From the Evening Standard:
Crispin Blunt, chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform, is urging the Government to control sales as he claims that 50 years of “prohibition” has failed “lamentably”.
Go Crispin!
Tuesday, 26 March 2019
"Legalise cannabis sales to tackle criminal gangs, says Tory MP"
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35 comments:
Have you ever experienced the psychosis that develops from cannabis use?
No, but you are a walking advert for what happens.
@RS, my opinion is that cannabis psychosis is in large part due to prohibition. It's a risky business running a drug trade, you want your product to be as compact and potent as possible. Regulate it and say no THC above x amount, no additives, etc and it can only be better than the current arrangement.
So rude Mr Wadsworth. Time to moderate yourself?
I like your idea Mombers. Have experienced the frightening experience too. Which affects only some addicts?
Make it legal, available to anyone over the age of 16 years, and even give it the brand name "Soma". What could go wrong?
PS, minimum age would be 21. Apparently it a really is harmful for developing brains. Past 21, has no effect.
Who are you believing in that - the war on, the war in drugs?
MW,
Having spent quite a few years in a county Police force drug squad, despite not being a medical expert, I would disagree that after 21, cannabis has no effect. It ruins families, not only the user, and is often a leader on to harder drugs. I have seen professional people, who took cannabis in their mid to late 20's/early 30's and were on crack cocaine by he time they were in their 40's. The 'buzz' they initially experienced, wants with constant use and they either need to take more or go on to something stronger for the same buzz, and so it goes on. No one I ever met was content to stay on a set dose for any length of time.
Also, human nature being what it is, people over the age of 21 would give/sell it to those younger, just like people do with alcohol and tobacco today.
There is no easy answer to the drug problem, apart from self discipline, and that is rarely easy. In my own view, anyone who feels the need to start taking drugs, many of which contain other, lethal or toxic, additives to max out the quantity, either has a very shitty life, or is not intelligent enough to be let out on their own.
Penseivat
" and is often a leader on to harder drugs."
To what extent is this simply because the hard drugs are supplied by the same dodgy characters that the user gets their cannabis from? If not, why don't alcohol or nicotine lead onto harder drugs? The habituation is the same, but, on the whole, smokers and drinkers simply go on to smoke or drink more, not to move on to cocaine or heroin.
"There is no easy answer to the drug problem, apart from self discipline"
However, the "drug problem" is one that is an order of magnitude greater because of the drugs being illegal. Just look at the effects of Prohibition in the USA. It's time to admit that the state cannot legislate against people doing stupid things to themselves.
Hi Bayard
Have you ever experienced the quality of life destroying effects of cannabis psychosis. Do you know what paranoia and schizophrenia feels like?
This disease infects a large proportion of cannabis addicts.
Mind you, coffee is also destructively addictive and is legalised.
BTW I have a lifelong friend who's toked all his life and never really proceeded to harder drugs. But he he is now a total agrophobe who's not left his flat for 10 years. Thank goodness for Tesco delivery, online games and YouTube. To be fair he never claims dole and lives totally off his land rents.
Bayard,
*..why don't alcohol or nicotine lead onto harder drugs?*
I don't know if you smoke, or drink alcohol, but if you do, you didn't start by getting through a packet of 20 or a couple of gin and tonics. You, and others, would have started with the odd purloined ciggy, usually in mid teens, to keep in with your peers. Once you got used to the nictine buzz, you found you needed more than that odd one, had 2 or 3 over a period of hours - possibly threw up a couple of times - but went back. Once your body got used to the nicotine buzz, your ciggy numbers increased until suddenly, you were getting through 20 or so a day. Nicotine is one of the most addictive, legal at the moment, substances you can buy and stopping often takes more than Champex, hypnotism, or substitutes.
The same with alcohol. You may start off with nicking a glass of Gran's sweet sherry, then going on to something else, and having a beer or two with your mates (and possibly throwing up a couple of times, but going back to the beer). Your taste buds will alter as you get older and you may go on to wine, or spirits, in order to get that buzz. In the main, however, your body will tell you that you should stop, and I understand there are fewer alcoholics in this country than there are drug users.
If cannabis was made legal, the only benefit is that they would not have tea leaves, ordinary tobacco leaves, or even leaves from bushes amongst it. However, once it becomes legal, then they will end up having it included in medical prescriptions, possibly because without it they will die, or because to deny them would breach their human rights. Most druggies can, or will, not work and will be on benefits. The cost of supplying them with these drugs will then fall on the taxpayer.
