As someone who witnesses what goes on on the streets of Byron Bay every weekend I would simply say this: appalling.
Young men and women totally drunk off their dials staggering around the streets, stumbling and bumbling their brain-damaged way back home.
Alcohol-fuelled fights occur on a regular basis with police, bouncers, taxi drivers and ambulance personnel copping the blunt end of the stick.
All this is due to a drug that is the most toxic of any I’ve ever encountered. These young people are being exploited by an alcohol drug industry far more sinister and insidious than any other and it is sanctioned by laws that have been consistently watered down to suit the profiteering whims of the drug pushers in clubs, bars and pubs.
Yep! Why are they any less so than the bloke peddling dope on the street being harassed by sniffer dogs? These young people get drunk beyond simple tipsy and the damage they are doing to their brains is evident in their inability to articulate beyond their immediate self-gratification.
In other words, we are allowing these alcohol drug pushers to make brain-damaged morons out of our kids!
Alcohol is addictive and its deleterious effects on society are more than well documented, yet the alcohol drug pushers are allowed almost carte-blanche licence to create the next generation of addicts with government approval and sanction.
The cause, not the effect, is what produces the violence on our streets, and that cause is too freely available and irresponsibly supplied alcohol.
For the alcohol drug pushers to claim they are somehow indispensable to the community in Byron Bay is akin to a heroin dealer doing the same – just because they are making money and employing others to help push their drug.
Whichever way you spin it, the reality is that this insidious drug is a blight on society and a detriment to the development of human beings into their total potential and a financial drain on the community and its amenity.
If the alcohol-fuelled violence in Byron continues, the police should start looking at revoking some of the licences these alcohol drug pushers have to do their trade because, ultimately, those are responsible for turning this town into a trashed, drunken, stumbling, brain-damaged oasis for debauchery and violence – no-one else.
M Mizzi
Ocean Shores
My life time has spanned nearly 4 generations now and the present so-called alcohol-fueled violence has only happened since backyard drug producer’s pills came onto the scene.
Alcohol fueled violence was once a rarity. There was always the bloke who got tanked and put up his fists claiming he could beat any man in the house. He was usually ignored or tossed out into the street.
Nowadays the mix of amphetamines etc, with the alcohol it’s a far different story. Violence offenders should be tested for drugs and charged to the hilt.
http://thomaskleppesto.tumblr.com/post/26149335063/the-relative-dangers-of-drugs-what-the-science-says
… well said… as a local i need to be out of town by 7pm in winter and 9pm in summer as the vibe in town changes from friendly and cruizy to that of impending violence… My son who has lived here all his life cannot walk around his own home town, unless he has a few mates with him, as he is targeted by ignorant, drunk, aggressive visitors to Byron, with i threats of violence, as a result he doesn’t go out to enjoy his own home town, and its the same for many locals, we’ve lost our once funky, cool, cruizy town to alcohol and violence… 🙁