The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
It just strikes me as futile to continue to ban recreational drugs - particularly when they are, to all intents and purposes, let’s be honest, decriminalised for personal use anyway - when one particular, legal, recreational drug is so central to our culture. Think of all the lovely tax we could be raking in. There is no moral difference between taking one or the other. The damage alcohol does dwarves that of any other drug.
What constitutes a dope head, what level of consumption? 1 joint on an evening? 2, 3? What strength would they need to be? What amount will cause national decline? ‘Cos I know a lot of folk who are doing a lot of boozing every night and there can’t be great for UK PLC. How many MPs, in their subsidised bars, are fighting national decline by drinking less than 14 units a week? How many millions of people across the country, in responsible positions, are habitually doing a bottle of wine a night? A few large whiskies?
Millions of people wake up every day slightly fuzzy round the edges from a few drinks the night before. The impact on any putative national decline of a few spliffs or lines here and there is tiny in comparison, I’d say.
Legalisation absolutely should happen and I hope Labour do it when they're in charge.
1. Tax it. Billions in tax revenues, instead of billions spent on a futile and failed war on drugs. 2. Education and healthcare beats police and prison. 3. Prohibition has failed. 4. Legalisation allows regulation. People know what they're getting, and the strength they're getting, rather than something stronger or laced with another product.
There is no good reason not to legalise and tax it.
As it applies to mariajuana it might be different if it was still perceived as a huge societal ill, but whilst not everyone sees it as on a par with alcohol and the like a lot of people do, other countries are going full tilt on legalisation, and quite frankly general attitudes even from the police seems to be to just turn a blind eye to it. Some might see that as the degredation of society, but I suspect enough people know others or see others who use it without it being at the extreme end that they just don't fear it enough to make a war on drugs viable anymore, if it ever was.
So even if just that was legalised and not some others which still carry both more stigma and are considered to be more harmful despite similar logical arguments applying around legalisation being better than a war on drugs, it would still be worth doing.
I'm a libertarian extremist on this issue. I don't take any drugs, besides caffeine very regularly, alcohol sometimes and paracetamol if feeling unwell, and have no intention of taking any more.
But I would legalise, regulate and tax all drugs. Cocaine, heroin, all of them. Get them out of the gangsters hands.
But seriously educate people about them too. Take resources away from law & order/prison services, and put them into treatment and rehabilitation. Tax the drugs, and use the taxes to educate people as to why they're a bad idea. Stamp warnings on them, like cigarettes.
The best single piece I have seen on the drug overdose problem in the US is a column by Megan McArdle, which ends as follows: "Drug users must understand that if they cannot take drugs without also committing crimes, injecting in public places or camping on the street, they will be forced into treatment.
Now, as a libertarian, I was pretty uncomfortable writing that last sentence, and reading it might well have made you uneasy, too. Many people will no doubt be equally wary of giving up on controlling the use of indisputably harmful drugs. But overdose has become the leading cause of nonmedical death in the United States, and we seem to be out of comfortable options. We might have to settle for one that results in fewer deaths." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/25/legalize-fentanyl-overdose-deaths/
In America overdoses now kill more people than guns and cars combined, in the land of guns and cars.
Not much sign there that legalisation has either reduced consumption or stamped out the illegal trade.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
It just strikes me as futile to continue to ban recreational drugs - particularly when they are, to all intents and purposes, let’s be honest, decriminalised for personal use anyway - when one particular, legal, recreational drug is so central to our culture. Think of all the lovely tax we could be raking in. There is no moral difference between taking one or the other. The damage alcohol does dwarves that of any other drug.
What constitutes a dope head, what level of consumption? 1 joint on an evening? 2, 3? What strength would they need to be? What amount will cause national decline? ‘Cos I know a lot of folk who are doing a lot of boozing every night and there can’t be great for UK PLC. How many MPs, in their subsidised bars, are fighting national decline by drinking less than 14 units a week? How many millions of people across the country, in responsible positions, are habitually doing a bottle of wine a night? A few large whiskies?
Millions of people wake up every day slightly fuzzy round the edges from a few drinks the night before. The impact on any putative national decline of a few spliffs or lines here and there is tiny in comparison, I’d say.
On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of middle-class parents compete to get their children a supply of amphetamines, which reliably add 10-20 points onto IQ test scores (Leon's not around, so I can safely mention IQ tests, right?).
And tens of millions of us use caffeine every day, which gives much less of a boost but is generally enough to counteract the fuzziness from the night before.
There's a huge amount of humbug and hypocrisy about drug use. But whatever your view, no-one is seriously proposing to give the police the resources needed to end their use. No-one actually wants us to be Singapore, let alone Saudi Arabia.
