A sensible discussion about current drugs policy.

[spindrift]

Portugal decriminalized drugs in mid-2001. The effect on drug use has been a notable decrease in drug usage by minors at the same time when drug usage rates in the rest of Europe have been increasing. Glen Greenwald has more.

 

Drugs should be legal because you own your body, and the idea of a consensual crime where you are both victim and perpetrator, is anti-freedom and irrational. But for pragmatists out there who can’t get on board because they think that legalizing drugs will result in more drug usage by minors (the “for the children” argument), here is the evidence that it will not:

 

http://txfx.net/2009/04/08/drug-use-in-portugal-plunges-after-decriminalization/

 

 

 

 

Can the supporters of the current policy explain why they want more addicts?

[esme]

Mod Note

 

A number of off topic and insulting posts have been removed, I may have been a bit overzealous with that if you feel your posts were removed unfairly please contact the Helpdesk.

 

Lets try this one last time, this is supposedly a sensible discussion about the current drugs policy, if you wish to discuss the George Michael case there is a separate thread that you can post in, if you wish to insult each other then do so on some other forum.

 

Discuss the topic and refrain from insulting each other otherwise the thread may be locked or deleted and those responsible may face further sanctions.

 

Any queries, comments or complaints regarding this should be directed to the Helpdesk

[melthebell]

seem my posts been deleted, surprising

i wasnt trying to be personal or insulting, i was trying to show that bassmans whole drug views come from the headlines of the red top newspapers rathert han a rational and thought out arguement

[Hairyloon]

It was on an ealier page on teletext now it just says the government don't agree (remember they are the elected government).

Well I didn't vote for them, and frankly I would not trust them to wipe their own bottoms.

And I refer the honourable gentleman to the answer I gave earlier for the real reasons the government don't like the idea.

[Bassman62]

seem my posts been deleted, surprising

i wasnt trying to be personal or insulting, i was trying to show that bassmans whole drug views come from the headlines of the red top newspapers rathert han a rational and thought out arguement

I'm sorry but you were trying to get mods involved by being insulting.

My views have not changed.

I'm against substance abuse.

I'm against anyone who gets involved in substance abuse.

I'm against self harmers/substance abusers.

I'm against paying for the treatment of sef harmer/substance abusers.

I'm against having to support weak willed serial drug/substance abusers.

I'm against saying crime will fall, on that logic legalise housebraking shoplifting etc.

I'm against excuse makers.

I'm against my probation officer neighbour who let her 14 year old son smoke cannabis in the house, go to school in the morning with a fag in one hand and a bottle of lager in the other.

I've raised four children all in good jobs, as I've said before 5 graduation photographs on my living room wall and four lovely grandchildren, I must be doing or have done something right.

My wife and I are currently sorting out the estate of a close friend who couldn't cope with life, we've handled over £100,000, we're not well off but we can account for every penny and have not taken a single penny in costs or fees, his 12 year old son will get it all with interest.

So don't tell me I have to rely on tabloid rags to think for me.

[Digsy]

I'm sorry but you were trying to get mods involved by being insulting.

My views have not changed.

I'm against substance abuse.

I'm against anyone who gets involved in substance abuse.

I'm against self harmers/substance abusers.

I'm against paying for the treatment of sef harmer/substance abusers.

I'm against having to support weak willed serial drug/substance abusers.

I'm against saying crime will fall, on that logic legalise housebraking shoplifting etc.

I'm against excuse makers.

I'm against my probation officer neighbour who let her 14 year old son smoke cannabis in the house, go to school in the morning with a fag in one hand and a bottle of lager in the other.

I've raised four children all in good jobs, as I've said before 5 graduation photographs on my living room wall and four lovely grandchildren, I must be doing or have done something right.

My wife and I are currently sorting out the estate of a close friend who couldn't cope with life, we've handled over £100,000, we're not well off but we can account for every penny and have not taken a single penny in costs or fees, his 12 year old son will get it all with interest.

So don't tell me I have to rely on tabloid rags to think for me.

 

Do you agree with cannabis being used as medication for those that need it?

Or are you against those too?

[willman]

Portugal decriminalized drugs in mid-2001. The effect on drug use has been a notable decrease in drug usage by minors at the same time when drug usage rates in the rest of Europe have been increasing. Glen Greenwald has more.

 

Drugs should be legal because you own your body, and the idea of a consensual crime where you are both victim and perpetrator, is anti-freedom and irrational. But for pragmatists out there who can’t get on board because they think that legalizing drugs will result in more drug usage by minors (the “for the children” argument), here is the evidence that it will not:

 

http://txfx.net/2009/04/08/drug-use-in-portugal-plunges-after-decriminalization/

 

Can the people who see Portugals decriminalisation as a success explain why they want to legalise hard drugs or give them away for free?

 

 

Can the supporters of the current policy explain why they want more addicts?

 

 

Can the people who see Portugals decriminalisation as a success explain why they want to legalise hard drugs or give them away for free?

 

The number of druggies going into rehab has doubled - surely thats part of the reason why they don't have as many druggies as the UK.

[Bassman62]

Do you agree with cannabis being used as medication for those that need it?

Or are you against those too?

If Cannabis is a help to those who genuinly need it and given on prescription like most controled medication is then I've no objection whatsoever.

[spindrift]

There are only a handful of politicians who are willing call for drugs to be decriminalised, but in private many experts seem to think that this would be a good idea.

