Drugs are the biggest problem in Britain

[discodown]

This is a radical view perhaps, but I thought drugs were more acceptable when they were on the fringes of society used mainly by musicians, writers, artists and other creative bohemian types.

 

As with everything though, the problems really started when recreational drugs became widely available to the great unwashed and the criminal classes at large.

Not only is this hopelessy snobbishly elitist its almost wholly innaccurate. Theres never really been a time where drugs were "used mainly by musicians, writers, artists and other creative bohemian types" and even if it was why should only they get to use them?

[spindrift]

Countries that legalise drugs see a fall in usage. It's the "Forbidden Apple" theory, once legalised the drug loses its attraction.

 

Countries that legalise drugs see a fall in crime, it happened here, in Liverpool, under Dr Howard Marks, addicts were prescribed drugs and recorded acquisitive crime fell sharply because addicts no longer had to thieve to feed their addiction.

 

Heroin addicts can lead productive, law-abiding lives with a legal source.

 

Banning drugs is like banning sex, it will never work.

[melthebell]

it happened here, in Liverpool, under Dr Howard Marks,

??

liverpool legalised drugs? when?

and when was howard marks a dr? i thought he was a big time drug smuggler / user?

[spindrift]

John, sorry:

 

The Swiss, for example, in 1997 reported on a three-year experiment in which they had prescribed heroin to 1,146 addicts in 18 locations. They found:

 

 

"Individual health and social circumstances improved drastically ... The improvements in physical health which occurred during treatment with heroin proved to be stable over the course of one and a half years and in some cases continued to increase (in physical terms, this relates especially to general and nutritional status and injection- related skin diseases) ... In the psychiatric area, depressive states in particular continued to regress, as well as anxiety states and delusional disorders ... The mortality of untreated patients is markedly higher."

 

 

They also reported dramatic improvements in the social stability of the addicts, including a steep fall in crime.

 

There are equally impressive results from similar projects in Holland and Luxembourg and Naples and, also, in Britain.

 

 

In Liverpool, during the early 1990s, Dr John Marks used a special Home Office licence to prescribe heroin to addicts. Police reported a 96% reduction in acquisitive crime among a group of addict patients. Deaths from locally acquired HIV infection and drug-related overdoses fell to zero. But, under intense pressure from the government, the project was closed down. In its 10 years' work, not one of its patients had died.

 

 

In the first two years after it was closed, 41 died.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/jun/14/drugsandalcohol.socialsciences