Just like people on benefits collect their money, spend it, and then report to the Police that it has been stolen, in the hope of receiving more, so druggies will do that to try and get more of their NHS prescribed magic substance of choice.
Alongside this, you will parents, sons or daughters whose lives have been, if not ruined, adverseley affected. They can't let their family member in the house or be left alone or else they will steal the family silver in order to get more drugs. Family relationships don't come into it, Drugs come first.
When serving in the British Army, I was attached to a drug unit of the Royal Hong Kong Police (something whivh made me be a Police officer on leaving the Army, but that is another story). The Hong Kong Chinese authorities sent their drug addicts to a clinic or sanitorium on one of the islands where they were weaned off drugs, from cannabis, to heroin, to cocaine. They were told this is the one opprtunity they had to have help. Once weaned off, they returned home, with regular visits by counsellors. Some fell by the wayside and returned to taking drugs. This time, they went to a different sanitorium where they underwent cold turkey. Seeing videos of mean and women screaming, clawing at their skin and drawing blood, ripping their clothes in their torment was something I would never want to see again.
As a Police officer, I obtained permission to contact the RHKP to see if they would allow some of those videos to be sent to me so I could show it to addicts in the UK. Senior officers watched one and banned their showing to the public becaue they were so horrific. In my mind, perhaps that's what casual drug users needed to see so they were aware of what could, and would. happen to them if they continued their drug use. Of course, in these SJW and CP days, there is no chance of them being shown (I understand they were destroyed).
I know I have gone off topic somewhat, and I apologise for that. However, if that that well meaning politican had seen one of those videos, the suggestion to legalise cannabis may not have been forthcoming.
We have an addict in our family and it's a total nightmare. All of us have to create a safety net around our families due to the innevitable collateral damage. That's not to say we don't care for them. It is to say we have to protect our children from being robbed while still caring for the addict.
I don't use the term addict lightly. I see a large proportion of the population being addicted to something or other, none we good effects, some worse than others.
A few years ago I met with the leader of the campaign to legalise drugs. I was astonished it had not crossed his mind to ask, what social paroxysm is causing there to be so many addicts. He just looked at me as if I was an alien. In a public forum they held I did the same and I was attacked and intimidated as an 'abolitionist', in the same spiteful way as Marxists do when you point out how badly wrong he'd got it, referencing George and showing how land is not Kapital.
It's astonishing how an idea can totally capture and start to inform the mind of one possessed without them even realising it.
PS "No one I ever met was content to stay on a set dose for any length of time"
Because as a police officer, you only met the minority who spiralled?
So it's OK to commit a minority to misery for your politics?
@all, the status quo isn't working. So, do we double down on prohibition, sending more people to jail, increase violent drug crime by making it even more risky and lucrative to defend cartels, etc? Or do we try another approach? Interestingly, opiod deaths in Colorado plunged after . Legal marijuana is saving lives in Colorado, study finds
mombers, citing the Colorado study is post hoc logical reasoning. And with all due respect you're begging the question @all - no one is saying(afaik) "prohibition". What I'm saying at least is why, no one, is asking the central question "why do we not think a world full of addicts is something deeper and more serious to look into". That's is, what is root cause of epidemic addiction. Or do you think that is natural recreational activity? No one here has prescribed what you allege we do. Only asked us to look deeper into it. Certainly, that is an action few are willing to do, and like you allude, there world crumbles into a wasteland of inauthentic souls.
Have ever suffered chronic psychosis?
Pen Sieve
Very illuminating.
is it probable that the people you dealt with were of an addictive personality type? Isn't there evidence that this is the case? if so is your experience self selecting?
In which are we not better screening for that personality problem?
In regards to how one starts on the booze, isn't also true that in France say, children are given watered wine from a young age with food which seems to mitigate against binge drinking? That's is how I started on it - my parents being fairly liberal. And I have never been keen on over-drinking.
My preference is to de-criminalise all narcotics but I can see the arguments for licensing their distribution. If for no other reason than it is economically better value than pursuing an ever escalating 'war on drugs'.
Will be amusing to watch how, when drugs are licensed, the trade becomes fully monopolised. There will be no change by legalising drugs. Only a shift in where the damage gets done.
