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saying that I woulndn't be against the decriminalisation of cultivating a few weed plants for personal usage. the Spanish have a sensible approach there.
For other drugs, i wouldn't advocate that though. It's a world away from growing a plant to getting your chemistry set out.
Just a random thought, how does this move to ban 'legal high's' or psychoactive chemical compositions leave the various NHS sponsored initiatives with regard to substituting heroin with subbutex and methadone? Both of which are vastly inferior and tend to replace one addiction for another.
As a small anecdote, A couple I have known well for a long time, decided a number of years ago when their two teenage girls expressed an interest in recreational chemicals, that it was better for them as parents and for their daughters, to control both supply and location of where their kids took them. Relatively content in the knowledge that they were not scoring from a back street dealer, but through the parents from a known and trusted supplier. This, with education about dosage, quantities and respect for the the substances, predominantly weed, coke, e, whizz and k, worked well for them all. Both girls are now in their twenties, one has a Law degree and the other a very competent business person, neither of them them now partake. There will always be those who find it difficult to self-regulate, fortunately they are in the minority.
Education frst. Reading "close" experiences like this should be enough
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/cannabis-induced-psychosis
I would decriminalise all drugs but the harder ones I would only prescribe under licence with the users having to get "treatment" of some sort in order to get the drug
Nice try, but the problem with that is you're assuming that everyone who uses Heroin, Cocaine, Meth etc are diseased wrecks who need help. So your everyday guy or girl who just wants to get high and use those drugs responsibly is still gonna have to go through the black market to avoid being hectored by some nazi in a white coat. Not to mention jumping through loads of hoops/having to go on some list that will potentially effect insurance... etc etc ad nauseum...
There's been pilot schemes where heroin addicts are given high quality heroin, for free, and gradually weened off. There's conditions attached like non participation in other drug taking etc, but generally they're able to function from fix to fix and eventually are reintegrated into society without a drug problem. It's success rate is much higher than the current methadone based methods. Schemes like this would be much easier to operate if heroin were legal or decriminalized and society would be in a much better place.
Education frst. Reading "close" experiences like this should be enough
I agree with the first statement. And knowing what could happen is obviously important, but we can't bombard people with stories of worst case scenarios all the time as they know it's just not true. An attitude of, 'we know some of you will take drugs, here's how to do it as safely as possible' is much better than the current fear mongering approach.
Enough for what?teamhurtmore - Member
Education frst. Reading "close" experiences like this should be enoughhttp://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/cannabis-induced-psychosis
jambourgie - Member
I would decriminalise all drugs but the harder ones I would only prescribe under licence with the users having to get "treatment" of some sort in order to get the drug
Nice try, but the problem with that is you're assuming that everyone who uses Heroin, Cocaine, Meth etc are diseased wrecks who need help. So your everyday guy or girl who just wants to get high and use those drugs responsibly is still gonna have to go through the black market to avoid being hectored by some nazi in a white coat. Not to mention jumping through loads of hoops/having to go on some list that will potentially effect insurance... etc etc ad nauseum...
I don't see why that should be a barrier to legalisation? You are't going to be able to legislate for every eventuality, but you can seriously curtail black mark profits, which will also probably have a knock on effect for funding for other crime.
I also wouldn't have people goign to the doctors for a bit of coke. But I would fund voluntary clinic for people that run into problems. (tbh I'd probably do the same for heroin tbh, as I don't really believe in a mandatoy draconian approach.)
Education frst. Reading "close" experiences like this should be enough
We could do the same with gambling and alcohol use as well but kids are savvy enough to work out that atypical [ though possible] scenarios are largely done to scare them rather than inform them. Its a risk for sure and they need to be made aware of it but they also need to know what the odds of this happening are. Its not the most likely outcome of getting stoned and "reefer madness" fear wont really work.
Nice try, but the problem with that is you're assuming that everyone who uses Heroin, Cocaine, Meth etc are diseased wrecks who need help.
I am not I am assuming that is easier to get to this state with these drugs than with cannabis or coffee hence I would licence them more strongly. In the same way I would licence explosives more than fireworks.One lot has greater consequences than the other if misused.
