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Cracovian

Listed below are comments made by Cracovian between Wednesday, 7th May 2008 and Monday, 21st September 2009.

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Where's ITV's Ball? 10:07am on 21 Sep 2009 ITV? That's the channel that gets in the way of my channel surfing from BBC2 to Channel4, right? Now that there are no restrictions on product placements inside TV shows, I have even more reason to rapidly press 'channel up' to avoid another ad-break-ridden flop.
How Portugal treats drug addicts 11:04am on 02 Jul 2009 Why do some people think that "the sky would fall in" if drug use was decriminalised / legalised? What facts or opinion do they use to justify that position?

To me, its quite obvious that anyone who currently wants to take a drug doesn't have to look far to get hold of it. Do the doom-mongerers out there seriously think that there are vast swathes of people awaiting the legalisation of heroin just so they can go and score themselves a heroin addiction? Those doom-mongerers seem totally out of touch with the reality of human life. Humans don't make decisions about what substances they consume on the basis of an arbitrary law. We're far more complex and irrational. That's why drug users (including the so called legal drug users of alcohol and tobacco) consume something they "know" is harmful.

What bothers me about lauding decriminalisation is that its an unsustainable and undesirable halfway house. If possession is to hold less than 10 days worth of supply, does that make everyone who has 11 days worth, a dealer? What if a user decided to reduce their costs by buying in bulk? So, through decriminalisation, the drug market dynamic is for more regular contact with the criminal gangs who still control drug distribution. That can't be a good thing.

Drug related violence is not effectively dealt with through decriminalisation. The police and justice system are put in an untenable position of either supporting someone caught with a drug or charging them with dealing and throwing the book at them. No wonder some police don't like the policy... but I'd add to that - the police are certainly not the best ones to make reasoned judgements on drug laws.

Whilst I don't know of any examples, I would guess that decriminalisation increases the possibility of state corruption or collusion between officials and drug gangs. I wonder if anyone has done any work on this?

So, whilst its pleasing to see a growing awareness of alternatives to outright drug prohibition, I think we've got some way to go to develop effective drug policies which tackles the negative effects of the drug market from production through to distribution and consumption.

Full legalisation is our only hope.
Caption Competition 10:41am on 07 Nov 2008 The Republican campaign's mascot fails to hide the writing on the wall.
Caption Competition 7:55pm on 30 Oct 2008 Some dirty pap gets more than he bargained for as he tries to get an upskirt photo from the gutter.
Caption Competition 7:51pm on 30 Oct 2008 Iron Man doesn't understand why he can't front the campaign against unlicenced taxis.
Map of the week: The mystery of the missing opium 1:04pm on 10 Oct 2008 Theory 3 - the estimates are simply wrong. There are good reasons to over-emphasise the problem.

So called "intelligence" told of WMD in Iraq yet we all know that none were found.

How exactly are the estimates produced, and can we trust the motives of the UNODC? It seems to me that its in their interests to overplay the numbers to create a scare and hence receive more funding for their activities.

I'm sure a lot of the pro-war brigade are very keen to continue to justify our presence in Afghanistan. Firstly we were there to remove the Taleban and their support of Osama. Given that poppy production had reportedly reduced under the Taleban, for reasons explained earlier, our presence in Afghanistan was not motivated by any interest in hunting down the drug cartels.

But now we've removed the Taleban and lost Osama in the mountains of Pakistan, we need a new reason to be in Afghanistan. Ah - let's make it look like we're fighting a drug war!

And as we don't want the war to stop (as that would harm our "defence" oriented economy), let's make it look like we have to fight a bigger problem and over-egg our own estimates. In that way, whenever we make a seizure in the future we can say that we're winning the war (which we've created in our own minds).

As others have pointed out - if we really could know how much opium had been produced we'd have a decent idea of where to look for it. As we've got thousands of troops across Afghanistan operating with the latest high-tech satellite systems, the most plausible explanation for why we're not finding any more heroin is that it simply isn't there.
Caption Competition 10:07am on 10 Oct 2008 The chin touching art appreciation society contemplate the meaning of this new work from China.
Caption Competition 10:39pm on 02 Oct 2008 The global economy hits a brick wall.
Caption Competition 12:04pm on 12 Sep 2008 Was it you that made a jibe about a pig with lipstick?
Freesat - will it fly or flop? 10:54am on 07 May 2008 I'm excited by freesat because it offers the possibility of accessing all of BBC's content from the EU. With the principle of the free-market and free-trade, I see quite a few ex-pats using this as a cheaper and easier alternative to subscribing to Sky, then taking the box abroad.
But no-one has yet given me conclusive evidence that this is entirely legal. If it isn't - why not? I'd even be happy to continue to pay the UK TV licence. Surely it shouldn't be a crime to want to watch your own country's TV from within the EU?

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