Illegal Drugs

[annakey]

What’s the ARRSE view on illegal drugs? On the one hand I’d expect a strong, authoritarian, anti-drugs position – damn the junkies and the horse they rode in on. On the other hand, many senior coppers and other authority figures now take a more finessed position on drugs, and some ARRSE members are (broadly) libertarian anarchists so may favour personal choice and decriminalisation.

Plus the killing of Rhys Jones in Liverpool has again brought the subject into focus.

It is almost guaranteed that the guns used in the killing of a child in Britain will have been bought with money handed to gangsters by drug prohibition. Scotland Yard estimates that 95 per cent of guns on its patch are related to the drugs trade.

http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/johann_hari/article2906301.ece

My position is that I loath drugs culture and the gangsters who supply them. While they remain illegal I support strong police action against both groups. But I’d like to see a major UK political party detach itself from the ludicrous US ‘war on drugs’, face-down the Daily Mail editorials and take a more rational line. I broadly agree with the quoted article.

 

[cpunk]

I'm in favour of legalisation, regulation and taxation of 'illegal' drugs. They're not going to go away so we might as well make them pay for the social costs they impose. The fact is that legally produced drugs will sell for a fraction of the price of the illegal stuff from other countries, even when taxed to the eyebrows, so there won't be a smuggling problem, unless other countries follow our lead. It might even improve society.

Mind you, I'm a kind of Tory Anarchist: I can't see David Cameron following this line.

 

[legal_eagle]

Tricky one...I can see the argument for decriminalisation and particularly taxation but how exactly should it be managed....

Complete decriminalisation..i.e. you can buy whatever you want from the chemist etc or drugs such as heroin available on prescription for addicts in order to prevent them committing crime to fund their habit? The latter would for the most part defeat the argument on taxation as most heroin addicts are on free prescriptions anyway...

 

[REgards]

If anyone has ever read the Ben Elton book 'High Society' it talks about the very same thing, legalisation, control and taxation of all illegal drugs. It fails (of course) but does make a valid point. With proper control the drug dealers profits would likely fall to nothing and just maybe reduce some of the gun crime that's plagueing the UK.

Not that I condone drugs in any way, but whatever's your poison I suppose.



Edited for mong spelling

 

[devilish]

Even if they are legal, junkie scum fcuks will still rob cars/houses/shops/old people/mobile phones to fund their addiction.

You might change the title at the point of sale from illegal to legal, but a leopard does not change it's spots.

 

[annakey]

Mind you, I'm a kind of Tory Anarchist: I can't see David Cameron following this line.

LOL. I thought this thread might flush a few.

I reckon Cameron's split on this too. He'll have numerous socially liberal, or libertarian, party members/supporters, particularly wealthy, urban Tories - the Notting Hill set if you like - who take a legalisation/control/regulation line. Yet they have to keep quite for fear of enraging Sir Buffton-Tuffton (who last had a rational thought in 1956).

 

[Black-Mafia]

Banning drugs does'nt stop people taking em, the same as making firearms illegal does'nt stop people getting hold of em.
The only people who benefit are the criminals, the jails are at bursting point and the majority of the people in are for drug related offences, the goverments "war on drugs" has'nt made a bit of difference in fact where I live ( Liverpool ) the price has dropped, its time for someone to have the common sense to legalise drugs.

 

[RHODESIAN]

It has got to happen before long,most crimes have some connection with illegal drugs and like cpunk says they are here to stay,the police,with the best will in the world will never stamp them out,so why not legalise them at a fraction of the cost of the smuggled drugs and control it like that,every now and again they could up the purity a bit,thus getting rid of a few thousand addicts et voila crime down addicts down and goverment money up

 

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Even if they are legal, junkie scum fcuks will still rob cars/houses/shops/old people/mobile phones to fund their addiction.

Yes, but I'm sure I've read somewhere that what costs the NHS £5 to buy (legally) costs scrotes £100s (illegally), and is also far purer.

Lower cost price = less drug-related crime.

Free from drop-in centres = zero drug-related crime?

As long as they sign a register saying that they're junkies, and accept all the social services intrusion that should naturally follow from that, I have absolutely no problems with them shooting up off the NHS budget.

edited to add: an absolute must-read is: Emperors of Dreams: Drugs in the 19th Century by Mike Jay. It persuasively demolishes the idea that prohibition has any social or functional utility at all.

 

[legal_eagle]

We can buy up all Terry's opium to make the legal skag too!!

Maybe he won't shoot at us so much!!

 

[annakey]

I have absolutely no problems with them shooting up off the NHS budget.