Sure the War on Drugs has failed, but that doesn't mean that drugs are harmless, just that we have failed to protect our people.
How many of those overdose deaths have occurred from legalised drugs like cannabis?
And how many of those overdose deaths have occurred from prohibited drugs that are still illegal or prescription only?
Seems to me like it is prohibition that has failed.
How happy would you be if your daughters became cokeheads or smackheads?
I'd be disappointed, just as I'd be disappointed if they became alcoholics.
I'd love and want to help them still if that happened.
And I'd want them to be helped through AA/NA style programs, education, support etc - not simply locking them in a prison with other addicts and throwing away the key.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
Is that in dispute ?
The real question is how best to address that. We didn’t ban cigarettes - but smoking has dropped massively.
Indeed. I'm baffled at the idea there would be an explosion of dopeheads if certain substances were suddenly legal to use. It seems to be presented as if everyone who might conceivably try out a legal dose of heroin would jump immediately to shooting up in an alley.
Some restrictions are surely appropriate (and people do not all agree that every narcotic should be legal), I'm sure if Imperial China had legalised opium consumption as a free for all it would hardly have helped their situation any, but our current approach appears to be to ignore it unless it is too big to ignore, then do some pointless stamping down.
The best single piece I have seen on the drug overdose problem in the US is a column by Megan McArdle, which ends as follows: "Drug users must understand that if they cannot take drugs without also committing crimes, injecting in public places or camping on the street, they will be forced into treatment.
Now, as a libertarian, I was pretty uncomfortable writing that last sentence, and reading it might well have made you uneasy, too. Many people will no doubt be equally wary of giving up on controlling the use of indisputably harmful drugs. But overdose has become the leading cause of nonmedical death in the United States, and we seem to be out of comfortable options. We might have to settle for one that results in fewer deaths." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/25/legalize-fentanyl-overdose-deaths/
In America overdoses now kill more people than guns and cars combined, in the land of guns and cars.
Not much sign there that legalisation has either reduced consumption or stamped out the illegal trade.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
It just strikes me as futile to continue to ban recreational drugs - particularly when they are, to all intents and purposes, let’s be honest, decriminalised for personal use anyway - when one particular, legal, recreational drug is so central to our culture. Think of all the lovely tax we could be raking in. There is no moral difference between taking one or the other. The damage alcohol does dwarves that of any other drug.
What constitutes a dope head, what level of consumption? 1 joint on an evening? 2, 3? What strength would they need to be? What amount will cause national decline? ‘Cos I know a lot of folk who are doing a lot of boozing every night and there can’t be great for UK PLC. How many MPs, in their subsidised bars, are fighting national decline by drinking less than 14 units a week? How many millions of people across the country, in responsible positions, are habitually doing a bottle of wine a night? A few large whiskies?
Millions of people wake up every day slightly fuzzy round the edges from a few drinks the night before. The impact on any putative national decline of a few spliffs or lines here and there is tiny in comparison, I’d say.
On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of middle-class parents compete to get their children a supply of amphetamines, which reliably add 10-20 points onto IQ test scores (Leon's not around, so I can safely mention IQ tests, right?).
And tens of millions of us use caffeine every day, which gives much less of a boost but is generally enough to counteract the fuzziness from the night before.
There's a huge amount of humbug and hypocrisy about drug use. But whatever your view, no-one is seriously proposing to give the police the resources needed to end their use. No-one actually wants us to be Singapore, let alone Saudi Arabia.
Sure the War on Drugs has failed, but that doesn't mean that drugs are harmless, just that we have failed to protect our people.
How many of those overdose deaths have occurred from legalised drugs like cannabis?
And how many of those overdose deaths have occurred from prohibited drugs that are still illegal or prescription only?
Seems to me like it is prohibition that has failed.
How happy would you be if your daughters became cokeheads or smackheads?
I'd be disappointed, just as I'd be disappointed if they became alcoholics.
I'd love and want to help them still if that happened.
And I'd want them to be helped through AA/NA style programs, education, support etc - not simply locking them in a prison with other addicts and throwing away the key.
Libertarianism requires free choice.
Addiction is the antithesis of free choice. It is enslavement.
48% to form a majority, 46% a minority so it's far from a foregone conclusion the Conservatives will be able to form a Government if the Liberals, NDP and BQ can get enough seats.
Yes, Polievre is an effective Opposition Leader if a little nerdy to Trudeau's more charismatic Liberal PM but he may face the same problem the Spanish PP leader had last month, he wins most seats but not enough to be sure of becoming PM without a majority (and Trudeau like Sanchez should not be written off, both have won tough elections before).
