angiescarr

I'm for legalization of cannabis... Not because I want to smoke the stuff, nor that I want my...or your children to. Simply because making out it's as dangerous as other drugs is a lie. and as such is lying to children. If you're caught lying to your children you'd expect your children not to trust you and to believe you lied about everything else.
The government, in bracketing all drugs (except tobacco and alcohol) in the same level of danger causes kids to go up the scale much more than cannabis itself does. Once they've smoked it safely... They're sure they're being lied to about everything else. Tell 'em the truth about all of it!

Rosemary

Totally agree with you. I found a tax disc off a motorbike in the street and took it to the police station. The owner asked the police for my address to come to thank me and he insisted on giving me a few pounds for my honesty. In the same week my neighbour found some money (a fair amount) in the street and did not take it to the police but treated her family to chinese and pocketed the rest. She may have gained more than I did but at least my conscience was clear but I hope that hers was not.

Regarding being given the wrong change, I got as far as the door in a small shop and realised that they had given me the wrong change so turned and told them that it was wrong. They immediately and aggressively said that it was too late to query it as I was at the door, I really enjoyed saying OK and thank you very much for the extra money as I would spend it in another shop where they were more pleasant to customers.

Rosemary

Domino

there are some people who admit to having worked on assembly lines you know!
although I wasnt one of them, they are out there, getting rather old now because it is a long time since we had a viable manufacturing industry where production lines were used to actually make things...

Domino

I am not sure I want to sign up to any statement that condones or promotes the use of any drugs but thats the problem, political decisions without true scientific basis form the bedrock of some of the biggest lies around today.
we know how much damage tobacco and alcohol can, and do, cause, even in "moderation" - but are never banned, just used as a milch cow for the exchequer. Is it because both have been around for centuries that they have this special status ??

IF cannabis is "harmless" then what is the use of using it ?
its like having a 200mph car and only travelling at 30mph

But IF cannabis is "harmless" then the government and us are telling lies to our children because we are saying it is harmful - for political reasons.
irrespective, the more we say not to use it they will lean more and more towards actually trying it, solely because we have told them not to.
in the same way as we tell them not to touch the fire - so they have to find out why.

HBG

I've met three retired rear admirals here in Spain, two British and one German. I've never met ordinary retired police constables, but the place is bouncing with former DCIs. A former prison officer lives nearby and always insisted he used to be the governor of the Maize in Belfast - until that night a big Paddy came into the bar and knocked him spark out.

I blame the sun.

bil

Nothing is harmless. Everything is comparative. The fact that drugs are illegal is down to the fact that people are incapable of looking at it rationally.

Gram for gram, smoking cannabis is more harmful than tobacco, but it isn't addictive per se, and a heavy cannabis user doesn't smoke as much, gram for gram as does a light smoker.

Harmless, and having an effect, aren't the same.

Ecstasy kills a very few people per annum. Aspirin, I have heard kills about 50 a year. I would just point out that aspirin is manufactured with scrupulous care, and ecstasy is manufactured, packed and distributed by criminals.

Also, the deaths from taking ecstasy may not even be due to ecstasy itself.

The manufacture of carbon based chemicals is not as simple as inorganic chemistry. Inorganic chemistry is comparatively simple.

However, in carbon based (organic) chemistry it gets very complex very quickly. You do not get simple clear cut results, and the results vary given the temperature.

A+B > AB in inorganic chemistry, but in organic, there will be some A and some B left over, and if you got the temp wrong, there will be AAB and ABB there too.

If you do not clear out every bit of A, B, AAB and ABB from the mix, then when you come to make the next step, where you want to gp AB + C > ABC then you will have waste products AC, BC, AABC ABBC and so on.

Some of these waste products can be deadly, and in order to make these chemicas, sometimes there can be several steps.

Given that our governments are incapable of stopping the manufacture, sale and use of drugs, a logical person might just conclude that it is time we looked at a more intelligent approach.

Half a century of prohibition has merely put billions of pounds into the hands of organised crime, but all the fools will still run around in circles screaming that we are winning the war on drugs, and prohibition is the only way.

Fools, all of them.

Legalisation will create problems of its own. However, if events in the past are anything to go by, treating addiction as a medical problem, and prescribing clean heroin for example, to addicts would reduce the mountain of problems we face. That would be a net gain.