So your everyday guy or girl who just wants to get high and use those drugs responsibly is still gonna have to go through the black market to avoid being hectored by some nazi in a white coat
We were ever so close to a rational debate 😕
there may some middle ground between these two extremes
Look at the states in America that have had legal medical weed, their claims of massive drops in crime rates, and the millions of dollars raised in taxes. Has the is been discussed here yet?
not really well not in any detail
"Police said they were acting over concerns by local residents about “persistent anti-social behaviour” from customers of the shop."
So basically nothing to do with what they were selling, it could have been a Greggs that got shut down.
Does no one bother with magic mushrooms these days? I know not everyone has access to a spot where they grow, but they're legal aren't they?
They are categorised as a class A scheduled drug, same classification as Cocaine, Heroin etc.
Utterly ridiculous classification, personally I consider them to be one of the most rewarding and affirming ways to spend a night/day.
They were legal to pick up until early mid 2000s. Best drug out the lot tbh. Hallucinigenics are a strange one, ecky seemed to kill them off in the 90s.avidtaylforth - Member
Does no one bother with magic mushrooms these days? I know not everyone has access to a spot where they grow, but they're legal aren't they?
Drugs and their usage are absolutely driven by market forces, which is why banning legal highs won't make much difference, it'll just drive people that took them towards the illegal ones again(not a bad thing as it currently stands imo).
But simple fact is that the demand to get ****ed up ain't going away. Society can either accept that, or not. In which case with the latter you have to accept that the black market and criminals with control supply, quality and profit. A daft and illogical situation.
Btw, imo that's the reason why legal highs were born, so to speak. i don't think it's any coincidence that they started to appear in the early 2000s around the same time the drug dealers were supplying poorer and poorer quality eckies(so much so that people were taking 5-10 at time to get up there) and flooding the market with cheap really bad soap bar (you can get good soapbar, it's just the stuff that people call pollen)(Thankfully the market in grass exploded in the mid 2000s! 🙂 )
Have we done this yet?
[b]Tom Lloyd, former Cambridgeshire chief constable[/b]“What’s happening here is a continuation of prohibition, a policy which has patently been a hugely costly, harmful, and counterproductive failure over the last 40 or 50 years. Prohibition can have a temporary local impact on the drugs market, and an impact, to an extent, on what is consumed – it can lead to shifts in use from one drug to another. What we won’t see is a fall in problematic drug use overall, as criminals adapt their mode of supply, for example from high-street headshops to internet dealers and street corners, as we’ve seen in Ireland.
“It would be even safer if all drugs were regulated by the government, as the reason that prohibition fails is that people want to get high. If you ban the substance you artificially raise its price, and criminals are highly motivated to take over the supply of that substance. The best option is to regulate all drugs so that you can control access, strength, and purity.
“You’re going to get unintended consequences from this law, and it won’t protect children, because it’s easier for children to buy drugs from illegal dealers than from legal premises, as you can see with tobacco and alcohol.
“From a narrow law-enforcement point of view, this is yet another law for police to enforce; it will create a criminal market, and therefore more work for police. And there’s no evidence that it will reduce harm. But this isn’t about reducing harm through following evidence: It’s about futile posturing to appease ill-informed opinions.”
KABLOW!! 🙂
Good to read there are some pragmatic police officers.
Saw this little snippet on the Beeb site earlier, which further shows how effective the UK's anti drugs/prohibition laws are working:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33009682 (Cocaine in sewage: London tops league table)
Would have used the hyperlink URL button, but it seems to crash Safari on my iPad when I try to use it.
Just read that ....good to know we are still world beaters at something eh
[quote http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33009682 (Cocaine in sewage: London tops league table)
That'll be all those people who bought it by mistake thinking it was legal. Then when they got home, realised that it was in fact [i]illegal[/i], and promptly flushed it like good citizens/consumers.
Most of it was from the Houses of Parliament toilets....
Allegedly.
Thank goodness for the House of Lords 😀
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33079042
URL button on here still crashing my iPad, so in essence, the headline to the story is: Is the Home Office attempting to 'body-swerve' official drugs advisers?
Interesting read, especially when the view of the early 70's parliament was reticent towards prohibition.