MartinLuther

That you can't prove (or demonstrate) that something which is not clear cut is actually clear cut because something else is clear cut.

That you can't prove (or demonstrate) that drugs should be illegal because house-breaking and drink driving are illegal.

iamthecreaturefromuranus

errr right.. I think !!

Illegal drugs are illegal... house breaking is illegal... drink driving is illegal.

Arguments being used here to advocate legalising currently illegal drugs are that it would save money and that lots of people already do it. I.E. a battle lost.
I could make equally spurious arguments for legalising housebreaking and drink driving... I mean just think of the boost to the economy if people had to nip out every couple of weeks to replace stuff that people had stolen from your home !!

It's a nonsense argument... but it's just a valid as legalising drugs 'because lots of people do it' and it 'would save us money on policing'.

MartinLuther

I agree that they are all nonsense arguments.

iamthecreaturefromuranus

Good.. that's that settled then.

MartinLuther

Does anyone have a sensible argument for or against?

I must admit that I don't really. I tend towards thinking we should try decrimalising (registration), possibly private use only (and not around children) but think that full legalisation would be too far. Unfortunately I don't think there is an ideal or perfect solution to this, so all solutions can be criticised.

willmore

Yes, they should be decriminalized and then taxed to death by the govt - a easy way for the govt to obtain revenue, and perhaps would stop some of the violence if they were easily accessed.....

iamthecreaturefromuranus

For those of you voting in favour consider this:-

I spent the first 30+ years of my life living on council estates in central Manchester, probably amongst the most drug blighted areas of the UK. In all that time not once did I try a class A drug and perhaps more surprisingly not once was I even offered one.

Conversely I was smoking at 13, helped along by the local Paki shop selling them to kids at 5p a piece, and drinking at 15 or so. I even used to go to the local pub with my teachers when I was 17.

If you had drugs as freely available as tobacco and alcohol then what's the chances that I, and tens of thousands of other kids would be crack/smack/ice addicts while still in their early teens?.

Everybody happy with that prospect?

tomarense

FYI, I was raised in a similar situation to you in Glasgow and had much the same experiences. So, if I may, I will comment on your remarks here and previously.

My argument for the legalisation of drugs has little to do with tax revenue or "having lost the battle" but, rather, an acceptance of the reality of fact.

Drug taking is a fact, and has been for as long as we care to go back in history. And, it will continue regardless of legalisation or prohibition.

As to my assertion that illegal drugs, in some form, are being produced is self evident - diamorphines, benzodiazipans, various hallucinogenics (developed by various governments). Please take the time to research my assertions as you may find it informative.

As I have said before, prohibition has been tried in many situations , but has failed in its objective on every occasion, spectacularly so in the US with regard to alcohol.

Prohibition is the ultimate aim of the scum class as it leads to their enrichment and the degradation of society. Reference, in the last hundred years, Capone, Joe Kennedy, Westminster's son and, if you want to look at politics, MacCarthy, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot.

Your argument is emotional and I can accept that but, nonetheless, it is flawed.

DadAgain

Also consider this - at age 19 I gave up drinking for a couple of years.

Why? MONEY - I did the analysis and discovered (along with many of my friends) that alcohol was very expensive 'bang-for-buck'. Instead we carefully researched, tried and tested a large number of recreational drugs widely available at the time.

Out of hundreds of my friends all doing much the same (although not too many abandonned alcohol altogether) I know *nobody* who experienced any difficulties beyond slight motivational disorders from being stoned from time to time. We smoked lots of canabis, took a lot of mushrooms, dropped LSD, took Amphetamines and Ecstacy.

Personaly - I didnt get on with the 'dance drugs' and after a couple of energetic nights out to give the a go, I decided that halucinogenics were more my cup of tea. I had a couple of good years where a common friday night entertainment was an LSD trip costing me just 3 or 4 pounds enabling me to wander peacefully around enjoying life with a group of friends for a whole evening whilst others in my peer group spent 5 times as much and became beligerent and destructive.

There were occassions where for logistical reasons I did 'the shopping' for a group of friends and therefore exposed myself to the legal risk of being a "Class A drug dealer" - for which the maximum penalty would be many many years in prison and a life no doubt destroyed (for the record I consider this to be the MOST DANGEROUS risk I have ever exposed myself to).

A couple of years later and after joining the serious workforce almost ALL the friends I knew back then no longer have the time or inclination for those recreational drugs (most have succesfully quit smoking cigarettes too). No lives were ruined (most are now very productive highly valued professional members of society), nobody inconvenienced and health uneffected.

