Could we save billions by legalising drugs?
Heroin and cocaine cost Britain billions.
From Cabinet Office, Strategy Unit Drugs Report Phase One: Understanding The Issues,
12 May 2003 [661 Kb PDF]
Five years ago, a Cabinet Office report estimated a figure of £24bn a year - £16bn of that from the costs of acquisitive crime by users funding their habit.
But what if those drugs were legal and regulated? What if heroin and cocaine were available on prescription or at affordable prices? (See my previous post on this debate Legalise Drugs! From maverick to mainstream.)
Today's report [444Kb PDF] by the campaigning Transform Drugs Policy Foundation (TDPF) argues that government must look at the current drugs policy with the cold eye of a cost-benefit analyst. If they did, it is suggested, ministers might save the taxpayer close to £11bn a year. (The figures in the table below relate to England and Wales.)
TDPF admits that the sums are back-of-an-envelope calculations because much of the information is simply not available. The conclusions involve, they concede, some "heroic assumptions".
But at the centre of the analysis is the claim that prohibition itself is the root cause of almost all drug-related acquisitive crime. If government took control from the pushers, dealers and gangsters, they suggest, levels of such crime would be "negligible". Even in the "highly unlikely" event that drug use doubled, suggests Transform, a regulated market for cocaine and heroin would see almost £7bn of savings in the cost of crime.
A relatively small amount of property crime is directly related to people's demand for cigarettes or alcohol, it is argued. Take other drugs away from the criminals, and the greatest driver of property crime in the UK largely disappears.
But what about demand? Wouldn't legalisation, as the Home Office suggests in a statement this morning, "risk a huge increase in consumption with an associated cost to public health"?
Drugs are controlled because they are harmful. The law provides an important deterrent to drug use and legalisation would risk a huge increase in consumption with an associated cost to public health.
The legalisation of drugs would not eliminate the crime committed by organised career criminals; such criminals would simply seek new sources of illicit revenue through crime. Neither would a regulated market eliminate illicit supplies, as alcohol and tobacco smuggling demonstrate.
Transform accepts that "whilst some pressures towards increased use may occur under a regulatory model, these would be moderated by effective controls on availability, price, and marketing".
The bottom line, though, is that we don't know. We don't know because government has never done a cost-benefit analysis of its drugs strategy, or conducted an "impact assessment" to ensure that policies are cost-effective.
This, argues Transform, is contrary to Treasury rules which state that
...no policy, programme or project is adopted without first having the answer to these questions:
(1) Are there better ways to achieve this objective?
(2) Are there better uses for these resources?
In its statement above, the Home Office explains that the law "provides an important deterrent to drug use". But does the law achieve this end?
In 2002, Tony Blair was told [81Kb PDF] by drug policy analysts in Number Ten that "attempts to intervene have not resulted in sustainable disruption to the (drug supply) market at any level".
Last year, a report [631Kb PDF] from the independent UK Drugs Policy Commission concluded that "law enforcement efforts have had little adverse effect on the availability of illicit drugs in the UK".
Today's Home Office statement offers another reason for not considering the legalisation/regulation model.
The legalisation of drugs would not eliminate the crime committed by organised career criminals; such criminals would simply seek new sources of illicit revenue through crime.
This strikes me as an odd argument, as it implies that it is pointless trying to eliminate any area of criminality because the bad guys would simply go and find something else bad to do.
What this is really about, surely, is a moral and political argument being challenged by a methodical and technical one. For generations, we have been told that recreational drugs are "wicked" (although alcohol is omitted from the axis of evil), and few in Westminster want to appear "soft" on sin.
It is interesting, however, that the Liberal Democrat Shadow Justice spokesman David Howarth has said this in response to the Transform report:
For far too long, drugs policy has been dictated by what sounds tough rather than what works.
We continue to pursue the same policies, despite the fact that the availability and use of drugs are up, prices are falling and drug-driven crime remains rife.
If the government are sceptical about these figures, then they should come up with their own cost-benefit analysis immediately. It would be a welcome nod towards evidence-based policy.
Perhaps we are witness to further signs that the debate over prohibition is hotting up.
I'm 
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~22~RS~)
Comments
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even though it would save money on one side it would be moraly corrupt to legalize these products that cause serious harm to the human animal.
i am surprised that this government has not taken more draconian measures to control the growing drug problem.
may be those using illegal drugs and needing hospital should have to pay for treatment and be removed from the NHS thus saving money for that once great institution.
sellers and pushers should get harsher terms of prison etc to try and reform them.
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I believe the main reason for legalising drugs is that without the economic incentive to push drugs the rate of use would decrease substantially. Criminals stand to gain by actively selling drugs and then their customers rapidly become dependent. If that initial economic incentive was broken how many people would walk into a chemist to buy E, or coke or other drugs? Well there would still be some , perhaps even many, but not as many as are now the victims of this pernicious sales force.
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How much burden will there be on the NHS for drug abuse, there is enough now without letting it be legal.
Where will the drugs be purchased, Afghanistan - so we will be funding the Taliban to fight.
Once legal the Government take responsibility it is OK to take drugs - rather irresponsible I would say.
Road accidents will increase because people taking drugs before or during the journey, yes people drink while driving, but smoking is less obvious, or just popping a pill or two.
Anyone who is pro legalisation is already taking drugs - so if you have a high percentage responses that are for, then you know roughly the percentage of population that are drug users.
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Yes this approach is screamingly obvious as the only truly workable solution. Get serious addicts away from dealers and in front of a GP, who can offer help as well as their next fix - safely and for free. Opponents have nothing more than vague pseudomoral ramblings in favour of maintaining the insane status quo. These ramblings are nothing more than a desperate post-rationalisation of mindless subservience to decades of government and media brainwashing.
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I cannot share your views on the Home Office arguments regarding simply diverting criminal activity into different areas. One of the main arguments put up by transform is that much or most of the money spent fighting drug use in the criminal sense is wasted. The Home office rightly points out that most of that money is going to have to be spent fighting criminal activity somehow, if not in drug enforecement then in some other sphere. In my view this negates much of Transform's reasoning.
I am not convinced by the arguments that much of the harm from drug use comes from the need to fund a habit, either. The history of Rock and Roll is littered with casualties who had more than enough money to fund their habits, and yet still suffered great harm from their drug use. The fact that many also overcame those problems may well be more to do with better social support, which even in non-celebrity addicts has a lot of benefit in terms of survival and maintaining health.
As for alcohol, I like a pint or a whiskey, but the harm done by alcohol is, in my view, a far better argument for banning alcohol than it is for legalising other dangerous drugs. And I do not see that the legal status of alcohol has stopped increasing social and criminal harm caused by its consumption. Abuse of illegal drugs may be rocketing, but so is the abuse of that particular legal drug. Use of the other grossly harmful legal drug, tobacco, is generally declining, and this has been at the same time as increasing restrictions on its use. Perhaps there is a lesson there?
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As soon as we know those who are taking drugs we can direct aid towards helping them. Whilst drug-users remain hidden, they are prey to criminals.
Get it all into the open so we can, at least, begin to solve the problem.
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Mark,
In your report you highlight the assumption that legalising drugs could 'save up to £11 bn' - that is using the totally unrealistic assumption that legalising heroin and cocaine would reduce use by 50%. Can you give me any instance where legalising such an activity has reduced its use?
If we ignore the ludicrous idea of giving these drugs away on prescription then we are left with the idea of the Governement selling them at an affordable price. At what age will it be legal to buy these drugs - 18 like tobacco and alcohol? How is the price set?
Both of these questions leave the opportunity for the criminal drug dealers to supply outside the legal market. I would therefore suggest that the cost savings won't be as great as generously stated in your report. I'd also be interested in finding out why the cost of drug related deaths is so much less if the drugs are legalised.
We are then left with the concept of the state promoting harmful drugs with minimal cost benefit and the potential for significant social harm. Not really a worthwhile trade off.
That said, I'm not against legalising less harmful substances such as cannabis - not Skunk - providing that measures to tackle drug/driving etc are in place.
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This is a very complex subject with good points on both sides. Let's be clear, this Government does not shy away from ways of making money off the public - and it would not only save but make from taxation - but it is very concerned with spin and public perception, that is what this is about. The people taking the drugs have the choice to do so and we know prohibition does not work; it fact it makes a bit of a mockery of other more important laws, as a lot of people who recreationally take drugs see nothing wrong with it. Harsher terms and more draconian action will not work either, not least of which it is not policeable. In order to change social habits, they have to address the underlying issues creating them, and this they will not and cannot take responisbility for, as they cannot 'spin it' in their favour. So unfortunately, they will continue with the same inept argument. Transform have to keep going, eventually the powers will have to see the obvious.
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Prescribed drugs makes sense although this will also cost, but the problem I foresee is drug dealers manufacturing lab drugs, opening up new markets, Chrystal Meths springs to mind how could anyone put something that destructive on prescription?. Same argument with legalising prostitution this puts younger people at harm e.g. minors as the market would be exploited by criminals determined to make their money somehow
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I thought the War On Drugs was lost by 1995, when anyone in the country could buy their drug of choice without much trouble. The most-addictive drug is legal, nicotine, the most-damaging drug is legal, alcohol, yet we struggle on.
Where are the cost benefits from the excise tax???
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I agree wholeheartedly that this entire issue needs to be viewed dispassionately. However, the foundation of the above analysis seems to be the assumption that the level of (ab)use would remain much the same once narcotics were legalised. I fear that many who wouldn't dream of taking illegal drugs would be tempted or persuaded to try them once the reins came off, if only as a rite of passage.
Given the addictiveness of cocaine and heroine, can we be sure that the vast majority of partakers could control their consumption sufficiently to at least make a positive contribution to society (we are doing a cost-benefit analysis, remember). Self-restraint is a quality that seems in short supply at midnight on many a city-centre street.
Furthermore, there is ample precedent of governments trying to restrict the supply of legal drugs by raising taxes, or by limiting access to stronger forms. The same people who supply illegal drugs today will be happy to ensure that the demands of those who can't get what they want over the counter are still met.
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In a word - yes! But first we'd have to overcome the vested interests:
Newspapers - a "problem" they can constantly write about whenever other news is scarce, putting their own spin as and when needed.
Government - would probably prefer to keep prohibition as another tool to create fear (a well-known tactic to keep order) but they have enough real enemies to do without, so will probably simply pander to whatever gets the most votes, something which applies to opposition politicians as well.
Police - have a load of great toys to keep playing with (helicopters, fast boats etc) and a great way to improve their "catch the villains" statistics. Drugs busts seem the easiest way to do this - BTW has anyone ever seen them catch "Mr Big"? Plus have you ever tried to explain to ANYONE that what they've been employed with for the last 30 years has been a waste of time and money? Having said that, there are examples of John Stalker types with enough integrity to speak out against prohibition (difficult to find them in the tabloid press though, without them being described as crazy).
And the biggest winners? Organised crime, they must be laughing all the way to the bank!
This is purely a freedom issue - "we can tell you what you put in your body AND charge you loads of taxes to police it".
We're all being conned.
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Fantastic article, and yes this really is the way forward.
Many people are exposed to drugs they otherwise wouldn't be through prohibition. The media bands all drugs in the same category - you'd be forgiven for thinking Cannabis is every bit as harmful to you as Herion based on Media reports - this is simply untrue.
If drugs were legalised, and just 10% of revenue generated was put into educating people on the REAL (not media speculated) effects of drugs, we would see a fall in drug use. Other areas of improvement would include a fall in crime, a fall in hospital addmission through drug use and extra revenue generated (through tax on drugs) could help in many, many areas.
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re comment 3, chrisk50
People who take drugs do so because they want to (or in the case of addicts, need to). Their decision is made regardless of the substance's legal status. There is hardly any correlation between legal status and usage. We have observed this again and again: e.g. in the UK when the gin laws were passed, in the USA during alcohol prohibition, and in The Netherlands now with their relatively low levels of cannabis use despite its de facto legal status. The additional burden to the NHS will be negligible, and any additional cost will easily be made up by the freeing up of our criminal justice system, and tax revenues that could be collected from the sale of currently-illegal soft drugs.
Poppies could be grown here in the UK if heroin was legally supplied by doctors instead of illegally traded by criminals. Indeed this is starting to happen. The Taleban wouldn't be able to make their current vast profits from the drug if it was legalised, and this would massively help our troops.
So as you can tell I am pro-legalisation, and yes I take drugs: alcohol and caffeine. It is likely you do the same. The difference between alcohol and illegal drugs is that you don't fund violent criminals when you buy it, you can be sure of a certain level of quality control, and there are regulations on how it is sold. We can achieve the same safeguards for all drugs, but only if we legalise them. At the moment drugs are out of control.
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We only ever see a debate as to one extreme or the other - total prohibition or unconditional freedom of use.
It seems to me that, just as with alcohol and nicotine, once other drugs are legal there can be a number of avenues open to attack any problems.
If we try to imagine how the world might look in a legalised scenario - I can't see the booze shelves at Tesco stocking E, heroin and crack. Nor can I see pharmacies and clinics handing out free drugs like they now do with contraceptives.
There is a world of difference between making it available and inviting a free for all. Maybe we have to acknowledge that most drug users have a problem and legalising their habit is a step towards identifying those who need our help.
I'm reluctant to go beyond that in terms of the exact solution, since we would need to very careful that we don't create a situation whereby people have to do too much in order to gain access to what they want/need.
You could, for example, set certain criteria, such as needing to be an identifiable, registered user who can only use the drugs at the place they receive them, possibly under medical supervision and on production of a photo-id card.
But you may lose a significant proportion of people in doing that - such as addicts who are too embarrassed to take the risk of being seen at such a place, or known to be registered there - and so the underground market may have a reason to continue.
But probably some kind of stipulations need to apply. Certainly we would not want to be handing out cheap/free drugs to people to go and party, as so many kids do now with alcohol - we would simply be exacerbating the problem we have now with binge-drinking. Worse, in fact, since we don't have an equivalent of the breathalyser for drugs.
And we would need to be certain that we were not doling out free/cheap drugs to people who may sell them in another country (one with less liberal laws).
The key thing is be certain that the drugs are available to those who need them and that they must be substantially cheaper than the current sources. Otherwise we don't solve the problems of society - if people are still buying from drug dealers because it's easier and/or cheaper then (a) we still have drug dealers and (b) we will still have drug-related acquisitive crime.
We can compare legalisation to the same process with alcohol. Even though people could in theory make their own alcohol at home, they don't, for the most part - even when it is taxed to death. There is the worry that the drug dealers could undercut the legal suppliers, but evidence suggests that this will not happen - when alcohol was re-legalised in the USA after prohibition, the moonshiners were out of business virtually overnight.
I am certainly in favour of legalisation, but only when we have a clear vision of exactly how that will work as part of the structure of (the new) society.
I should add that I have no vested interest (other than an interest in the benefit to society) - I do not use any drugs at all.
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There are lots of missing details in this proposition. I postulate that Heroin, Crack/cocaine, Amhpethamines and other user dependant drugs remain controlled but freely available on prescription for addicts.
Cannabis should be 100% legalised and freely available. People should be allowed to grow it in there own homes/gardens or buy it from licensed premises.
The facts prove this would work. Every time draconian anti drug legislation is put through demand for drugs increases, drug strength increases and safety is inhibited.
What kind of insane person would allow what should be a relatively harmless drug be controlled by criminal gangs? The only reason cannabis was made illegal in the first place was to give American policeman a legal reason to persecute mexican migrant workers.
Current legislation is oppressive and harmful and should be considered against peoples human rights.
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Mark
I doubt very much whether the debate on prohibition will hot up. I would risk a small wager that the Government will ignore this report and it will soon be forgotten.
Neither politicians nor the media (except for you and a handful of toher specialist reporters) are in the slightest bit interested in the evidence in regard to drugs. As in so many other areas of government policy, we have policy-based evidence not evidence-based policy. The Transform report has been reported only by said specialist reporters and as a low-priority topic by the media. It's not mentioned on the BBC website other than through the link to this blog on the "health" page
The politicians have cynically decided that there are no votes in liberalising let alone legalising "drugs"; rather the reverse - witness the reclassification of cannabis back to "B".
So we will continue to see the spectacle of a society which consumes tobacco and alcohol with abandon, yet stigmatises people who use other, less dangerous, drugs and puts billions into the pockets of organised crime from the Taliban to Colombia.
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As with everything else in the capitalist society we live in it really is "all about money".
Do we want illegal activities and people making money out of other more vulnerable people or do we want to have it under the control of "the authorities" so that the people in the drug supplying industry are under some form of regulation and quality control and paying their taxes like everyone else?
You could even argue that drug dealers are entrepreneurs and that it's a pity their business brains are not being used within the system.
I am a caffeine addict and luckily for me this is socially acceptable, not hugely expensive and the side effects are not too bad so far.
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I always find the 'legalise (heroin/cocaine/amphetamine) and then every thing will be ok' argument difficult to follow.
Alcohol and tobacco are legal - is everything ok with them?
No one dying? Not a penny of cost to the tax payer from alcohol or tobacco use? No one importing/selling them illegally?
By the way, the bottle of vodka in my lounge is on it's last few drops. Can I have it replaced free of charge on prescription please?
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One thing that has not been explained properly is how the legalisation is going to work. How would you supply heroine to people, for example? By prescription, in shops? How would you cotrol who buys it? How would you ensure that people (children, youngsters?) who are refused drugs legaly, would not turn to ilegal drug dealers instead?
If a constructive proposal is put forward, explaining how the legalisation is going to work, then it should be considered. However, so far there has been no such constructive proposal. The arguments seem to revolve around the notion 'prohibition does not work, legalise', which is clear nonsence. After all, we do not want to legalise pedophilia just because its criminal status does not seem to deter the pedophiles.
Another problem with legalisation is the confusion as to what needs to be legalised. Post #16 is a clear example- legalise cannabis, do not legalise anything else. Such an approach although easy to implement will not lead to any perceivable reduction in drug-related crime. Drug related crime is mainly caused by the 'hard' drugs, not by cannabis.
People often think they want legalisation of drugs, when in fact they want legalisation of recrational drugs. I do not think anybody would want 'Cristal Meth', GHB and kethamine to be readuly available for their own 18-year-olds to buy.
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I have had this conversation many times before, with both pro and anti people, and the best solution I can see so far is along these lines:
Legalise all drugs but regulate them closely.
Standardise strength and cost (reasonably affordable to deter associated crime)
Sell them over the counter in Police Stations. (Allows police to keep a close eye on things, ask questions, gather information)
You must register to buy and provide ID at the point of purchase. Information may be shared with medical authorities etc. - but not employers.
All proceeds go towards policing/healthcare/rehabilitation programmes.
Very heavy penalties for supplying minors, driving under the influence etc.
Allow businesses to decide how best to cater for drug use on their premises. Licencing laws can be debated and first aid provision may need to be compulsory, but most establishments would prefer this to the current, illegal but widespread, status quo.
Bulk buy directly from Farmers in countries like Afghanistan/Columbia at a similar price to other cash crops.
Simples!
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Legalise and be done
We grow or own and the supply should be directed through GPs and outreach clinics the tax return on the casual user who is not a redgistered addict would pay for the health budget on the addicts also the savings on the custom and exise (This would be a problem area in getting drugs leagalised because of the job loss and the reduction of the hidden budgets involved)and police would be immence also the amount of criminal activity would decrease
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Possession of these drugs should be quite legal - though of-course not encouraged. Drug users need to be educated and helped, not put in prison. For peddlers though it is quite a different story. Lock them up and throw away the key.
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I can just see the thug drug dealers sitting down to work out their self assessment tax returns on this. BEcause if they did not pay tax it would be breaking the law now, would it not ? !!
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Just look at how much tax payers money is wasted every year with no benefit whatsoever. At £1344 million per year, that's about £1 billion per month, or £16 per month per person! That's more than my phone bill! At least with a regulated system we'd make that money back by taxing the drugs!
As for the home office's claim that the organised criminals would move on to something else, what are they going to do?! There's just not enough profitable illegal activities out there. At worst, you'd have more prostitution (another area requiring legalisation and regulation; anyone thinking the sex trade can be stopped is a naive fool), and perhaps a few more people smuggling in cheap booze from Calais.
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Well done for actually saying this. Whether or not I agree legalisation/control is the right way forward is another matter, but the debate ought to be had, and points of view like this - and like that of Professor David Nutt - shouldn't be shouted down simply because they don't fit into what is the most politically palatable option.
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About time we had a decent debate on the legalization of drugs. We waste a huge sum of money each year losing the war on drugs. People are dying needlessly because the drug trade is run by criminals who cut their products with other more harmful fillers. We all agree that drugs can be dangerous but we need to balance that against the fact that people will always take them no matter what sanctions the authorities use to try to stop them. This is a difficult issue and will take a great deal of effort to get the balance right and it worries me that our current govt only seems to be able to tax problems and not really sort things out. We need to stop hand wringing and moralizing about this issue and get it sorted out before more young people die through taking bad drugs supplied by criminals who are only interested in the money.
