Read the book, Good Cop – Bad war .
Its written by an undercover officer who spent years putting dealers and generally nasty people away.
At the end of it his conclusion is legalise it. Regulate it heavily, and put a system in place to help addicts get off whatever they are addicted to.
The drop in crime rate , and the circle of violence and prostetution that accompanies the hard drug culture would be a huge benefit to society.

The drop in crime rate , and the circle of violence and prostetution that accompanies the hard drug culture would be a huge benefit to society.

It would undoubtedly be a very good idea, but the last year has shown that the British public isn’t really open to rational discussion or expert opinion.

Maybe in 100 years time.

What’s happening here? There’s no arguing or pointless graphs. I’ll come back when it reaches 6 pages 😉

I wonder what impact, if any, the theoretical legalisation would have on crimes that are associated with drink and / or drugs (particularly driving and antisocial offences) and what percentage of the population who previously haven’t partaken would decide to give something a go.

I think legalisation or decriminalisation along with education would be a good thing. I think everybody knows that people will take drugs if they want to irregardless of legality. Making it safer to do so would be a good idea IMO.

what percentage of the population who previously haven’t partaken would decide to give something a go.

This is an interesting question.

I expect there’d be a bit of that, but I think the real sticking point would be on rationing.

Do you let people buy 20 pills for their weekend’s entertainment? I think there’d have to be a bit of damage limitation built into the rules.

I don’t really agree with the point of decriminalisation, why would you leave control of the trade in the hands of the black market?

It isn’t really the drug that’s the dangerous bit IMO.

Well I sort of see the point your making, but heoin use is still really bad for you.

OK so to outline my question again, for comment and opinion.

Let’s assume we have legalised all class A drugs and they are now being distributed through a controlled government channel.

If you still charge for it, you still have the problem that addicts, who can’t hold down a job because they are addicts, can’t afford to pay for it. So let’s put that issue to one side and agree that we’re going to give it away for free, like methadone.

So now you still need to control it’s distribution.

Are you going to let anyone have it assuming they are old enough (you’d apply an age restriction obviously).

If anyone can request it and be supplied it, then we have to accept that as a society, we are enablign the creation of a new population of heroin/cocaine/ecstasy users. That might be a price worth paying for the benefits?

What do people think specifically about this?

Heroin is also damaging in any quantity – there is no safe amount

There really is as long as its pure and t can be prescribed in the Uk as diamorphine.

Dont mistake this for me saying its safe nothing is 100% safe and o ones life would be enhanced by being a heroin user never mind a heroin addict

Prohibition does not work so it ought to be legalised so as we can control it, do less harm and make shit loads of money stopping the “war on drugs” and getting some tax payments out of it

These days with the dark web and other avenues the only people – especially young people- who have not done drugs have done so largely from choice [ rather than lack of opportunity/sources]and legalising them wont alter my behaviour nor the vast majority of the population.

Objecting to it wont stop it and when we cannot stop the supply in the most controlled environments in the country [prison]there is no chance we will end it in wider society.

Prohibition does not work so it ought to be legalised so as we can control it, do less harm and make shit loads of money stopping the “war on drugs” and getting some tax payments out of it

Junky (how ironic that moniker is now) I’m prepared to believe you.

Tell me how you would manage it’s distribution as outlined above. Please believe I’m not trying to be argumentative. Think of it as being the opportunity to convince me to your point of view.

and it becomes alot less edgy and way less cool if its legal all of a sudden. Significantly reduces the appeal and the ‘look at me, Im double hard coz I do drugs (( zamo )) ‘.

If you still charge for it, you still have the problem that addicts, who can’t hold down a job because they are addicts, can’t afford to pay for it. So let’s put that issue to one side and agree that we’re going to give it away for free, like methadone.

I wouldn’t subsidise it. not like we give alcoholics free bevvy. I wouldn’t give people a script for methadone either.

yes it can, go and down a bottle of vodka or 2 and see how you get on.

I’m sure it’s possible, but I’d expect that you’d almost certainly spew most of it back up before hitting lethal levels, unless you were a pretty hardcore drinker / alcoholic to start with. Your average 17 year old isn’t going to be dropping two litres of vodka ‘down in one.’

Far as I know, most alcohol-related deaths are a) long-term cumulative damage, b) choking on your own vomit in bed, or c) doing something stupid because you were pissed. I don’t know for certain but I’d be surprised if a single-session overdose in isolation was particularly common.