It is certainly hard to see the NDP allowing Polilievre to become PM now they have a confidence and supply deal with Trudeau's minority Liberal government
It's an accepted convention in Canadian politics that the party winning the most seats goes on to form the government, no matter how from they are from a majority. Of course that convention may change at the next election if the NDP does a deal with the Liberals.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
Is that in dispute ?
The real question is how best to address that. We didn’t ban cigarettes - but smoking has dropped massively.
Indeed. I'm baffled at the idea there would be an explosion of dopeheads if certain substances were suddenly legal to use. It seems to be presented as if everyone who might conceivably try out a legal dose of heroin would jump immediately to shooting up in an alley.
Some restrictions are surely appropriate (and people do not all agree that every narcotic should be legal), I'm sure if Imperial China had legalised opium consumption as a free for all it would hardly have helped their situation any, but our current approach appears to be to ignore it unless it is too big to ignore, then do some pointless stamping down.
The evidence from places that have legalised is that things are not better:
The best single piece I have seen on the drug overdose problem in the US is a column by Megan McArdle, which ends as follows: "Drug users must understand that if they cannot take drugs without also committing crimes, injecting in public places or camping on the street, they will be forced into treatment.
Now, as a libertarian, I was pretty uncomfortable writing that last sentence, and reading it might well have made you uneasy, too. Many people will no doubt be equally wary of giving up on controlling the use of indisputably harmful drugs. But overdose has become the leading cause of nonmedical death in the United States, and we seem to be out of comfortable options. We might have to settle for one that results in fewer deaths." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/25/legalize-fentanyl-overdose-deaths/
In America overdoses now kill more people than guns and cars combined, in the land of guns and cars.
Not much sign there that legalisation has either reduced consumption or stamped out the illegal trade.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
It just strikes me as futile to continue to ban recreational drugs - particularly when they are, to all intents and purposes, let’s be honest, decriminalised for personal use anyway - when one particular, legal, recreational drug is so central to our culture. Think of all the lovely tax we could be raking in. There is no moral difference between taking one or the other. The damage alcohol does dwarves that of any other drug.
What constitutes a dope head, what level of consumption? 1 joint on an evening? 2, 3? What strength would they need to be? What amount will cause national decline? ‘Cos I know a lot of folk who are doing a lot of boozing every night and there can’t be great for UK PLC. How many MPs, in their subsidised bars, are fighting national decline by drinking less than 14 units a week? How many millions of people across the country, in responsible positions, are habitually doing a bottle of wine a night? A few large whiskies?
Millions of people wake up every day slightly fuzzy round the edges from a few drinks the night before. The impact on any putative national decline of a few spliffs or lines here and there is tiny in comparison, I’d say.
On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of middle-class parents compete to get their children a supply of amphetamines, which reliably add 10-20 points onto IQ test scores (Leon's not around, so I can safely mention IQ tests, right?).
And tens of millions of us use caffeine every day, which gives much less of a boost but is generally enough to counteract the fuzziness from the night before.
There's a huge amount of humbug and hypocrisy about drug use. But whatever your view, no-one is seriously proposing to give the police the resources needed to end their use. No-one actually wants us to be Singapore, let alone Saudi Arabia.
Sure the War on Drugs has failed, but that doesn't mean that drugs are harmless, just that we have failed to protect our people.
How many of those overdose deaths have occurred from legalised drugs like cannabis?
And how many of those overdose deaths have occurred from prohibited drugs that are still illegal or prescription only?
Seems to me like it is prohibition that has failed.
How happy would you be if your daughters became cokeheads or smackheads?
I'd be disappointed, just as I'd be disappointed if they became alcoholics.
I'd love and want to help them still if that happened.
And I'd want them to be helped through AA/NA style programs, education, support etc - not simply locking them in a prison with other addicts and throwing away the key.
Libertarianism requires free choice.
Addiction is the antithesis of free choice. It is enslavement.
Which is why we should have education and treatment, not police, prison and courts.
Addiction is hard to treat, but not impossible. If the addict wants to break free from their addiction they have the best chance to do so with education, healthcare and support. You can't treat addiction by incarceration.
The best single piece I have seen on the drug overdose problem in the US is a column by Megan McArdle, which ends as follows: "Drug users must understand that if they cannot take drugs without also committing crimes, injecting in public places or camping on the street, they will be forced into treatment.