To give some idea of the comparison.

An illegal addict commits crimes to feed his addiction, will have serious health problems, and his crimes will cost us dearly in terms of police, hospital and insurance costs, as well as police action on the world wide illegal drugs network. The Methadone he is prescribed will damage his health (heroin doesn't) and it is more addictive than heroin.

A legal addict costs us his share of the medical centre, he doesn't have to turn to crime, he has as good a chance of holding down a job as anyone in his socioeducational class which will convert him into a taxpayer. The heroin will cost no more than the methodone that he is currently prescribed, and if there were a legal supply of clean heroin, free for addicts, the international drugs market would cease to exist in the UK.

Other drugs are more problematical, like crystal meth, and special strategies would need to be devised, but how would these be any worse than the dysfunctional system that we have today?

bil

We have seen the damage to society that prohibition of alcohol caused in the USA.

Can you IMAGINE what would happen if tobacco were made illegal? Nicotine addiction makes heroin addiction look like a pussy cat.

Organised crime would have wet dreams about that.

Dick Dasterdly

You present an interesting case for legalisation.
However as almost every country in the World goes along with the current laws to some extent it's very highly unlikely to happen in the near future if ever, and we'll probably never know if your proposal would be a success or not.

To a certain extent the same applies in reverse with alcohol and baccy.
They have been freely available in most countries worldwide for so long that prohibition would be a non starter and in any event we saw what happened when it was tried in the US back in the 30s.

Had they only become easily available worldwide in very recent times, as with many illegal drugs, I imagine they would also have been classified as illegal and prohibited,...... for better or for worse,who knows ?

lynnxa

well you can't blame the News of the World anymore, can you?

Domino

come on bil, not like you - how many are actually killed by Ecstasy.?
the manufacturing by criminals is carried out under quite clean mass production conditions because of the volume needed to meet the demand. no longer a few pills made by hand. (and the plant is generally easy to get hold of on the second hand market)

although asprin is manufactured with scrupulous care, there are still deaths - more likely a reaction with another drug (including alcohol) or condition or overdosing.

this week it was announced that upwards of 80% of those on blood pressure medication actually don't need it, its all caused by worry generated in the doctor's waiting room. but taking them will not cause us any harm. but they can and do have an interaction with other drugs when in the bloodstream.

how can we not tell lies to our children if we are not in receipt of the full facts ??

angiescarr

Too true. Many parents unwittingly tell lies to their children. It's only when the child starts to question and find out that it's either untrue...or not so clear cut,so that the children then start to question their parents honesty. I can honestly say I've never knowingly lied to any of my kids. Except about Santa Claus and the tooth Fairy. Even then when they've been old enough to ask I've introduced the concept of childhood fantasy and explained how this is different to lying. As are white lies when asked "does my bum look big in this". Anyone who tries to say there is any similarity between those concepts and lying, are just bonkers...and mean minded to boot.
Touch wood, my kid's forays 'off the rails' have been short and shallow.
Telling your kids the truth, and teaching honesty is the very foundation of good parenting. But it's not by any means the easy way.

HBG

Nice one. It cheered me up before Bil depressed me again.

The other day I was people watching from the outside coffee terrace of a four star hotel, when I spotted an unusual looking couple sitting too far away from me to see what newspaper one of them was reading. My companion said they were Libyan, I chose Moroccan and felt confident that she would be paying for the coffees.

I walked past their table and found they were reading the Sun. On the terrace of a four star hotel in the sun!

jimenato

27

Mitzyboy

Whats about the SAS??????
I feel safe in Spain because I am surrounded by ex SAS officers ... its great, innit!

bil

http://obsolete.com/ecstasy/russell.html interesting article, puts deaths at about 5 per annum.

http://www.naturalnews.com/027548_sw...eath_risk.html
The CDC now reports that nearly 4,000 Americans have been killed by H1N1 swine flu. This number is supposed to sound big and scary, motivating millions of people to go out and pay good money to be injected with untested, unproven H1N1 vaccines. But let's put the number in perspective: Did you know that more than four times as many people are killed each year by common NSAID painkillers like aspirin?


Good enough?