What is your stance on drugs? Should we legalise/control them or not?

[Froozy]

I was reading and came across this

http://uk.news.yahoo....banned-011919288.html

I've done some research and these legal highs the kids are taking can be pretty lethal and no one knows the long term effects of them, one i was reading about even brings on Parkinsons disease!

In Holland and Portugal i believe that casual drug laws have made crime figures decrease so should we adopt a more liberal stance?

Should we legalise them so that our kids can safely do drugs where they know exactly what's in it, know the dosage and cut out the evil drug dealing middlemen?

I would prefer my kids to buy clean drugs from the government rather then off some shady criminal in a dangerous area where they could be taking a lethal cocktail, wouldn't you?

(By kids i don't mean children)

[ummmm]

Em - that depends on the drug. I know many many recreational users who just take some here and there with no adverse effects (affects...never sure which one) I also know heroine addicts and I would never advocate legalising that drug, or crack.

[EDDIE51]

This link is even better at describing what has happened in Portugal
http://www.businessin...lization-works-2012-7
With over 80% of ALL crime in the UK drug related just think how much we coud benefit from a good decriminalisation policy.

[emmie]

I know like alcohol, drugs can affect people in different ways, but this to me was a salutary lesson, and she has not been alone. I have lost friends to excess drink too, and smoking.. the main problem here is that there is big money to be made in the drugs trade, and that also means gangs, crime big and small. Does no one ever think of the people who harvest this stuff, like opium, the little man who gets paid a pittance, to the drug bosses who are making billions. Not to mention those people who are hooked on cocaine, crack, heroin, and cause their families such anguish.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leah_Betts

[ummmm]

I'll read your links later Eddie...

You can get a hit from heroine/crack for 1/2 the price of a gramme of coke.

[ummmm]

Em - read you own link from 'Death and inquest' down. It wasn't the drugs that killed her.

[emmie]

if she hadn't taken the drug, she wouldn't have had the need for the water

and this just appeared on BBC news

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-20172392

[ummmm]

True - but people taking MDMA were advised to drink lots of water because it was presumed they were raving. Obviously they weren't all raving so that advice was very very dangerous.

[ummmm]

More people also die falling over drunk!!

[mazie]

or falling off Roofs !!!

[EDDIE51]

em10, there is a very serious world wide shortage of medical grade Heroin (Morphine) this is very much because the drug barons control the growers through extreme violence and force them to sell only to them at a pittance . If the use of Di Morphine (heroin) was decriminalised there are already plans to recruit the growers to produce for the legal market and pay them at a realistic rate. The same applies to cocaine and cannabis. Heroin, Cocain and cannabis all have genuine medical use's as well as the underground criminal market.
Decriminalisation would benefit everyone from producer to user to the ordinary citizen . Imagine the benefit if 80% of all crime ceased to exist ! we could get rid of 80% of the police force / courts and close 80% of the prisons just for a start. The redundant police/court officials/ prison officers would raise an objection of course , they have a strong reason to keep the present system ( their wages and pensions to a very large degree depend on drugs being kept as illegal)

[youngmafbog]

Much the same problem as you get with prostitution. No matter how hard you clamp down it will never go away.

For soft drugs (and prostitution) I am of a mind to legalize them, this means they can be controlled and also taxed. The revenue raised could then be used to fund the seedier side of both, hard drugs and human trafficking.

[sp1814]

Froozy

I'd like to thank you for posting a genuinely interesting question. It's a real head-scratcher...because logic tells me that decriminalization makes sense, but then my head also tells me that the message that would send out is one that no UK government will ever sign up to.

I'm going to sit on the fence here because I really don't know one way or the other.

Except...

Legalise weed...it chills people out. You can't do much damage to anyone if you spend a whole day on the sofa listening to Morcheeba and puffing on a spliff (not that I've done either).

[Svejk]

Every-one I know thinks like the majority of posters here(perhaps I move in the wrong circles)yet every UK government sees it as the kiss of death even to debate it. I wonder why?
Lives can be ruined by drugs. But then people with addictive personalities have ruined their lives with say, food,sex or all sorts
I think the present situation is ridiculous & future generations will look back at us & be mystified.

[jno]

I wouldn't advocate anyone taking drugs, at any time

Just put down the 600mg Ibuprofen and step backwards slowly, em

[emmie]

Eddie
the police and courts don't just deal with drug cases, but a myriad amount of crime. i reckon that if we decriminalised drugs then it would certainly take the wind out of the sails of the bstards who peddle the stuff. Then perhaps the moronic gangs that pervade the capital can settle down to something useful, instead of killing one another because one got in the way of a drug deal.

[ummmm]

Sp - cannabis can make you paranoid. They don't all chill out all day.

[emmie]

jno, as per usual the daft comment. This thread is about drugs, the sort
that pervades our society like a nasty dose of the pox, only ten times more dangerous, perhaps not always to the individual but to society at large.

[EDDIE51]

Drugs such as ecstasy are a VERY small part of the whole culture (but newsworthy) and if the main drugs (,Heroin cocaine and cannabis) were available free in treatment centers then no one would be prepared to risk importing or selling minor drugs like ecstasy .
Alcohol has been part of human culture since the stone age and although it causes major problems the possibility of banning or controlling it are none existent for all practical purposes. But remember, decriminalise the main drugs and 80% of the police force would be free to concentrate on booze !!!!, hell, we could have a police officer permanently stationed in every bar/ pub and off licence !.

[emmie]

i only speak from my own experiences, and having seen some relatives become hooked on drugs, become ill, and watched their friends die one by one, doesn't ever give me the incentive to take it up any day soon. They all started on so called soft drugs, upper, downers, pills, poppers, then cannabis, by that stage it was just a matter of time.