I agree - in countries where personal use of cannabis/marijuana has been decriminalised for years, such as Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands, there is no evidence to support this at all.

Absolutely true! Decriminalising it has only diminished the influence of big drug cartels and the violence that goes along with it. The last thing the drug cartels want is decriminalisation or legalisation. Just as the smugglers didn't want prohibition to end in the US.

Whereas, in a country where it has not been decriminalised:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23913818

Not working too well, is it?

An interesting article here about the post-decriminalisation experience in Portugal, which was the first country in Europe to adopt this policy:-


http://content.time.com/time/health/...893946,00.html

And a more recent one:-


http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-891060-2.html

Lynn thanks for the links..

Wow I spend a lot of time in Portugal and had no idea that they had gone so far... even to harder drugs!

I think the examples given so far on this thread make a very compelling case.

Thanks

Jon

I remember when Portugal first went down this road I was quite surprised as I'd never thought of it as a particularly progressive country (although a very nice one!).

What's sauce for the goose may not be sauce for the gander.
If the UK is considered a to be binge booze nation then why not a binge drug nation if it becomes decriminalized ?

Good point... it has a lot to do with existing culture.

I reckon it could become a hip, popular thing for a decade or so... until eventually becoming socially passé, and no longer hip and and popular, and likely frowned upon, like many things we once embraced but now despise as populist sentiment.

Still, pulling the rug from under the drug lords would be a kick IMHO...

Clearly the Dutch authorities don't agree with you as as of late they have been tightening up their once liberal drug policies, with locals in Amsterdam and border regions becoming pissed off with tourists coming just to smoke weed.

Furthermore Spain has huge problems with substance abuse, by some counts the worst in Europe.

Is this due in part to decriminalisation and the Spanish authority's unconcerned attitude towards drug use? It is hard to say.

However to say there is no evidence of a drug problem in Spain is absurd because there clearly is.

How about because alcohol is totally different in its nature from most other illegal drugs?

The vast majority of people are able to drink alcohol in moderation, know when they've had too much and recognise when they have a hang-over.

It seems to me that most users of illegal drugs can't recognise this due to the nature of the substances they are using, which consequently means high rates of addiction and dependency and an inability to recognise coming down from a high, which results in the user behaving in an erratic, unpredictable and potentially violent manner.

To try and compare alcohol to weed and particularly harder drugs is absolute nonsense.

Erm, the Dutch resisted the EU as long as they could. The result, of course (mainly at the request of the Germans, where weed is very, very illegal) that they have to check IDs to ensure they are dutch residents. Being that their primary clientele are tourists, the coffee shops are quite pissed (and launched all kinds of protests), but they have little choice.

Spain has some drug abuse, but far less than those with more prohibitive laws, such as Germany or the UK. Yes, Spain is a major import point to the EU, but that has everything to do with geography and nothing to do with drug use in Spain. It has much more to do with drug demand in northern Europe, where it's a big problem, with the predictable short-sighted solution simply to make it "more illegal".

I'm not comparing the two.

All I'm saying is that if folk are inclined to binge to extreme on one habit, given the opportunity, they may well be inclined to do the same on another habit and if so the results wouldn't even bear thinking about.

Though alcohol is legal, it is seriously abused by many. People drink until they are vomitting in the streets, fighting, harming themselves and others and generally causing quite a mess. A mess I might add that costs thousands of tax payers money to repair the damages.
There is no comparison of alcohol to weed?
For once I agree with you. People who smoke weed don´t cause a fraction of the aggravation that people drinking alcohol do!
Most, or if not all of your post is more accurate to that of drinkers! Not "pot heads"

Most drugs are different in their nature from most other drugs. In that way alcohol is no different. The only thing that makes alcohol different from illegal drug is its 'illegalness'.

You should read up on drugs. For instance not all illegal drugs are addictive - LSD for example is not - although alcohol and tobacco both are. So obviously addictiveness in itself is not a particular reason for making a drug illegal.

A comment you made earlier about marijuana users needs commenting upon. You said that they were anti - authority or something like that - can't remember the exact words. In fact most of the marijuana users I know are responsible middle-class people with families, holding down good jobs - far from the anti - establshment type you describe. Most of their use is restricted to a relaxing spliff after work from time to time.

There is no link between marijuana and harder drugs apart from 'illegalness' so if one leads to the other (any evidence of that?) then it is only the illegaleness that is the link. In all other ways marijuana is linked to hard drugs no more than alcohol is.

Some very sobering thoughts regarding the wide variety of negative health effects caused by Marijuana.

http://www.drugabuse.gov/publication...acts/marijuana

It surprises me not that Marijuana was reclassified from C back to B.

Though it may not have affected the overall usage rate to any great extent, IMO it's best that ppl. are fully aware of the reasons why, including some of those detailed above.