If liberty is earnt, what do we do about hoodlums?

Oh, you know the type - drunk, on drugs, out of control and on welfare and scaring the living daylights out of the rest of us.

When I say this, I need to qualify that I do not refer to the mythical 1979 dole bludger, photographed for the front page of a conservative tabloid, sitting on the beach at Byron Bay, with long hair and an unkept beard, smoking marijuana and drinking a bottle of bourbon. Right-wing politicians pitched to swinging voters, the need to eradicate the world of this bunyip! This, however, is not what I mean. It has very little basis of sense.

Instead, what I refer to, however, is often the scene at night in Sydney. We are in the midst of an ice epidemic and it scares the living daylights out of me.

I believe personal liberty is one of the most important ideals in western philosophy. If, however, you grew up in the 70s and early 80s, your family may have trained you that you had to earn your liberty.

For this reason, I question why anyone who roams the streets harassing people, who have not done anything to them, is allowed to continue with this behaviour? Of course they are allowed to continue this nonsense and so they don't stop their harassment of others.

This means the junkies on welfare (or whatever they are) have taken the liberty away from the people they harass in the streets.

This really is upside down. When the junkies and alcoholics are on welfare and under retirement age, I suggest we fix their problems with humane rehabilitation. I believe that we need to take just a little bit of liberty away from the young junkies and alcoholics, who are dysfunctional in society. Yes, ok, so humane, but compulsory rehab. That's the ticket.

Many libertarians would disagree with me. All I can say is that, while I don't agree with some of their stances on drug consumption, I will put up with letting the people who are not on welfare, take these horrific substances, even though every side of my sane mind is screaming NO very loudly at such a horrific prospect - that is IF new laws legalise these horrific drugs.

There is, indeed, an argument, which states that drugs will take away liberty and quality of life, from the junkies.

I will, however, say that if people wish to have the liberty to slowly destroy themselves, then they need to have earnt that liberty. The unemployed drunks and junkies who harass people on the streets have not earned any such liberty and so the Oager needs to knock on their door at 3am and flush all their drugs down the toilet and tip their booze down the sink.

I will concede that there are some people who need two glasses of wine before they go to bed at night, or they may be suicide risks. Proper rehabilitation carried out by the correct community workers should be able to assess this and find appropriate solutions. Moderate allowance of alcohol should be okay for some people, provided it is done responsibly.

With this in mind, I very much agree that people have who have illnesses, which cause them pain. must be allowed to use marijuana.

I think that when we apply same system fits all bureaucracy to all people, then none of these individual cases can be worked out properly.

Liberty is one of the most important things to me, but I don't agree that people sleeping in the gutter, because of their drug and alcohol addictions has anything to do with liberty ―  Joseph Walz