Now, as a libertarian, I was pretty uncomfortable writing that last sentence, and reading it might well have made you uneasy, too. Many people will no doubt be equally wary of giving up on controlling the use of indisputably harmful drugs. But overdose has become the leading cause of nonmedical death in the United States, and we seem to be out of comfortable options. We might have to settle for one that results in fewer deaths." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/25/legalize-fentanyl-overdose-deaths/
In America overdoses now kill more people than guns and cars combined, in the land of guns and cars.
Not much sign there that legalisation has either reduced consumption or stamped out the illegal trade.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
It just strikes me as futile to continue to ban recreational drugs - particularly when they are, to all intents and purposes, let’s be honest, decriminalised for personal use anyway - when one particular, legal, recreational drug is so central to our culture. Think of all the lovely tax we could be raking in. There is no moral difference between taking one or the other. The damage alcohol does dwarves that of any other drug.
What constitutes a dope head, what level of consumption? 1 joint on an evening? 2, 3? What strength would they need to be? What amount will cause national decline? ‘Cos I know a lot of folk who are doing a lot of boozing every night and there can’t be great for UK PLC. How many MPs, in their subsidised bars, are fighting national decline by drinking less than 14 units a week? How many millions of people across the country, in responsible positions, are habitually doing a bottle of wine a night? A few large whiskies?
Millions of people wake up every day slightly fuzzy round the edges from a few drinks the night before. The impact on any putative national decline of a few spliffs or lines here and there is tiny in comparison, I’d say.
On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of middle-class parents compete to get their children a supply of amphetamines, which reliably add 10-20 points onto IQ test scores (Leon's not around, so I can safely mention IQ tests, right?).
And tens of millions of us use caffeine every day, which gives much less of a boost but is generally enough to counteract the fuzziness from the night before.
There's a huge amount of humbug and hypocrisy about drug use. But whatever your view, no-one is seriously proposing to give the police the resources needed to end their use. No-one actually wants us to be Singapore, let alone Saudi Arabia.
Sure the War on Drugs has failed, but that doesn't mean that drugs are harmless, just that we have failed to protect our people.
How many of those overdose deaths have occurred from legalised drugs like cannabis?
And how many of those overdose deaths have occurred from prohibited drugs that are still illegal or prescription only?
Seems to me like it is prohibition that has failed.
How happy would you be if your daughters became cokeheads or smackheads?
I'd be disappointed, just as I'd be disappointed if they became alcoholics.
I'd love and want to help them still if that happened.
And I'd want them to be helped through AA/NA style programs, education, support etc - not simply locking them in a prison with other addicts and throwing away the key.
Libertarianism requires free choice.
Addiction is the antithesis of free choice. It is enslavement.
Which is why we should have education and treatment, not police, prison and courts.
Addiction is hard to treat, but not impossible. If the addict wants to break free from their addiction they have the best chance to do so with education, healthcare and support. You can't treat addiction by incarceration.
So why support the latter, rather than former.
I don't want to incarcerated addicts. I want to incarcerated dealers.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
Is that in dispute ?
The real question is how best to address that. We didn’t ban cigarettes - but smoking has dropped massively.
Indeed. I'm baffled at the idea there would be an explosion of dopeheads if certain substances were suddenly legal to use. It seems to be presented as if everyone who might conceivably try out a legal dose of heroin would jump immediately to shooting up in an alley.
Some restrictions are surely appropriate (and people do not all agree that every narcotic should be legal), I'm sure if Imperial China had legalised opium consumption as a free for all it would hardly have helped their situation any, but our current approach appears to be to ignore it unless it is too big to ignore, then do some pointless stamping down.
The evidence from places that have legalised is that things are not better:
Legalisation means regulation. It means instead of buying drugs from criminals you can buy drugs from licensed shops, which will sell you regulated strength of the product in a store, subject to taxes, with no criminal activity.
The best single piece I have seen on the drug overdose problem in the US is a column by Megan McArdle, which ends as follows: "Drug users must understand that if they cannot take drugs without also committing crimes, injecting in public places or camping on the street, they will be forced into treatment.
Now, as a libertarian, I was pretty uncomfortable writing that last sentence, and reading it might well have made you uneasy, too. Many people will no doubt be equally wary of giving up on controlling the use of indisputably harmful drugs. But overdose has become the leading cause of nonmedical death in the United States, and we seem to be out of comfortable options. We might have to settle for one that results in fewer deaths." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/25/legalize-fentanyl-overdose-deaths/
In America overdoses now kill more people than guns and cars combined, in the land of guns and cars.
