Relaxation of drug laws

[cromwell]

What war on drugs is this?
The penalties for possession now are pitiful. £85 fine when caught hiding heroin in your underpants? You'd get more for speeding.

[Oojamaflip]

So drugs become legal, then what?

How will they distributed? Can anybody with a licence sell them, in the same way as tobacco and alcohol, or will it only be pharmacies? How much will they cost? Who will decide? Will there be an age limit? What will it be? How much will a person be allowed to buy, and will they be allowed to pick-and-mix to the max? Will drugs be subject to tax and VAT? Where will they be allowed to be injected/sniffed/smoked by the users? What implications will there be for the world of work: for example decision making, operating machinery/driving? Will the current traders suddenly rush out for jobs, or will they turn to alternative illegal means of income generation? What might they be?

I've got an eddayke. Anyone got any pills?

[Workingman]

I've got an eddayke. Anyone got any pills?

I'll have a word with someone I know... and see if I can get you some...

Anadin.

[Aggers]

I think children, from a young age, should be educated about the dangers of drug taking.
Then drugs should be de-criminalised, and if they are then foolish enough to take drugs,
so be it. It's a simple case of survival of the fittest.

[Suff]

It's a simple case of survival of the fittest.

Actually it works the other way around. Look at Rome. The decadent last years of Rome are the path we choose to tread if we decriminalise drugs. No amount of "education" will get a Juvenile to believe that drugs are bad. We are educated by example. Speeding is BAD, look what they do to you, drugs simply can't be BAD as they don't do anything to you at all.

You can say anything you like to a child but what you DO is vitally more important.

If we want to create a society of dependent drug users, all we need to do is decriminalise them. Then, as WM says, where does it stop? Manadtory drugs tests before you operate any machinery at work?????

There are simple steps that any responsible society should take to protect itself and Cameron is 100% correct on this one. If society doesn't take these steps, then it will die out or be taken over. Which is what the survival of the "fittest", in a real world, means. Rome was no longer "fit" to rule the known world. So it died. The USSR was no longer "fit" to rule where it did, so it died. If we choose to be a delinquent society, we will no longer be "fit" to run our own country and must cede that right to others.

This is not an abstract concept of what people do in their "leisure" time. Society is the rules that bind and sustain us. If we do not take the responsibility of maintaining and managing those rules, then our society falls.

Forget human rights, they don't exist.

[shazsha]

One thing that this thread has shown me it's that there is no simple answer to the war on drugs.

For a start we're failing to divide drugs use into different sections. The person who smokes cannabis once weekly is totally different from the heroin addict who is using daily.
Soft and hard drugs are very different and each will have it's own issues to be dealt with.
Within each section you'll also have your recreational users and your addicts,with each again having their own set of issues.

I believe that if someone is living a functional life and chooses to spend £20 on a bit of cannabis once a week/fortnight/month then that is their personal choice and they shouldn't be criminalised for doing so.
I also believe that the heavy cannabis user may be self medicating- does the user have mental health issues he/she is attempting bring under control. It's a bit like the old scenario of which came first, the egg or the chicken?
Even doctors and experts in the drugs field cannot agree on that one and I question whether or not it is fair to possibly criminalise this person.

Then we come to the hard drugs issue. I only have limited experience of cocaine, amphetamines,etc.
However I do have quite extensive experience of heroin addicts. I used to believe that all dealers should be hung, drawn and quartered and that all addicts were weak, selfish scumbags and then heroin entered my life in the form of my brother.
Watching him fall into addiction and his fight to try and get help for that addiction and his subsequent death made me look differently at my beliefs.
I discovered that your street dealer of heroin was usually another addict who wasn't making a fortune from his sales-he was most likely just keeping his own habit and yet we were throwing vast amount of resources at catching him, And then, when he was caught, there was another addict in place to take over the dealing...we weren't( and still aren't) getting to the root of the problem.

I saw addicts who hated themselves and their lives and tried to change that only to find it almost impossible to get proper help. Our main way of dealing with the problem was to throw methadone( street name ,deathadone) at them, causing an addiction that was as nasty as heroin but, hey, it's legal so everything in the garden is rosy.

