Heh, I got "raggedy-arse" from watching "Rob Roy". It just seemed a great insult!
markfiend wrote: You don't drink then?
My grandfather died of liver cirrhosis at 55. I remember being taken in to the hospital to say "goodbye" to him in the hospital at about 12. Wasn't a pretty sight, although looking back, I'm glad I went. You really think alcohol likely to play a part in my life after that?
markfiend wrote:Most drug users are recreational users, not "addicts", and are perfectly capable of holding down jobs; your "raggedy-arse long term users" are the exception, not the rule.
The problem users are the ones committing the crime to feed their habit (~50% of crime according to some figures). Legalisation would deal with this at a stroke: legal (medical) diamorphine costs about 1% of the price of street H and is far less dangerous. Cheap government heroin would put all the dealers out of business. There'd be a vast reduction of street-crime and burglary. No more smack-heads dying because they got stronger drugs than they were expecting. No more innocent bystanders hurt in turf-wars.
I could walk down Sc**thorpe high street and pick out at least a dozen any hour, any day, of these exceptions. There might be a recreational cocaine/cannabis user, but I reserve my right to disbelieve in a recreational heroin user, and that's the drug that's causing problems here in poor towns. The movement for legalisation comes from the professional middle-class who will not be living anywhere near these dispensing clinics, or the current areas rife with drug use. Largely coke/cannabis users. I'm sorry if I don't think their wish to destroy their septums and appreciate Eddie Grant on a higher musical level doesn't seem to me worth what those of us living on less exalted plains will deal with afterwards.
You'll end up with cheaper more lethal, more addictive versions of any drug appearing within weeks. I don't see how it'd be any different than the black market in cigarettes, and HMRC are pretty useless at controlling that, even! So there'll still be deaths. It'll change nothing really. Addicts will still run out of money and assault, burgle to pay for it, never mind the cost of caring for their rapidly disintegrating mental and physical health.
markfiend wrote:Every country that has tried the decriminalisation or legalisation route has experienced a downturn in the numbers of addicts, the wider use of drugs, and of the related crime.
Well, that's not strictly the case. China ended up with almost half the population addicted to opium at one point, I recall.The Netherlands claim it's increased drug use, addiction, and crime. They then started looking at tightening their laws up. Portugal had the opposite effect, a drop in use and crime. Again, like the drinking laws, different cultures will react different ways. Judging by the response to looser drinking laws, which learned authorities claimed would lead to less public drunkeness remember, we would more likely go down the Netherlands route.
markfiend wrote:But the UK government (and pro-prohibitionists) are happier with the status quo. 99% of illegal drug imports reach the streets unhindered by the "war on drugs". Billions of taxpayers' money are wasted in enforcement of unenforceable laws.
I'm not happy with the status quo at all. I live in an area with a large number of drug addicts, as I think I've made clear. I'd just stop treating them like victims. They're self-indulgent parasites with no will power. I've heard of prostitutes being forcibly addicted to drugs to control them, but anyone else made their choice. And it's a choice.
"Vengeance. Justice. Fire and blood.."
) stems from prohibition, not from the drugs themselves. If they said "it's your body, you do what you like to it" the problems would largely vanish.
