Judge - I am the law and I'll do as I please.

[Halibut]

You ought to watch some of your own UK cop shows on TV. Prime Suspect (Hellen Mirren) was a series that aired in the mid 1990s. One story dealt with the murder of a young man by a drug dealing gang in Manchester, unless of course you believe that police stories have no truth or validity to them.

 

Gangs who deal drugs often have rival gangs who want to muscle in on their territory and having guns is a good way to make sure that "turf" as they call their territory is safeguarded.

I'm sure there are such gangs in London, Birmingham. Glasgow and the other biggest cities and enough crack and heroin addicts to keep them in business.

 

Then of course there's yer common garden mobs who want to hit a few banks and security trucks

 

Yes, the enormous profits made possible by prohibition do render drug dealing a very attractive proposition for criminal gangs.

Oddly enough, although there is some crime associated with the supply of both tobacco and alcohol it's on a much smaller scale and almost never involves killing. That's because the vast profits simply aren't there, because tobacco and booze are legal.

[fruitisbad]

I think that the flaw in harleymans thinking is now aparent. It's based on cop tv shows.

[janie48]

Do you get concerned about how alcohol may affect people in the future?

 

Yes if they become addicted.I've remarked about that further back on this thread,there are so many pages now. I did read quite a lot of information,a few days ago,about drug and alcohol addiction.Not an easy read!

Thats why i posted this link.

 

http://www.sheffielddaat.org.uk/HelpSupport/FamilyFriends.aspx

[RootsBooster]

Yes if they become addicted.I've remarked about that further back on this thread,there are so many pages now. I did read quite a lot of information,a few days ago,about drug and alcohol addiction.Not an easy read!

Thats why i posted this link.

 

http://www.sheffielddaat.org.uk/HelpSupport/FamilyFriends.aspx

 

That's fair enough, but you didn't mention anything about addiction in your comment about cannabis.

[janie48]

 

That's fair enough, but you didn't mention anything about addiction in your comment about cannabis.

 

Not on the one you quoted perhaps,but on a previous post.

[Phanerothyme]

Don't anyone say that cannabis isn't addictive, it emphatically is.

 

But as everyone knows, some people will get addicted to anything given half a chance - and others have the ability to just take it or leave it. We all know people at both ends of the spectrum.

 

A significant portion of 'addiction potential' is genetic in origin, but it's not a simple correlation like gene x causes addiction or anything so straightforward.

 

People who lack certain genes, or have certain other ones will have different responses to different drugs. So some people with a certain gene suffer more nausea and dizziness ingesting nicotine than others. This translates into a tendency for these people to not become addicted to nicotine.

 

So you will conceivably be able to have a test to establish your addiction risk potential for a number of different substances. Similarly you can be screened for susceptibility to various side effects. You might find out that you have a sensitivity to methylated amphetamines, or that (like a seemingly significant number of people) you're unlikely to experience any effects from cannabis.

 

It may also be possible to develop therapies that lower the addiction potential of an individual for a given substance.

 

All addictions are not the same in severity. Cannabis addiction in adults tends to be quite gentle. This is perhaps because the active constituents are fat soluble, and are not immediately removed from the body by the liver/kidneys. Dependency tends to be pretty weak. Unlike cocaine, cannabis addiction doesn't press the user hard to return to the drug.

 

Stopping cannabis is pretty easy to do, and even a seasoned cannabis smoker can quit cold turkey with only a week of mild irritability and vivid dreams.

 

Very often the most addictive thing with cannabis is the nicotine that's consumed with it. Nicotine has the effect of potentiating and reinforcing the effects of drugs it is used in conjunction with, typically cannabis, coffee and alcohol.

 

Smoking whilst taking another drug can make the second drug as hard to quit as cigarettes.

 

Anyway, some words from our sponsor:

Doug Sellman at the National Addiction Center offers what he calls "The 10 most important things to know about addiction". He offers the following points, before explaining them in more detail (although even his full paper does not presume to be able to discuss all the important facts about addiction).

 

First, Sellman says that the most important thing to know about addiction may be that addiction is "fundamentally about compulsive behavior" .

 

Second of all, such habits originate outside of consciousness (i.e. from the unconscious mind). The compulsive sequence of behaviors are so practiced that they can be extremely difficult to avoid initiating, and even harder to interrupt.

 

Sellman maintains, thirdly, that addiction is 50% heritable. In other words, family background and genetics play a large role.

[Bonzo77]

You ought to watch some of your own UK cop shows on TV. Prime Suspect (Hellen Mirren) was a series that aired in the mid 1990s. One story dealt with the murder of a young man by a drug dealing gang in Manchester, unless of course you believe that police stories have no truth or validity to them.

 

Gangs who deal drugs often have rival gangs who want to muscle in on their territory and having guns is a good way to make sure that "turf" as they call their territory is safeguarded.

I'm sure there are such gangs in London, Birmingham. Glasgow and the other biggest cities and enough crack and heroin addicts to keep them in business.

 

Then of course there's yer common garden mobs who want to hit a few banks and security trucks

 

Your logic is baffling! You want me to watch Crime Suspect with Helen Mirron, to get an idea of what gang life is like??!!

 

If drugs were legalised, these gangs would have nothing to fight over. There you go, less crime, instantly!

[RootsBooster]

 

Gangs who deal drugs often have rival gangs who want to muscle in on their territory and having guns is a good way to make sure that "turf" as they call their territory is safeguarded.

I'm sure there are such gangs in London, Birmingham. Glasgow and the other biggest cities and enough crack and heroin addicts to keep them in business.

 

Then of course there's yer common garden mobs who want to hit a few banks and security trucks

 

Bonzo is right, your logic here is baffling.

 

To put it simply, you think that drugs should remain illegal then you're complaining about the results of this.

 

Then you use these results as a reason for keeping it illegal!

[RootsBooster]

Alcohol addiction is tragic too, but thats a subject for another thread.

I think it's a subject perfectly suited for this thread, it is after all the most suitable legalised drug with which to compare cannabis when discussing the pros and cons of legalisation or decriminalisation.

[Cyclone]

You ought to watch some of your own UK cop shows on TV. Prime Suspect (Hellen Mirren) was a series that aired in the mid 1990s. One story dealt with the murder of a young man by a drug dealing gang in Manchester, unless of course you believe that police stories have no truth or validity to them.

 

Gangs who deal drugs often have rival gangs who want to muscle in on their territory and having guns is a good way to make sure that "turf" as they call their territory is safeguarded.

I'm sure there are such gangs in London, Birmingham. Glasgow and the other biggest cities and enough crack and heroin addicts to keep them in business.

 

Then of course there's yer common garden mobs who want to hit a few banks and security trucks

 

You're making an argument for legalisation here aren't you.

Make it legal, regularise the supply, tax it, sell it safely to people over 18 and suddenly there are no more gangs, there is no more drug crime, the police can go and do something else, everyone wins.