We’ll that’s just some kinda crazy association that legal = moral or right.

Crazy or not, it was my reasoning when I was at school. I don’t doubt that when you were at school you were the paradigm of perfect thinking with a comprehensive understanding of socioeconomic politics. Me, I’d only just discovered that girls didn’t have willies.

Prohibition does not work so it ought to be legalised so as we can control it,

Prohibition does work for the people it does work for. It just doesn’t work for the people it doesn’t work for.

Prohibition doesn’t work for people who don’t care the consequences. This is most acutely the case in the US where they try to create ever greater consequences for the things the prohibit but fail to create a society where people care about themselves enough to see any kind of punishment as a threat to their well-being.

If the prohibition of a self-destructive activity ‘isn’t working’ then that activity is doubly self-destructive. In that situation you need to look at what the problems are with our society that would fuel both the escapism of drug use and the self-carelessness that leads people to risk liberty and future prospects to achieve that momentary escape.

Cougar.

Was in the news the other week some 20 something odd did that very thing and carked it, think it was just the one bottle. Don’t have a link. Just my point is that most over doses are equivalent to doing something as silly.

Re second point: I know just saying there is a converse to your statement.

When i was a teenager the legality didn’t come into it for me. I just wanted to get **** up! 😆 Some of the drugs were even legal at the time, some weren’t. Magic mushrooms didn’t get outlawed till 2005 i think, might have been a bit earlier..

If you still charge for it, you still have the problem that addicts, who can’t hold down a job because they are addicts, can’t afford to pay for it. So let’s put that issue to one side and agree that we’re going to give it away for free, like methadone.

Have you actually used many different drugs? Not all drug use leads to not being able to hold down a job.

Are you happy for alcohol to still be legal or should that be made illegal? TO em either all drugs are legal or all drugs are illegal. Much, much more harm caused by alcohol than any other drug. Short term )policing, drink driving) long term (NHS bill of slow deaths)

Prohibition does work for the people it does work for. It just doesn’t work for the people it doesn’t work for.

So it doesn’t work then ?

If it doesn’t work for everyone, then it’s not prohibition.

kerley – Member
Have you actually used many different drugs? Not all drug use leads to not being able to hold down a job.

this is the problem with discussions about drugs, it’s always framed towards the people who have problems, ignoring the 95+%(madeup stat) of users that live perfectly normal lives.

Let’s assume we have legalised all class A drugs and they are now being distributed through a controlled government channel.

If you still charge for it, you still have the problem that addicts, who can’t hold down a job because they are addicts, can’t afford to pay for it.

Most addicts and casual users are already holding down jobs.

“Problem” users would be dealt with in the same way as alcohol dependency: Through the health system. Taxes on the supply of said substances would easily cover the cost of treatment (IMHO) – we are already paying for this out of general taxation, so *any* revenue raised would be an improvement.

So let’s put that issue to one side and agree that we’re going to give it away for free, like methadone.

No, it would have to be bought – just like beer / wine / spirits / tobacco from licenced premises.

So now you still need to control it’s distribution.

As above, the same as existing ‘stimulants’.

Are you going to let anyone have it assuming they are old enough (you’d apply an age restriction obviously).

Yes

If anyone can request it and be supplied it, then we have to accept that as a society, we are enablign the creation of a new population of heroin/cocaine/ecstasy users.

Anyone can get anything now – the ease with which cocaine, ecstasy and similar ‘middle class’ drugs are available is laughable. The difference is that at the moment, illegal drug users are the “consumers” that pump funds into the criminal underworld. Drug dealers don’t operate for the benefit of drug users; they are in it to make money. What better product to sell than one which makes your customers dependent on it? One where you can expand you market by tempting people with free hits to get them started? Where you operate completely above the law, because your customers accept it that way? Where you can put so much pressure on people that they rob their own grandmothers?

The whole thing is a money making exercise – profits don’t go to buying better drugs, they go to other illegal activities.

I would legalise the whole bloody lot tomorrow and make it available as above.

I would argue that the ‘drugs problem’ would get much better because:

a) Commercial pressures that lead to minor dealers encouraging / recruiting new users would be eliminated.

b) Users would get clean, consistent products, greatly reducing the risk of overdoses, poisonings and infection.

c) Use would be ‘above board’, making it easier for problem users to seek and receive help without being under the threat of physical violence.

d) The ‘underground mystique’ of drug use would disappear, making it less appealing.

e) Elimination of drugs-related gang violence

f) Reduction in petty crime as customers could be readily identified.

g) No incentive to smuggle / recruit drugs mules as the supply chain would be legitimate.