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Here (http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/24/miron.legalization.drugs/) is a recent commentary, from the other side of the pond by a Harvard professor, focusing more on a potential reduction in violence through the legalization of drugs.
Here (http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/67) is a quick overview from DrugWarFacts.org comparing the USA with the Netherlands. In short the Netherlands, where cannabis is legal, has a much lower marijuana-use rate than the USA who, incidentally, is rather Draconian regarding cannabis.
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There have been many posts about the advantages or disadvantages of legalising or not legalising these drugs from the point of view of the effects on society. I would like to take a different approach.
What right has the state to tell me what I can and cannot do to myself? Laws exist to regulate behaviour as it relates to others - murder, rape, robbery etc - but where is the justification for attempting to regulate behaviour that affects only the person engaging in that behaviour?
Currently, UK law allows the consumption of alcohol but drunken disorder is illegal - not because alcohol has been consumed but because it's disorder! If I choose to take another drug, why should I be penalised, as long as my behaviour doesn't adversely affect others? It's my life, my body, my mind and I don't accept that the state has authority over it!
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One thing I have noticed on this blog is no one has actually asked why people take drugs? Well having tried drugs myself, though not a regular user, I can tell you. It is because they make you feel great (usually - depends on the drug). Having tried my first E many years ago I can honestly say it was an incredibly uplifting experience, better and safer than alcohol, plus you don't want to fight anyone or throw up in the high street. Now you can't get a clean E for love nor money, they are all full of cr#p thanks to the criminals just wanting to make more money.
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Let us consider the benefits (or otherwise) of the present system of prohibition:
There is no incentive to label illegal substances as to purity. A dealer will get exactly the same sentence whether they've been dealing pure heroin, or 20% heroin + 80% Goodness Knows What; but the second way they can increase their profits and make their supplies go much further. As well as the obvious risk of poisoning by adulterants, users unaware what they are getting may well end up inadvertently overdosing due to scoring something which is purer than they are used to.
There is no incentive for users to seek help before a habit turns serious. The stigma attached to addiction coupled with the psychological difficulty of betraying people you have met through it (even if you can see that your dealer is a nasty piece of work, many of his other customers may be good friends who do not deserve it) convince many people to avoid involving anyone else until it is much too late.
The worst cases of addiction are exaggerated. Contrary to the propaganda, one does not usually become a gibbering wreck from a single "hit". Even discounting the vast majority who will try a drug, not like it and never bother with it again, there is a broad spectrum ranging from occasional recreational users who manage to avoid taking their drug of choice when circumstances so dictate; via fully-functioning addicts who manage to hold down a full-time job to support their habit; to the stereotypical "oh please I just need some morphine or some methadone or something please just one hit please you've got to help me oh please" junkie portrayed on TV programmes such as Casualty. Most people on that spectrum go completely unnoticed. In fact, for the majority of heroin addicts, the cold turkey method of giving up (whether temporarily or permanently) is no more uncomfortable than a dose of the 'flu.
There is no incentive for users not to turn to crime to fund their habits. If possession of a drug is already an offence in and of itself, then the psychological barrier has already been crossed -- if one is going to prison just for having the substance about their person, then it hardly matters about going to prison for how they obtained the stuff.
There is an incentive towards unsafe methods of administration. Heroin is much less dangerous if inhaled from hot tinfoil than if injected (it is potentially just as addictive, but a fatal overdose is less likely as the user tends to pass out long before consuming a lethal amount). However, this is also a very inefficient and wasteful method. Similarly, sniffing cocaine is more wasteful than making it into "crack" and the "high" comes on more slowly.
There is no incentive towards open and honest discussion of the issues involved. (I confidently predict that many posts in this thread will contain the words "I do not use any drugs myself" lest the posters be associated in any way with the "junkie scum" portrayed by the tabloid media.) Politicians can always score a few cheap votes by promising to be "tough on crime", and drug users are an easy target.
Consider also the following (not entirely hypothetical) scenario: An ill-informed casual user, in a desperate bid to evade detection for fear of causing embarrassment to her parents, commits a preventable schoolgirl error which ultimately proves fatal -- but which almost certainly would have been avoided if she had heeded a simple warning on an information leaflet which would have been required to be supplied with the drug if it were sold legally, or if her parents had held a more enlightened attitude towards recreational drug use in the first place.
Whilst the unfortunate victim is clearly a victim firstly of prohibition and secondly of her own ignorance, she will nonetheless be held up by supporters of prohibition as a poster child, an example of why we need the very thing which killed her.
It will be a very brave person indeed who bites the bullet and changes the law; but history, in the long term, will show them to have been absolutely right.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
If we accept that the current approach to drugs and their effects has failed miserably then I think we are left with 2 choices :
1) Legalise them, sell them at regulated prices and remove the economic incentive for criminal activity. Along with truly punitive punishments for anyone caught selling to under 18's, driving under the influence etc.
or
2) Hit the demand end of the chain. Make the possession of even the smallest quantity of prohibited substances generate an automatic criminal record. No cautions, no slapped wrists - a criminal record. Anne Widdicombe once suggested this and was howled down by the middle classes who didn't want to see little Johnny or Tabitha criminalised for "just smoking a bit of pot at university".
We currently try and steer between these two by attacking the supply side of chain. Ignoring the obvious fact that if you take one supplier off the streets another will take his place.
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The progressive relaxation of the licensing laws over the last thirty years has brought a massive increase in drunkeness and social disorder. So much for the argument for a continental culture.
I am afraid this sort of argument about other addictive chemicals falls into the same wishful category. No wonder the political class are picking up on it; much as they did with the new paradigm discovered by the bankers before the recent crash. We should establish another new paradigm; namely, beware the middle classes with slick ideas.
I would agree that the 1967 Misuse of Drugs Act was ridiculously authoritarian and all the subsequent legislation has been equally absurd. I agree it has not worked, yet addiction and the consequences of addiction are more evident than ever before. Legalisation is just not an option.
Over the same period the Home Office has been banging its hairy chest with new drugs initiatives, customs officers have been withdrawn from the small ports and harbours, the police have disappeared off the beat into their cars and police stations, and legalised addicts have been left to rot on subsitute drugs without proper psychiatric help.
The solution lies not in more draconian laws but in tackling the psychology of addiction and funding the known solutions properly. Sure, disrupting the supply will also help but that can only be done by good coppering and not the perennial mobile riot squad.
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recently the UN said that prohibition was funding criminal gangs, I've been saying that for ages, legalisation is the lesser of two evils and would save us a lot of cash, free up police to deal with REAL criminals, the gangs that have made a fortune off the law, well it seems the law has worked for some one. We need a change we need to look forwards and look for new ways to deal with the issue of serious drugs, i mean crack et cetera not cannabis, grouping cannabis, heroin and cocaine together really gives the wrong impression of cannabis and elevates its apparent dangers, it doesnt fit along side crack heroin or alcohol, it doesnt cause any of the social problems ALL the other 3 do and the physical/mental harm is alot less. legalisation of all drugs is the only way forwards then we can begin to deal with them properly. Only by admitting you have a problem can you move forwards.
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@ 32 typical ignorant view, illegal drugs kill less than legal drugs, illegal drugs kill very few people, more people have died fighting the war on drugs in Afghanistan than they do of illegal drugs each year in the UK. By doing what you recommend you then are guilty of murder, killing people is alot more immoral than smoking a plant that grows naturally. The problem isnt drugs its peoples uneducated and misguided opinions on drugs
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@ scaryeater # 32:
"Am I wrong? Morally, maybe I am - but am I wrong that drug use would stop?"
There's no "maybe" about it. You are a nasty, evil, twisted person to have even thought of this. At first I thought of reporting your idea to the moderators; after all, condoning large-scale murder sounds like grounds for banning. However, censoring your ideas will not prevent them from festering in that cesspit you call an imagination, and might even server to vindicate you in your own sick little mind. Therefore, I have decided instead to respond in the open, so your ideas can be treated with the contempt they deserve.
Let me state for the record without a flicker of compunction how I sincerely hope that, should your horrible idea ever become reality, your children are on the receiving end.
And no, drug use would not stop. There would probably be a brief downturn. Drug dealers would repurpose the poisoned wares to kill off their enemies, and the demand for unadulterated product would be met from elsewhere.
"Am I wrong that our society would be a better place for the responsibles to live?"
Yes. Society would be a far worse place; because if you did get your way, one of two things would inevitably happen.
Either the idea would become ingrained within the popular psyche that the Government would be justified in killing off large numbers of the population on a whim because they do something that the Government consider objectionable. Or -- and I hope this would be the case -- there would be a popular uprising on a scale that would make the Miners' Strike of '84-85 and the Poll Tax riots look like a three-year-old having a tantrum in Tesco.
Try this little thought experiment. What if the Government proposed to ban the eating of chips as a measure to control obesity? Would that justify measures tantamount to genocide?
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What's so wrong with recreational drugs anyway? Even the "it harms people" argument is spurious. I pay my taxes, I should have a right to harm myself in whatever way I wish. It's my body after all.
If the drugs were legal, the consumer would be able to demand ethical production. If they were taxed, treatment and policing would pay for themselves.
Besides, most illegal drugs aren't really that harmful. I took some legal ones last year, and the list of side effects was concluded with "coma, death." If that doesn't constitute potentially harmful, I'd love to know what does.
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There are serious arguments for and against the legalisation of drugs.
Legalising would mean trading legally with the countries who grow or manufacture them so cutting out the criminals who undermine them.
These tend to be poor countries with little else to trade.
Legalising could also spawn a black market undercutting any price structure leaving us then with the worst of both worlds.
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"What if those drugs were legal and regulated?"
Well, for starters, they probably would lose some of their attraction amongst the younger generation; the group most likely to experiment and feel the need to be daring and do stuff society does not approve of, but, then they would only lose that symbolism and be replaced by some equally repulsive, wholly addictive narcotic and therefore the 'in-drug-of choice' for the rebellious and the desperate.
Have we not already got enough Nationwide social-health issues with the legalised substances called tobacco and alcohol?
Do we really want to add to the Clinic and Hospital queues because 'regulated' does not automatically equal reductions unless we are applying the Government/Police/Council CCTV-standard: They produce statistics proving cameras bring down crime figures and every member of the public knows that is precisely because the problems have moved elsewhere!? It is bound to be a similar case with legalisation of hardcore narcotics: Users will graduate/gravitate to the next level once society and the authorities in particular think it has it all under control. Then there is the longer term issue: If we legalise Heroin 'use' exactly which types is it; not all Heroin users only use 'H' in the stereotypical druggie tv version? Where, for example, do we next find the argument not to legalise 'crack-cocaine'?
Some scenarios are mind-boggling: Woe to the parent who tries to stop their 16 year old smoking 20 ciggies because they cause cancer, but nodding happily as their 18 year old stops-off at the local clinic to get their dose of 'H'!
The UK Drugs Policy Commission can find any amount of evidence that drug use has not gone down at all despite Government initiatives as far back as the Sixties. Since the Sixties the understanding of what is right and what is wrong has also not decreased: Naturally, measurement of cost to the Tax-payer (i.e. 'cost-benefit' analysis) must come into consideration of every Government policy, however, there is neither 'methodical' nor 'technical' grounds for a relaxation never mind abandonment of the present legal situation with regard to Class A drugs. It would be wholly irresponsible on grounds of imagined more effective control of drug supply and drug price that it would somehow alleviate society of the ills attributable to their use. "Savings of 10 Billion per annum"! Where has the mass supply of legalised alcohol led to more tee-totallers? When did the legalised use of fast cars cause people to slow down? Show me the Bankers/Stock-brokers who because they could gamble 100 million decided to gamble only 50 million? Which group of criminals and addicts volunteered to come quietly on the promise of a regular, cheaper supply?
When the Lib Dem Minister for Foolishness and Wishful Thinking really adds up the true costs of abandoning swathes of people to addictive substances he will find the evidence-based policy this scourge of modern society requires is massive Public Expenditure on National unrelenting opposition to its spread, sweeping support programmes for the addicted and swinging punishment of its perpetrators.
"Heroic assumptions"!?
More like drug-fuelled bravados late at night vandalising the long standing Community Hall for the shere reckless, novelty value!
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@ 39, If drugs were legalised i would go to the licensed distributor not the man down the dark ally, i drink and smoke aswell but i only buy legal tobacco and alcohol why would i go back to the dodgy dealer down the back ally, if i could get cleaner safer drugs that actually support the economy, it's a no brainer to a drug user. This seems to be an argument a non user would come up with.
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"Legalising could also spawn a black market undercutting any price structure leaving us then with the worst of both worlds."
Actually, the legalization point of view typically argues exactly the opposite; not only would legalization remove the black market (isn’t that what we have now, no?) and allow for a defined price structure, that the current drug prohibition is what allows/causes the black market in the first place. The CNN link I posted earlier (http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/24/miron.legalization.drugs/) explains this point of view (which doesn’t mean you have to agree with it) in a clear and simple manner.
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"This seems to be an argument a non user would come up with."
That's a little unfair on non-users in general!! An enlightened non-user may not see a direct and recreational benefit of legalizing drugs, but they would see secondary economic and security benefits. I suppose the 'pro-legalizers' have to formulate an argument where the benefits and lack-of-negatives (such as increased use/addiction) are pushed equally.
Take this comment from an earlier post: "Anyone who is pro legalisation is already taking drugs". Obviously, you have to be pretty close-minded or naïve to believe this. But then I wondered; 'drug takers' are probably more enlightened on this issue because they perceive a direct benefit from legalizing drugs, whereas non-users are perhaps less inclined to see such secondary benefits (increased tax revenue, safety etc.)
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The debate has been going on for hundreds of years and the conclusions are the same. Pro legalisation activists are those who either have no personal experience of hards drugs or drug addicts in denial.
Myth 1 : The user has a choice whether or not to use drugs.
95% - 19 out of 20 people after taking crystal meth ONCE, become permanent addicts. Most tobacco smokers do not want to be smokers and the same goes for hard drugs - Meth addicts do not want to be meth addicts, but the drug completely robs you of the ability to make a logical decision. 19 out of 20 people did not grow up dreaming of being a washed out brain dead loser with no grip on their life, no teeth, sunken cheeks, but they simply cannot say no. I grew up arrogantly laughing at smokers and even drinkers at the way they abused their bodies and took the Grange Hill 'just say no' attitude, but this is a naive attitude that is peddled by people with no experience of how drugs affect your mind. A small blip in my personal circumstances and one weak moment of curiosity and 17 years later, I am still picking up the pieces of almost 2 decades of lost life, lost teeth, weak bones, chronic insomnia, anger issues etc. Transformed from a popular kid, top of every class, to a 35 yr old unemployable disfunctional social liability because of one moment of weakness 17 years ago. It is almost impossible to understand this fully without personal experience, but this is one of the key issues.
myth 2: It is nobody's business what I put in my body
Well, as explained in the blog:- It will be joe public who foots the bill for your rehabilition, Psychotherapy, the crimes that fund your drug habits, cancer treatment and social security becuase you are too messed up to work. All of which are very expensive, so it is everybodys business.
At least the TDPF admits that the projections of cost benefit are very loose. How can you measure the loss of productivity for example? The loss of benefit to mankind? The breakdown of families etc? The problem is that you will need to legalise in order to provide any kind of measurement and by this time it will be too late, the lion will be out of the cage and you will never be able to tame him again. The social implications are imeasurable against any cost benefit. Have the debate - debate is good, but if drugs are legalised, capitalism will gain more enemies, 10 years down the line you will have a country full of unproductive brain-dead addicts that are a drain on the system and anyone with who cares about their children will emigrate to somewhere safe.
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pat i wouldn't expect a non user to understand the recreational 'benefits' of taking drugs, and i wouldnt expect them to understand my point of wanting a cleaner, safer product, it would probably seem strange that a drug user would want a healthier option after all we have been told for years that drugs are dangerous it would seem nonsensical to talk about health and drug use. as a drug user i could see new benefits with no new negatives, as the negative are already here, criminalisation supporting criminal organisations putting unknown substances into your system, these all would be gone with a legal system. I disagree about non users not seeing the benefits of legalisation, not only could they see the tax benefits but they would also see the extra police not having to deal with drug dealers/users, customs could focus on illegal immigration, and also they would appreciate the extra jobs farming processing and distributing the 'drugs' would bring.
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Here in the Netherlands we are attempting to remove coffee shops from the towns, the reason?, crime is increasing. The Dutch have a reputation for tolerance, well that tolerance has reached breaking point, the police are having to spend the majority of their day calming down drug crazed idiots (mostly Belgian and German youths).
Maastricht the town I live in, has become a mecca for drug tourists, the local council along with the majority of other councils across the Netherlands have brought in new legislation to close coffee shops as soon as the owner retires.
Soft drugs may sound safe, but the cost to the local population due to drug related offences is horrendous, on the international train from Liege to Maastricht the police are forced to travel on all trains leaving Maastricht after 8pm, this is due to the amount of drug dealing taking place on the train.
All Dutch border towns (and their are a lot of them) are forced to pay for constant policing at the Railway stations solely to deter drug dealers and their customers bothering or threatening innocent travelers, the cost of all this policing is picked up by one group of people......the innocent tax payer.
So my advise to all you pro-legalising drugs posters, is be very careful what you wish for, because the cost of allowing drugs to be sold legally will far outweigh an possible benefits.
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Ghandis_ghost, we dont really have a big crystal meth problem in the UK, also most drug users, the largest group of illegal users being cannabis users, lead productive lives they work pay taxes and are far from braindead, the small minority who use crack heroin et cetera may well be a cost to the NHS but if drugs were to be legalised then the tax and savings fighting the drug war would easily pay for that, and also pay for more rehabilitation places so we could actually try to beat drugs like heroin at the moment there is nowhere near enough rehab places for hard drug users
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"Legalising could also spawn a black market undercutting any price structure leaving us then with the worst of both worlds." -- virtualsilverlady
There is already a black market in place!
A dose of most recreational drugs costs pennies to produce. The lion's share of the street price is spent on getting round the law; bribes, "insurance" (if 1/5 of your stock goes walkies, then you need to impose a 25% mark-up on the remainder just to break even) and of course good old-fashioned monopoly price hikes (we charge what we do because we know we can). At every link in the chain, and it's a long one, there is a small profit.
Even if farmers were paid a decent amount for their wares, the legal suppliers would be able comfortably to undercut the illegal ones.
As for the drugs that are manufactured from chemicals as opposed to plants, a similar argument holds: the chemicals easiest to use in the production of illegal drugs are presently watched by the authorities, precisely because they can be used as ingredients for the production of illegal drugs; thus necessitating ingenuity to devise non-obvious routes of synthesis. These may well give lower yields (and, alas, toxic pollutants as by-products) but at least the manufacturer remains below the authorities' radar. Legal production could still be done more cheaply than illegal production.
"95% - 19 out of 20 people after taking crystal meth ONCE, become permanent addicts. " -- Ghandis_ghost
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Note also that smoking crystal meth is by far not the most pleasurable way of ingesting a phenylethylamine analogue; it's just highly efficient, which assumes an importance of its own when the drug is artificially expensive. Crystal meth is highly concentrated, therefore it is quick to move a high-value amount, so the risk of a bust is minimised. In a legal drug culture, users most probably would prefer to take their amphetamine derivatives already diluted with some harmless substance, and by swallowing.
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42. At 6:27pm on 07 Apr 2009, PatAbroad wrote:
"...Actually, the legalization point of view typically argues exactly the opposite; not only would legalization remove the black market..."
I've heard this idea before on here, but I can't see how that would work.
Tobacco is legal but there is still unlawful importation and a black market.
Legal packets of cigarettes have to pay tobacco duty, VAT, council tax on the shop, income tax for the guy selling it, cost of buying/running a shop etc etc etc.
Illegal imports skip all of this, so they are cheaper. Some of the tobacco dealers used to be drug dealers, but they switched to tobacco to make more money with less risk.
How would legalised dope be any different?
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"Could we save billions by legalising drugs?"
Yes of course but that is far too straight forward for people who would rather make a huge moral debate about it than focus on practical common sense.
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jon112uk, the market for illegal tobacco and alcohol is nowhere near as bad as 10 years ago, i live in a major port town and we used to have a huge problem with bootleggers, mainly coming form northern cities to buy cigs off the ferries and from other eu countries, now i rarely see these people, most of the bootleggers were actually 'normal' people trying to make a bit of extra money. The difference between tobacco and drugs in general is the price, it could be taxed and sold in a licensed premise and it would be cheaper than today's illegal prices, i doubt the illegal market could undercut a legal market that is sensibly taxed then there is the issue of quality, more cannabis users would rather have a supply that is clean and tested not an unregulated drugs trade like we have currently. maybe there would still be a black market but it would be nothing like today's black market.