RS. I disagree. The key thing is to cut the huge risk premium to drug smugglers and dealers. That will knock on into huge savings in law enforcement costs. And why would distribution be monopolised? Any chemist or pharmacy could be licensed.
@ Lola, because everything regulated is an effective monopoly. We could estimate how much the monopoly profits might be, then compare them with the costs you estimate for the current free market in drugs. Are you up for that?
"Am I An Addict?"
Here's a simple experiment every budding scientist can try right away, to discover if one is an addict, and start a scrutiny of deeper social problems:
1) find a quiet moment away from work, family or other stress factors
2) think about all the substances you use daily which seem to relieve stress and anxiety
3) examples nicotine, vaping, caffeine, cannabis, alcohol, harder drugs maybe
4) select the one with the biggest use
5) heres the trick - see if you can give it up for just one day
6) make notes about the effects on you if you manage it
7) if you can make a whole day which is the biggest challenge, next try a week, and so on until you cave in
If you cannot make a single day, you are addicted to that substance for sure. And there will be a very good reason for it.
This is not to say that is bad per se. It is to say you are addicted to that substance and you have to accept that as scientifically true.
We don't need to go into the purist definition of addiction. If you cannot make a day without it, there's something happening unconsciously in your life causing you to lean on the 'drug' so much so that you now depend on it to cover up that latent root cause.
So it's not that drugs in themselves cause supplemental social problems. It is to say the underlying factor in your life causing you to take relief in the substance you're now addicted to, is. And if you want to limit any extra suffering your'e projecting into the world, you will now know where to look for the remedy.
Heres the killer app: now consider that billions are addicted in one way or another. That signals an enormous latent social problem/s. And the campaign to legalise drugs is doing very well to cover up scrutiny of it, probably without realising it, probably because they only attend to 'practical' matters. (the wasteland of inauthentic souls)
Once you've tried, let me know your results. I've been collecting data for several years.
PS, you make a cogent case for prohibiting alcohol and nicotine, making them illegal. However, when tried this hasn't worked well, or at all. In an ideal world, such things should be banned to protect people from their harmful effects. In the real world, banning them just moves their sourcing and distribution into the hands of criminals. There will always be people who destroy their lives with drugs, whether they are legal or illegal, such things cannot be prevented, only mitigated. Prohibition is not mitigation.
"Have you ever experienced the quality of life destroying effects of cannabis psychosis. Do you know what paranoia and schizophrenia feels like?"
No, but I have had experience of a family member and a friend having their lives destroyed by alcohol and I can still see that banning alcohol would have made little difference.
For that matter, have you ever experienced the life destroying (literally) effects of bad driving? Would you suggest that driving is banned as a result, that the sensible users of motorised private transport are penalised for the actions of an irresponsible minority? It's the same argument with cannabis, nicotine or alcohol.
Bayard, do you mean RS?
Who's talking about prohibition. Only you.
Did you read what I wrote carefully?
RS. Everything regulated are not monopolies. There is no current free market in drugs. Black or criminal market, yes. De-criminalising is deregulating. It would be very easy and cheap to licence retailers. As for producers as the risk premium had been decimated many would switch back to other agricultural products. That would hurt the Taliban say. But, and its a big but, i think you'd need to sustain general societal disapproval.
@Lola, I buy drugs all the time. The market for them is totally free from government distortion. I don't buy from gangs so there's no private state involved.
Again, would you like to look into the actual numbers like scientists would?
RS. That cannot be the case. If i understand you correctly you buy illegal narcotics all the time. As they are legally proscribed the suppliers must be breaking the law. As they are 'breaking the kaw' there must be a risk premium - which will vary with demand and supply.
By decriminalising narcotics that risk premium will be removed.
I only suggested that retailers need to be licensed, but that could simply be an extension of pharmacies current position.
FWIW the only 'drug' i have ever used is alcohol. I don't smoke. I have used cannabis. And never popped any pill that wasn't prescribed - save the occasional painkiller.
Oops. Never used cannabis. Ha ha
@Lola I hear you. There's a risk premium in everything, even in a free market. You seem to be saying its higher when government are not regulating it. OK.
So how much is the premium in monopoly profits once regulated? Certainly, it's not insignificant either.
My point is a stretch to consider I agree.
I'm saying there will be marginal difference in the end, between goods and services regulated by legalised gangs or illegal gangs.
Ah yes, and alcohol is probably as destructive as cannabis, yet it's been legalised. Whats the chances cannabis is not such a big hit with gangs because its profits are higher relatively?