Not much sign there that legalisation has either reduced consumption or stamped out the illegal trade.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
It just strikes me as futile to continue to ban recreational drugs - particularly when they are, to all intents and purposes, let’s be honest, decriminalised for personal use anyway - when one particular, legal, recreational drug is so central to our culture. Think of all the lovely tax we could be raking in. There is no moral difference between taking one or the other. The damage alcohol does dwarves that of any other drug.
What constitutes a dope head, what level of consumption? 1 joint on an evening? 2, 3? What strength would they need to be? What amount will cause national decline? ‘Cos I know a lot of folk who are doing a lot of boozing every night and there can’t be great for UK PLC. How many MPs, in their subsidised bars, are fighting national decline by drinking less than 14 units a week? How many millions of people across the country, in responsible positions, are habitually doing a bottle of wine a night? A few large whiskies?
Millions of people wake up every day slightly fuzzy round the edges from a few drinks the night before. The impact on any putative national decline of a few spliffs or lines here and there is tiny in comparison, I’d say.
On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of middle-class parents compete to get their children a supply of amphetamines, which reliably add 10-20 points onto IQ test scores (Leon's not around, so I can safely mention IQ tests, right?).
And tens of millions of us use caffeine every day, which gives much less of a boost but is generally enough to counteract the fuzziness from the night before.
There's a huge amount of humbug and hypocrisy about drug use. But whatever your view, no-one is seriously proposing to give the police the resources needed to end their use. No-one actually wants us to be Singapore, let alone Saudi Arabia.
Sure the War on Drugs has failed, but that doesn't mean that drugs are harmless, just that we have failed to protect our people.
How many of those overdose deaths have occurred from legalised drugs like cannabis?
And how many of those overdose deaths have occurred from prohibited drugs that are still illegal or prescription only?
Seems to me like it is prohibition that has failed.
How happy would you be if your daughters became cokeheads or smackheads?
An unpersuasive question, since it simply invites the question would you be happy for your children to become thing x which is bad, and therefore should that be banned as well, like the oft mentioned example of becoming an alcoholic or addicted to something legal but which is abused.
It's an emotional scare tactic that if there's any chance of someone going down a dark path with something, then of course it must mean they should never have the chance to go down that path, yet there's any number of things which do that which we permit, with drugs, lifestyle choices like gambling, and more. And they still might go down the path anyway.
It's weird that the pro-legalisation side are the ones to least attempt attempt arguments which are more logical, even if someone could still reasonably decide those arguments are not persuasive. I am not convinced by bartholewroberts' libertarian extremes on this issues, but a Helen Lovejoy appeal whilst not without any merit at all, is a thin plank on which to hold everything up.
Legalizing cannabis would help regulate the strength , you would also be less likely to see people moving onto harder drugs and you could raise revenues to go into funding help and support for those effected by harder drugs.
"Alysha Duran is shot dead by cop in Westminster, Colorado, after stopping car on wrong side of road and reaching for her gun
Alysha Duran, 46, allegedly tried to grab a gun when she was pulled over July 25 Shocking footage captured the moment a Colorado cop fired in response The killing has divided viewers over whether the police officer was justified"
Marijuana was legalized in Washington state in 2012. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_in_Washington_(state) (It was effectively legalized before then in much of the state, when sold for "medical" purposes. At one time there were more marijuana "medical" dispensaries in Seattle than there were Starbucks. The ads for them were not subtle, with many advertising doctors on site.)
Since 2012 usage here has increased, along with deaths from car accidents caused by impaired drivers. As in the rest of the US, potency has increased signficantly. (The US has some very good agricutural scientists, so that shouldn't be a surprise.) There is still a large illegal market -- and always will be, as long as there are significant taxes on marijuana.
(These results may be better than the results of alternative policies, but I wouldn't say they are an obvious win/win.)
"Alysha Duran is shot dead by cop in Westminster, Colorado, after stopping car on wrong side of road and reaching for her gun
Alysha Duran, 46, allegedly tried to grab a gun when she was pulled over July 25 Shocking footage captured the moment a Colorado cop fired in response The killing has divided viewers over whether the police officer was justified"
Without meaning to diminish the tragedy of anyone's death, I am somewhat astonished such an incident out of america is even newsworthy, even with it being reported on a British website.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
Is that in dispute ?
The real question is how best to address that. We didn’t ban cigarettes - but smoking has dropped massively.
Indeed. I'm baffled at the idea there would be an explosion of dopeheads if certain substances were suddenly legal to use. It seems to be presented as if everyone who might conceivably try out a legal dose of heroin would jump immediately to shooting up in an alley.
Some restrictions are surely appropriate (and people do not all agree that every narcotic should be legal), I'm sure if Imperial China had legalised opium consumption as a free for all it would hardly have helped their situation any, but our current approach appears to be to ignore it unless it is too big to ignore, then do some pointless stamping down.