I drink alcohol, but don’t use illegal drugs, or advocate their use. The current ‘war on drugs’ is the very definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.

Time for a change.

new population of heroin/cocaine/ecstasy users

THey already exist throughout society, and go right the way up to the high echelons I’d imagine.

It isn’t really the drug that’s the dangerous bit IMO.

I disagree. Heroin is addictive and causes physiological changes in the brain which cause the dependence. This goes for other opioids too, including prescription painkillers like fentanyl. There’s a big problem with opioid dependence in the US involving perfectly legal prescription painkillers.
While there’s a case for some drugs to be legal on the basis that they may be no more harmful (or maybe even less harmful) than alcohol and cigarettes, I disagree with that suggestion for opioids.

THey already exist throughout society, and go right the way up to the high echelons I’d imagine.

They do; I was referring to the generation that is to come that would ostensibly be legitimised/created by civil society.

But that’s by the by.

It’s intersting but really the practicality of this comes down to the simple question as to whether we think making some legal legitmises its use and therefore increases the likely use.

Here’s a follow up question:

If a substance was known to be extremely harmful and in many instances fatal to 50% of the population, but the other 50% of the population were able to use it without any real harm, would that substance be something you were comfortable to sanction the sale of?

Up until quite recently doctors were allowed to prescribe heroin to addicts. This helped in 4 ways

1. Allowed addicts to get medically pure drug without recourse to crime
2. Allowed them to have normal lives
3. Removed dealers from streets
4. Prevented threat of crime to local communities

You no doubt won’t be surprised to hear that these policies were removed because of US pressure applied to make the UK align with the US war on drugs….stupid Americans

Up until quite recently doctors were allowed to prescribe heroin to addicts. This helped in 4 ways

Well this is the workable system that it would seem sensible to move to.

If we legalised drugs…..
It would save the prison service an absolute fortune, that’s for sure.

Junky (how ironic that moniker is now) I’m prepared to believe you.
Tell me how you would manage it’s distribution as outlined above. Please believe I’m not trying to be argumentative. Think of it as being the opportunity to convince me to your point of view.

well your opening sentence would somewhat suggest you are being a teeny bit argumentative….its either that or i am just paranoid 😉

We regulate lots of things in society bookies, alcohol, driving licences etc so a similar method to that used to buy alcohol
If you want to have some intervention may everyone register first and attend a course offering help run by Daily Mail readers:wink:

I am sure we will have issues with it but the reality is today there is a drug dealer in many many school in the uk and most children can get hold of drugs. Whatever we do it it will be better that letting amoral money mad junkies control the distribution with a poorly controlled supply chain.

Its irrelevant whether one advocates it or not we cannot make it go away so we should monitor it rather than let it be run by criminals. This wont end the harm of drug use but it will reduce it. Its just the least harm outcome and we have to deal with reality not whether we want folk to do or not do drugs. the reality is they will so how to we want to manage this issue as we cannot make it go away.

They’ve legalised cannabis in California. So far, the sky has not fallen in.

May as well close the thread now.

Y’all been leaving the TM offa Heroin

Flash, please can you overlay a plot of numbers of pirates in the world in the last century?

Heroin is addictive and causes physiological changes in the brain which cause the dependence. This goes for other opioids too, including prescription painkillers like fentanyl. There’s a big problem with opioid dependence in the US involving perfectly legal prescription painkillers.

Essentially you’ve described pretty much everything that’s addicitve there – point remains that heroin addicts die or suffer ill health due to the effects of buying impure (and highly inconsistent) drug and paying loads for it, plus being involved with people who’re pleased to exploit them in any way they can.

IMO the actual drug and its addiction are not in themselves the major cause of death or morbidity (unlike, say, alcohol or tobacco)

Pure medical grade diamorphine is really quite cheap, especially compared to costs of caring for folk with the fallout from using heroin in the current “system”. Add in the costs of crime (and policing/judicial processes) to support the habit and you’re well away

I’m roughly of the opinion, that people should be educated in regards to the risks they are taking in regards to their health – and then be given the freedom to take those risks but at no cost to the rest of society – cheapish mandatory government insurance should be introduced for those that drink or use, to cover addiction rehabilitation – either through direct tax or a tax on the substances themselves.

