Looting, thuggery and addiction in New Orleans
I may expand on this for the Addiction Report, but here are my initial thoughts:
I recently asked some recovering addict gang members what percentage of gang-bangers are addicts. They all agreed at 100%. I think we can safely conclude almost all of the thuggery in New Orleans is, therefore, committed by addicts.
Addicts are capable of anything. The looters–who later graduated to violence and arson–needed to be stopped without compromise from the start. Better yet, we need to act to get gang members clean and sober now, before disasters occur. Only in our worst nightmares can we imagine the consequences to civil society of an 8.0 earthquake in Los Angeles.