I knew that this was one story the BBC would just love. I refer, of course, to the lunatic call from Sir Ian Gilmore for drug use to be de-criminalised. Happily, Dominic Casciani is at hand to explain the difference between decriminalising and legalisation of illegal drugs. The BBC memo is that we cannot win the war on drugs so best divert all that cash to helping drug addicts. Yip – I can see why the BBC likes this one..
FREE DRUGS?
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As I posted on the general thread on the Radio 5 phone in this morning all the usual thick halfwits (why do druggies always sound totally f**ked up?) were talking about buying their smack over the counter, but with what? These morons don’t have jobs and I don’t think benefits should be used for smack. What they want of course are free drugs paid for by those of us that have proper jobs.
So can I get free booze then? Free fags?
Perhaps the BBC think they should be able to get a free Romanian rent boy in the Chemist as well?
The BBC spun the lie that alcohol is a more dangerous drug than most drugs, apparently dope heads don’t go around stabbing people (except when they are so spaced out and they need money of course) but alcohol users do.
Funny that in all the years I’ve gone to France, you know sitting outside in a little French bistro having a nice glass of wine, I’ve never been abused by some vomit hurling French person, but for some reason it’s the chav scum who have of course been encouraged by Liebour to behave like vermin and get off free, after all it’s their right to get pissed innit?.
We can’t win the war on drugs, anymore than USA could Prohibit alcohol or New Labour could win its war on alcohol and tobacco
It is best to take drugs away from the crime gangs
So should be decriminalise child porn as well? There are plenty of Countries around the world who don’t have a drugs problem, but they tend to be the ones that execut the dealers and lock up the dope heads.
A person has a right to ingest whatever they wish unless it infringes on the liberty of others.
Child porn is a poor analogy as it requires a victim to suffer in the first place and you know it.
What happens in your world when they execute the smokers and coffee drinkers after that, will there be anyone left for you to murder that doesn’t adhere to your approved list of substances.
And for your information I’m not a druggie, just a libertarian.
Yawn. The Daily Mailesque chip on the shoulder B-BBC has regarding any remotely sensible drugs policy really is the only consistent flaw in an otherwise excellent website.
Yer man I need drugs like nooow you know.
I’m with anon on this one.
We should start with basic questions. Why ban hard drugs?
1) Health of addicts and indirectly health of others.
2) Drugs are a bad thing without further explanation.
3) Drug users do not contribute to society and are a drain on resources.
4) Drug use leads to criminality and prostitution.
Have I left anything out?
Why decriminalise hard drugs (and distribute directly)?
1) The major health problems relating to purity and hygiene (syringe) issues are removed.
2) Opiates were freely available in ‘patent’ medicines until the end of the 18th Century.
3) There is some evidence from small scale trials that freed from the pressure of obtaining the fix that at least some addicts can, like insulin ‘addicts’ hold down regular employment and some at least manage to come off drugs.
4) Distributed drugs reduces the price and therefore the profit to almost zero. The addict doesn’t have to commit crimes or enter prostitution for an income. Those who do should face the law as do their non-addicted fellows. The criminal element and the associated corruption of police and judiciary would be eliminated.
Martin: Child porn laws are designed to protect the children not the consumer of child porn.
Martin: Booze and fags are separate issues. You are confusing government free distribution of a means of enjoyment with government provision of what would be considered a medical drug only to those who pass strict medical/ psychological examination, delivered by trained staff in strictly measured amounts.
If alcohol was distributed to alcoholics by chemists who only give enough to stave off the delirium tremens/withdrawal symptoms and avoid trade (the failure of the methadone programme) by ensuring this minimum amount is consumed on premises you have an equivalent to what I propose. The Dutch experiment of users able to buy what they want, the equivalent of pubs and booze, has proved to be at least a partial failure by attracting undesirables to the Netherlands.
Cigarettes have been described as a means to deliver a measured amount of an addictive drug i.e. nicotine. It was only discovered recently that manufacturers actually add nicotine in the process. If the level was kept down to the amount left during the regular tobacco process the problem would be much reduced.
At the very least, legalising – but regulating (in a similar manner to the pre-60s regime) – hard and recreational drugs would do two things: prevent the adulteration of the drugs and remove the profits of the trade from organised crime (and, BTW, prevent much petty crime committed by druggies to pay for the next fix). It may be that, in the short term, the consumption of hard drugs would rise but, frankly, if someone wants to become a druggie that’s his business. In the same way, I don’t smoke but if an adult wants to smoke cigarettes the consequent health problems are his responsibility not mine. Anyway, smokers apparently contribute far more to the NHS that they take out for the treatment of (apparently) smoking-related diseases.
So I’m with deegee and, possibly, Gilmore. I suspect though that Gilmore, being the statist authoritarian that he is, would like to see a bureaucratic empire created to administer the supply of drugs. Anyway, broken clocks and all that, but Gilmore’s swan song is music to my ears.
Fascinating the way that drugs policy is the only policy the BBC is prepared to promote (which it does) as having failed when the same might be said of other policies.
For example, the subsidising of family breakdown has lead to an immense increase in child abuss and educational non-achievement. Yet not a peep from the Beeb about the welfare underclass we’re now stuck with.
If one’s working class one might regard the destruction of the grammar schools as having greatly reduced educational opportunity and social mobility for bright working-class children, but the Beeb, staffed by Socialists, naturally enough regards that as having been a positive outcome, for all the human cost to kids who don’t have Beeboid drones for parents, living off a poll tax.
At the very least, the abolition of capital punishment doesn’t seem to have resulted in a reduction in the murder rate, and costs us a fortune in keeping people in prison each year.
Putting back street abortionists out of business (a worthy objective) seems nowadays rather to have been at the expense of killing hundreds of thousands of healthy babies each year – something no-one foresaw in 1967.
In each case, can any of these policies be said, in hindsight, to have been wholly successful? If drugs policy has failed, why is the BBC prepared to discuss its failure and not that of other, equally contentious, policy areas? Just asking.
random drug tests for all Beeboids – if they’ve nothing to hide they’ve nothing to fear
oooo look at the time it must be 4:20 some where in the world. i have to go, theres something i need to do
Deegee: I understand where you are coming from, but I don’t think the answer is to liberalise drugs in the country. I want to see a politician grow some balls and come down hard on drug dealers.
The average sentence for drug dealers is something like 7 years, by the time you knock off remand, the 30% they get off straight away and then another 30% for being a good boy the average dealer probably doesn’t do 18 months in the nick, if they are making thousands a year that’s just a blip.
Dealers should get life and I mean life, in prison until death with no parole.
There are plenty of countries that have long sentences for drug dealers and mules and they don’t seem to have the problems we have.
Also legalising drugs won’t stop the illegal use of drugs, just as legalising prostitution wouldn’t stop the illegal trafficking in women and the other crimes around it.
Sorry but I just disagree with you on this.