 

 

Chris Mullin took an interest in the subject when he was chairman of the Commons home affairs committee and, in his diaries, he says that David Blunkett, Eliza Manningham-Buller (the then head of MI5) and "a lot of chief constables" were either in favour of legalisation, or at least hinted to him that they might be. Now Mullin can add another name to his list:

 

 

David Halpern, a former Downing Street policy expert.

 

Halpern worked for the prime minister's strategy unit from 2001 to 2007, mostly as chief analyst, and he writes about drugs in his new book, The Hidden Wealth of Nations. There was never much chance he was going to get Tony Blair to back the heroin legalisation. But, in the book, Halpern says this approach could cut crime dramatically.

 

Up to 80% of certain crime types, such as shoplifting and burglary, are thought to be drug related. Visibility of drug-related activity is also known to be an additional driver of fear. A key point to understand is that the best drug strategy depends on the maturity of the drug market in question. When a new drug enters the "market", it can be very effective to criminalise it and police it aggressively. However, once a drug has been around and in use for decades, criminal justice sanctions become much less effective, such as with addicts who have been on heroin for 20 years (or alcohol, in the case of the US prohibition).

 

At this point, a better strategy is to focus efforts on managing the harms. This may involve "legalising", or medicalising, the supply of long-established drugs to chronic users to undermine the criminal suppliers and to stop the person needing to steal or prostitute themselves to pay for the habit. International evidence suggests that such approaches can reduce associated crime by up to 60%.

 

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2010/mar/15/drugspolicy-drugs

 

In the early 1960's there were only a small number of registered addicts (who received prescriptions for pure heroin from licenced doctors. When this was outlawed it paved the way to the monster we have now:-

Over 300,000 known addicts

Criminalised and desparate people

Billion of pounds spent each year in a losing battle against the pushers

Impure and dangerous concoctions of heroin on the streets

Violent and nasty criminals making fortunes on the misery of the weak

 

This really is a no brainer, the present system is a failure will now end in sight.

 

 

Oh for courageous politicians!

[spindrift]

The fact of heroin's illegality raises the price of diamorphine to many times what it would cost in a legal market, because traffickers and dealers charge what has been called a 'risk premium' to compensate them for the dangers they face in getting diamorphine to the user.

 

 

 

At a low price we could expect much less property crime (although we might also expect a larger increase in new users -but these are matters that should be based on research, not assumptions).

 

Another point is that the economics of a market where products must be smuggled secretively means that the market is dominated by high-potency, and thus high-risk, versions of the product.

 

 

I haven't tried, but I'd bet I'd find it much easier to buy diamorphine than opium, the plant resin from which morphine is extracted and then acetylated into diamorphine. In a society where opiates in general were legal, there's no reason to assume that most users would choose high-risk injectable diamorphine over the (relatively) less risky smokable opium, just as currently many people choose 4% beer over 70% absinthe.

 

Thirdly, 'legalisation' isn't an absolute term.

 

 

While many supporters of the status quo pretend we only have a straight choice between blanket prohibition on one side and free-market legalisation, diamorphine-on-sale-in-candy-shops on the other, this is clearly false.

 

 

We could put all sorts of regulations in place to mitigate the harms of legal diamorphine, including, at one extreme, having it only available to use in clinics on prescription. This is more or less what the Swiss do, and they've found it to reduce crime, reduce overdose deaths and reduce new users starting to take street diamorphine, perhaps because, with the need to sell to friends to raise money removed, users have less incentive to get others onto it, perhaps because it is simply 'deglamourised'.

 

Presumably there would still be a small illegal market niche for dealers to get new people to use diamorphine, but given that most people don't want to use it, we can reasonably expect that it would be a small and marginal affair compared to the large and powerful black market we currently have - and even if we can't eliminate the black market, surely we must count reducing it as a gain. Also, we don't know how many more people would start to use diamorphine post-legalisation, but we don't have any reason to assume that the number would be large - quite possibly most of the people that want to use it already do - because most people's decision to take or not to take a drug are influenced less by the law than by other factors. If law was the main consideration, we would expect a clear correlation between the popularity of a drug and the penalties attached to it (i.e. whether it's Class A, B or C) - but we don't). Research is needed on this, but I suggest you do a quick poll of your colleagues and friends and ask how many of them would start using diamorphine if it were legal to do so.

 

My bet is it'll be a small percentage.

 

Prescription diamorphine would cost money, but we must remember that we already pay a lot of tax money on a system that maximises harm and doesn't seem very effective at reducing use. It costs a lot more to keep someone in prison than to keep them on a maintenance dose of diamorphine.

 

 

If we had to choose, I'd rather the state payed a modest amount for someone to get high than a large amount to keep them in jail (provided, of course, that their criminal activity stems only from the illegality of the diamorphine in the first place). Also, there is the very real possibility that someone on a legal maintenance dose will be brought into contact with medical services and decide to accept help in getting off diamorphine, something which prison has a poor track record of achieving.

 

It also costs a lot to try to intercept drugs. A few months ago the Scottish police announced that they reckon they intercept about 1% of all the diamorphine coming into the country. That is to say, despite the huge sums spent on supply-side enforcement, the effect of the police on the availability of diamorphine in the country is so small as to be statistically indistinguishable from zero. Surely that money could be more wisely spent.

 

I would recommend the Transform Drug Policy Foundation book 'Blueprint for Regulation', available to read online as a pdf here:

 

http://www.tdpf.org.uk/blueprint%20download.htm

 

 

which sets out the regulatory options for controlling the drug market.