I then found out about an experiment in Liverpool whereby an addict couple were prescribed heroin. In the six months they were prescribed it their lives totally turned around. They went from being hopeless addicts to being productive members of society with all agencies involved-ie social services, police, nhs,etc- agreeing that prescribing heroin had made a positive difference.
I found out that in England heroin could be legally prescribed by a GP if he registered to do so.
This is where I believe prescribing/decriminalising does work. When heroin is prescribed and administered under strict guidelines, and in a safe environment, then it can work.
If an addict can get his fix safely, with quality control, at cost price then he isn't going to go to a dealer to buy it which, in turn, would make dealing heroin unprofitable and eventually may lead to no heroin being available on the street to the next generation, then I am willing to consider it.

I am NOT advocating a scenario where people can go out to buy a pint of milk and see heroin and syringes freely available to buy and deciding " Ooh, what a great idea, I think I'll try that with my morning tea and see what it's like to be an addict"
I envisage a strictly monitored dispensing/supervision of heroin to addicts which would be more cost effective to society than our present set up.

However there is the obvious problem of those who just dont know when to stop. If we could clear our society of all known drugs tomorrow they would probably find something else, be it alcohol, glue or eating daisies...some people just cant be helped at times.

And with that I'll shut up- at the start of this discussion I decided we'd all been here already and would never agree so it was pointless throwing in my opinion but,as I said, some of us just cant help ourselves!!!

BTW, many people assume from my posts re drugs that I may use them- this isn't the case. I don't do drugs at all, not even cannabis or alcohol though I admit to smoking cigarettes!

[Suff]

Shaz I can see your point, when in the situation the activities to get you out of it are different from the activities required to stop it from happening in the first place.

I think we are coming at it from different angles and different viewpoints. First and foremost I want to eradicate the drug dealers. To do that you have to look at the way in which they generate the money and stop the money. That, as you rightly say, is not the dealers, they are usually addicts. The way to stop that is to remove the users.

Whilst I recognise that legalising drugs would effectively cut out the middle man (drug dealers) and make a legitimate new line for the drugs companies (GSK/Novartis/Merck et al), who already manufacture most drugs including Heroin, there is another factor to consider.

Teenagers and people in their 20’s and 30’s are mainly thrill seekers. They drive fast, play hard and live life at a pace that older people do not. People in these age groups will abuse drugs as they abuse alcohol and cigarettes. The problem with drugs abuse is that they are seeking a “thrill” or high. Get them on cannabis and, eventually, they will seek cocaine. Get them on cocaine and you have them on the slippery slope to Crack Cocaine or Heroin. Legalise cannabis without restrictions which, basically, remove it from this age group and you will not have the benign £20 a week scenario that you envision with the spliff or two, once a week on the weekend.

The problem I see is that most people feel that legalising drugs is a good option to deal with the aftermath of addicted people. My experience in life is that the battle is won by making sure you don’t have addict s in the first place. Once you have done that, you can then look at solid innovative ways to get the people who are addicts off drugs.

In order to achieve the above, truly draconian laws are required. So, for instance, were I to legalise cannabis it would be for the over 39 age bracket and only if they have no children in the home. Anyone with children in the home would be barred. I would make the punishment for dealing to underage; the seizure of all assets, mandatory 25 years in jail (without release) and sterilisation (as WM says, we don’t want these people to breed).

The consequences of drug addiction are truly horrific. So should the punishment be….

The problem we have today is finding MP’s who are NOT drug users. So a balanced debate is almost impossible. When the Scottish Assembly building opened, the press went in and sampled all the toilet surfaces. They found traces of cocaine on all of them…. Our tax £ at work.

[Oojamaflip]

One hope I have in the idea of legalising drugs is to eventually stop the hold at the 'top level'. Slowly chip away at the base of the pyramid and eventually the top topples too.

[Suff]

One hope I have in the idea of legalising drugs is to eventually stop the hold at the 'top level'. Slowly chip away at the base of the pyramid and eventually the top topples too.

Not if legalising drugs creates two lost generations of addicts who are, effectively, unemployable…

24 hour drinking was a drop in the ocean (pun intended a little), compared to the impact of legalised drugs.

There was little thought put to 24 hour drinking, to the restraint, or lack of it, in British society and to the role it would have to play in antisocial behaviour. We MUST and I do mean MUST do better than that when we legislate on drugs.

[Oojamaflip]

Yes, I agree with you over 24 hours drinking - it's the irresponsible drinkers who've blighted that. I toyed with the idea of doing Street Pastoring, but am self-aware enough to know I'm not the right character for that: "What're you going out without a coat and a vest at this time of night and in this weather - get that chest covered . . . ?" We're back to personal responsibility again.