On a different note, a brothel in Berlin recently had the brilliant idea to give discounts to customers who use public transportation or human power (a.k.a. a bicycle) to reach them. (Wow! What is it with me and brothels recently? I promise I'm not really looking for stories on brothels, the find me...) Once again, I'd like to take this moment to point out what a good idea it is to regulate the sex industry. It's good for everyone involved since the owners can do it without fear of being shut down, the workers are legally protected from abuse and patrons don't have to worry about being arrested and can be better assured of cleanliness and quality. Seriously, we should legalize and regulate the sex industry.
Now that we're on the subject of things that need to be decriminalized, I seriously believe that we should decriminalize the use and possession of, but not sale of, most drugs. While it is true that checking yourself in to a rehab program does not inherently carry with it the penalty of criminal charges, many of the people who need addiction help most can't afford to go to a clinic because they cost ungodly amounts of money. Many of those people must wait to be caught for any help to be found for them and even then the only "treatment" for them involves incarceration and little, if any, psychological or medical treatment for their very real and very deadly addictions. I think the money we use locking up minor drug offenders could be better used providing drug addiction services to low-income people and funding community-wide drug abuse prevention programs targeted at teens and adolescents. Preventing drug abuse in the first place would tackle another problem: the large-scale sale of illicit drugs in the US. Sale of drugs will not ever be completely eliminated, but using community-based efforts to keep kids off drugs and out of gangs (because gang membership is often coupled with drug use, although it's true the the inverse is not true) will greatly decrease the market for selling drugs in the first place thereby eliminating much of the problem related to drug sales and smuggling. Wouldn't it be better to rescue 3 birds with one stone than continue to jail all three birds? It's cheaper for the government and the community for solutions like this to be implemented in place of the usual incarceration without rehabilitation method currently employed by the government in far too many of these far too common cases.
Also, the word of the day is pulchritudinous. It's an adjective meaning "characterized by or possessing great physical beauty and appeal." Plus, it's super fun to say!
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