The evidence from places that have legalised is that things are not better:
Yes, I've changed my view on this. I was once pretty libertarian on drugs, for the reasons that eg Bart set out. But my imperfect and rather anecdotal understanding (Canada, the Netherlands, San Francisco, etc) is that legalising or decriminalisinf drugs does rather lead to an increase in drug use, and that the externalities of this are negative.
The best single piece I have seen on the drug overdose problem in the US is a column by Megan McArdle, which ends as follows: "Drug users must understand that if they cannot take drugs without also committing crimes, injecting in public places or camping on the street, they will be forced into treatment.
Now, as a libertarian, I was pretty uncomfortable writing that last sentence, and reading it might well have made you uneasy, too. Many people will no doubt be equally wary of giving up on controlling the use of indisputably harmful drugs. But overdose has become the leading cause of nonmedical death in the United States, and we seem to be out of comfortable options. We might have to settle for one that results in fewer deaths." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/25/legalize-fentanyl-overdose-deaths/
In America overdoses now kill more people than guns and cars combined, in the land of guns and cars.
Not much sign there that legalisation has either reduced consumption or stamped out the illegal trade.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
It just strikes me as futile to continue to ban recreational drugs - particularly when they are, to all intents and purposes, let’s be honest, decriminalised for personal use anyway - when one particular, legal, recreational drug is so central to our culture. Think of all the lovely tax we could be raking in. There is no moral difference between taking one or the other. The damage alcohol does dwarves that of any other drug.
What constitutes a dope head, what level of consumption? 1 joint on an evening? 2, 3? What strength would they need to be? What amount will cause national decline? ‘Cos I know a lot of folk who are doing a lot of boozing every night and there can’t be great for UK PLC. How many MPs, in their subsidised bars, are fighting national decline by drinking less than 14 units a week? How many millions of people across the country, in responsible positions, are habitually doing a bottle of wine a night? A few large whiskies?
Millions of people wake up every day slightly fuzzy round the edges from a few drinks the night before. The impact on any putative national decline of a few spliffs or lines here and there is tiny in comparison, I’d say.
On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of middle-class parents compete to get their children a supply of amphetamines, which reliably add 10-20 points onto IQ test scores (Leon's not around, so I can safely mention IQ tests, right?).
And tens of millions of us use caffeine every day, which gives much less of a boost but is generally enough to counteract the fuzziness from the night before.
There's a huge amount of humbug and hypocrisy about drug use. But whatever your view, no-one is seriously proposing to give the police the resources needed to end their use. No-one actually wants us to be Singapore, let alone Saudi Arabia.
Sure the War on Drugs has failed, but that doesn't mean that drugs are harmless, just that we have failed to protect our people.
How many of those overdose deaths have occurred from legalised drugs like cannabis?
And how many of those overdose deaths have occurred from prohibited drugs that are still illegal or prescription only?
Seems to me like it is prohibition that has failed.
How happy would you be if your daughters became cokeheads or smackheads?
That's a really unfair question. I mean, why not ask about them becoming alcoholics or gambling addicts or masturbation addicts or commenting-on-internet-forum addicts?
Addictions can certainly be destructive, and we should ensure that those affected receive all the love and support they need in order to overcome their problems.
But occasional cocaine or opiate or amphetamine or opiod or alcohol or substituted phenethylamine or caffeine or whatever use doesn't imply addiction. There's a qualitative and quantitative difference. We can support one without condemning the other.
The best single piece I have seen on the drug overdose problem in the US is a column by Megan McArdle, which ends as follows: "Drug users must understand that if they cannot take drugs without also committing crimes, injecting in public places or camping on the street, they will be forced into treatment.
Now, as a libertarian, I was pretty uncomfortable writing that last sentence, and reading it might well have made you uneasy, too. Many people will no doubt be equally wary of giving up on controlling the use of indisputably harmful drugs. But overdose has become the leading cause of nonmedical death in the United States, and we seem to be out of comfortable options. We might have to settle for one that results in fewer deaths." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/25/legalize-fentanyl-overdose-deaths/
In America overdoses now kill more people than guns and cars combined, in the land of guns and cars.
Not much sign there that legalisation has either reduced consumption or stamped out the illegal trade.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
It just strikes me as futile to continue to ban recreational drugs - particularly when they are, to all intents and purposes, let’s be honest, decriminalised for personal use anyway - when one particular, legal, recreational drug is so central to our culture. Think of all the lovely tax we could be raking in. There is no moral difference between taking one or the other. The damage alcohol does dwarves that of any other drug.