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what always makes me wonder about this argument is what would the drug dealers do?
Lets say we legalised cannabis for example, if I was a drug dealer and my main revenue stream was gone would i then go get a job? becoem an MP maybe even a BBC journalist?
I suspect the answer would be to use my trusted contacts, supply chain and distribution network to sell either other harder drugs or the same drug cheaper, tax free.
that wouldn't benefit the tax payer at all.
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"Tobacco is legal but there is still unlawful importation and a black market. "
Illicit tobacco accounts for 8-9% of all tobacco in the EU25 (e.g., http://www.fctc.org/dmdocuments/fca-2008-inb-illicit-trade-inb1-factsheet-how-big-was-illicit-trade-2006-en.pdf). It’s 5% in North America (and lower in the USA, according to the document).
Presumably the "dope market" in the UK is 100% black [market], right? I suppose the question is why would the "dope black market" NOT be ~10% or less if it was legalized and properly priced?
Also, presumably, the illicit tobacco trade is mostly the trade of a legally produced product that is illegally sold (to avoid import taxes etc.). For the "dope" case, I suppose, illegally producing and trafficking the product would still be highly illegal, and therefore still very expensive to sell illicitly.
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bansis:
"I disagree about non users not seeing the benefits of legalisation"
Isn’t that what I wrote? Didn’t I write "An enlightened non-user… would see [the] secondary economic and security benefits".
In fact I wrote what I did in reply to your comment ("This seems to be an argument a non user would come up with") in order to suggest that some of us non-users are perfectly capable of forming cogent pro-legalization arguments.
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The cost of not legalizing Drugs is death. Dig my brother up and ask him how his heroin addiction went.
The cost to the dealer of not accepting responsibility is well 'your children' plain and simple they will provide a steady income for many years all tax free.
"what always makes me wonder about this argument is what would the drug dealers do?"
How about go to prison for up to 4 times the current sentence because the prisons will not be full of users and more importantly when it comes to cannabis SICK people who provide their own medication through cultivation.!
To say that the tax payer wont benefit is a joke if that's your line of thought then its a poor one the current system is a total waste of tax payers money, counterproductive to society as a whole and disastrous in the 3rd world.
Now it is said that no tax is taken on drugs by the government yet if I go in to my local head shop and buy a bong or a pack of gauze or Rips I pay 15% VAT on them, likewise if I hit the local garden center and buy a couple of 600watt HID lights with fans and grow trays some growth hormones some bud boosters I will pay 15% Vat on it all. The average good hobby setup for a bit of home grown will cost £1000 of which £150 belongs to government.
In the last few years cannabis has been produced under license as a medical aid for many illness, from this one would assume that only legal drugs tied to pharm's are okay if not costly.
What is at question here is it morally right to have drug addicts? if your answer is no then why have we got them? Because we have no funding to treat them properly as human beings and not the Scum people make them out to be?
legal age of tabacco 18
legal age of alcohol 18
legal age of drugs £10
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well i apologies pat, i misread your statement it's been along day for me, and i agree with your statement i am sure plenty of non users can see the benefit of legalistation and some would have a more open minded opinion then either me or a person anti legalisation, again apologies.
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53. At 8:13pm on 07 Apr 2009, PatAbroad wrote:
"Illicit tobacco accounts for 8-9% of all tobacco in the EU25..."
That's the EU. The illicit tobacco travels from the EU to the UK because of the price difference - what percentage of UK tobacco is it? I was watching a bloke selling 3-4 cartons of cigs from the boot of his car to a young woman at a petrol station a few weeks ago - she was actually working in the kiosk, surrounded by thousands of legal cigarettes, but still came trotting out to buy the illicit ones when he pulled up.
The 'legalise it and it'll all be ok' argument seems to rest on the idea that tobacco/alcohol will continue with several hundred percent tax but (eg) heroin will be untaxed.
How about my alchohol habit? That's legal. (I'm still waiting for a free bottle of vodka on prescription though)
Anyone want to tell me that (legal) alcohol causes no health/social problems, cost to the tax payer etc etc. ?
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jon112uk you can drink alcohol responsibly (I'm guessing) but i can't smoke cannabis responsibly. Isn't that hypocritical? MP's expenses are legal but it doesn't make them right.
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"How about my alchohol habit? That's legal. (I'm still waiting for a free bottle of vodka on prescription though"
Im not to sure but last i knew Jon112uk if your a registered alcoholic you get a state allowance towards your vodka.
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If we are going to do a cost-benefit analysis of the usage of drugs, should we also not:
(a) stop ticketing drivers who speed?
(b) stop restrictions on smoking?
(c) stop licensing guns?
If everything in this world boiled down to cost-benefit analyses, perhaps we should not concern ourselves about vaccinations, preventative health measures and education.
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@48 - the figure 95% comes from white county state police, florida police give a figure of 95-98% first time addiction & white county police claim that 90% of addicts are either dead or in prison within 5 years
& @ bandis - I only used the cystal meth stats to make the point that the ability to say no diminishes further with every use.
But lets use the same argument with crack-cocaine. I used to be a crackhead , with crackhead mates and I have been in a house with 10-15 people all smoking the crack - when it runs out, you get on all fours and scour the carpet for pieces of white that resemble crack and gather them all up, then go through each little white piece to test if you 'got lucky'. You will look in areas of the house you havent been, where there couldnt possibly be any and the end result is always the same - none of the little white pieces are crack - pieces of food, plastic, stones etc, but it doesnt stop you doing it the next time. Watching a group of people all scouring the carpet saying out loud 'i dont know why we are doing this, we aint gonna find anything', yet still desperately searching, JUST IN CASE - such is the power of crack. This is an example of how the logic dissappears from the decision making.
I have seen one friend go from having a high flying job, inheriting £70,000 from dead nanna and blowing the lot in 18 months on coke and crack - Nathan - Such a nice guy, but now a neurotic, lying thief, skeleton appearance.
Another friend - My old best friend - Dave - on the smack for 2 years - while waiting for the housing market to cool, he blew his 18k deposit on smack, lost his gf (along with about 5 stone in weight), now is a born again christian who cannot sleep or work and believes that he is being sent messages from god.
Another friend - Sam - Not overly intelligent, but very caring and considerate - recently had her children taken away because she thought nothing of turning her house into a crack den - no carpets, no food for the kids, she had a stroke aged 25 and has lost the lot, including her mind and pretty face.
Another friend, my old flatmate - Anne Jeffries - Very elegant (and very tall) ginger haired woman with rosy cheeks who came from a very respectable family. Now dead as doornail from a heroin overdose.
Another friend - Zeb (forget his real name) - died in front of us all in media studies from a drug-cocktail induced heart attack.
Marijuana is a different story altogether, the dangers are more subtle. You can still hold down a job, But the danger from weed lies more in the fact that smokers neglect their lives - Oh make a list of the things you have to do - then stare at the list while you roll a joint, then make a cup of tea, then look at the list and add a few things, then roll another, then stare into space for an hour, then roll another, then make a cup of tea, then peel your face off the tablle, look at the clock, its 8pm, roll a joint while feeling slightly frustrated at your lack of ability to address the first job on the list. It gets to 11pm and then you roll another joint, promising to yourself that when tommorow comes, it will be a new start and you will get the list of jobs completed. Tommorow comes and you wake up with a fuzzy head, make a cup of tea, roll one and this day ends up almost the same as the previous 200 days. The list will look the same for 6 weeks until you give up smoking then complete the entire list in 1 day.
You make excuses to get out of social occasions (because you cant have a smoke) so human relationships suffer, There was a long documentary on recently and this was their conclusion - that the dangers from marijuana are more subtle - the lost opportunities of life sat around vegetating in a brain dead state, neglect of responsibilities etc. These may not be life threatening things, but i am yet to meet a long term smoker who doesnt look back on the very little they have acheived with their life with agnst and regret. Admittedly, there are a minority of tokers who seem to be able to smoke and get on with life and make a success of it too, but these people are few and far between. Ask ANY doctor and s/he will tell you that the biggest side effect of weed for the vast majority of people is the drain in motivation. Legalise marijuana and the inevitable result will be a drop in productivity.
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I am glad that this debate is being brought into the open.
I am a middle class middle aged family man & think the only way forward is to legalise drugs. In one fell swoop it could do away with a massive amount of global crime associated with these chemicals being made illegal. What is more usage could at least be monitored and measured and the quality of the drugs themselves could be regulated in a way which is not currently possible.
As to those who say that we should not condone the use of dangerous substances: it seems to me that plenty of equally dangerous substances are freely available and regulated at the moment; the obvious examples are tobacco and alcohol but there are plenty of others - solvents, sleeping pills, vallium etc etc. The fact that these are freely available doesn't imply that they are officially 'condoned' - in fact very much the opposite. Just because they are freely available doesn't mean that everyone is going to use them, become addicted to them or even try them - in fact this remains a matter of personal choice whether these drugs are freely available or not: if I wanted to get my hands on illegal drugs I am sure I could do it, I choose not to, that is all and everyone else has basically the same options - making them illegal doesn't stop their use it just drives it underground where it cannot be controlled and leads to crime. Personally I smoked dope a few times as a kid - couldn't see what the fuss was about ! I would quite like to try heroin & cocaine, not to mention ecstasy, I don't do it because it is illegal; I might if it was legal & regulated, but that doesn't mean that my usage would be dangerous or morally damaging to me or to society in general.
One last point: what I would like to know is who decides which drugs I am allowed to get out of my head on/addicted to and which I am not ?! It seems to me that it is very paternalistic & morally suspect to say that it is OK to get addicted to tobacco and/or alcohol but not to cocaine/heroin and that it is OK to get out of my head on alcohol but not on ecstasy or heroin. Who makes these decisions and on what basis and who do they think they are to make them ? Every time a new drug appears someone somewhere says "ooh no, we can't have the population taking that" and they make it illegal thus further exacerbating the problem. Why ? Who are they to say. What damage can it really do - after all we are all addicted to something & most of us have been off our heads at least once in our lifetimes.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Mark Easton writes: "..and few in Westminster want to appear "soft" on sin."
perhaps we'd all be better of if more of them had "inhaled".
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@62 - 8logg3r
If you have to ask what is the difference between cigarettes /alcohol and crack /heroin then with all due respect you are in no position to make a judgement on this lol, The level of physical / mental damage and addictive nature are not in the same league, nowhere near, not even close. Read first about the devastating effects of these two drugs and you will see why they are illegal. If you can leave your middle class behind and come with me for a tour of the working class world, I am happy to take you on a trip into the pits of human existence - into the crack/smack dens of urban britain and show you why it is that your family made it to the middle classes and why hundreds of thousands of others didnt quite make it out of the worst areas of council estates. Crack is so addictive that despite your abstinence because of its illegality, if I forced you to smoke crack for 2 days, on the third day you would beg me for it - and keep begging and you would hand over your £20 along with your principles in a flash.
Trust me, I have seen the strongest minded men reduced to a pitifully weak minded state within a couple of hours and it is tragic to watch.
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Drugs are not 'bad', as the proponents of the 'war on drugs' would have us believe. It depends how we use them. They can be used to heal, to raise consciousness or to have fun, all of which are perfectly valid in my view. Of course, use of these substances is not always risk-free and we are told that this is why they must be prohibited but, apart from the fact that this ban is applied very selectively and inconsistently, this argument strikes me as spurious. Is it possible, or even desirable to eliminate risk from human life? What about motorcycling, mountain-climbing or skiing, all of which are far more likely to result in serious injury or death than consuming, for example, cannabis or ecstasy? To prohibit these activities would be ludicrous.
And the options are not just prohibition or complete free-for-all. There is another option - regulation. #20 wrote: 'If a constructive proposal is put forward, explaining how the legalisation is going to work, then it should be considered. However, so far there has been no such constructive proposal.'
Wrong! See the Transform report: 'After the War on Drugs: Options for Control', available on their website at http://tdpf.org.uk/AboutUs_Publications.htm#options
Prohibition must end! It is not only unworkable and the cause of far greater problems than the prohibited substances, it is an infringement of the human right to cognitive liberty.
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61:- The point you fail to mention is that all your friends' lives fell apart in a country WITH prohibition. Nobody is saying it's great to take all these drugs but why do you assume everyone will start doing it just because it is outside criminal control? Believe you me I would never take heroin, I've seen the people who do (and before anyone complains yes I know there are some competent, together people that can use these drugs on an occasional basis).
I'm anti-prohibition myself but even I wouldn't recommend an unregulated market for the harmful ones. That is what the situation is now. I would however expect decent information and quality control.
But whatever, I have to take issue with your thoughts on Marijuana (or should it be called Killer Skunk these days to distance it from the stuff our Jacqui smoked at University)? The occasional person sitting around smoking weed all day is a small price to pay for the savings and the cut in crime that legalisation would bring. I couldn't believe that the tv program the other day found the odd waster person to be such a big problem. Many people are just like that, they start doing something and it becomes an obsession. There are those that are addicted to shopping, video games and Mancherster United! Try banning any of those!
It would be laughable if possessing cannabis weren't an imprisonable offence.
It's a MAJORITY of tokers that get on with their lives and make a success of it, just as it is a majority of non-illegal drug takers. It provides a great pressure reliever after a stressful day, so you're ready to go out and face the world again, all guns blazing.
To any reduce drug use you simply ban advertising and ban pushing i.e. legalise. The government's Talk to Frank whilst well-meaning (I like to think) will remind some teenagers that cannabis exists and to remember to get some. Most advertising works by simply reminding the user of the brand.
The Beatles, amongst others were right when they signed up to the Times advert in 1967. 'The law against marijuana is immoral in principle and unworkable in practice', as has been proven over the last 40 years. And counting.
All that is needed is for popular opinion to push the politicians to do what they know is right for their country and not just their short term popularity.
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The Home Office statement that
"The legalisation of drugs would not eliminate the crime committed by organised career criminals; such criminals would simply seek new sources of illicit revenue through crime."
This deserves scrutiny.
It is an historical fact that the major growth of organised crime in America was the result of the National Prohibition Act during the 1920's and that once Prohibition had been repealed in 1933, the organised criminal gangs did not disappear, they may have lost the vast majority of their income, but they continued to thrive by exploiting other markets which were suppressed such as prostitution, gambling, pornography and of course drug dealing.
It is obvious by this example that the growth of criminal gangs in the UK is a direct result of the drugs policy adhered to by consecutive governments despite the lessons of history, and legalising drugs would not make the gangs disappear.
But to use this as a reason not to consider a change in drugs policy is spurious as Mark has pointed out.
The government's short-sighted policy created the conditions for organised crime, they need to create the conditions to eliminate it.
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"The legalisation of drugs would not eliminate the crime committed by organised career criminals; such criminals would simply seek new sources of illicit revenue through crime."
Maybe, maybe not, but relevent? Not very. Surely the intent is to eliminate the crimes committed by users trying to fund their habit, rather than the crimes committed by suppliers in the course of their business.
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Hard drugs are on the streets,unscrupulous dealers cut them with all kinds of substances to make more money from their victims. Many people die as a result of this. To suggest we are morally wrong as a nation to legalize these drugs I think is insane. I believe that if a drug addict is registered with a clinic and he or she attends the clinic under strict Government control to get his or her fix then surely it will eradicate drug dealing at a stroke. Not only the dealers would lose out but the crimes related to the drug trade would virtually disappear overnight. Let face it, making drugs illegal has not done anything whatsoever to cut the use of them so why bother fighting it. The reality of it all is to use common sense and control the drugs. If people want to die as a result of these hard drugs then let them do what they want. We can however try to educate them as a registered drug addict as part of the program that they would need to attend the clinic. We would know who the users were and we would at least be able to TRY and change their habit.
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@ GrumpyOldRigsby, # 33:
This statement deserves to be examined in greater detail, because it shows that what we have going on is not really a drug war but a class war: certain behaviours are considered acceptable by a certain sector of society if practised by the middle and upper classes ("Law Abiding Citizens") but not if practised by the working classes ("criminals").
It's OK for little Johnny or little Tabitha to smoke a joint; it's not OK for Wayne or Sharon from the council estate to do the same thing.
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if you think keeping drugs illegal is a good thing then you have to make alcohol and tobacco illegal...they cost far more to society than other drugs! However you have to ask yourself has making drugs illegal worked....the answer has to be no. Remember prohibition, it did not decrease the consumption of alcohol but sure as hell increased lawlessness!It is time for new thinking to solve the problem not the same old measures that clearly do not work..
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What an irresponsible idea...
How do you expect our government to pay for all the ''false flag terrorism'' and ''Black Ops'' if you take away their drug money?!?
Oliver North and his shady mates wouldn't have had a budget to fund his terrorist buddies without flooding the US with cocaine!
''Spooks are for life... Not just for Christmas!''
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I hear a lot of people say 'alcohol is legal and look at the problems we have with that'. Ok lets looks at alcohol.
Currently i can buy a bottle of whisky from a off license today, tommorow or this time next year and if i buy the same brand it will be exactly the same. The risks are the same, if they had them i could read the potential risks etc on the bottle.
In Russia due to extreme poverty many people were making their own moonshine, which is exactly what would happen if alcohol was illegal.
Whats the result? Mass death, jaundiced men and women walking around with yellow eyes, blindness, people dropping dead.
Thats what happens when supply is restricted so much people have to use the black market and its exactly what happens with drugs.
So what did puntin do? He nationalised a vodka company in order to make safe clean affordable vodka people could buy safely. And the result? Deaths dropped massively.
So yes we have problems with alcohol but if it were illegal we would be in real trouble just like we currently are with drugs.
Legalise drugs make them safe and affordable and countless lives would be saved and billions on pounds would be saved by reduction in crime.
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ikamaskeip at #40,
Very well said. Your last paragraph is a true work of art.
"Heroic assumptions"!?
More like drug-fuelled bravados late at night vandalising the long standing Community Hall for the shere reckless, novelty value!'
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58. At 9:39pm on 07 Apr 2009, bansis wrote:
jon112uk you can drink alcohol responsibly (I'm guessing) but i can't smoke cannabis responsibly. Isn't that hypocritical? MP's expenses are legal but it doesn't make them right.
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Hi...I was looking at the idea 'legalise it and all the problems go away'
It just doesn't hold water. Alcohol is legal but is implicated in more than half our violent crime. Tobacco kills >100,000 people a year. Both are illegally traded.
If I was discussing 'hypocritical' then I might wonder why people on heroin think I should pay for them to get it free on prescription whilst I still have to pay for my next bottle of vodka.
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Please can we be rational about this debate rather than moral, since I question the morals of those who would exclude addicts from treatment and would condemn them to harm for that addiction, I don't understand why alcoholism is an illness and drug addiction a choice.
Much drug harm stems from two sources, the first feast and famine consumption caused by irregularities in supply and the second the varying strength and or contamination of street drugs, sharing of needles has reduced but not ceased because of harm reduction strategies and I consider this a semiotic indicator of what might be achieved by dealing with the issue rather than wilful blindness.
I am, of course, a drug user- I regularly drink wine with my meals and have regrettably failed at every attempt to become nicotine free. When I was younger I also used speed,LSD,cannabis and crack cocaine (then referred to as 'base')but like many of my generation I survived those excessess, I hope without significant harm.
Since the economic argument is the focus of this blog I would like to point out that the social and economic marginalisation of hard drug users/addicts which is a consequence of the moral attitude behind the war against drugs has two economic effects in that it removes users from the job market and limits them to gaining income from criminal activities whether that be street robbery, prostitution or burglary.
Legalising the more addictive drugs on the tobacco or alcohol model would provide revenue as well as stable uncontaminated supply of known and certain strength, release law enforcement resources to combat the supposed alternative criminal activities to which organised crime will turn when denied the income from the supply of illegal drugs and enable those who wish to remove drugs from their life to so do within mainstream society.
Comparing the use of alcohol and tobacco as the two headline legal drugs in recent history we find that the education about harm has effected reduced use in mature individuals but had little impact on the young.
If we accept that youth will inevitably push against the boundaries and act unwisely is it not sensible ( I do not say our duty as I have excluded morals from my argument) to ensure as far as is possible that they can do so without running the added risk of contaminated drugs and inevitable association with criminals whose vested interest lies in promoting the use of more addictive and harmful drugs.
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"The legalisation of drugs would not eliminate the crime committed by organised career criminals; such criminals would simply seek new sources of illicit revenue through crime."
This is a hilarious argument : prohibition redefined as an employment scheme for hardcore criminals. The prohibitionists lost the intellectual argument 40 years ago and they are now reduced to making absurd statements, which even they cannot believe.
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@ TeeTempest, # 68:
So the obvious solution would have been to legalise -- and regulate properly -- those industries, instead of suppressing them and so leaving them to the criminals. However distasteful you may find the idea, people are clearly willing to participate in such activities. Forcing them underground benefits no-one save criminals, and the collateral damage impacts on law-abiding citizens.