By contrast I know a number of people who shunned the recreational drug thing at that time and preferred instead to focus their efforts on 'legitimate' intoxication. A couple are in prison following violent drunken outbursts, others have lives in tatters following drunken losses of control.

I'm not for one minute suggesting that their ARENT people who struggle with some recreational drugs. But my hypothesis would be that the vast majority would have experiences much like mine - benign, peaceful, harmless and economically less destructive than the more expensive 'legal' drugs.

Should I currently be rotting in jail for supplying drugs many years ago? should all my friends have blackened criminal records for our peaceful harmless choices? Should we have shunned the pharmacutical lolly-shop of choices in favour of the all-mighty alcohol?

The legalisation argument has a number of key points:
1) Will the 'problem' users be any worse?
Theres no evidence to suggest this would be the case. problem users would no doubt still exist, but they might be better managed, have less reason to develop criminal tendencies

2) Would society as a whole be inconvenienced more or less?
Most respected analysists on the topic suggest that lawlessness would reduce, crime would reduce, domestic insurance premiums might drop and the cost of incarceration and prosecution to the taxpayer would massively drop.

3) Are the drugs in question 'undoubtably' bad? The jury is out.... alcohol kills lots of people. Tobacco kills lots of people. It *may* be true that allowing people to socially chose other forms of intoxication may be safer. [further citation needed!]

Wol

You are right - there's no real solution. The best that can be achieved IMO is to accept that some people will always want for whatever reason to shove stuff into themselves, and create an environment where this has as little impact on the rest of society as possible.

Many arguments have an almost straw man flavour: as if the two choices are (a) illegal and therefore not much of a problem or (b) legal and therefore a huge problem.

This misses the point that the present situation - illegal supply - is in anyone's thinking, a failure. Drugs are apparently available for the asking and a only tiny proportion is intercepted. The more that *is* intercepted, the higher the drugs' suppliers' prices, this in itself generating even more criminal activity to pay for them.

I don't know whether legalising the supply would overall make the situation better or worse = no-one does unless it is tried - but the evidence of Prohibition would certainly suggest that preventing people from getting what they want leads to many undesirable consequences including police corruption, gang warfare and many third party deaths.

My sympathy is reserved for those who have nothing to do with drugs but suffer the effects such as overloaded emergency departments, burglary and the rest. I am sorry for those who are hooked on them but for god's sake there's no shortage of information on the dangers and it's their bodies.

Sydney council has free injecting rooms so that these people can shoot up on illegal drugs - what sort of cop-out is that?

iamthecreaturefromuranus

Out of all that lot the thing I'm most impressed with is that you had "hundreds of friends" who were all taking drugs. It's not even the fact that they were all taking drugs.. just that you had hundreds of friends. That's very impressive.

I lived in a street of about 36 houses. Out of that street I know of at least three people who died as a result of illegal substance abuse over a period of about ten years. My nephew, who lives in the same street, will probably become number four within the next year or so.
I suggest your "hundreds of friends" were remarkably lucky.

iamthecreaturefromuranus

Is drug taking a fact, of course it is and I would be stupid to try and deny that... but what is being suggested here is, that because it's a fact, we legalise it. Why?

There are plenty of other activities that are 'facts' that nobody would suggest legalising simply because a percentage of the population are involved in those activities.

If the fact is that most people truly believe that society as a whole would be better off (and so far the poll suggests that) when everybody in it could be out of their face in seconds by using a mass produced, Government authorized, cocktail of drugs then I'm obviously past my sell by date.

DadAgain

Uni campus with population of over 6000, when living in halls there were probably a hundred or so I was on first name basis with (population changed each year). The Music department (to which I was associated) had 40 or so students all of whom I knew very well, The Orchestra (that I conducted) had 70 members all of whom I knew pretty well (ok most were also music students, and some lived in the same block as me - but not all). I also played in a number of bands gigging around the area got to know a lot of people in the live-music fraternity. Add to that friends made from mutual connections, those I played football with and of course the smaller circle of friends left over from school and that was a LOT of people.

Yes I'd say I easily had hundreds of friends back in the day - not necessarily good friends but good enough for me to share a smoke and a drink and have a bit of a chat with.... alas now I have a *much* smaller circle of acquaintances.

iamthecreaturefromuranus

Just a difference in our definition of 'friend' then. More acquaintances than friends.

lapin_windstar

It's not naive at all to say that all the drugs are already on the market. Legalisation wouldn't be introducing any new substance. Drug manufacture is already a huge worldwide industry with vertically integrated supply chains and a distribution network that extends to practically every village in this country. Amway, Avon and Tupperware could only dream of market penetration like that.