However, heroin – possibly coke and a few of the other high risk drugs, in my personal opinion – should only be decriminalised in that users won’t be sent to prison, but be placed into schemes where they can use safe GMP standard drugs and have a support system that helps them kick the stuff.

well your opening sentence would somewhat suggest you are being a teeny bit argumentative….its either that or i am just paranoid

I honestly just thought it was funny, your name being Junky in this thread. I really am not being argumentative. It’s a genuine attempt to educate myself by hearing other people’s opinions.

The argument you laid out is compelling in answering whether we should or should not take this legalisation approach. I buy that argument but it doesn’t answer how we should implement such a policy. That’s the part that the pro-legalisation lobby rarely addresses.

I can’t imagine a situation where somthing as dangerous as say heorin or its derivatives is sold as freely as alcohol or tobacco, but I can see a situation where we have doctors prescribing it routinely to addicts in a controlled envuironment. That would seem very sensible at least as a first step, or as someone pointed out, a return to the previous policy sa it may have existed.

I haven’t read the whole thread and I am sure the points have all been made.

The approach should be harm reduction and a move towards a healthcare approach not criminal justice

Different drugs require different approaches.

By making Cannabis available you create a relatively safe place for those who want to get high. People will anyway and while cannabis is not harm free, experience from other countries is that a decriminalisation in some form does not lead to huge increases in consumption or issues

Heroin. Prescription for addicts and make the whole experience dull. Its the dutch method and it works. Dutch junkies are not allways rattling and looking for the next fix causing huge amounts of petty crime and heroin is not the issue in the netherlands it is in the UK

MDMA – Decriminalisation or regulated market Harm reduction. Millions of folk take it anyway and its safe in relation to other drugs so make it safer.

Cocaine decriminalisation of small amounts ( harm reduction, healthcare approach). Remains criminal in larger amounts with it being a law enforcement priority. It really has no redeeming features and was responsible for all the financial shenanigans of the 90s

Other drugs as cocaine

While I’ve no personal interest in using drugs I’d have to say that the level of cannabis use in the UK is such that it’s got to be a better option to legalise its use now.

Thing is with legalisation, particularly with the likes of cannabis is that you could easily legalise it but have a campaign of healthier consumption along with it for example. Prohibition makes that type of thing impossible at the moment.

Take leah Betts as an example. she took an E at a party. she and her friends panicked, she had heard something about taking lots of water so drank pints and pints of water diluted her blood and died from brain swelling.

With a healthcare approach she would not have been worried about criminal records so could have phoned for healthcare advice / gone to A&E and she would have been fine.

Thing is with legalisation, particularly with the likes of cannabis is that you could easily legalise it but have a campaign of healthier consumption along with it for example. Prohibition makes that type of thing impossible at the moment.

The ‘socially acceptable’ aspect of it changes as well but not necessarily in the way you think. I know a fair few stoners who think nothing of waking up in the morning and having a joint (one of them is a city lawyer incidentally)

For some reason that’s considered acceptable in a way that getting up and having a couple of shots of vodka isn’t. I think that would change.

Step 1: Legalise Everything
Step 2: Sell softer drugs from authorised licensed dealers (taxed as per alcohol/cigarettes)
Step 3: Sell Harder drugs from government run clinics, where you have to consume/use the product on the premises in a safe environment. This will make it less appealing to newer users. Again taxed as per alcohol, but far cheaper and purer than street prices, thus removing wealth/power from dealers, and reducing drug related crime (as a habit will cost a lot less)

Step 4: Ban drivers etc from using, same as Drink Driving.

Step 5: Spend Money raised from taxes on Drug Education so users can make an informed decision, as well as every other aspect of society, new hospitals, better health care, education etc

Step 6: Enjoy a better society, no more nasty dealers, far less thieving junkies and a better quality of life for everyone.

Wouldn’t there always be an arms race with dealers looking for newer, more potent illicit drugs and generally the availability of such a thing moving faster than legislation?

Wouldn’t there always be an arms race with dealers looking for newer, more potent illicit drugs

Well there seems to have been a reverse arms race of chemists making crapper and crapper “legal highs” in response to better, safer drugs getting banned – so users may choose to stick with the good stuff.

Wouldn’t there always be an arms race with dealers looking for newer, more potent illicit drugs and generally the availability of such a thing moving faster than legislation?

Nah, that only happens as the current stuff is banned so people look for loopholes – if everyone (who wanted to) had access to a pure affordable supply then there would be no demand for anything on the black market – who would take the risk importing anything if they’re being undercut by the government, with a better safer product.