If the Government decided to ban the cooking and eating of chips in a valiant but misguided attempt to control the obesity bogeyman, can you tell me with a straight face that a black market would not spring up almost overnight to meet the demand? Do you honestly believe that there would not be a single fatal electrocution, carbon monoxide poisoning or fire attributable to a poorly-maintained frier in an underground chip shop? That there would be no poisonings from the use of home-made vinegar substitute? That the countryside would not end up polluted through the improper disposal of used cooking fat?
Would all this be an acceptable price to pay for a society where chips and obesity did not exist ..... sorry, where chips were readily obtainable, but only from organised criminal gangs, and average body weights were pretty much unchanged?
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Another Home Office quote :
"Drugs are controlled because they are harmful. The law provides an important deterrent to drug use and legalisation would risk a huge increase in consumption with an associated cost to public health."
Under prohibition, drugs are controlled by the criminal underworld, not the authorities. The so-called deterrent effect is illusory, because teenagers have no fear of getting caught when they try their first illegal drug and the transgressive instinct acts as an additional attraction.
The assertion that legalisation would lead to a huge increase in consumption is unevidenced. In fact, liberalisation as seen in Holland and Portugal has not led to increases in the use of hard drugs, but prohibition has led to a massive increase in hard drug use in the UK.
Our politicians seem unable to free themselves from the dishonest approach perpetuated by the Daily Mail and (shamefully) even the BBC.
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Any discussion on this issue has to begin with the acceptance of the current sutuation. Almost every UK adult enjoys consuming drugs, most concentrate on alcohol and nicatine, but over half of young adults have consumed illegal drugs as well. There is a vibrant, unregulated market that is highly accessible to children and has no obligation to take responsibility for the safety or the impact of its products. Pushers of hard drugs pray on the young and vulnerable, enslaving them into prostitution and petty crime to pay for their habits. The international drug trade is one of the biggest industries on the planet. It destabilises countries and funds powerful criminal and terrorist networks leaving atrail of destruction in its wake. Where is the moral imperative here? To maintain the status quo out or to accept that it has created an horrendous mess and be open to radical change - not to solve the problems associated with drugs, but to lessen the immense harm that results?
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Don't be so bloody stupid. The harm done by these drugs to users, and more importantly, the community, is incomparable to alcohol and tobbacco. If you want to save money, lock users up for two weeks to cold turkey and then let them out.
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Perhaps it would be more constructive to allow research into drugs such as ecstasy which look to have relatively little negative impact on users and society, rather than enabling people to destroy themselves and others by using heroin.
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warrior soul don't be so naive alcohol and tobacco do cause more physical harm and social harm than illegal drugs, just take a walk down to your local town centre on weekend eve and you can see it for yourself. Heroin addicts steal to feed their habits, drunk thugs start fights for no other reason than they are drunken thugs, a heroin addict can be treated a drunken thug can't be, just arrested after they either wreck the town or wreck someones head. Prisons are rife with drugs, so if a locked box that is guarded by prison guards can be infiltrated by drugs then nowhere is safe from them. Prohibition is not working and the law is causing more problems than it is solving.
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Legalise, regulate, tax.
It won't be perfect, but it would be a vast improvement on this dangerous farce we call "The war on drugs".
As any economist can tell you, if there is demand for a product, then eventually a supply will be found. If there is no legal supply, then illicit supply will spring up. Always. Everywhere.
Suprisingly, there is no mention of tax in this cost analysis. The excise tax on cannabis alone would make the Chancellor of the Exchequer high....
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The whole idea of legalising drugs to reduce harm (to the individual and to society as a whole) is a paradox that many people cannot (or refuse to?) get their head around. They think "Surely we must show that society disapproves of drug use by keeping it illegal."
Here's the problem with that point of view: Prohibition barely reduces drug use.
People with the urge to experiment with drugs will almost certainly do so whether it is illegal or not.
It is the reason that drugs are often adulterated or "cut" with chemicals more harmful to the user than the actual drug itself.
It is the reason for overdosing (there are no standardised strengths).
If caught, the user gets a police record. Once you have a police record your chances of getting that job are miniscule. You are steered towards a career of crime because it's the only option left open to you.
There are dozens of reasons why prohibition just doesn't work.
So, what framework for legalisation should we adopt?
I believe that legalising (or even tolerating, as in Holland) is not the way to go. If we are to stop the UK turning into a drugs mecca like Holland then what is needed is the removal of prohibition throughout Europe (and preferably the U.S. and the rest of the world too).
This would be necessary also because this country has international treaties in place. There will be no removal of prohibition in the UK until the U.S. and Europe decide to remove it too.
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#44
"95% - 19 out of 20 people after taking crystal meth ONCE, become permanent addicts."
This is an outright lie. Sorry. It's just not true.
You also fail to explain, even in the context of this falsehood, how keeping it illegal to possess actually helps anyone. This is a prime candidate for decriminalisation (though not general availability) coupled with therapy. It's criminal status only keeps people further from getting any help.
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You make excuses to get out of social occasions (because you cant have a smoke) so human relationships suffer.
This true to the point that you do avoid people because you don't drink alcohol so you are frowned upon. To add further insult to the human relationship you are branded scum no good waste of space, which in turn is no better than racist behavior. With most of the so called enlightened society being taught to hate the drug user, not much difference to race hate or religious hate in this is there ????
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After reading the comments on this discussion some points strike me.
Firstly, people have said that if drugs were legalised then a black market would still survive just like those bootleggers who sell illegal cigarettes and alcohol. But surely these bootleggers are in a very small minority (especially away from port towns/cities), I can name a lot of places cigarettes where I live, but I couldn't name one person selling illegal cigarettes (hands up who can?). Also in my opinion, which is probably correct, the main reason why bootleggers can sell cigarettes cheaper than shops is because of government taxation (money raised to buy MP's bathplugs and give bankers money to play monopoly). If the drugs were sold to cost, with very little profit (enough to pay for all the services and nhs costs), as suggested, then illegal drug dealers would see their profits disapear if trying to compete on cost and would surely have to change their line of work.
Secondly, that the costs and workload on the nhs would massively increase. This I have to guess is on the assumption that once legalised everyone would instantly become an addict(?!). But if you stop to think about the current costs; for all the money spend on treating drunks at the weekend, the government gets a lot of money in tax; for all the money spent on treating smoking related illnesses, the government gets a lot of money in tax; for all the money spent treating drug related illnesses, the government gets nothing (apart from a measly amount on rolling papers etc.)! If you looked at it like that, then if the government sold the drugs and got the tax (assuming drug taking levels remained the same) then some of the money spent tackling drug issues could be recouped.
Thirdly, that once legalised, everyone would become a drug addict. This point is absolutely absurd! More people may try it sure, and it may become another 'rite of passage' but trying something once if unlikely to get you addicted. How many people have tried drinking but not became an alcoholic? How many people have tried smoking, but aren't addicted? And how many people have already tried drugs and aren't addicted?
If drugs were sold in a chemist then id checks could be taken, which means records and databases of drug use could finally be taken, which would enable greater study into drug use and lead to more understanding of how to stop people becoming addicted. It would also be easier to identify those who are becoming addicted and enable phsycologists or social workers to vist them.
Government issue drugs would also be cleaner and safer then the current street drugs, which would mean people are less likely to overdose because they know exactly what theyve taken. Needles could be issued with each packet of heroin, which has the possibility to reduce the spread of hiv and other illnesses.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
bansis I am well aware of the harm caused by alcohol and tobacco, personally I would like to see tobacco banned altogether. But you can hardly compare it to heroin. Whatever the so-called enlightened may think, legalising it would give a signal that it's ok. More people would try it - more people would become addicts. If you have ever dealt with heroin addicts, and the carnage that they leave in their wake, you will surely appreciate that we should be trying to minimise the use of this drug, not tolerating it. Stop prescribing methadone and enforce cold-turkey. You can reduce demand that way, and save money into the bargain.
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warrior soul, whilst a totally agree the social harms are quite clearly there with heroin i totally disagree that locking people up in prisons is going to do anything, is it now, does it in the USA with their tough sentencing, no. I, like many millions of other people are enlightened maybe even you, have you been to hospital had serious surgery maybe you would have had morphine, same thing as heroin, so whilst i haven't and will never try heroin i have had morphine, incidentally when the body processes heroin or morphine it turns it into morphine. There are other opiates codeine et cetera which you may have tried?, whilst I am on the subject of Morphine and other medical opiates, how do people think the NHS gets hold of their supply? Afghanistan? i very much doubt it, it will no doubt be grown here in the UK so the argument about legalising heroin would fund the Taliban is null and void. We can and do grow poppies in the UK already for this purpose.
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92 that's so funny.
"If you have ever dealt with heroin addicts, and the carnage that they leave in their wake, you will surely appreciate that we should be trying to minimise the use of this drug, not tolerating it. Stop prescribing methadone and enforce cold-turkey. You can reduce demand that way, and save money into the bargain."
This drug as you put it is not tolerated yet it is one that continues to grow in use, I agree with the part about methadone that only prolongs the problem, the wake of carnage as you put it is a direct result of failure to meet the problem in a realistic way and a breach of human rights on many counts which will in turn prove costly to the tax payer. All the denial will only result in loss of life loss of property.
More people will become addicts is also laudable when supplies would be controlled by the home office and pharm's. Drugs like heroin would become a reserved drug IE to treat current addicts and eventually clean up the problem we have with heroin. With current black market dealers being given LIFE sentences for dealing rather than the short periods they spend inside now because of medical conditions. One of our local class A dealers just did 3 months for supplying and is now back on the streets selling his wares. The group i work with has had excellent results in removing heroin/crack cocaine dealers from our community's for a week or 2 but there soon back, we have awards for safer communities but then we come across MODA71 and our hard work goes tits up.
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@ jonathanash86, # 90:
I see the propaganda machine has got to you, too!
Addicts only take heroin by injection because that is the least wasteful method to take an expensive drug. If it was cheaper to buy, it would be more likely swallowed in pill form, or inhaled -- as many occasional, light users (who manage to conceal it so well, that most people probably do not even know are drug users) already do.
"Chasing the dragon" carries much less risk of an overdose, as consumption can be regulated more easily. You can just put your square of foil down when you feel stoned enough, and pick it up again when the effects start to wear off. Yet it's rarely mentioned as a possible damage limitation tactic. The public perception is that heroin necessarily means injecting. Which is obviously icky.
I'm sure that that is deliberate: someone out there would rather you die than get high. That deplorable attitude needs to be changed.
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At the moment the illegal heroin trade IS funding the Taliban and others similar terrorist groups, you want to fight the war on terror or at least give its financial strength a severe dent, legalise heroin grow it in poly tunnels in the UK, no money too the Taliban, just imagine a worldwide effort, we could financially wipe out the taliban over night, but that is far too simple, that would mean savings across the board no more UK troops being killed in Afgan with weapons bought by uk drug money, far too simple.....
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Bansis the EU license the growing of heroin in Afghanistan that is what makes me angry over the deaths of our troops in the region, protecting EU crops while fighting the Taliban who share the same poppy fields as the EU licensed farmers
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communitycriminal, maybe some is grown in Afgan, but some of it is produced in the UK for the NHS, so in theory it is possible. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1028504/The-opium-fields-England--heroin-producing-poppies-grown-make-NHS-pain-relief-drugs.html. I know daily mail, but it was the only link i could find!!
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sorry dead link, maybe this will work http://www.theherald.co.uk/search/display.var.2439164.0.uk_farmers_allowed_to_cultivate_poppies_for_morphine.php
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Dishing out heroin on the NHS is not going to help anyone. The NHS is not there to dish out recreational drugs to people who choose to opt out! What a waste of money. Addicts (heroin and alcohol) get special treatment as it is. In some areas of life, paternalism is entirely justified. The decision to take hard drugs is not without consequences for those around you, or the wider community. Sorry, but it has to be made clear that this choice is unacceptable.
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oh its very possible Bansis I was just pointing out one of the contradictions in this 'war on something were not happy with'.
The growing industries have come a long way to make this possible and ever cheaper you only have to look at the cannabis growers to realise this, as they move from HID and Sodium lights to LED's and dark rooms to grow in very cheap and no heat signature. The idea of growing our own opium is very attractive as a nation with the high demands of modern medical care, one that should be fully exploited.
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Exactly, farmers producing morphine for our NHS and other EU nations would be a massive boost to our economy and give us some needed extra jobs, but why not do it with heroin, it seems like a logical solution to end this war with the taliban, cutting their money will do more damage than British troops fighting them on the ground, and cost a hell of a lot less in money and lives.
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Sex-trafficking will always exist. There is nothing we can do to change that. So, the government should do the trafficking itself, on behalf of the taxpayer, for the benefit of those people who wish to use such a service. This would undermine the criminal gangs and we would all live happily ever after.
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@ 2 quad:- "Criminals stand to gain by actively selling drugs and then their customers rapidly become dependent"
Drug dealers are usually very paranoid about who they sell to and sell predominantly to users - peddle crack to someone straight and they will usually report them to the police. If drugs are legal, then you can guarantee that the professional marketing departments of major corporations would sell them far, far more efficiently.
@8 : How do you know more draconian action will not work either ? we havent tried. If we publicly hung major dealers then this would not deter others?
@10 :- Alcohol is not the most dangerous drug, Heroin is
@14 + 28 :- Marijuana is NOT legal in the Netherlands, it is even illegal in Amsterdam, but the attitude is one of tolerance and only in the coffee shops of Amsterdam, you cannot smoke it in the streets outside the coffee shops. If beer was illegal in the UK and you had to travel to london to have a pint, we would drink a lot less. We drink more than every country on the planet bar germany because it is widely available, legal and heavily promoted. To suggest that legalising while promoting and increasing availablity of drugs will somehow reduce consumption is a ridiculous no-brainer and #46 states the truth about the situation - the tolerant attitude in the dam has caused increased crime and many of the coffee shops are being shut down as a result
@31 - ""the vast majority who will try a drug, not like it and never bother with it again"" lol - do you know what the addiction rate is for first time cocaine users? believe me, on the contrary, the 'Vast majority' go on to try it again and again.
""In fact, for the majority of heroin addicts, the cold turkey method of giving up (whether temporarily or permanently) is no more uncomfortable than a dose of the 'flu.""
This is totally false. Coming off of heroin is very mentally and physically demanding, so much so that even with methadone, most addicts will try and fail several times before succeeding despite the obvious will to give up. Most or all of these symptoms are usually present:- severe muscle cramps, severe itching (causing users to scrape chunks of skin), major halluinations, heavy sweating, diahorrea,sever bone aching (severe!), violent muscle spasms, insomnia and vomitting - these are not mild symptoms like you would read from the (legal cover) warning on a precribed medine box - we are talking the extreme end of these symptoms in virtually every case and the mental/emotional aspect is even tougher - depression, anxiety...Do these sound like flu symptoms to you? It is highly irresponsible to spread this kind of uneducated guesswork.
""There is no incentive for users not to turn to crime to fund their habits. If possession of a drug is already an offence in and of itself, then the psychological barrier has already been crossed -- if one is going to prison just for having the substance about their person, then it hardly matters about going to prison for how they obtained the stuff."""
Most drug users disagree that they should be labelled criminals because most drug addicts either see themselves as victims of the drugs addictive properties or do not consider it a crime because they are the only 'victim'. I think I understand what you are trying to say - that once a user has a criminal record, then he/she may be less likely to worry about getting a criminal record in the future, but this does not mean that just because we smoke a joint and break one law, that we will then consider all other laws worthless, drop all other morals and start to mug old grannies, burgle peoples houses and break into cars.
Also, you can educate without legalising, it is happening in schools right now
@ 88 - The figure of 95% first time meth addiction comes from white county police, florida state police, so blame them if you think the figures are wrong, you should give them your figures, wherever you plucked them from. Meth is meant to be more addictive than crack and if you ever smoked crack or known anyone who smoked it then you will know, is very very very addictive. Regardless of the correct figure, the fact remains that ability to make a logical decision diminishes further and further with every use
An interesting part of the pro-legalise argument is that we can use the revenue generated to help addicts kick their habit. lol. Increase drug use and then spend the money made trying to decrease drug use? Cutting your nose off to spite your face - Telling society that drug use is legal and OK while making drugs more widely available WILL increase use
At first I had to check the date on this post to see if it was april fools - Anyone who thinks taking heroin is a sensible constructive way of spending your spare time is either an addict in denial of its utterly destructive nature (habits can make users try so hard to find excuses + reasons not to give up because it is difficult - you even see it with cigarettes) or is looking at the equation from a purely financial pov.
The upside here is the financial benefit, the downside is increased availablity and use, so the best would be to try and get the cash without increasing overall use, right ??? So If you want a workable solution, then perhaps we should take control of the supply COVERTLY, keeping the drugs illegal and the use level down, while using the profits to pay for education etc. Use dealers who mainly will only sell marijuana to reduce the spread of harder drugs. But the question for me here is that once the flow of money comes in, will humans be too weak and corruptable to then use the money for education and rehabilation, or once the problem of harder drugs was brought under better control, would we then not be able to let go of our supply of cash or even worse, encourage drug use to keep the money coming.....
Ask any doctor, those on the front line who see the affects drugs have and they will shriek at what an absurd proposition that legalising heroin and cocaine is. History has shown that drugs wreck societies and families and this is the reason that it is illegal in virtually every country in the world, despite how poor some of them are and how desperately they could with the extra revenue.
Legalising Heroin and cocaine will just create a price war with the smugglers which will drop the price even further and make them even more affordable - how do all you pro-legalisers suggest we would overcome this?
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I don't have an issue with legalised prostitution, it would make the 'industry' alot safer, and maybe it could help the fight against sex trafficking from eastern European countries, similarly with legalising heroin, it would, if grown here in the UK end criminal and terrorist groups exploiting this market.
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100# The decision to take hard drugs is not without consequences for those around you, or the wider community. Sorry, but it has to be made clear that this choice is unacceptable.
yes our current choice is unacceptable to communities to addicts to society in general.
not everyone has the shining strength of character you obviously have they lack the power to be able to say no they lack the support to say no they are to young to say no to battered and abused to say no... or do you presume a heroin addict thinks yer great ill stick a needle in my arm for fun? by this point they have been failed by everyone around them. As i said earlier dig my brother up and ask him how his heroin addiction started was it fun did he get kicks out of it? oh and to make it simpler for people like yourself to condem he got his heroin addiction in a home run by social services during the lowest part of of life age just 15.
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There are good reasons why some drugs are illegal. How anyone can entertain legalising them, for whatever reason, I can't imagine. Mind you, Labour responded to a massive culture of binge drinking and violence by making booze cheap and opening pubs for 24hrs so I suppose you can expect drugs to be legalised soon!
Do the pro-legalise people realise how many people in our over-boozing, over-eating, over-weight, over-violent country would take drugs if you could get them easily and legally?! There'd be nobody coherent enough to run the country!(There probably isn't anyway!). Kids would be stoned the whole time, the death rate would shoot up (no pun intended), because it's all too easy to overdose on such strong chemicals. (OK you could kill youself with drink, but it's not so easy).
The money you'd save by not locking up drug dealers would be spent on burying people and by the country sliding into anarchy. Anyway, I'm sure the drug dealers would just move on to something else that's illegal if they're so determined to be criminals.
Keep them illegal, and enforce the law more strongly. Cut off the demand and hit the dealers and the casual users with long sentences and fines.
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Exporting illegal heroin from afgan turkey et cetera costs more than growing it in the UK, not only that the supply would be clean, and standardised, I'm sure many users would opt for the cheaper safer legal version not the dark alleyway smack. All of your statement is opinion, the same opinion that has governed drug law in the UK and the rest of the world for decades, dictated by the USA, who have draconian drug laws and still have a massive drug problem. Face it prohabition failed with alcohol, and is currently failing with drugs.
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I don't think anyone so far has mentioned that cocaine and heroin used to be available to addicts on prescription and this was only changed in the nineteen seventies. It used to be that anyone who could prove an addiction could get a prescription. The drug problem in the UK only really took off after prescribing ended. The reason was quite simple. When an addict could get heroin for free on the NHS, dealers had nobody to sell to except non-addicts, which meant they had to continually seek out new customers. This made heroin dealing unprofitable, so organised crime didn't bother to import the stuff in the first place. A return to this system would do a lot to reduce drug use in the UK.
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People on addictive drugs (e.g. heroin, cocaine) are not fully in control of their lives. The compulsion to feed the habit drives them to activities (e.g. theft, prostitution) they probabably would not consider, were they free of the need to fund their habits.
Drug addiction harms them, their families and their lives. It destroys lives.
Drug addiction also harms me. As a non-user, I have to fund the control mechanisms (e.g. police, customs) that seek to contain and minimise illegality. I also have to fund the health and social services, that must mitigate the harm addicts do to themselves and their families.