What constitutes a dope head, what level of consumption? 1 joint on an evening? 2, 3? What strength would they need to be? What amount will cause national decline? ‘Cos I know a lot of folk who are doing a lot of boozing every night and there can’t be great for UK PLC. How many MPs, in their subsidised bars, are fighting national decline by drinking less than 14 units a week? How many millions of people across the country, in responsible positions, are habitually doing a bottle of wine a night? A few large whiskies?
Millions of people wake up every day slightly fuzzy round the edges from a few drinks the night before. The impact on any putative national decline of a few spliffs or lines here and there is tiny in comparison, I’d say.
On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of middle-class parents compete to get their children a supply of amphetamines, which reliably add 10-20 points onto IQ test scores (Leon's not around, so I can safely mention IQ tests, right?).
And tens of millions of us use caffeine every day, which gives much less of a boost but is generally enough to counteract the fuzziness from the night before.
There's a huge amount of humbug and hypocrisy about drug use. But whatever your view, no-one is seriously proposing to give the police the resources needed to end their use. No-one actually wants us to be Singapore, let alone Saudi Arabia.
Sure the War on Drugs has failed, but that doesn't mean that drugs are harmless, just that we have failed to protect our people.
How many of those overdose deaths have occurred from legalised drugs like cannabis?
And how many of those overdose deaths have occurred from prohibited drugs that are still illegal or prescription only?
Seems to me like it is prohibition that has failed.
How happy would you be if your daughters became cokeheads or smackheads?
I'd be disappointed, just as I'd be disappointed if they became alcoholics.
I'd love and want to help them still if that happened.
And I'd want them to be helped through AA/NA style programs, education, support etc - not simply locking them in a prison with other addicts and throwing away the key.
Libertarianism requires free choice.
Addiction is the antithesis of free choice. It is enslavement.
Which is why we should have education and treatment, not police, prison and courts.
Addiction is hard to treat, but not impossible. If the addict wants to break free from their addiction they have the best chance to do so with education, healthcare and support. You can't treat addiction by incarceration.
So why support the latter, rather than former.
I don't want to incarcerated addicts. I want to incarcerated dealers.
Addicts do not have free choice.
But you can't incarcerate the dealers, it doesn't work. And many dealers are addicts themselves, so where do you draw the line?
Healthcare and treatment works. Prohibition doesn't.
That doesn't mean I'm pro-addiction as you are implying, I'm anti-addiction, I just want addiction treatment by a method that works, not a method that doesn't.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
Is that in dispute ?
The real question is how best to address that. We didn’t ban cigarettes - but smoking has dropped massively.
Indeed. I'm baffled at the idea there would be an explosion of dopeheads if certain substances were suddenly legal to use. It seems to be presented as if everyone who might conceivably try out a legal dose of heroin would jump immediately to shooting up in an alley.
Some restrictions are surely appropriate (and people do not all agree that every narcotic should be legal), I'm sure if Imperial China had legalised opium consumption as a free for all it would hardly have helped their situation any, but our current approach appears to be to ignore it unless it is too big to ignore, then do some pointless stamping down.
The evidence from places that have legalised is that things are not better:
Legalisation means regulation. It means instead of buying drugs from criminals you can buy drugs from licensed shops, which will sell you regulated strength of the product in a store, subject to taxes, with no criminal activity.
That's not remotely what Oregon has done.
This is what happened in Colorado with Marijuuana legalisation:
"The yearly number of emergency department visits related to marijuana increased 54 percent after the legalization of recreational marijuana (2013 compared to 2017). The yearly number of marijuana-related hospitalizations increased 101 percent after the legalization of recreational marijuana (2013 compared to 2017). Marijuana-only exposures more than quadrupled in the six-year average (2013–2018) since recreational marijuana was legalized compared to the six-year average (2007–2012) prior to legalization. The percent of suicide incidents in which toxicology results were positive for marijuana has increased from 14 percent in 2013 to 23 percent in 2017."
The best single piece I have seen on the drug overdose problem in the US is a column by Megan McArdle, which ends as follows: "Drug users must understand that if they cannot take drugs without also committing crimes, injecting in public places or camping on the street, they will be forced into treatment.
Now, as a libertarian, I was pretty uncomfortable writing that last sentence, and reading it might well have made you uneasy, too. Many people will no doubt be equally wary of giving up on controlling the use of indisputably harmful drugs. But overdose has become the leading cause of nonmedical death in the United States, and we seem to be out of comfortable options. We might have to settle for one that results in fewer deaths." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/25/legalize-fentanyl-overdose-deaths/
In America overdoses now kill more people than guns and cars combined, in the land of guns and cars.