Bayard,
Yes, I have seen the effects of bad or dangerous driving, including attending fatal road crashes and knocking on doors to tell people that their parents or children will not be coming home, ever! That is why there are rules in relation to driving - having a valid licence; the car being legal for the road with insurance, tax, or MOT; speed restrictions; fitness to drive, whether it is a level of sobriety or general health; following road traffic signs and restrictions. As long as these conditions are met, driving a motor vehicle on a road is permissible. Of course, there will be idiots who drive dangerously, recklessly, drunk, drugged up, or without valid documents or in untrustworthy vehicles. That is why there are, in theory, punishments for going against those conditions.
You can't equate banning all motorists from taking part in a lawful past time because some will flout the law, with people taking an unlawful, unregulated, mind bending substance.
Also, legalizing cannabis will not make the drug dealers go away. They will merely alter their method of operation. It is well known that vulnerable people, living in social housing, usually flats, under the care in the community schemes, have had their flats more or less taken over by gangs who use it as a base. They don't live there, so the terrified tenant can't be evicted, but spend most their time there.
Now, imagine that cannabis is legalised. The addict gets their prescribed weekly/monthly supply and returns home, where it is confiscated by the gang which now has a supply of pure cannabis, thanks to the taxpayer, at no cost to themselves (it is highly unlikely they pay tax). This is cut with other substances to increase the quantity, and profit. Some of this is given to the addict as payment. Not a lot, just enough to keep them beholden (and terrified of the consequences if they object).
Bizarre fantasy? I would suggest that something like this is already taking place near to you, whether it's drugs, medication for alcohol abuse, or social security benefits.
I mention alcohol abuse, as there are those who are alcoholics (the daughter of a friend of mine was married to one) and no, I don't believe we should ban alcohol. People drink too much for various reasons, stress, depression, financial, employment or marital worries (3 out of 5 in my case), but this is, where self discipline comes in, just like driving within the law, or considering taking unlawful, unlicensed, and unknown substances from some bloke they have never met before. Some will do it and the majority won't. Those that don't have that self discipline, in my opinion, should shoulder some, or all, of the blame if it goes wrong, because they would be, hopefully, intelligent enough to understand the consequences.
Since I retired, I have met recovering addicts who felt that my actions and conversations with them during my Police days, helped them on the way to recovery. Mind you, I have also met some who still take drugs and wish me a long and painful death, which shows you can't please everybody.
My experiences have guided my views and, if they differ from yours so be it, and we will agree to disagree.
Penseivat
RS
You persist in maintaining that there will be "premium in monopoly profits once regulated?" I flatly disagree with that assertion. And I have never said 'regulated'. All I have said is that it would be most likely that - given the nature of the product, drugs - distribution would be by pharmacies.
RS. No. Alcohol has never ever been 'legalised'. In the UK. What is has been is that its use has not been criminalised.
@Lola, dont take it personally. If you don't understand me simply ask for clarification politely.
Scientific precision is not required for my point. And the open minded analysis of a scientist is.
My point is this: there will be no change in general wether 1) a sin is made legal by the gang we elected or 2) or the illegal gangs retain their own market for it. Pen sieve made a very good exposition of this above.
On monopoly and regulations if you insist on making the distinction - a legalised protected monopoly will be far more effective through economies of scale and the inherent protectionism it gets, than an illegal one. If GSK get the contract to supply newly legalised sins, then for sure, the goods they supply will ultimately cost more than before. Or do you think they are so kind hearted they will pass on all the economies to their customers? :)
"The profits of monopoly are a tax on the rest of production" - how confident are we on this forum about this? The forum elite discuss the negative effects daily.
So again I ask if you're willing and able to look into the effects compared to the illegal gangs pedalling sins, using some actual estimations rather than political opinions?
How much time have you spent with people who've not managed to fight their way up off the bottom?
"Also, legalizing cannabis will not make the drug dealers go away. They will merely alter their method of operation.".
What you are saying is that there is no point in legalising drugs because the people who currently import them illegally will simply steal them off people who are buying them legally. If this is such a good idea, why not extend it to alcohol, nicotine and prescription opiods, immediately, why wait for cannabis to be legalised? Instead of having to run the risks of importing banned substances, they could simply steal legal substances off the citizenry. While they are doing that, why not take their money, credit cards and motor vehicles while they are about it? We could be on the verge of a huge crime wave.
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