If the government were to provide free supplies of these drugs in controlled circumstances, the evidence (e.g. from Berne in Switzerland) is that harm to themselves and their society is greatly reduced. Cost to themselves, society and me would be significantlty reduced. There would also be opportunity to try to help addicts to return to a drug-free life, which they will control.
A risk of this approach is that it may be said attract marginally-addictive personalities with the opportunity for a "free-ride". However, it is likely that these people would chose drugs, regardless of the supply route.
Drug abuse is reality. Present strategies have failed to reduce its prevalence. Costs escalate, billion upon billion, without any effective returns. It is time to address reality, and stop reinforcing the present failed approach.
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Britain’s government seems willing to bend over backwards to help its upper classes. First it borrows gazillions to protect their riches, now it considers legalizing their dirty coke habits.
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LippyLippo, that reads very much like a home office statement, is that you jacqui?, Britain has been boozy for centuries, ever since anglo-saxon times, cheap liquor didn't change that. What do you suggest ban food and beer?, that would create more black markets. If people want to try drugs they will whether or not they are legal, so saying we would all take drugs just because they are legal is silly, i have never and never will take Heroin legal or not. Why would it be different for anyone else if they chosen not to do some thing, the law wouldn't change someones opinion, infact it's a widely held belief that drugs are popular because they are illegal. When they lowered cannabis to class c not long ago usage dropped over that period.
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#107
"There are good reasons why some drugs are illegal."
That's not what this study or other studies say.
"How anyone can entertain legalising them, for whatever reason, I can't imagine."
Because it would do less damage to the drug users, reduce the likelihood of you or me getting burgled and cost the taxpayer a lot less money. Did you even bother to read the article?
"Kids would be stoned the whole time, the death rate would shoot up (no pun intended), because it's all too easy to overdose on such strong chemicals"
Kids are already using them in vast quantities. The fact that drug deaths (outside of heroin addicts) are a rarity does not support your position.
"The money you'd save by not locking up drug dealers would be spent on burying people and by the country sliding into anarchy."
Again, this is not held up by the evidence and is entirely propagandist hyperbole.
"Keep them illegal, and enforce the law more strongly. Cut off the demand and hit the dealers and the casual users with long sentences and fines."
And you're happier to enforce your moral rules onto everyone, regardless of any evidence of harm, and to pay the masses of extra tax involved in that, than you are just to live and let live?
I'm sorry, but your attitude is out of date. You still believe all the nonsense about killer skunk, don't you? And that a single whiff of cannibis smoke will turn you into a drooling addict, all that other guff.
It's time for you to stop judging other people by their choices, the vast majority of which do NOT end in dependency or any cost to you. And maybe when you've done that we can have a mature conversation about the people who do get into trouble and do need our help.
I'm not advocating selling heroin in sweetshops. I am advocating looking at the actual evidence. Legalising things that do little appreciable harm and educating people on the side effects without the "just say no" propagandist subtext that's in all the contemporary government information is just common sense. Putting these people in prison is a cost to you and me with no reward. We don't get a safer society out of it, we don't help the people that are apparently hurting themselves so much already that we feel justified making possession a criminal offence.
Why do you feel that someone smoking a joint in their home deserves to go to prison?
What have they done to you?
Why is it different if they have a can of lager and a cigarette?
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bansis my point was not about prostitution, the ethics of which is a matter of debate, but about forced prostitution, which is plainly wrong. It was intended as a reductio ad absurdum of the argument for legalising heroin.
CommunityCriminal I have no wish to condemn anyone. I am just trying to point out the moral dimension in the argument, which understandably tends to be overlooked in the search for a practical solution. Legalisation seems to me to cross the line into condoning heroin use, which I think is dangerous and wrong.
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@ 88 - "You also fail to explain, even in the context of this falsehood, how keeping it illegal to possess actually helps anyone."
Criminalising possesion helps the cause because most people do not want a criminal record. It is a deterant. Not a particularly fair one, but it contributes all the same. Relax the law, relax the attitude, stick a stamp on heroin that it is ok to use and people will use it more - refer to post #62 - this guy would like to try heroin /extacy but doesnt because he repsects the law. Theres one person that criminalising possesion has helped and i have known at least a few people with the same outlook - they do not do it because it is illegal. By using the word 'help' you at least acknowledge that drugs are a problem and I agree that it is harsh to criminalise addicts and the problems for them are exaccebated by having a criminal record, but the alternative will just create more addicts - it is just the lesser of 2 evils. Perhaps we should force addicts to undergo treatment and testing programmes as a first resort.
@85 - lol, warriorsoul is right, erm..TOBACCO IS NOT MORE HARMFUL THAN HEROIN LOL.
@ 90 - ""Thirdly, that once legalised, everyone would become a drug addict. This point is absolutely absurd! More people may try it sure, and it may become another 'rite of passage' but trying something once if unlikely to get you addicted. How many people have tried drinking but not became an alcoholic? How many people have tried smoking, but aren't addicted? And how many people have already tried drugs and aren't addicted?"""
Nobody has suggested that 'everyone' will become an addict, only that use will increase with availablilty. have you ever smoked crack? You don't need to answer. Increased use will result in increased numbers of addicts for all substances - this is undeniable.
"How many people have tried drinking but not become an alcoholic" - well thats why beer is legal and drugs arent lol. Beer, because of its sickly hangover symptoms, is less moreish and far less addictive than crack cocaine for example. Have a heavy night on the beer and the next day most people wake up saying "oooh never again, Im not drinking anymore" - how many times have you heard that - have a heavy night smoking weed and you will quite enjoy waking up and sparking up a joint with your morning coffee. Coke is worse, crack even worse.
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Hi, I'm one of the authors of the Transform report discussed in the blog, welcome this discussion and wanted to respond to a couple of points. The first is to recommend that people read the report itself, rather than infer the detail of its contents from blogs and headlines. It contains a lot of detailed discussions responding to a lot of the points of concern raised above. It is quite long - apologies - but this is a complex policy area.
Ghandis-Ghost 104
marketing and advertising of legally regulated drugs would not be allowed. We know this is a realistic proposition from our experience with prescription drugs (unlike in the US) and with tobacco (use has fallen post ban). There is no marketing of prescription heroin anywhere where it is prescribed - indeed use has been falling in the Netherlands where it si widely prescribed - one reason being that number of user-dealers recruiting new users to fund their use has fallen correspondingly. Transform also calls for bans on alcohol advertising and marketing. One option is entirely state regulated supply as happens with Swiss prescription heroin, UK prescription heroin and amphetamines, and indeed, alcohol in some countries. There are a range of regulatory options to be deployed as appropriate. These are set out in the report and discussed in more detail in other Transform publications.
"How do you know more draconian action will not work either ? we havent tried. If we publicly hung major dealers then this would not deter others?"
We haven't tried it, but they have in other countries - the US for example where they spend $40billion a year on enforcement and have the worst drug problem, and highest prison population (including 700,000 non violent drug offenders) in the Western world. The WHO did a massive survey last year that found there was no correlation between harshness of enforcement and levels of use (mentioned in the report). Use of the death penalty for non violent drug offenses is morally repellent, ineffective (and rightly illegal under international law).
"Alcohol is not the most dangerous drug, Heroin is"
comparing drug harms is not especially useful, but none the less, this statement is nonsense on a number of levels - comparing chronic and acute harms, or social harms. Heroin related harm is discussed in some detail in the report.
"An interesting part of the pro-legalise argument is that we can use the revenue generated to help addicts kick their habit."
The report does not include any tax revenues and estimates they would be fairly small. We do however speculate that savings on police enforcement, and wider savings to the criminal justice system could be substantial and potentially redirected into public health interventions including treatment, prevention, and education - that, unlike enforcement, we know can deliver positive outcomes - including reduced misuse - when done properly.
You confuse legalisation/regulation with increased or free availability. Under a legal model the State is in a position to determine how available drugs are, in terms of access and price. The whole point of an evidence based regulatory approach is that it allows the appropriate authorities the power to intervene in the markets (controls over suppliers, purchasers, consumption and products) in ways that are demonstrably impossible under prohibition and criminal anarchy it creates. We currently have abdicated all control to violent criminal profiteers and unregulated street dealers - and results have been catastrophic by any yardstick.
Evidence based regulation - guided by public health principles rather than illegal market forces - allows us to see what works and adapt policy accordingly. This is the exact opposite of a rigid and dogmatic prohibitionist approach where the response to decades of systematic failure is apparently just more of the same. This is about replacing political posturing, tough talking drug war rhetoric, and moral grandstanding with reason, evidence and pragmatism.
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Tragically, from the comments posted here it seems a number of people are under similar misconceptions as our current government. (Before I start, yes, I'm pro-legalisation, and no, I don't do anything illegal.)
Firstly, this rather nebulous notion of what would happen with the money spent on enforcement once no longer used on drugs. I note one person suggests that this money being used for other law enforcement post-any legalisation makes Transform's whole argument about saving money irrelevant. But this depends on two things; first that 100% of that money is then spent elsewhere, and second that the extra has no impact on whatever it's being spent on. Otherwise there is a positive cost-benefit factor there.
I'm not going to go into depth on the "anyone pro-legalisation is on drugs" comment, beyond a quite simple response - "Made up facts don't mean anything." While this would, no doubt, be a number of those pro-regulation, it is certainly not all.
On the subject of legalisation decreasing or increasing use...more interesting. There is a negative effect, in that the wider supply, and decreased social stigma, will increase base user numbers. However, there is a countering positive effect (this is, to the best of my knowledge, supported by data from the Prohibition period in the US), in that the frequency and severity of use decline as legalisation is implemented. Therefore, while there are more moderate users, there are fewer heavy users, where most of the damage and cost originates from. Opinions on this are going to be split pretty much depending on which of these the individual regards as more important.
My argument there is based on anecdotal evidence - I know a large number of people who use a variety of substances in a moderate way, and a couple more heavily. All of those more moderate users hold down successful careers...
The final line, however, is that no party, even the LibDems, is likely to legalise or even investigate legalisation in any real detail. Why? Because headline-seeking media would turn a legitimate analysis into "Brown considers marijuana for all!"
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#116 SteveRolles
"This is about replacing political posturing, tough talking drug war rhetoric, and moral grandstanding with reason, evidence and pragmatism."
Yeah - that summarises what I was trying to say quite well really. I, for one, would really like to see a reasoned defence of the drugs policy currently in force, as to my knowledge, no such document exists.
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Sorry i didn't do Latin at school, but i don't agree that legalising heroin would lead absurd consequences, 14 billion pounds totally wasted seem absurd to me. There should be no moral dimension in the argument, it should be based on science, fact and money, not hysteria, moral values or the daily mail.
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Ghandis_ghost, nicotine and alcohol are far more addictive than heroin, more people die from either one compared to heroin, the big dangers of heroin are unsterilized needles, over doses and unknown chemicals added to it. The fact that smoking kills more than heroin does say that tobacco causes more harm too society than heroin does, heroin maybe more socially dangerous that tobacco, but then you can't die of passive heroin abuse.
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114/119 - I'm going to jump in quickly...
Using forced prostitution as a comparative for drug use is fairly poor analysis, really. More because nobody is "forced" into taking drugs in the same way. There's some intense persuasion involved, but there's still a far greater element of personal choice.
Unfortunately, the moral dimension can't be ignored, though. Our whole legal system was, and is, intended to keep us within a set of boundaries that correspond to our way of life. Part of this is economic, part political, and part moral. A distinction can be drawn between moral objections (I have a responsibility to not take drugs because of the harm it would do to my parents and/or others) and religious (I have a responsibility to not take drugs because it is the word of God).
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anyway as steve rolles said 'comparing drug harms is not especially useful', peanuts, paracetamol and horse riding (remember prof nutt)kill more than ecstasy but no one is calling for them to be banned.
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#116 first thank you for being part of a valid look at the problem.
When a lot of us talk about savings to the tax payer and extra revenues etc most see the whole picture rather than just making a few quid on a legal system. I know personally from working in and with my community the cost to police and local services of all drugs not just the illegal ones. Ive personally asked the home office for a duty on alcohol outlet profit to aid in the support of communities affected by drug use and heavy alcohol use they laughed and told me they had a working policy that was very affective for all.
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@ Ghandis_ghost and LippyLippo:
Please go back and read my post no. 79. Then tell me honestly what you think about the idea of banning chips, and what you envisage being the most likely consequences of such prohibition.
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121 its not the word of god this is :)
The Lord said unto me, "I will take my rest and I will consider in my dwelling place like a clear heat upon herbs, and like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest. For afore the harvest, when the bud is perfect and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, he shall cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks and take away and cut down the branches. (Is. 18:4-5)
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
ghandis R.E. 115, you really underestimate alcohol, maybe to your own detriment, your comments regarding addictiveness of alcohol are quite dangerous, it has been proven that alcohol is very addictive, on par with cocaine and tobacco some of the most addictive drugs used. The comment about waking up the next day after a night on charlie or weed, and you feel fine how do you know? did it yourself, no i didnt think so, this is incorrect, weed can give you hangover affects the next day same with cocaine, spurious made up arguments got us into this mess, people need educating about the real facts of legal and illegal drugs, you should read the lancets report on the matrix of harm for drugs by prof nutt et al, it compares the dangers of legal and illegal drugs.
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What country has the lowest unemployment rate in the whole EU?
Here are some clues;
It is the country that has de-criminalised cannabis.
It is the country that has state sanctioned brothels.
It has a great football team.
It absolutely, positively emphasises CYCLING as the greatest form of transport.
It is multi lingual.
It abhors intolerance.
IT HAS THE LOWEST UNEMPLOYMENT RATE IN EUROPE.
Answer:- Not the UK nanny state where responsible adults who want to chill and wind down after a hard day looking for a job can't enjoy a doobie or two without fear of persecution and imprisonment.
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At least if recreational drugs were sold legally, people would get what they thought they were buying and not just any old stuff someone had handy to cut it with. Imagine buying a Scotch and finding it was half whisky, half methylated spirits? This could be the reason Transform are thinking the costs associated with deaths would reduce.
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"Nobody has suggested that 'everyone' will become an addict, only that use will increase with availablilty."
There's no evidence that it will though. There's a lower incidence of cannabis use in Holland where it's legal. Legalisation may increase overall availability, but it also restricts availability for certain groups. If sold through licensed businesses, it can be controlled in the same way alcohol is - at the moment it's easier for kids to get hold of cannabis than alcohol.
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There is a major problem that seems to have been overlooked by many here.
Our anti drug legislation is based on the United Nations list of narcotics
If we are to change our legislation in any way, we will have to convince others (read USA) that they should change theirs in unison; maybe even Part Company over it.
Recent changes in the classification of cannabis in the UK show that the UK Government has little appetite for knowledge based policy & would far rather beat the same drum that they have been beating – unsuccessfully – for the last 50 years or more.
Most Western Governments follow an established path regardless of the facts or consequences.
The War on Drugs was lost years ago, but then again so was the apparent war on prostitution, but still the same old rhetoric continues.
Drugs have been used by man for thousands of years & will continue to be used regardless, so a change of policy seems to make sense to you or me, but to our Governments with vested interests, change is the last thing they want.
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I find it laughable the government think that by making drugs illegal they are imposing some level of control. All drugs are relatively easy to obtain and I forget the speaker of the quote 'the minimum age for a bag of heroin is £10", but it's true.
Drug dealers are not subject to legislative controls, so illegal really means anything goes. As for increasing the number of users, it is unlikely to cause much change... anyone who wants to do drugs already does.
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#119 there is a moral dimension to virtually all law-making. We constantly make value-judgements about what kind of society we want to live in.
My point is that users choose to take heroin, but this decision directly affects other people. For example, I have personally been mugged for drug money. Certain drugs, such as heroin, change the way people behave, and so the decision to take it is of moral significance, though it may not seem it at the time. The state would be implcitly condoning the effects of heroin by making it freely available.
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#121 "Using forced prostitution as a comparative for drug use is fairly poor analysis, really. More because nobody is "forced" into taking drugs in the same way. There's some intense persuasion involved, but there's still a far greater element of personal choice."
With all due respect, you have missed the point I was trying to make. What I am saying is that taking heroin is morally wrong, and that the government should not legalise something that is morally wrong in order to regulate and tax it, or to combat organised crime. Why is taking heroin morally wrong? Because it has a major detrimental effect on those around you.
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115: Many points to answer (yep, let's confuse everyone into thinking legalisation's too complicated to do):
"Drug dealers are usually very paranoid about who they sell to and sell predominantly to users - peddle crack to someone straight and they will usually report them to the police. If drugs are legal, then you can guarantee that the professional marketing departments of major corporations would sell them far, far more efficiently."
- For the less harmful ones, that should be applauded. For the nastier stuff, you do NOT allow advertising, that would be plain dumb.
"If we publicly hung major dealers then this would not deter others?"
- It would raise the stakes and cause more gangland killings. And we'd become a pariah state. On the plus side, the backlash would finally enforce an end to prohibition.
"To suggest that legalising while promoting and increasing availablity of drugs will somehow reduce consumption is a ridiculous no-brainer and #46 states the truth about the situation - the tolerant attitude in the dam has caused increased crime and many of the coffee shops are being shut down as a result"
- more rubbish. Nobody is suggesting PROMOTING harmful drug use, just treating it as a medical thing. Those who promote use are those who have something to gain i.e. the dealers when it is illegal. And they are already widely available from the crime business. SOME of the coffee shops are being shut down due to pressure from prohibitionists, Holland's lower drug use is an embarrassment to them because it destroys their argument.
"An interesting part of the pro-legalise argument is that we can use the revenue generated to help addicts kick their habit. lol. Increase drug use and then spend the money made trying to decrease drug use? Cutting your nose off to spite your face - Telling society that drug use is legal and OK while making drugs more widely available WILL increase use "
- it is becoming increasingly clear that you either do not understand the legalisation argument or don't want to. You can legalise something without telling someone it is OK. Nobody thinks self-harm is a good thing but nobody gets stopped by police and asked to have their arms examined for cuts.
It's very simple. For harmless drugs (lower harm matrix score than alcohol), legalise with appropriate warnings on packets and no advertising. And not too much excise duty, or you'll get smugglers!
For the nastier stuff: horses for courses but a range of pharmacy supply, regular medical consultation and all with the aim of stopping the addiction. In short, leave it to the experts. That's the medical people, not the government who ignore them. But in all cases if someone can get what they need from low cost source the criminals have permanently lost their business.
"Also, you can educate without legalising, it is happening in schools right now"
- and has been happening for years. Thirty years ago I remember a policeman coming to our school and playing a load of scary films about things like LSD. Did it lower the number of drugs taken by our generation? An emphatic NO. Clearly education without legalisation is also an utter failure - because without legalisation you get a different point of view from the person selling it to you. If you go to e.g. a pharmacist with a drug habit you'll get the medical information and support you need. Try to think these things through..
"Ask any doctor, those on the front line who see the affects drugs have and they will shriek at what an absurd proposition that legalising heroin and cocaine is. History has shown that drugs wreck societies and families and this is the reason that it is illegal in virtually every country in the world, despite how poor some of them are and how desperately they could with the extra revenue. "
- I personally know two doctors and both of them support legalisation in it's most recommended form, i.e. treated as a medical issue for hard drugs and 18 or over for softer ones. The "drugs wreck societies and families" may have started as the reason for prohibition but now it's just the pretext. Drugs are that perfect hidden enemy that keeps people in their place and gives police (and therefore government) greater powers. Apologies to any police reading this, it's nothing personal but a lot of you must also think "why am I doing this" whenever arresting someone for using drugs and not harming anyone else.
"Legalising Heroin and cocaine will just create a price war with the smugglers which will drop the price even further and make them even more affordable - how do all you pro-legalisers suggest we would overcome this? "
- Again trying to put false words in legalisers mouths. Seriously, what "smugglers" are going to run their businesses at a loss? This is a fundamental misunderstanding of prohibitionists - the thought that criminals somehow decide on a business and are miraculously better at it than legal industry. If that were the case wouldn't they just start doing things like building cars or designing window displays?
Criminals enter the drugs industry BECAUSE it is illegal and therefore there is low competition and no regulation - so the profits are high. Think of it as high profit = high risk, but they're prepared to take it. But with drugs you also get the addiction effect so they can grow their businesses.
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#120 "you can't die of passive heroin abuse."
Many babies have died through neglect by addict parents, and many people have been murdered for the price of a fix.
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It's interesting to see that many of the 'pro-legalise' people emphasise that THEY have not taken any drugs. You don't want the misery of addiction yourselves but are quite happy for other people to suffer. Nice. The argument that we have legal alcohol and cigs so why not legalise drugs as well as equally ridiculous. You want to add to the problems of Britain addicted youth by letting them get their hands on stronger drugs? Don't forget that drugs won't replace alcohol or fags, they will ADD to the problem. We just don't need more routes to self-harm and addiction. Look at the medical damage people who drink, smoke or use cocaine suffer. Then tell me you want to add to it?
