As the BBC have given their listicle about barbiturate abuse in Scotland, Strathclyde Spotlight has decided to lend our expert voices with five tips of our own explaining how we can foster a greater drug problem to bolster the economy.
1. People have to start buying radios and dvd players again
The bees of the drug economy are the addicts; the wonderful people who commit small crimes in order to pay for an all-consuming and ever-dwindling high. Through their humble acts, they create revenue for police forces, prisons and drug dealers, a trifecta of moving capital.
Today's enterprising addict struggles to fund their habit as a lot of people have traded in small electronic boxes for streaming services that are pre-integrated into their televisions. Leaving the door unlocked at night and placing loose, mid-value items around the home are small steps you can take to nurture the crime-addled days of yore.
2. Criminalise more drugs, such as ibuprofen and Piriton
The private prison industrial complex relies on drug charges to fill their cells and wallets, so any talk of legalisation is not in the interest of shareholders. Pick drugs with low death rates and genuine health benefits, then give them the cannabis treatment. Speaking of which...
3. Demonise widely used medicine with new branding
Just as weed started getting called 'marijuana' in America to make it sound foreign and scary, use language or trite phrases to make day to day medicine daunting. For example, Calpol will be called Isis syrup, or deploy meaningless puns like 'you can't spell paracetamol without 'para'.'
4. Allow police to deploy ESP in finding drugs
We've all been there; you've pulled over some vagrant* and feel like he may have something incriminating stashed in his car, like a stolen Kitkat or a nuke. But as a warrantless search requires 'reasonable grounds', you need to have a motive to kick him out of the car that you can put in writing for a report and is conveniently impossible to disprove at a later date. Therefore, ye olde "I smelled cannabis" has been a load-bearing pillar of intrusive searches in Scotland for decades.
But with edibles and oils becoming the dominant method of consumption over the years, this blatant excuse is losing the fig leaf of credibility so it may be time to allow police extra leeway - they can 'sense' the presence of drugs about the person. Psychic officers will be trained at Caledonian University (odds are there's already a course there for it) and should be rolled out mid-2022.
*vagrant in this case meaning black, catholic or available