In a message dated 9/8/2000 9:08:36 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
retroman@turbont.net writes:
>
> Not that I think this may have not been a good idea, mind you, but as I
> recall
> Reagan got the blame for what was essentially an ACLU action.
>
Hmm ... good response, and partly true - but that is not *exactly* as I
recall it. What the ACLU wasn't mandating the closure of the hospitals. First
of all, it wasn't exactly Reagan himself (who seems to have been nothing more
than a good actor in his best role), but Prop 27.
What happened was that the hospitals were closed down : (and I will have to
check my history, because I was only a young pup at the time ; - ) And so the
detention institutions for the criminally insane became overburdened, being
the only resource for poor families of people whoused to get outpatient
treatments at state run facilities. The ACLU stepped in and said: you cannot
retain people and force medication on them, unless they are a danger to
themselves or others.
There is *still* a lobby for mandatory medication on the table, in other
words: Government agencies that will (by force) make mentally ill patients to
take psychotropic drugs, or Lithium or whatever, which is a really scary
idea, isn't it? Now talk about Big Brother!
Sigh... Once again, it's a VERY gray area. I would like to see medication
available for indigent folk, so they can get back on track. I would pay a
percentage of my earnings to assure that kind of social program. Who knows,
someday that could be me, or my loved ones, all it takes is a chemical
imbalance, one tiny ingredient missing from the brain soup -- and POOF!
There you are talking to yourself and wearing garbage bags!
But who would trust the police, or the state to regulate who or how much the
poor sot needs to take? (Pictures of mind control experiments, roundups of
depressed housewives forced to take Prozac, or better yet: drugs that help
the economy by encouraging shopping; - ) Argh.
On the other hand, these are not people who can help themselves, unlike so
many of the welfare cases. To be honest, these folks don't KNOW they need it,
and often they *like* themselves the way they are... so *someone* has to take
them in and get them started, because they haven't the mental faculties to do
it themselves! And no one is doing it *now* - so we have this really scary
homeless population of wandering lost souls, spreading mayhem and disease...
Conundrum city.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:37:33 MDT