Legalise and educate? We all know that this won't work. We have sex education and awareness everywhere and we still have the highest teenage pregnancy rate, abortion rate and most promiscuous society. Clearly giving people all the advice and letting them make up their own minds doesn't work, nice idea as it is. We don't want or promote abortions but we still have an unacceptably high abortion rate. People just don't listen and no amount of liberal touchy-feely nonsense will change that.
I would also add that as a 17 year-old I was very curious about drugs and would have taken them willingly had they been readily available. I used cigs instead and smoked for 12 years as a result. I shudder to think what might have become of me and many others if we were able to stroll into Boots and pick up marijuana, coke or heroin. Plenty of kids get alcohol and cigs underage, and you can bet that they'll soon find a way to get hold of legalised drugs.
Finally, the argument that policing the law is 'expensive and difficult and people want drugs, so let's just legalise it', (and other similar arguments) is just plain cowardice. Democracy or not, you just can't let the tail wag the dog.
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But the point is not to legalize drugs to be able to buy over the counter, because that would also be a very stupid thing to do, as the drugs then would start going the other direction to Countries where it was illegal to get them. The whole point is to put the dealers of of the loop, the acceptance of drug addicts, yes we have them and yes we want to put the dealers out of business and stop the drug related crime in this Country. The only and most effective way of dealing with it is comment 70 of this blog.
As far as prostitution is concerned, well now that's another issue altogether, but why not have a similar state controlled brothel where girls are screened by expert medical staff. Given state of the art treatment and keep the scum who are peddling these vulnerable kids off the streets and mainly out of pocket.
But no we typical British don't want to know anything about that nasty stuff, so what do we do? we ignore it and it goes on in back streets and seedy grotty places where scum are exploiting females so that the girls can get money for their drug addition, that the pimps have managed to get them hooked on the hard stuff. and so it goes around and around.
Getting the drug dealers and pimps off the streets has got to be a priority. OK they might start other illegal activities but if we use the same logic to the future activity we can solve all the problems. The job is not easy we know that, but it will be alot better than what we have at the moment.
Acceptance of drug addiction and prostitution does not mean to say we agree with it, it just means we are dealing with the problem and keeping scum bags out of business and making our society a safer place to live and bring up our children.
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120 there is up to 160,000 deaths related to tobacco and alcohol in the
UK each year, compared to illegal drugs which it has been suggested cause 1500 deaths maximum, many babies, many murders where do you get your 'facts' from. Facts are alcohol and tobacco pose the most serious harm to the public and this misconception that its really illegal drugs that do the serious harm is blatantly wrong, legal drugs would be even safer, tobacco and alcohol are legal and they still kill many thousands!!!
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I hear a lot of people saying that controlled prescription of heroin for addicts would raise money for the Taliban, how so?
The Taliban do not grow opium, they never have done. Ordinary local people in Afghanistan grow opium as it is about ten times more valuable as a cash crop than anything else they can grow.
Traditionally the Taliban persecuted these farmers as they believed it was unislamic to take opium.
Only now they are at war they have bought opium from the farmers in order to fund their activies. Hence the reason that since the invasion opium production in Afghanistan has increased by around 20%.
If UK/US forces attempt to burn opium feilds they really annoy the farmers as it means they will lose a lot of money so they lose the 'hearts and minds' battle which is FAR more important than winning battles with the Taliban. As such they generally leave the farmers to it.
So the problem here is not production of opium the problem is who buys it and profits form it.
If we told all the farmers in Afghanistan we would pay them double what they currently get for there raw opium we would do a lot to increase popularity and trust in the international forces fighting there. We would also be taking a valuable commodity away from the Taliban.
So buying up all the Afghan opium so we can use it here to treat our addicts and supply the NHS would actually save us a lot of money weaken the talibans income and increase our popularity with locals in Afghanistan.
In short we would be insane not to buy up all the opium anyone who suggests otherwise clearly hasn't thought it through.
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Drugs are controlled because they are harmful?
I nominate this for hypocritical statement of the year. Legal drugs are controlled. If you buy a legal prescription, Over-the-counter or recreational drug, such as alcohol or tobacco, you can see exactly what you're getting, if you bother to read the packaging.
Illegal drugs are not "controlled". A 10 year old could buy them if he had the money.
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LippyLippo, regarding 137, condoning drug use is against house rules, so we are unable to have a honest mature debate on this site because many of us can't talk about our own experiences fully with illegal drugs, that is why you wont find many comments saying 'yeah i take drugs!!!', another reason to legalise, as i said before you have to admit you have a problem before you can deal with it, at the moment you may face criminal charges and lengthy jail terms for admitting using drugs.
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Well done to Transform for trying to bring reason and sense to a non - debate which should be happening. With due respect to this thread, I think it is appalling that the BBC main news programmes have ignored this report as well as a recent similar one in The Economist, when you consider the extraordinarily uncritical mass coverage the output of the Prohibition lobby routinely enjoys - even when traducing the ACMD and other serious participants.
There still seem to be a few (mercifully the number seems to be reducing) who see this as a moral debate - thus excusing failed policy on the absurd grounds that it "sends a message", it is nothing of the sort. Unless it is proposed to legalise forcing other people to take drugs against their will, it is nobodys business what drugs people use any more than what they have for breakfast - and the cost of maintaining this farce is being paid in human lives. Those supporting Prohibition must take full responsibility for the deaths their fetish is causing.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
'Unless it is proposed to legalise forcing other people to take drugs against their will, it is nobodys business what drugs people use any more than what they have for breakfast.'
Let us limit the debate to heroin and crack, as the blog does. It is EVERYONE'S business if folk take these drugs since a) heroin addicts are not productive members of society, b) we would have to pay for these prescriptions from our taxes, c) the addiction changes people's behaviour in such a way that can harm others (e.g. children in their care).
Can you really not see how hard drug use has an impact beyond the user? I appreciate that most of these arguments also apply to alcoholics. The difference though is that the vast majority of people who use alcohol do not become alcoholics, and remain productive members of society. We need to fundamentally look at how alcohol is sold and distributed in this country, but that is another debate.
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Just a reply to this comment
"Chrystal Meths springs to mind how could anyone put something that destructive on prescription?"
It is already on prescription called Desoxyn and its prescribed to children
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I've read some of the other comments posted and although decriminalising the use of drugs and dealing with it as a health issue makes perfect sense, I realise that to implement such a policy would lead to a whole raft of complications.
In order to support such a policy the state would need to set up controlled pharmacies. Users/addicts would require monitoring by health professionals. Given that the state can hardly do this in the mental health sector, or many other sectors involving the care of vulnerable human beings, causes me to seriously doubt whether it can be done. The state itself would be liable to prosecution when people die due to poor quality provision.
On moral a ehical grounds I see the principle of this not from the view point of experts, but in the concerns of the families of this nation, who have children, and in the most part wish to protect them. There are already great concerns with alchohol and its effects on young people. Little is done and our former town centres are full of bars catering to the binge drinker. The traditional pub where generations and families mixed is dead - the streets are full of drunken young people after a certain time with no one to control them.
So what will happen to a generation exposed to legal drugs, where they're told, 'You can have them, but they're not good for you.' How do you conrol people getting drugs and selling them on to addicted friends? You can't. The system sounds great for a mature person with responsibilites, who just wants a recreational drug at weekends, but if you asked him or her about their kids, most have enough dealing with the aftermath of alcohol.
Finally, combating criminality. Yes it would deprive the networks and gangs of immense revenue and relieve our policing services. The quality of the drugs would be better not having been 'cut'. Lives would be saved throughout the world.
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rogertheterrible, your point about children, at the moment they are exposed to illegal drugs, young people are currently totally unprotected, under regulation this can be minimised. In order to protect our children we need to remove the illegal dealing of it so licensing certain drugs to be sold with age restrictions and other more harmful ones to be prescribed, we can significantly reduce the black market of drugs and reduce the harm to our children. Legalising something doesn't mean we condone it.
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Many people have raised the question of morality in this thread, versus simply solving a huge and seemingly intractable problem by the simplest means possible. I have read many excellent arguments for legalisation on the basis that it addresses the problems in a pragmatic way. But pragmatism has its faults too. I am quite sure that, given the opportunity to cure diseases that kill millions of people, science could make massive leaps if it were allowed to experiment on live humans - criminals perhaps - instead of animals or single cells. You could argue that, given the much greater suffering that could be alleviated, it would make logical sense as well as some moral sense. But we don't do it. Why? Because it's just wrong. It goes against the grain of most civilised people in the same way that legalising drugs goes against the grain. We spend fortunes on treating diseases that we could wipe out if only we relaxed the ethical constraints. In the same way, we suffer the criminality and misery of drug use rather than doing what pragmatism tells us. We cannot allow expediency to rob us of our humanity, however much sense some think it makes. We need only look at Hitler's 'Final Solution' to show us what we can become when we ignore morality and try to solve problems technically.
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149 LippyLippo
That is your sense of 'morality', stop forcing it on the rest of us - to compare the legalisation of drugs to forced experimentation and the holocaust is grossly offensive, it is arrogance like that that keeps politicians doing the cowardly thing
keep at it Mark, you are probably the best voice the public have on this matter
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LippyLippo, it's only been the last few decades that drugs have been morally 'wrong'. It was quite accepted for centuries, sherlcok holmes had a fictional opium and cocaine habit, benjamin franklin did opium and sigmund frued, captian scott and sir ernest shackleton all used cocaine. When drugs were prevalent in Great Britain, Britain was truly great, it was the biggest empire ever!!. In my opinion it isn't very pragmatic to use criminals as test subjects it's very uncivilised and goes against basic human rights. legalising drugs would not be a human rights issue, nor should it be a moral issue. drugs are neither good or bad, hitler was bad, what is your basis for comparing hilter and drugs, morally atheists were bad once and burned at the stake so were left handed people, are we saying that these burnings were right because 'morality' was on their side? morality isn't always that moral, especially when humans are involved.
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In reply to 137 .LippyLippo.
Unfortunately it’s not a case of the tail wagging the dog, but coming to terms with the facts & acting accordingly.
We have plenty of historical evidence that, in a democracy anyway,
Prohibition to control substances just does not work.
In the United States, prohibition of alcohol (1920 – 1933) resulted in a rise in consumption with most proceeds going directly into organised crime that flourished during this period.
Incidentally, the USA did not ban Heroin until 1923, but by this time the crime network was already in place to exploit this ban as well & some say, this continues to this day.
Surprise, surprise – In 1933 the USA repeals prohibition of alcohol & within a short period of time, the proceeds go back into the US coffers, but not without a major shake up of alcohol regulation.
Direct comparisons with the UK (& US to come to think of it) drugs problem can be made can be made here & history just repeats itself.
I could list other countries, but the USA is a very good example.
As I pointed out in 131, this is not about evidence based policy, it’s about towing the international political line & our misery will continue until our Government change to a policy based on independent evidence, which is available to them, rather than aged old speculation & the burying of heads in the sand.
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In response to 149:
Yes, morality has, of course, to be considered and it is very clear to me that to criminalise and imprison a person for the substances they choose to consume, while doing no harm to others, is deeply immoral. This is happening to many people.
Moral issues are often complex and I am not advocating free availability of all substances. I accept certain limits on my freedom for the greater good of society, which is why I support regulation.
To invoke the holocaust as somehow comparable to legalisation/regulation is just plain silly.
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The only sane answer to the drug problem is:
Legalise, tax, regulate, educate & rehabilitate (with part of the vast tax income).
This would take billions out of the hands of organised crime, massively reduce the number of crimes committed in order to pay for overpriced street drugs, reduce deaths from dirty street drugs, free up police to peruse violent rather than victimless crimes, and act as an incentive to move people away from nasty life wrecking drugs like crystal meth and crack, (why would anyone choose to buy these nasty drugs when they have a pharmacopoeia of pleasant drugs with fewer side effects?).
The problem with this approach is that it would be fundamentally opposed by the Americans, the unthinking rightwing majority in this country that have lapped up government propaganda against drugs and drug users for the last 60 years and not least the government and that awful teacher woman who ignores the advice from the experts in order to pander to the rightwing majority.
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To sum up my previous post:
Prohibition causes more harm that the effects of the drugs.
Legalise, Tax, Regulate, Educate and Rehabilitate those that need it.
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And another thing!! How do the legalisers envisage the actual acquisition of drugs? I am over the age of consent. Drugs have been legalised. How do I exercise my right to obtain these harmful but legal substances? Go to my doctor and say 'Hi, I'd like to start taking drugs please. Where can I get cocaine?' Do I have to prove a 'need'?
March into Boots and select from a nicely-displayed rack of now-legal drugs? (Buy one get one free on heroin!)
Only let existing drug users have them? Isn't that a 'chicken and egg' question?
In short, if you're going to legalise, you will create a demand. How will that demand be satisfied? How will we be able to send out the anti-drugs message after they're legalised? By legalising, you are giving drugs a seal of approval that you will then spend decades dismantling. Cigs are legal but we don't promote their use any more - quite the opposite in fact - we spend a fortune trying to STOP people smoking them! Ditto booze. You are going to have to do the same with drugs. It's like starting a big fire and then trying to put it out again. You might argue that the fire's lit and we are spending a fortune already. But why throw petrol at it? We might find it gets out of control and then there will be no stopping it. It seems utter madness to even consider legalising drugs.
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The drug "problem" will never be solved, whether they are legal or not. People have been getting off their faces for thousands of years. It is in our nature to do so. Yes lets get it out in the open, but please lets apply a little realism to the issue. And yes, why not legalise it and make some tax on it?
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"What this is really about, surely, is a moral and political argument being challenged by a methodical and technical one. For generations, we have been told that recreational drugs are "wicked" (although alcohol is omitted from the axis of evil), and few in Westminster want to appear "soft" on sin."
Leaving aside the unhelpful pseudo-religious terms used here (wicked, evil, sin), it sounds to me like you think moral considerations have no place in this debate. If that is the case, then the answer is simple: execute all dealers and users - no more drug use! (for the more literal-minded amongst us, I am not actually proposing this, merely illustrating where your argument takes us). And this talk of human rights - what is that if not a moral consideration?
There are many legitimate medicinal drugs that are only available on prescription, because of the consequences of misuse, and yet you propose to sell heroin and crack over the counter? Or should it be prescription only, another 'basic human right' for those who contribute nothing to society?
The real way to take control from the dealers is adequate sentencing.
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@ LippyLippo, #156:
Presumably, you would go to a designated outlet, which might be situated on an industrial estate or in an area of town far from any schools or other places where children would be likely to be; ask a sales assistant for what you wanted; hand over your cash; display proof of age, if you were lucky enough to appear under 21, and/or evidence that the money was obtained legally; and be given a package containing your chosen substance, in a standardised dose, with an accompanying information leaflet containing dire warnings about what to do and what not to do.
Then you could go and enjoy yourself.
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#159 I could see this working for something like ecstacy, although we still know very little about it's long-term effects. Not for highly-addictive, life-destroying drugs though.
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warrior-soul, That was the wrong answer, the correct answer is allow people to make up their own minds without forcing your moral OPINION upon others.
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160, what like Nicotine and alcohol? 160,000 deaths a year from both, 2 of the most addicitive drugs used, heroin isn't as adictive as either. A couple of hundred people a year die from heroin compare that to the 110,000ish a year for tobacco theres more deaths from smoking than there is heroin addicts in the UK, registered users number around 40,000. the most dangerous social harms arise from heroin being illegal, fear of jail to users, and fear of robbery from non users.
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Current drug policy indicates just how highly the incumbent government values the welfare of its own citizens. Under the pretense of protecting people, prohibition is enforced and lauded as the answer. Ironically, all that prohibition achieves is that people will put themselves in unnecessary danger to obtain and consume their substance of choice, which means that current policy is achieving entirely the opposite of what is intended. Whether this is through sheer ignorance or deliberate contempt remains to be seen.
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"Let us limit the debate to heroin and crack, as the blog does. It is EVERYONE'S business if folk take these drugs since a) heroin addicts are not productive members of society, b) we would have to pay for these prescriptions from our taxes, c) the addiction changes people's behaviour in such a way that can harm others (e.g. children in their care)."
None of this amounts to a logical reason to persist with prohibition - rather the opposite. (a) and (c) seem to be based on the assumption that everybody who experiments with these drugs becomes an addict which is simply false, and ignore entirely the obvious reality that addiction is spread specifically by prohibition. Think about it. A person foolish/unwary/unlucky enough to develop addiction is presented by Prohibition with a large problem - the cost of maintaining a habit rendered artificially expensive by the law - and an obvious solution which is to introduce others to the stuff and sell it to subsidise their own supply. Prohibition is murderously immoral.
(b) is really rather silly as there is no way the cost of the drugs legally would approach the £14 billion currently spent annually on enforcement.
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156. LippyLippo wrote:
“In short, if you're going to legalise, you will create a demand”.
Sorry to get back to you again, but this is not the case at all.
The Dutch experience has shown that partial deregulation (it’s still illegal, so OK under UN description) of Cannabis has not resulted in a rise in consumption at all.
In fact the opposite seems to have happened & the consumption rate per head of population is less than the UK.
As for harder drugs, the Dutch seem to have controlled the growth of hard drug usage, which is more than can be said of the UK Government.
You mention that legalising drugs would only add to the current problem of tobacco & alcohol, but I doubt this.
Why do you think the various lobbies (think the alcohol lobby) have such a vested interest in keeping, for instance, cannabis at bay?
As I have mentioned before, this is about getting policies that are knowledge based in place & that means legislating in regards to how much harm a drug does, rather than a politician’s bigoted opinions.
For example: Like most others of my age group, I have used cannabis in the past & now hold down quite a good job.
I don’t know anybody who comes close to the stereotype that seems to be used for UK consideration.
On the other hand, I have also seen first hand the effects of heroin on individuals & their families that have had to pick up the pieces – not a happy thing to witness.
My point, as in previous posts, is the same.
Drugs must be legislated & controlled according to knowledge & historical data & not a blanket “Drugs are bad OK” opinion.
We have been there & tried that for so long now & look where we are!
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#164 they also have another choice - kick the habit. Get a job, live life. If they instead choose to supply drugs and get others hooked to fund their habit, it is not prohibition that is to blame, it is them. Prohibition does not say to their mate 'here, try some of this, you'll love it.' Prohibition does not stick the needle in their arm. I don't want to sound unsympathetic to what is after all a terrible affliction, but the bottom line is that you cannot blame others for your own behaviour.
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166, Prohibition is totally too blame. Young, naive, vulnerable, people, people forced into prostitution and people who have drugs forced on them by unscrupulous pimps and dealers are these people too blame, no its the law for allowing the dealers to exist, and whilst there is prohibition these dealers will exist. Some heroin addicts have chosen to take it but that is where the choice ends, when the addiction takes over.
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#162
'160, what like Nicotine and alcohol? 160,000 deaths a year from both, 2 of the most addicitive drugs used, heroin isn't as adictive as either. A couple of hundred people a year die from heroin compare that to the 110,000ish a year for tobacco theres more deaths from smoking than there is heroin addicts in the UK, registered users number around 40,000. the most dangerous social harms arise from heroin being illegal, fear of jail to users, and fear of robbery from non users.'
So, after all the rant about the legal alcohol and cigarets causing thousands of deaths, you propose to make heroin as legal as they are, instead of banning them? Kind of strange logic.
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168, prescribing heroin would make it safer, it would minimise it's contact with children, and it would protect society, there would be less deaths, heroin related robbery could be reduced, there would be more police freed up to deal with any remaining dealers and other criminals, drugs would be less of a financial burden and could even bring in a profit to society, the list goes on all been mentioned above on various posts, if that is strange logic then there must be something wrong with society.
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168 what don't you understand about prohibition didn't, doesn't and don't work? The reasons why alcohol and tobacco prohibition doesn't work have been listed and most nations understand this, strangely they don't understand the same arguments with drugs.
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159 these would be the conditions as per the report.
Controls over supplier
· Hours of opening
· Location/appearance of outlet, number of outlets
· Licensing/training of vendors/staff
· Controls over marketing/advertising
Controls over purchaser
· Age controls (minimum age, ID / proof of age required for purchase)
· Restriction of sale if purchaser is intoxicated
· Volume rationing
· Purchase tracking
· Licensing of purchaser
· Delay between order and pick up
· Required membership of group or union for purchase
· Consumption on licensed premises only
Controls over product
· Packaging (plain packaging, tamper proofing, health and safety warnings etc)
· Preparation, dosage, quantity
· Coded for individual licensed purchaser.
the report also goes on to say how hardcore addicts will be rounded up so to speak and treated via prescription while the rest of the known addicts will be able to by at a much cheaper rate and be monitored for health etc. You wont be able to take up heroin at the point of sale without medical supervision. On whole a very interesting read an leaves little to actually argue with when compared to the model of safe practice we now believe in.
