A culture is a widespread way of life. Its definition is derived from the term 'cult' which is a group of people with the same beliefs and practices. It baffles me as to why a 'cult' is a taboo and a culture isn't. It defines your desires and your taboos, and it ensures that everyone else feels the same as you. Unfortunately, culture is fallable, and there are people who deny their cultural roots in favor of some alternate way of life. Culture is given to you in many ways. You can get it from a family member, from a close friend, from other people in your living environment, and you may even have a strange inner culture all of your own. As we affect people in our daily lives, they learn elements of our culture and will almost always adopt those elements.

 

When a person learns cultural ways from you, they usually pick up new taboos, which are things you don't like.Taboos are the most influential parts of culture, and often the most harmful. It is uncertain how taboos start up, but the basic reason is that a person didn't like something, and influenced everyone else to dislike it too. In this way, it can become illegal to say that the earth is round, or that the planets revolve around the sun, and so it has been. Cultural taboos, for the most part, are a detrement to society, and should be minimized at all costs. There are some taboos, however, that are good, for example, being smelly and dirty is a taboo that makes you focus on personal hygene. Other taboos, such as harming yourself in some way, can cause great disorder.

 

Personal harm is the most basic cultural taboo. In early years, people believed that neglect was a part of personal harm. As the government neglected the common person, and imposed unreasonable laws on them, they rebelled and started democratic societies. As the fields of science advance, we find more and more ways to hurt ourselves, and we uncover bad effects of things that people have been doing for centuries. For example, although people have been smoking since before recorded history, it has been found out by science that elements in smoke can cause cancer. There are also drugs that people ingest or inject that can cause them harm. The obvious cultural response to a harmful substance or activity is to make it a taboo, and since culture can not resist infiltrating the legal system, they have outlawed these drugs.

 

There has never been an effective punishment to any harmful activity except for a quick and often bloody military action against all of the people who do it or accept it. The only way to really end any harmful activity is by containing it peacefully and affecting the people who do the activity in a positive manner. This means that when they do their harmful act, they are in the safest possible environment, around people who disapprove passively and mildly, people who may be their friends. In addition, this keeps harmful substances in a controlled environment as well, which helps control the supply and demand issues of illegal drugs. It would also be a paradigm shift in the way we think about substances. Instead of the 'no substances allowed here' signs, you will find only one sign, 'substances allowed here' on the door. This means that everyone who is a possible addict will have a safe place to stay instead of living on the streets. It also means that people with possible cures will be able to find them quickly and easily, and treat them.

 

There may be some question as to what 'substances' apply under this new system. I would use the legal system's definition of "any substance that impares judgement" and "any substance that is toxic to the human body" to be a harmful drug. This would logically include alcohol, certain herbs, cigars and cigarettes, and certain pain medicines and cold remedies. This paradigm shift in how we view drug users would also include legal incidents. When someone is caught doing an illegal drug outside the containment area and not breaking other laws, they will be sent to the containment area instead of being charged with a crime. Luckily, hospitals are contained and peaceful environments to administer some medicinal drugs, but where do the other people go?

 

This is where the "Drug Dome" comes in. It would be the size of a mall or a stadium, totally self contained, with even the open air areas being contained. This is not to be like some jailhouse though. It must have apartments and facilities for all of a person's needs. Drug users are not all lazy bums, they are also police officers, grocery store workers, waiters, little old ladies, sports players, doctors, nurses, and government officials to name a few. I expect that as a payment for the use of the drug dome, users will have to spend some time keeping it sterile and in working order. Everyone who uses the facility will also be entered into a database, with their current status of clean, addict, or recovering.

 

There are even more benefits of this system, beyond keeping people off of the streets and in fear for their freedom. It allows humanitarian groups to easily access and fund the treatment of individuals. It allows for scientific observation of people in a calm and safe setting, which the academic community is very interested in. It keeps alcoholics, who kill someone every day, off of the streets. It may also provide as a place to rest for travellers with little money to spend, and as a payment they can cook or clean. It will also keep products away from street corners near schools and other places where young people may become victims of dirty capitalism. It will, as I am certain, eventually lead to the elimination of truly harmful practices, and the safe controlled use of not so harmful practices.

 

My goal, although I believe it may be slightly unlikely, is to have all pubs/bars/salloons in the dome. Also, the growing, cultivating, and processing of more harmful products must be done inside this dome's property. People who produce anything under the dome's protection, at a profit, must contribute some of their wealth back into the dome, which is not just throwing away money, it is to improve the work place and living condition of everyone in the dome. Only drug related businesses may exist for profit inside the dome, it is one of the most important rules of the dome as well. Also, only people who do not do harmful substances may have a stay limit imposed upon them at any time. The dome must be a non-profit organization, with all profits either being donated to charities or given directly to the government. Although I believe this to be slightly unlikely and unfeasable, I imagine that a drug dome would be created for each city relative to the size of the substance using population.