Legalise "Illegal" Drugs?

[Acrylic-bob]

An interesting statistic

Last year the US government spent $1,716.77 on the war on drugs.

Which does not sound an awful lot until you realise that is the cost per second, of every minute of every hour of every day: x60x60x365. and that is just one year.

It sort of makes you think that it would cost an awful lot less to pay the producers to ...errm...just stop producing - wouldn't it?

[garinda]

If drugs were made legal, we'd only end up spending the same money, that we now spend trying to limit it's use.

Which we'd give in the form of foreign aid, to countries such as Colombia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

To make up for their loss of income.

[Acrylic-bob]

My solution; scrap the control of drugs act. decriminalise the whole business. Target the importers and spend the rest of the money you save on education and treatment and rehabilitation of addicts and users.

Banning it does not work, it never has and it never will. You need to make it socially unnacceptable, like drink-driving, and the only way you do that is through education.

[Acrylic-bob]

Originally Posted by garinda

To make up for their loss of income.

You are such a cynic

[Acrylic-bob]

Correction, the calculation above should be

$1,716.77 x60x60x24x365

Butterfingers, sorry.

[garinda]

Originally Posted by Acrylic-bob

My solution; scrap the control of drugs act. decriminalise the whole business. Target the importers and spend the rest of the money you save on education and treatment and rehabilitation of addicts and users.

Banning it does not work, it never has and it never will. You need to make it socially unnacceptable, like drink-driving, and the only way you do that is through education.

There's not a person in the country under the age of fifty, who hasn't had some sort of educational message about the danger of drugs.

People still take them.

Not everyone who smokes a joint will go on to be a heroin addict.

However every heroin addict starts off on 'soft' drugs, before moving on to smack.

Trouble with drugs, the human body soon gets used to them, and many people either increase their usage, or looks for a stronger drug, to replicate their inital high.

I hate to think what would happen to this country's feral youth, if they had access to legal narcotics.

Most of them struggle to get out of bed now, after a late night on the weed, in order to catch up with their friends and family on Jeremy Kyle.

[kestrelx]

Originally Posted by garinda

If drugs were made legal, we'd only end up spending the same money, that we now spend trying to limit it's use.

Which we'd give in the form of foreign aid, to countries such as Colombia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

To make up for their loss of income.

I last smoked cannabis in 1993 - when I had this new Skunk - it was disgusting stuff and if kids are smoking this now no wonder there were riots last summer! Skunk makes people violent and aggressive because it is grown in artificial environment by criminals. It is this that makes it grow faster and has much more of the active ingredient in it. Also Skunk could make people stab and shoot others. Natural cannabis makes people relax not violent.

Fact is Skunk was produced to meet the need caused by lack of naturally grown cannabis, stopped coming into the country by drug controls. So the crooks decided to create Skunk, which is artificially grown using soda lights and so on in enclosed spaces! This is an example of how making drugs illegal actually is more harmful than if they were legal!

[Acrylic-bob]

By education, I don't mean namby-pamby 'just say no' posters. I mean real, hard-nosed, no-blushes-spared education. The sort that drags you through the mortuary, and the brothel and the back streets. The sort that makes you so terrified of drugs even the thought of hermasita's becomes a major traumatic event.

[garinda]

Originally Posted by Acrylic-bob

By education, I don't mean namby-pamby 'just say no' posters. I mean real, hard-nosed, no-blushes-spared education. The sort that drags you through the mortuary, and the brothel and the back streets. The sort that makes you so terrified of drugs even the thought of hermasita's becomes a major traumatic event.

Don't know about you, but that's just the sort of hard core drugs education I had.

Still doesn't stop a fair number of people from taking recreational drugs.

Trouble is, most drug users first try it when they're young.

Unfortunately youth think they are infallible.

They haven't the imagination to think that they'll one day be forty.

Nevermind realise that they might be one of the users who can't control their usage, and that the drugs will control them.

They'll be the ones stealing off their granny, leaving their children go hungry, or letting strangers penetrate them, so they've got the next tenner they need, for their next fix.

[Acrylic-bob]

Just found this on Wikipedia...

Adulterants

Chalk (in the Netherlands) and glass particles (in the UK) have been used to make cannabis appear to be higher quality. Increasing the weight of hashish products in Germany with lead caused lead intoxication in at least 29 users. In the Netherlands two chemical analogs of Sildenafil (Viagra) were found in adulterated marijuana.

According to both the "Talk to FRANK" website and the UKCIA website, Soap Bar, "perhaps the most common type of hash in the UK", was found "at worst" to contain turpentine, tranquilizers, boot polish, henna and animal feces—amongst several other things. One small study of five "soap-bar" samples seized by UK Customs in 2001 found huge adulteration by many toxic substances, including soil, glue, engine oil and animal feces.

Bet you didn't realise you were smoking dog muck, did you?

[garinda]

As for cutting crime, I've yet to meet any person addicted to hard drugs, who were in anyway fit enough to hold down a full time job.

Since Job Seekers Allowance doesn't presently stretch to a hundred quid a day, those addicts will still need to supplement their state funds, by crime, or prostitution.

[Acrylic-bob]

I remember once reading a sci-fi novel which rambled on about population and over-population and the effects thereof. In order to keep their populations quiescent and compliant drugs were handed out in the same way as state benefits.

Somehow, thirty years on, that does not seem so far fetched.

[garinda]

Originally Posted by kestrelx

I do not have insomnia

Originally Posted by kestrelx

Anyone here use sleeping pills?

I think Zopiclone are the most common - which I have taken on prescription.

Are we to add memory loss to your ever growing list of symptoms, or did you take sleeping pills as some sort of recreational drug?

You do seem like one of those highly strung, easily angered types.

Perhaps you should make a visit to your doctor, and see if there's something they can prescribe for you, in order that you become a little more chilled.

Failing that, change your dealer.

[garinda]

Originally Posted by Acrylic-bob

I remember once reading a sci-fi novel which rambled on about population and over-population and the effects thereof. In order to keep their populations quiescent and compliant drugs were handed out in the same way as state benefits.

Somehow, thirty years on, that does not seem so far fetched.

Sci-fi?

Probably why I never really saw the great attraction of mind altering drugs.

Much prefer gritty realism, and my own fertile imagination.

[garinda]

Originally Posted by kestrelx

I know how you people work

There's the paranoia again.

Rearing it's ugly head.