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@ 158 warrior-soul
'The real way to take control from the dealers is adequate sentencing.'
Like in the USA, where half a million people are in jail for drug offences? Has that solved their 'drug problem'?
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I am 60 years old, in the 1960's and 1970's I was a Junky - dependent on class 1 Hard Drugs. Although I no longer use drugs, and regard both drug users and alcohol abusers as rather sad individuals I have long considered the laws against drugs ridiculous.
If we consider the phrase used by governments since, (to the best of my knowledge), "The War on Drugs". Then by any standards the consistent growth of drug use would indicate the war is lost.
Since the late 1960's there has never been a drop in the number of users.
In fact the Class 1 drug laws introduced in the late 1960's opened the doors to "organised crime".
Until 1967 any doctor could prescribe class 1 drugs. A small number of doctors prescribed for drug addicts (most were private patients), chemists dispensed pure drugs. Therefore there were less overdoses, less injuries like absesses, less strain on the National Health Service.
Most important for society there were no pushers, inadequate individuals who wished to take drugs would inevitably find their way into the drug scene, and soon find a doctor. Inevitably doctors over prescribed and the surplus got sold on a disorganised black market, but importantly the availability of prescribed drugs prevented demand rising to a point that would fuel an organised black market as exists now.
I would advocate;
a return to pre 1967 for Class 1 Hard Drugs:
and the sale of cannabis licensed in much the same way as alchohol, maybe no off-sales, a few Cannabis Cafes might help in the regeneration of the High Streets.
The benefit to the exchequer could be fantastic.
1. Less drain on the NHS.
2. A drop in crime by Junkies.
3. A substantial fall in the prison population - keeping a person in prison is a four figure sum per week.
4. Tax benefits (a) The inevitable Cannabis Tax (b) Business Rates on the premises occupied by the Cannabis Cafes.
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"166. At 3:09pm on 09 Apr 2009, warrior-soul wrote:
#164 they also have another choice - kick the habit."
Er no they don't. Remember we were talking specifically about those who have already succumbed to addiction. Trapped between that and Prohibition, it is inevitable that many will turn to dealing.
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I suspect the potential savings figures given here are substantial underestimates because
1. the figures for future drug related harm seem to assume that legally supplied drugs would be as harmful per user as the currently contaminated and unregulated criminally supplied drugs, whereas in fact it should be dramatically reduced esp. in the case of heroin (which in medical form at appropriate dosage is as near to a harmless drug as you can find).
2. they probably don't take into account the fact that a large proportion of prison places would not be required, nor indeed would we need such a large police force and criminal justice system.
Of course the lobby in favour of keeping things the same has a massive vested interest in it - jobs for the police/prison system and fake moral righteousness which politicans and other moral cowards can clothe themselves in with the approbation of the gutter press;
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173 - Thanks for your contribution Kernow-jon, it's great to hear from someone who has seen the whole effect of drug prohibition throughout its years. I can understand why the drug laws were brought into force in 1967, it's intuitive to think that banning something would make it less available, even though that has now been proven not to be the case. To me, the key point you mention is:
"Inevitably doctors over prescribed and the surplus got sold on a disorganised black market, but importantly the availability of prescribed drugs prevented demand rising to a point that would fuel an organised black market as exists now."
As a lesson of what to do when (and I mean when, this can't go on indefinitely) prohibition is canned. Looks to me like it's that black market of surplus that needs to be kept to the minimum, enough that those that need the drugs can get them without too much excess for someone to sell on.
It will be a difficult balancing job but infinitely easier and less costly than the massive crime operations we have now. The important thing is that at least government will have some genuine control, changing drug classifications never makes a blind bit of difference, if it's illegal and desirable it's available from organised crime.
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Not only would we save billions by legalising drugs, but we could save many of out most vulnerable (our children) because nobody would be pushing drugs to children, some of them still in primary school. In addition, the police currently wasting their time on fruitless efforts to stop drug trafficking, could spend it protecting the average taxpayer from the crime which remains after drug related crime is no longer a factor.
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Dear Bansis I agree present legislation continues to expose our children and young people to danger. Legalisation has so many positive aspects to it and for years when I've discussed it with family and colleagues I've always argued that if we had a government with any 'balls' legalisation and control was the only answer.
My concern, however, is how to convince society that there is an answer. The government could have used the cannabis reclassification to pave the way. Instead of their limp policy they should have legalised the sale of cannabis and a few other recreational drugs from licensed outlets. There was sufficient evidence from the Netherlands to suggest this would not cause a problem. If society judged that such a policy worked then we could begin to move on in the control and treatment of those wishing to use higher classified substances. Please do not misinterpret me when I say control, I mean by this that individuals would be free to purchase the substance of their choice providing they accept the implcations. As you say Bansis, legalisation doesn't have to infer it is condoned. I do not condone how the government has done seriously little about alcohol misuse, but it should be the right of the individual to decide if they get drunk. The implications of their behaviour would be answerable in law, or in the lose of their own life or livelihood and I see no reason why this would not hold if they chose to get high.
So in a nutshell, albeit alot of discussion having been made by government it missed a perfect opportunity some time ago. It is government, therefore, that continues to condon the illegal use of drugs and allows young people to get hurt. It has to accept that it will never prevent the drugs trade through policing.
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Great idea, totally impractical! 1) criminals would stay in business selling to minors or popularising new designer drugs or just move on to other greedy crimes (or perhaps run banks!). 2) The government is incapable of bringing any change in on budget, so expect mssive cost for a government to even look at doing something, never mind doing it 3)'tis bad enough dodging the drunk drivers without having to dodge druggie drivers as well (also add in extra road accident, policing and NHS costs here. 4) dont forget most of law enforcement cost is employment costs, so you cannot count full cost here as it recycles back through taxes taken and benefits not paid.
As an financial alternative, how about an increase of 20% in policing, 10% of this in the field and 10% in claw-back of profits from crime, make policing pay for itself! Increase jail capacity and charge those who can afford it proper rent for the privilege of staying at Her Majesty's Pleasure.
Problem solved ten mninutes at no cost to anyone!
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TomDKGreen, 1)most dealers would go out of business if adults were using legal outlets and criminals will move on to other greedy crimes because there are other legal loops holes they can exploit just like they do with mod71, it is a system failure. The transform report said they couldn't see a dramatic rise in use is legalised, so why would you suddenly see more intoxicated drivers. How would your suggestion be a financial one how would this deal with the £14billion+ acquisition crime, the police still have to catch the criminals. the financial solution is regulation.
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TomDKGreen what you talk about in your post is already in place, druggies driving cars is this this going to be a new activity one that is totally unseen in this day and age?.
lets look firstly at the 20% increase in policing this will be very costly or do you propose that we simply remove 20% of the current police force off the streets just to deal with drugs?
secondly who is going to pay for the prisons the staff the food the fuel to run the prison, the NHS intervention within the prisons to treat addicts. Do you know that more addicts come out of prison than go in ? So the problem is magnified within the very system that is meant to stop it.!. Or in your mind do all people that go to prison come out shiny and new with little halo's ?
We often hear about clawing back the profits of crime but as our government has already found out this is next to imposable. Most profit from drugs is spent either on luxury goods or more drugs the occasional house and cars but beyond that is invisible to the regulated system, Existing in another world altogether almost like a mirror of the legally governed systems the standard member of society knows.
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In reply to 179: TomDKGreen.
1. Criminals already sell to minors anyway so no change there.
There’s no legal age of sale of illegal drugs because they are, err, illegal.
If criminal gangs could invent new designer drugs they would since they remain legal until the Governments classify them as otherwise.
As I pointed out in a previous post, US organised crime flourished during alcohol prohibition & shrank again after repeal, only to flourish again with Narcotics regulation.
Yes, they are a resourceful group & will move into other areas, but what makes you think that they are not doing that anyway; human trafficking springs to mind.
2. You are a man after my own heart here; I agree that our Government appears to be incapable of implementing any change on Budget or time, but this does not mean we stop all future initiatives because of their incompetence.
The TDPF admits that the sums are back-of-an-envelope calculations, but if we followed your ideas, the current expenditure would probably continue & the additional costs of 20% Police would add to our burden.
Further more, where do you hope to find the money to expand the Prisons? We already have record levels of inmate population & further, already planned, expansions are proving expensive.
The Police & Authorities have been doing their best to prosecute & retrieve profits from crime, but this has been a lot more difficult than they, or the Government envisaged.
Often, it costs more to carry out the investigations than the amount of money retrieved, so I can’t see your 10% idea going anywhere.
3. Hate to tell you this, but we already have a significant number of people driving under the influence of drugs. The laws are already in place & our Police are prosecuting where possible. Your argument was used in relation to the Government’s recent relaxation of alcohol licensing rules, but so far this seems unfounded since there has been no significant rise in drink drive cases. You assume that there will be a sudden rise in consumption of drugs but, as I’ve already pointed out before, experiences in other countries would indicate otherwise.
Finally, the idea that junkies could fund their own imprisonment is a bit flat since they usually spend it all on drugs. If they had that kind of money, they wouldn’t have burgled my house recently.
My costs of replacement windows & locks, time off work, insurance rises, not to mention Police time etc can be added to the Countries true Drugs total with my blessings.
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When I was young I started smoking, why? because it was against the rules and I wanted to appear cool and smoke behind the bike sheds too.
This is how the drug world starts. it is coolness and gangness.
If drugs were available at every supermarket on presentation of a registration card and with a 5 minute chat to a reident doctor/dispenser assessing ones psychological state then I believe a lot of the coolness would evaporate - especially if it became obvious in said supermarket to the young that those obtaining were clearly losers.
THIS is where the obvious benefit lies. It will take 2 maybe 3 generations for this get high drink hard culture to disappear but INTELLIGENT legalisation, INTELLIGENT advertising/education a plough back of monies into REAL recreational facilities for the 13 to 18 year olds and legalisation could have benefits.
BUT,(always a but) the policy has to be strong, planned and carried through for 30 years or more with no backsliding or political/moral/religious wavering.
So no change then.
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It would appear to me that by legalizing drugs you will create MORE demand, you will still have the crime of people on drugs who are unable to work because of their habit and will still commit crime in order to satisfy this need. I am sure that many young people who do not do drugs, do not do it because of the penalties involved in our current environment. Even if you legalize it there will still be a enormous "Black Market" for it. Summation: More demand;More Crime;More younger people on drugs.
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I don't know the answer to this question maybe someone can answer it for me. If drugs are leagalized then does that mean that people like airplane pilots, police, nurses, doctors, teachers, anyone can come to work and not be prosecuted? What are the legal implications of decriminalizing drugs in this respect?
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185. Joan Olivares wrote I don't know the answer to this question maybe someone can answer it for me. If drugs are leagalized then does that mean that people like airplane pilots, police, nurses, doctors, teachers, anyone can come to work and not be prosecuted? What are the legal implications of decriminalizing drugs in this respect?
Hang on a moment , who but a damned idiot would even want to take drugs?
Imagine your surgeon or hairdresser let loose on your personal spaces tanked up on drugs? Only total wets and drips take too much drugs or drink. I think the NHS must start charging substance abuse takers , and I know that many countries do not allow entry to substance takers, USA is one of them. The DVLA take a dim view too, and if you are caught out , you are regarded as a danger to other road users and you can lose your licence--
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@ Joan Olivares, #185:
I would imagine that the situation would be covered under existing rules i.e. if you show up while not in a fit state to do your job, you can be turned away and docked a day's wages; and if you do so repeatedly, you can be compulsorily enrolled on a counselling programme or dismissed.
The legality or not of whatever caused the unfit state needn't be a factor. After all, workplaces are not full of drunks or glue sniffers.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
The reaction from The Home office about criminals moving on to other activities is, frnakly, surreal. Surely a similar outcome would then result from eradicating drug crime? Or from reducing demand to zero? If that's the case, then why pursue drug dealers? It's a knee-jerk response without even a second's though applied to it.
In response to other posters - alcohol and tobacco aren't harm-free, but the harms they do cause are limited and reduced by their being legal. Drinking gin isn't great for your health, but it would be worse if that gin had been made in a bath-tub, cut with some other substances and then sold to you by a criminal. With tobacco we've successfully reduced use year-on-year through health education and campaigns.
Illegality isn't a deterrent to drug use today because the chances, as a user, of being caught and then charged are little more than zero. Everyone who wants to take drugs does - no-one will wake up tomorrow if drugs were legal and decide that after decades of clean-living they are going to buy some crack. There are lots of legal substances today that can cause grave harm - petrol sniffing, glue sniffing, meths drinking and eating small quantities of certain poisonous plants. We don't make these things illegal and usage is minute - proving that just because something is legal doesn't mean that people will do it.
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Prohibition worked but only for Al Capone. Get real take control of drugs and stop talking about "War On Drugs", there is no war there is simply a well organized business run by criminals.
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I couldnt care less what anyone shoves up their nostrils into their veins or down their throat
Instead of "protecting people from themselves" which current policy isnt even acheiving, how about protecting those who have no interest in taking them but find themselves the victims - either personally in terms of burglary robbery and muggings from the users, or indirectly from their business going down the tubes because it cant compete with a rival that's being subsidised by dealers in order to launder money and has no real need to turn in a genuine operating profit?
Pointing to the tobbaco smugglers etc is a red-herring. Unless the govt planned to levvy excessive amounts of fund raising duty as they do on tobacco and alchohol there simply wouldnt be the same opportunity for smugglers to enter the market with a cut price version.
Make the stuff to a national standard supply it as an on-request-no-refusal prescription to any over 18 from pharmacists (or a licenced recreational drug vending equivalent if pharmacies have some moral objection to getting involved). Not only cuts out the opportunity for dealers if theres no big profits to be made but also keeps the users in regular contact with the NHS.
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Government's use drugs for payment for deeds that they do not want there slaves to know about like blood diamonds the chose of drugs now are nearly as much as there is chose of booze which is a powerful drug why all this rant about drug us, because now the Govenment wants to harvest body parts we now have a big company called Bio bank check them out they harvest body parts from people and information from them for life and the healthier you die the better so no smoking, no drinking, no other drugs. Because really Governments are not interested in the us of drugs in the people unless they can make money out of them Britian is now a corporation we do what ever the USA does now and the drug rant will not get people to stop nor those whom the Govenment has given the right to make shed loads of money from. How many PMs are into drugs? well they do like to booze some of them and many still smoke.
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Parliament wouldn't agree to 'legalising' drugs unless they could tax them and be sure of collecting those 'Taxes'. Also, I was in a store coffee bar, and they were selling cakes with 'Poppy Seeds' in them. They didn't know whether the Poppies were Red or White variety. Is this a way of sneaking White Poppy produce onto the High Street ?
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If drugs were legalized, drug barons would find other ways of making money and this may cost us more than we would save from legalizing drugs.
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Legalising drugs is common sense. Make them available readily at prices which drive the drug pushers out of businness, then we just might stand a chance of dealing with the drug addiction problem. When there is no longer any incentive to make people drug addicts, then we have taken a major step forward.
Peter D South Carolina
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195. At 04:17am on 12 Apr 2009, tangent wrote:
If drugs were legalized, drug barons would find other ways of making money and this may cost us more than we would save from legalizing drugs.
This is a silly statement. What would they do to make money and do I suppose you are advocating maintaining the illegal drug system the way it is? That doesn't help our drug addicts in any way.
Peter D South Carolina
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Is this really only about saving money? I hope not. Rather would I wish it to be an attempt to remove the misery of life as a drug addict and to prevent others from falling into the pit. You want to solve the problem? Then get money out of the system. Money always was and always will be the root of all evil.
Peter D South Carolina.
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195 And your point is?. Criminalising million because Government can't be bothered to tackle other crimes that may or may not arise is not an argument it's a cowardly cop out. This is a prime opportunity for this Government to show the world that Britain isn't a 'preeminent power of the past' and is still taking those lone decisions that eventually change the world, like the abolition of slavery to name one. Britain has a long history of challenging conventional thought.
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Yes, they should be legal and widely available. That would be normal (non- hypocritical ) and moral thing to do.Governments and two-faced moralists are the worst. They agree on killing the millions in imperialist wars, but wouldn’t allow individual freedoms and personal responsibility?!
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I see arguments that the criminal element will turn to other crime can someone actually name a few of the new crimes they would move over to that are totally none drug related????. As a legal drug system would leave open prisons for hard core that continued to try and make money on the back of a legal system. To many people hear the word LEGAL and seem to think that punishment for Drug offenses would vanish from the law system. MODA 71 would get a quick make over renamed and sentence's expanded to the point were life would be life no chance of appeal as it should be now but due to consumerism is imposable.
Most of the cannabis dealers I know welcome such changes, support legal drugs, why because on the whole they are hard working people just that the industry they are in is frowned upon. They welcome the opportunity to open coffee shops to work in safety with safe products, not to have to deal with some of the lowest scummy people you could ever imagine meeting.
When we can see and understand all of the argument and problem only then can we can deal with it accordingly.
Happy Easter :)
Matt. 15:11
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I think legalisation will have to happen, the drug industry world wide is a major problem with failed states and the people who run this illegal industry having so much money.
I think fewer people would use these substances if they were legal, it is the secret squirrel thing that helps attract people.
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yes the secret squirrel thing and then some.. maybe a practical approach should be carried out, by slowly phasing in a test scheme in a certain area, but allowing less problematic drugs, like marijuana to be legalised. Perhaps decriminalisation instead.. ultimately I feel drugs like heroin though should never get the green light.
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Such hypocrisy. Why the concern about drugs which because their use is illegal, draw addicts into a criminal world, yet alcohol is freely available? The dangers of drugs is not only that they are the keys to an underground of crime, but also because by the very manner in which they are imported and processed, they are impure (adulterated) and carry grave health risks. Alcohol is equally lethal, it contributes to terrible diseases, affecting vital organs such as the liver, and its damage is irreversible. But, no government would have the guts to ban it. The British will suffer almost every outrage, from the destruction of freedom of speech and movement, to constant interference from a Nanny State in the most intimate aspects of private and family life. All is suffered with the usual grumbling, but if alcohol was banned, I do believe Civil War would break out, and an enraged populace would literally burn down 10 Downing Street. So no needles and no sniffing please, down the hatch old man!
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Great debate, though very litte in the way of new ideas. Haven't we been having this debate for a very long time? The truth is, human beings seem to have an inate drive to experience altered states of consciousness. We've been fascinated with it since we first ate a mushroom or smoked a plant and found ourselves intoxicated thousands of years ago.
The health risk arugment is obviously redundant otherwise why are we allowed to smoke and drink ourselves to death. Also what about the obesity explosion related to cheap fast food and the media barrage of adverts encouraging us and our children to eat it? Believe me, the problems that this is going to present society over the next 20 years is going to make the debate about drugs seem pretty trivial.
The risk of an explosion of new addicts is I suppose a possibility. Would loads of people suddenly decide to cash in their lives and choose to lie around the house all day stoned? Pretty pessimistic view of human nature. I mean we could all do that now with booze and prescription drugs if we wanted to but most of us like to keep some sort of balance around productive and recreation activities.
The small percentage of problem drug users will always be with us. Some people are very unhappy and traumatised, usually due to childhood neglect / abuse and get trapped in the life of poverty and drug addiction. It is these unfortunate people who are always dragged out by the media to support the " keep drugs illegal" campaigns. Images of drug adicted mothers living in squalour and not looking after their kids, are powerful propoganda tools. And yes there are horror stories out there for sure. As a mental health worker I hear more than my fair share. However, the vast majority of us illegal drug users do not suddenly give up on life and become addicts. We keep things in balance, just like the majority of society does with alcohol. And if we start getting too heavy with our alcohol intake, then the government launches a campaign to educate and inform so that we can make better choices if we want. The fact that there are so many people addicted to alcohol and nicotine does not lead the the Tabloid media screaming for prohibition! Why is that do you think?
Getting older certainly curtails most illegal drug use. It just loses its appeal after a while and staying up all night listening to music with your mates becomes much harder when you have to take your kids to swimming lessons on a Saturday morning. Plus the risk of getting a criminal record and losing your job has more of a deterrent effect when you have kids and a mortgage.
Conclusion: controlled legalisation of all drugs is the only logical solution. Prescriptions for hard addictive drugs like heroin and cocaine with lots of access to rehab. Off-license style availability of softer drugs like marijuana, MDMA, amphetamine with clear health and use information available at point of purchase and strict penalties for selling to minors, driving under influence etc. Hard to swallow for some, but as millions of people are using illegal drugs in the UK already, we might as well make it safer and easier for them to do so.
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Aaaagh! Why legalise drugs? We don't WANT people to take drugs, so why make it even easier for them to do so? People already smoke and drink too much. If you legalise drugs, more people will take them. The govt spends a fortune on telling people not to drink, smoke, eat too much. Hospitals are full of people who ignore this advice. What is the point of legalising drugs, only to have to tell people not to take them?
