]

Originally Posted by Spare Chaynge

it would almost be as bad a slavery

Spare Chaynge added 1 Minutes and 5 Seconds later...

It would be like willing slavery. Swim imagines everyone would show up, but what kind of work would that do?

I don't see much of a difference between being paid in heroin and being paid in money. People toil through life until the age of 65 working jobs they despise just so they can put food on the table. Wage slavery and this form of heroin slavery are pretty similar if you ask me. Sure, you need money to buy food et cetera but I think the principle is the same.

Reputation Comments on this post:

a good point

[Spare Chaynge]

hahaha socialism

[MotherSuperior]

SWIM actually knows of a dealer who used to pay his drivers in this way(in the days that he used to deliver to the door). Frankly you would have to be pretty numb to put up with the shit this dealer used to give people(especially the driver).

[Oneiros]

I took a sharpie to an old undershirt and scribbled "Will Work for Heroin" on it once. A lot of nervous glances, but no employment offers.

Maybe we could use some kind of universal intermediate... Something that all of society accepts as a method for transferring value. That way, regular people as well as addicts could buy whatever they wanted from anyone else, including drugs. Oh wait...

[china cat]

Originally Posted by Oneiros

I took a sharpie to an old undershirt and scribbled "Will Work for Heroin" on it once. A lot of nervous glances, but no employment offers.

Maybe we could use some kind of universal intermediate... Something that all of society accepts as a method for transferring value. That way, regular people as well as addicts could buy whatever they wanted from anyone else, including drugs. Oh wait...

The sad fact for swim is that heroin is worth far far more than plain old money.

They say that money shouldn't be the most important thing in your life.

[Spare Chaynge]

Could that cause legal problems in the U.S? Will work for heroin

[Oneiros]

Regardless, it would only make sense if you were getting paid more heroin than you could buy with a day's pay... But still, while I'm sure securing opiates is important to all of us, some people would still like to be able pay rent and buy food. Its hard to do that with heroin, unless your landlord and your grocer are both junkies. That's why we have money.

This concept could actually work very well in a utpoian nation of addicts. Think of it: our currency would be fixed on a heroin standard. Everyone would have a job, at the very least working in the poppy fields or the processing labs. Education would be centered around botany, chemistry, and the performing of basic medical procedures. Our chief exports (opiates) would be renewable, and their insatiable demand would make us richer than any oil producing country by far. We would use the profits to fund the research of new opioids and the physiology of addiction.

I'm a dreamer.

[Spare Chaynge]

The money standard heroin would be unreliable. If harvest was bad heroin would cost so much... also you would be using your money

[Oneiros]

Originally Posted by Spare Chaynge

The money standard heroin would be unreliable. If harvest was bad heroin would cost so much... also you would be using your money

If the harvest was bad (decrease in supply), the value of the currency would increase, due to an increase in the market price of heroin. We would then be able to import larger amounts of precursors to synthesize fentanyl and methadone to hold us over until the next harvest.

The fact that we would be using our money would prevent inflation, keeping the value of heroin and our currency up.

A stable balance could be achieved by controlling the supply, much in the same way that the oil nations do.

[crackcityrocker]

just make sure you give it to them at the end of the day...

[china cat]

I don't see much of a difference between being paid in heroin and being paid in money.

I know this is all make believe but if you think that working for money is slavery then working for heroin would be like being enslaved twice over!

Being a heroin addict doesn't necessarily mean that you can't make meaningful contributions to your community........perhaps instead of exiling addicts by driving them underground you could use the object of their addiction as an incentive.

As with the majority of illicit drugs the effects of the illegality of heroin does far more damage than the effects of the substance itself.

All the time that addicts waste whilst trying to score could be put to much better use. I hate to think of the amount of hours, days, weeks that swims wasted whilst waiting on streets corners in the past.