I didn't know till now that Tricky-Dicky's partly to blame for the current UK heroin situation. From the quoted article:

The drug that the Croxteth Crew and the Strand Gang specialize in – heroin – was actually safely controlled in Britain by doctors and pharmacists until the 1970s. They gave small, regular prescriptions to addicts, who in turn committed virtually no crime. This policy worked well. It was only stopped because the US government under Richard Nixon applied massive diplomatic pressure to join his country's Puritan crusade against drugs. Once the doctors were banned from prescribing heroin, the gangs stepped in, and they have grown ever since.

 

[johnojohnson]

I'm against it as the resulting habit and it's affects far outway any benifits from legalisation and taxation. The concept of "it's legal now so I won't bother" just doesn't hold water and as someone posted earlier the users do not consider that robbing and killing anything other than the norm and will do it whether they get it legally or not.

As an aside, where do get the supply from of E, Crack, Heroin etc to supply them through the "registered" distributed and how do you explain to some drugged up moron that they have had there fix for the day and can't have any more.

What should be the norm is a strict infringement of the users liberty and rigid enforcement of the law and not some mamby pamby attitude.

IMHO of course

JJ

Edited to add: Will the gobment enforce all manufacturers to print pictures of addicts brains, lungs, genitals etc on packets to "stop more people from taking them" as they will do as of next year for all tobacco products.

 

[msr]

With proper control the drug dealers profits would likely fall to nothing and just maybe reduce some of the gun crime that's plagueing the UK.

And certain sections of Afghanistan.

msr

 

[maxi_77]

The real problem with drugs is the criminality involve in the importation, distribution, and paying for them. Making them legal and having a controlled and licensed distribution system would at a stroke put the big time criminals involved in the drug trade out of business in the UK, and at te same time greatly reduce the petty crime involved. It would also make it far easier for addicts to access help and reduce the number of new addicts as the need for pushers to create new customers disappears.

Legalising drugs will not stop their use, nor will it stop new addicts, but it will reduce vastly the ammount of crime involved, and perhaps allow the plod to deal with some of the other aspects of criminal behaviour.

 

[legal_eagle]

I'm against it as the resulting habit and it's affects far outway any benifits from legalisation and taxation.
JJ

I'm not so sure about that...a lot of the damage to people's health (from heroin at least) is as I understand it, caused by the impurities in the drug itself, which would be solved by giving pharmaceutical grade heroin and from malnutrition and unclean living habits due in the main to the fact that all their money goes on the drug.....

I could be wrong of course...I'm no expert on drugs that's for sure..

 

[REgards]

Legalising drugs will not stop their use, nor will it stop new addicts, but it will reduce vastly the ammount of crime involved, and perhaps allow the plod to deal with some of the other aspects of criminal behaviour.

Like eradicating all chavs from the face of the earth?

 

[SO3Paperclips]

It makes sense to legalise, tax and license "recreational" drugs like Ecstacy, Acid and Cannabis.

Heroin should be on prescription to registered addicts, in pre-loaded syringes, (maybe in drop in centres?).

Not sure what to do about cocaine. Its recreational, but can be turned into crack - which is definitely a prescription drug!

These measures would probably be revenue-neutral, would lessen the number of people dying/going mad through dodgy drugs and would take the profit motive away from all the gangs in the city centres of the UK. It's so obvious a solution that I cannot understand why the government doesn't just get on and do it.

The biggest downsides I can think of are:

What would all the crims do?
How would we deal with the millions of drug tourists?

 

[devilish]

We can buy up all Terry's opium to make the legal skag too!!

Maybe he won't shoot at us so much!!

"Terry Taliban's opium emporium" has a very nifty ring to it.

Ok, so we make heroin, cocaine and cannabis and the such legal. We then license a number of niche outlets to provide these product, which we have purchased from Terry, Columbia Bob and Amsterdam Sam. After a couple of years of peace and harmony amongst our new found 'buisness dealers' the Government realise the amount of revenue that is being made and they then decide wouldn't it be a bloody good idea to grow our own.

Terry and his mates get awfully p1ssed off and decide it's a good idea to start slotting squaddies again.

 

[legal_eagle]

Heroin should be on prescription to registered addicts, in pre-loaded syringes, (maybe in drop in centres?).

I don't know about the merits of the other stuff but I'd definitely agree with that...

Take all the current addicts out of the market and there would be no money in the illegal importation of heroin...the traffickers wouldn't bother = no black market heroin = no new addicts..

Or would it?? Worth a try at least, nothing else has worked

 

[msr]

How would we deal with the millions of drug tourists?

Who cares, as long as we are recycling their spondulicks via the Treasury?

msr