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Apparently, while we were not looking, the government legalized thousands of drugs, doctors gave them a universal rubber stamp of approval, and along with the insurance and pharmaceutical corporations, convinced the majority that they can not live without them. One only has to start reading the side effects in very fine print to realize the alledged cure may be worse than the alledged disease. The only reason this hipocrasy goes unnoticed is that the brainwash/propaganda machine has been cranking on this for over a century. I would love to believe they have our best interest in mind above all, but my youthful optimism could not stand the test of time, or the mountain of evidence to the contrary. Follow the money.
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One major benefit is that if drugs were legal, those selling them would not need to push harder and harder drugs. I can walk into my local off-license and buy a single can of beer without him whispering "Psst, got something stronger under the counter. Want it?"
When drugs are illegal and pushers can make a very nice living from addicts, it is in their interests to get people addicted fast. Hence they offer something stronger very cheaply, they hawk their wares near schools, they'll do what it takes to get people to try their first hit. If they make a loss selling heroin to kids at £1 a go, they'll make it back sooner or later once the kid is hooked.
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There's really no easy answers to this one.
In general my initial reaction would be for legalising, on the grounds that it cuts the "pushers" out of the loop to a certain extent .... but would there be an age limit, as for alcohol - would it work as well?. Dealers would still be there to bring the drugs to underage users. And would we legalise all drugs - once the legal ones seem soft, the only rebellious thing for people to do would be to take more and more dangerous synthetic drugs which would then doubtless spring up to fill the void.
There are arguments in favour of legalising - tax revenue could be tasked directly to funding addiction treatment - and also quality and strength could be monitored. There is also the idea that use may decline if it is not seen as being rebellious....
However my big worry would not be the moral collapse of our society as some people fear (have they been out and about lately?) but the possibility that the UK would end up as the magnet for all the crack-heads and addicts from the EU and wider world wanting a clean fix without the risk of criminality for "possession".
Also adicts would still need to get their drug-purchasing money from somewhere, and so I don't see theft as declining. For every problem solved there would be a new one created.
After serious thought I don't think that legalisation is workable ... but that does not mean the current system is not in need of a major shake up. Let's cut the b-s and deal with the problem with education, funding for helping addicts ..... and the big one - stop criminalising the teenagers who are just doing stupid rebellious stuff without thinking through the consequences. Hit the dealers and hit them hard.
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I worked as a drug worker in the NHS for some years.
Legalising drugs would not work, what would you legalise ? Most people who use drugs are polyusers, crack and heroin go hand in hand. Those who are given the opiate substitute ( methadone ) use on top of it or sell it for heroin. In addition to this they spend huge amounts of thier time conning GP's out of Valium and other benzodiazapines. These are either sold or misused.
Frankly instead of relaxing the law I feel it should be tightened with methadone only given at supervised dosing units where they take the medication in front of a nurse and if users are found to have heroin or crack in their system then all medication is stopped for 36 hours.
This would force up the pice of heroin and street methone and may initally increase crime but in the long run would marginalise the dealers.
Another way of looking at this is do we have drug users commiting crime or criminals using drugs ?
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Portugal decriminalized personal possession of ALL drugs a few years back. It's not something you hear much about, probably due to it being a success!! Here’s a recent article on the subject. It’s worth taking the time to read. http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Portugals_drug_decriminalization_bizarrely_underappreciated_Greenwald_0406.html
Even legalising cannabis would reduce the use of harder drugs. The Netherlands - decrimmed cannabis years ago. The number of heroin addicts in the Netherlands has stayed at a fairly constant level over the last 30 years while in Britain the number of heroin addicts has increased by some 1000%+. Give people the freedom of choice and they will often make the right choice. Tell people what they can't do and they will rebel!
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'Most people who use drugs are polyusers' first of all the biggest drug users are tobacco or maybe prescribed drug users, secondly the biggest illegal drug users are cannabis users, as a nhs drug worker you wouldn't meet so many of these people as they don't need hospital treatment unlike alcohol or some harder drugs like crack. If you made it harder for smack heads to get their fix then inevitably, heroin prices would go up and in the process acquisition crime would be forced up, but it wouldn't marginalise dealers just increase the amount of money passing through their hands. 'it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes' Abraham Lincoln on prohibition, as you can guess he wasn't too keen on the idea of locking people up for doing something which isnt a crime, so paddysam imo it's a drug user FORCED INTO committing crime by the state.
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btw not all drug users commit other crimes than taking drugs, it's only a small minority that need to rob to feed their habits, in fact the only law the majority of drug users break is the prohibition law. so most drug users don't need to commit crimes but are forced too, cannabis has been cultivated for 10's of thousands of years and the opium producing poppies have been grown for thousands of years, it is very very naive of this or any other Government to think they can stop it, cannabis will be around long after us and it will be smoked long after our GOV pass their inconsequential laws.
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210 "Another way of looking at this is do we have drug users committing crime or criminals using drugs ?"
Another poor uneducated view If indeed you believe this then currently there are nearly 3 million hard core criminals who just use cannabis alone.
Your view is laughable when you look at the FACTS not some self idealized view of how the world should live according to ones own weakness, because that's what a lot of this is about weak minded people keeping drugs illegal because they fear in their own minds that they will be one of these drug users.
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Anyone pro-legalisation is a drug user - what a load of tosh. I am most certainly pro-legalisation and I have never done drugs other than alcohol. The problem with drugs, is the crime that surrounds it and that dealers PUSH the drug ie the title drug pusher. Is we took a morally BRAVE decision to provide these drugs to the inquisitive few, it would drive the crime rate down and drug use down too. This policy may well cause some people to die (but that person would most likely have died anyway through misuse) but more importantly it would save many more lives.
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@chrisk50
The NHS burden would be dramatically reduced, canibis use would probably grow slightly but cocaine and herion use would be slashed.
Funding for Afghanistan - I seem to recall that poppies grew rather well in France during WWI
Road accidents. You can still restrict drug usage, highlight the dangers and control it's use. Laws for driving under the influence needn't change - they are already in place for legal drugs (alcohol) as well as illegal drugs.
Nobody wants or suggests a free for all, but the important thing is to sever the link to organised crime and it's pro-active encouragement of hard drug usage, along with a common sense approach to social drug use, which has gone on, largely harmlessly, for thousands of years.
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As long as drugs remain illegal, people will commit crime to acquire them. Gangs and criminals will reap the rewards of the control of a black market. Innocent people will be killed in gang crossfire. There is absolutely no benefit at all to maintaining the criminality of drugs. It's the same all over the world. Criminalize drugs, and you empower drug dealers. Provide them through public health programs, and the dealers have no reason to exist. What is it better for society? A child prosituting herself to buy crack from a street thrug, or to acquire it from a public health system??
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To those like delminister who see the legalisation of drugs as immoral, let me remind you that there are far more alcoholics and addicts of prescription medicines such as painkillers and sleeping pills than users of heroin, etc. Furthermore, would you deny obese people NHS care too? If we really wanted to do away with the most dangerous thing to our health, we'd ban cars!
The simple fact is that no matter how much the police and security forces try, they cannot and never will be able to stop the flow of drugs. Not only does an illegal product promote crime and violence in society, it also undermines it through corrupt police, customs officers, politicians, etc. and establishes damaging precedents that spill over into other areas of that society (money laundering creating corrupt bank officials for instance).
Surely, it is up to the individual how he/she treats his/her body. Obviously, when society is harmed in general, then measures must be taken, but I personally cannot see how, for example, someone smoking or ingesting the dried leaves of a plant that grows naturally in many parts of the world should mean that that person is incarcerated or fined - that, to me, is an absurdity and against that person's human rights. We can stuff ourselves with harmful junk food, smoke 100 cigarettes a day, drink as much scotch as we can get down our necks - but smoke a joint or pop an E?
The drugs trade is threatening the stability of several countries in the world and is a great source of revenue for the Taliban, FARC, Middle Eastern terror groups, etc. Surely it's time to adopt a workable and sensible solution to the trade. The article said we don't know what will happen if drugs are legalised - well, why we don't we try? It's the only way we'll know.
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Having been in law enforcement for the last 30years the real problem is that there is no political will to erradicate this problem. As figures from Afghanistan show for this year the world food shortage actually saw a reduction in poppy growing in some areas, because farmers need to make a profit. This will be true of most of the farmers in South America too, so the problem is one of economics. If food crop prices rise fast enough you could actually see the erradication of drugs for any but pharmaceutical purposes and save the money of the cost of the American deployment and the British in Afghanistan. This requires a temporary increase in the Law enforcement budget. Add this to the confusion in Government policies in relation to tobacco and Alcohol and you see the problem. We can smoke and drink ourselves to death so long as we pay the taxes but we are not allowed to kill ourselves with drugs and guns. Now either the Government condones death through taxation or it doesn't. It must make its mind up.
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Can I take issue with Nearpostheader. I know exactly where he is coming from in terms of prohibition in America. However the problem is a perrenial one. Either you make a law which is enforceable and provide the resources to deal with it or you make a token law. Prohibition was broken because of insufficient resources and insufficient thought about how to treat the problem, not because the legislation was wrong.If a law in unenforceable it is pointless.
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Anyone who says that people who support legalising drugs are all drug users themselves are quite wrong. If the drugs were legalised and taken off the streets and put into chemists, a whole load of things would change for the better. For those who are addicted to drugs, they'd be supplied with something "clean", i.e. not cut with whatever random crap the dealers can lay their hands on, which is where most of the danger associated with drugs comes from in the first place. Also, anyone trying to come off any particular drug wouldn't have their former dealer hasseling them to buy more drugs - instead they'd have a doctor saying "OK, you want to come off heroin. We'll put you into a rehab clinic and get you onto the methadone program" which can't be a bad thing. In fact... drug culture pretty much wouldn't exist as it does today. It would disappear almost completely as most of the drugs would only be perscribed to those already addicted, and they would be offered help to come off the drugs. Also, when it comes to reducing crime rates, the very successful legalisation of cannabis in the netherlands has already shown us that by legalising the most common drug on the market, crime rates drop hugely. Surely it can't be much different if we legalise everything?
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this is sheer idiocy why should the average law abiding citizen pay for these scum who makes society life a misery,why should we pay for them because drug addicts cant hold down a job,put there offspring at risk and anybody else around them at risk.we have tried the softly softly approach and addicts have spread like wildfire out of control.its about time we invested in the police to crack down on these scum.take them out of society to stop it spreading even more.the answer is opt out the human rights act and round these people up.civil war is close in this countr vigilantes are getting ready come the revolution.all we want is to go back to civilised society so our children can grow up witjout fear and give them a decent future.legalise drugs no thanks..its wrong
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222 what a load of rubbish, im not even gonna comment on the crap you have spouted, but i will refer you to the transform report and many previous posts, as you seem not to have bothered reading the report which answers many of your questions. civil war your so funny thanks for the chuckle.
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222: James 1969:
I presume you will be looking to round up all the drunks on a Saturday night as well; after all, why should we pay for these “scum” as well.
Of course, they pay taxes so it’s different.
I also guess you have worked out how you plan to pay for all of the extra Police that will be needed to raid every house in the country looking for drugs of any description?
You talk about a revolution; I can assure you that this kind of response will lead to one very quickly.
You won’t mind the massive rises in taxes either, because super prisons will be needed to hold the huge numbers of prisoners on remand because our justice system is at breaking point as it is.
You also manage to throw all drug users into one basket as well, which does you no credit at all.
Yes, it’s fun to stereo type everybody who uses, or has used drugs, as scum who can’t hold down a job.
It makes people, like me, who have been victims of drug related crime a whole lot better even if it ignores the facts or experiences of other countries.
Still, since me & my buddies have tried cannabis when we where younger, we will lead by your example & hand ourselves into the local Police tomorrow.
You will loose my 40% income tax & have to pay for my wife & kids as well as Police & Prison costs – I hope you have very deep, recession proof pockets.
Seriously, your post would go down well in the Daily Mail “Mr Angry” section, or even the House of Common’s, but lacks serious thought on the consequences of your ideas.
Remember, this report is about the proposed savings to the taxpayer & not about extra costs that the country can ill afford.
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Any policy should be based on effectiveness of outcomes. To state otherwise would be to suggest that policies should be based on ineffectiveness. A difficult point to argue. When we look at the criminalization of drug users it is clear that consumption and supply have been boosted by a prohibition stance, somewhere in the region of 1000% since the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. The impact of this legislation on services trying to support drug users to make changes in their lives, including reduction in criminal behavior is immense. Section 8 puts enormous pressure on services that house drug users, leading to homelessness. It is not hard to calculate the impact of homelessness and drug use on crime.
We need to step aside from the morality debate and ask what is going to provide the most effective outcome in terms of crime reduction, cost to the health service, prison reforms etc. The answer is decriminalization. It is hard to remember, however there was a time pre 1920s, when drug use came under a degree of control by governments. Decriminalization is not arguing for free consumption of drugs across the population. It argues rationally for tight government controls in closely regulated market. This would put criminal networks out of business, free up millions from the overstretched prison and criminal justice systems, that would allow for money to be redirected at health and education. Not just for drug users, but that hip operation you might be waiting for, or more effective dementia care.
The moral argument - there was a time when we thought it was morally just to make slaves of people. Criminalization keeps people enslaved in a cycle of drug dependency and crime, with disastrous implications for health, community order and life expectancy. Can we argue that these outcomes should be pursued?
If nothing else, would it not be rational for the government to at the very least have a independent review of policy that would not posture to the baying media?
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Mark:
I am not an advocate of ILLEGAL DRUGS...
I think it is a horrible idea regarding the entire idea of Legalising drugs, is simply allowing for more trouble in the long-term....
-Dennis Junior-
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226
"I am not an advocate of ILLEGAL DRUGS...
I think it is a horrible idea regarding the entire idea of Legalising drugs, is simply allowing for more trouble in the long-term....
-Dennis Junior-"
I would get some help there Dennis you don't seem to be able to make up your mind, you cant be against illegal drugs if your against legalising them. Or is there a third option your not explaining to everyone?
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I couldn't agree more with the report (in fact, I blogged about it today in light of the controversy over David Nutt).
While the cost/benefit analysis is never going to be clear cut, it's pretty obvious that prohibition has only served to create a whole raft of criminal enterprises.
Whether people taking drugs is desirable or not, people are taking drugs. The law as is stands has been a colossal failure, despite incredible amounts of money having been thrown at enforcing it.
It's just time for a different approach. If my kids are going to grow up and experiment with drugs, I'd rather they were going to buy something safely, legally and in a controlled fashion rather than chancing their arm with some streetcorner thug. Let's lose the moralising about whether using drugs is right or wrong and start to be a bit more clear headed on the issue.
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Perhaps we could consider what we are dealing with?
Class A, B and C drugs are illegal.
Remember Prohibition in America? Remember what happened? Did you know that Prohibition ended because it became obvious that if the American Government didn't repeal the law they would lose the next election? Of course that left them with something of a dilemma, legalise alchohol and they were going to have to lay off all those civil servants (the FBI) who were tasked with policing the alchohol laws and so lose an awful lot of votes from the Republican Party faithful. Solution - criminalize drugs and give the FBI a new remit.
Of course during Prohibition Americans would come to Europe and get most horribly drunk then try to bring a few bottles home. It being much easier to conceal opium and cocaine than bottles of whisky from Customs, that needed to be dealt with. No problem, the UK and the rest of Europe were so much in America's debt after the First World War that they leant on us, and lo and behold, soon afterwards we followed suite and criminalised drugs.
As for the future; legalise it and legalise it now. The benefits are obvious. If we control sales we control taxation (large amounts of money), if we use the Swedish alchohol sales model we control profit (more large amounts of money), we control sales we control qaulity (massive decrease in drug (especially heroin) related deaths), we control sales we control the black market (no more 'dealers at school gates', no more dealers and associated 'criminals' as role models for the young), we control sales we give the Police more time to deal with real crime, we control sales we control prices (we cut the crime rates as without incentive few people can be bothered to go out and commit drime (once more especially herion users)as costs can be kept lower (give heroin to heroin addicts - methadone doesn't work and nor do most addicts so just cut our losses), control sales we cut NHS costs as (once more) qaulity control will help and people will ask for help while there is still time to help them (and we will perhaps be spared their mothers and fathers becoming instant 'drugs experts').
Control sales and we control buying, that is the next point: Cash crops are of extreme importance in developing countries, many of which have excellent crops of interesting substances. We could give an awful lot of foriegn aid just by enjoying ourselves
Then there are countries like Afghanistan, do any of you think that we are 'winning the hearts and minds' of a very independent people by destroying their traditional crops and trying to replace them with market gardens? Utter nonsense, let's just buy up the whole poppy crop, save soldier's lives and manufacture the heroin we can use for our addicts and cut the cost of quite a few medicinal drugs at the same time, same thinf for cocaine, same thing for marijuana, same for many other substances I could name ...and still think fondly of. I could go on and on (did you know that Queen Victoria took cocaine? She even wrote a letter of commendation to the distillers of a cocaine liquer), but this is a comment not a speech.
Oh, and would you hypocrites who use tobacco and alchohol please try get real.
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For the people who want illegal drugs to remain illegal, rather than looking to what MIGHT happen with all the doom and gloom of soothsayers, why not look at what IS and how things can be improved for everybody.
Children are already using these substances, every day of the week on a street corner near you. And I'll tell you something else, the only 'drug educators' they listen to are their dealers, who don't know a lot either about the substance they are pushing. They don't know what it is they are buying most of the time and every time they buy it they put their health and sometimes their lives into the hands of criminals who think nothing of mixing, for example, cannabis resin with boot polish or used engine oil as a bulking agent, or spraying sand, ground glass or cellulose onto the bud to make it look like it is more potent.
We have to get away from the outdated notion that lying to children is ok if it keeps them safe, it doesn't keep them safe it puts them in harms way. We are one of the highest cannabis users in the world so it is obvious isn't it...the kids ain't listening. What they need is to have access to substances that cause harm restricted enough to reduce the use to a trickle and the ONLY way to do that is take control of the situation. Legalising would bring the ability to regulate where, when and how the sale would take place and who could produce it. If enough thought were given to the planning of such laws so that possible loopholes could be identified.
The Netherlands have coffee shops, the US have dispensaries, Spain allows the use of cannabis in the privacy of ones own home. There are already examples around the world where this has worked and none of the prophecies of the prohibitionists have come true, the sky didn't fall in.
I do think however that before any reform of the drug laws can take place the alcohol licensing laws have to be looked at again. I have nothing against alcohol as a substance but I think 24 hour drinking was the most short-sighted thing I've ever witnessed a government doing. Couple that with there being no restriction on the number of bars on any one high street and cheap booze in supermarkets and you've got a recipe for disaster. I'm all for freedom but not a free for all like we've got now.
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Upon coming of age a boy is given two poisons to drink from: one makes him passionate and deranged followed by violent puking and a splitting headache the next day. The second lets him see colours and seems to sharpen his hearing and “space” him out and leaves him with no headache the following day. The boy upon becoming a man learns that when a label says “legal” it is bad but when it says illegal it is good...Is this wise ?
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Leagalise all drugs?....not with this lot in power,or the next lot,they cant even make up their minds what classification to give to cannabis,although they seem to have made up their minds about where they want their drug (alcohol) in the scheme of things,available in corner shops and supermarkets for all the kids to see.
But,the good news is the rate of pub closures around the country,52 per week are now closing and taking this drug menace off our streets,plying their trade on street corners,luring in young people with their cheap and nasty promotions,using their "starter drugs",shandies,alchopops etc with the air of respectability that legality gives them.
Soon,these new recruits will graduate to the various beers on offer,this habit forming drug forming part of their lives,regularly sinking several pints each night,and more on weekends,this habit can continue for a number of years before the side effects start to manifest themselves,these side effects can range from becoming overweight,liver problems,heart strain,headaches caused by dehydration,vomiting,mental confusion,dizziness,depression etc.
As the body becomes accustomed to it's daily intake of beer,it will cease to provide the user with the desired effect,they may then graduate to the smaller more concentrated doses of the drug in the form of spirits,this form of the drug providing a much quicker route to the oblivion they seek,desperate to drown out the boredom of their meaningless lives,this insidious drug weaves it's way into their lives until they find themselves hiding bottles of the drug around the house or in garage,shed or garden,regularly sneaking off for a swig to keep themselves "topped up".
By now,the side effects are even greater,family breakdown,violence,incoherent speech,failure to eat properly,mental breakdown,financial problems,career failure and eventually and early death.
So, watch out kids,all this is provided by your government,they need you to drink and provide them with the revenues that will pay for the hospital treatment you'll need when you're a hopeless alcoholic.The revenues come in now and the hospital treatment will be for some future government to deal with.Dont believe anything the government tells you and trust no one,all they want is your money and it's the young people with the largest disposable incomes that are the targets.
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