One thing I missed off the list was The War On Drugs.
I hate Fat Bitch Smith more by the day. Let's just look at this short sentence:
"While cannabis has always been illegal, reclassifying it to a Class B drug reinforces our message to everyone that it is harmful and should not be taken," she said.
1. Cannabis has only been illegal since 1928.
2. If we assume that cannabis use is A Bad Thing, then empirical evidence from e.g. The Netherlands and other European countries shows that decriminalising can help get usage down slightly. So why not go the whole hog and treat it like tobacco or alcohol - legalise it, tax it, regulate it, restrict sales to minors and educate people about the delights and dangers of smoking cannabis?
3. Indeed, from The Guardian: Paul Corry said: "Gordon Brown should put aside his personal views on cannabis and accept the fact that it does not make sense to reclassify. Use of the drug has gone down since it was downgraded in 2004 and research by Rethink shows that only 3% of users would consider stopping on the grounds of illegality."
4. If it is true (which I doubt) that people are smoking stronger types of cannabis, then the reason thfor this is because "you may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb". In other words, if you could buy perfectly ordinary cannabis from the off-licence for a reasonable price, there'd be practically no demand for the stronger stuff, it being a question of quantity vs. strength.
5. Labour politics works by generating a Climate Of Fear. Clearly, they can't tell us that cannabis is deadly, because out of millions of users, it is a direct or indirect cause of an average of about 0.5 deaths a year. So they've come up with this myth that Smoking Cannabis Drives You Mad, for which the evidence is tenuous at best.
6. I am not particularly keen that my kids smoke cannabis, as I don't like the stuff, but if they did, I wouldn't want them to be criminalised for what is IMHO not really a crime at all.
Pressing The Reset Button.
4 hours ago
3 comments:
OK, I've come round to your way of thinking - but I'm not happy, mind. I only accept that regulation is a more practical and effective option than criminalization.
If you want to make this argument - and you should, because it is a good one - the point you need to conceed is (5). You are trying to make water run up hill here. Too many people - me included - have seen how cannabis works. It isn't a scare story; the stuff is like a fingernail under a scab. It picks at any tendency to depression and irrationality and turns it in to an a festering ulcer. Some people are not affected, true, but the stuff seems to have the capacity to find those people close to the edge and then push them right over. Families are left to cope with the mess.
Show me how regulation will manage this effect, making it less likely that people will become enmeshed with prostitution or drawn in to activities which cross the threshhold of legality, and I'll listen.
To be honest I don't care if wacky baccy sends people prone to mental health problems over the edge. Just tell all the teenagers the facts, and let them get on with it. It's their lives, and if they want to f**k them up, so be it. Legalise the lot, control the supply and tax it. Let the chips fall where they will. If a load of losers kill themselves in the first few years, so much the better. Probably lead to less public spending on benefits paid by the rest of us. Evolution at its best. Survival of the fittest. We are all responsible for what we put in our bodies, and entitled to chose to trash them if we see fit. Unless you propose making smoking, drinking and Big Macs illegal too, I don't see why people can't take what they like (subject to the libertarian maxim of 'as long as you harm no innocent party' of course!)
WOAR, it is not disputed that there is a correlation between depression and cannabis over-use, but the serious question is, which causes which? We are talking about hundreds of cases out of millions of users.
Cannabis is not so expensive (even while it is illegal) as to drive people into crime - it would be even cheaper if legally available plus massive tax, like tobacco, alcohol. And that massive tax could be earmarked for treating depressives (whatever the correlation) and educating people about its effects.
As to prostitution, a sensible programme of legalisation/regulation/taxation and education would sort that out too.
Sobers, I made exactly the same Big Mac point in my article on ConHome a few months ago.
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