Not much sign there that legalisation has either reduced consumption or stamped out the illegal trade.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
It just strikes me as futile to continue to ban recreational drugs - particularly when they are, to all intents and purposes, let’s be honest, decriminalised for personal use anyway - when one particular, legal, recreational drug is so central to our culture. Think of all the lovely tax we could be raking in. There is no moral difference between taking one or the other. The damage alcohol does dwarves that of any other drug.
What constitutes a dope head, what level of consumption? 1 joint on an evening? 2, 3? What strength would they need to be? What amount will cause national decline? ‘Cos I know a lot of folk who are doing a lot of boozing every night and there can’t be great for UK PLC. How many MPs, in their subsidised bars, are fighting national decline by drinking less than 14 units a week? How many millions of people across the country, in responsible positions, are habitually doing a bottle of wine a night? A few large whiskies?
Millions of people wake up every day slightly fuzzy round the edges from a few drinks the night before. The impact on any putative national decline of a few spliffs or lines here and there is tiny in comparison, I’d say.
On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of middle-class parents compete to get their children a supply of amphetamines, which reliably add 10-20 points onto IQ test scores (Leon's not around, so I can safely mention IQ tests, right?).
And tens of millions of us use caffeine every day, which gives much less of a boost but is generally enough to counteract the fuzziness from the night before.
There's a huge amount of humbug and hypocrisy about drug use. But whatever your view, no-one is seriously proposing to give the police the resources needed to end their use. No-one actually wants us to be Singapore, let alone Saudi Arabia.
Sure the War on Drugs has failed, but that doesn't mean that drugs are harmless, just that we have failed to protect our people.
How many of those overdose deaths have occurred from legalised drugs like cannabis?
And how many of those overdose deaths have occurred from prohibited drugs that are still illegal or prescription only?
Seems to me like it is prohibition that has failed.
How happy would you be if your daughters became cokeheads or smackheads?
I'd be disappointed, just as I'd be disappointed if they became alcoholics.
I'd love and want to help them still if that happened.
And I'd want them to be helped through AA/NA style programs, education, support etc - not simply locking them in a prison with other addicts and throwing away the key.
Libertarianism requires free choice.
Addiction is the antithesis of free choice. It is enslavement.
Which is why we should have education and treatment, not police, prison and courts.
Addiction is hard to treat, but not impossible. If the addict wants to break free from their addiction they have the best chance to do so with education, healthcare and support. You can't treat addiction by incarceration.
So why support the latter, rather than former.
I just don't see how we end up with fewer addicts with a more controlled and regulated environment than what we have now.
Granted, you shouldn't just grasp at any solution to a problem, some solutions are not effective, but what alternatives are being offered that have not already been tried? Everyone in this debate points to different examples of what happens when you legalise or regulate, so at worst it an issue which is still open for debate rather than some licence for addiction. Otherwise nuanced folk become very polarised on it very quickly.
Who would play you in the film of your life? I’ve got to go for Colin Firth because he played Mark Darcy, the human-rights lawyer in Bridget Jones’s Diary. There’s been this rumour going on for years that he’s modelled on me – and the honest answer is, I don’t know.
The best single piece I have seen on the drug overdose problem in the US is a column by Megan McArdle, which ends as follows: "Drug users must understand that if they cannot take drugs without also committing crimes, injecting in public places or camping on the street, they will be forced into treatment.
Now, as a libertarian, I was pretty uncomfortable writing that last sentence, and reading it might well have made you uneasy, too. Many people will no doubt be equally wary of giving up on controlling the use of indisputably harmful drugs. But overdose has become the leading cause of nonmedical death in the United States, and we seem to be out of comfortable options. We might have to settle for one that results in fewer deaths." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/25/legalize-fentanyl-overdose-deaths/
In America overdoses now kill more people than guns and cars combined, in the land of guns and cars.
Not much sign there that legalisation has either reduced consumption or stamped out the illegal trade.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
It just strikes me as futile to continue to ban recreational drugs - particularly when they are, to all intents and purposes, let’s be honest, decriminalised for personal use anyway - when one particular, legal, recreational drug is so central to our culture. Think of all the lovely tax we could be raking in. There is no moral difference between taking one or the other. The damage alcohol does dwarves that of any other drug.
What constitutes a dope head, what level of consumption? 1 joint on an evening? 2, 3? What strength would they need to be? What amount will cause national decline? ‘Cos I know a lot of folk who are doing a lot of boozing every night and there can’t be great for UK PLC. How many MPs, in their subsidised bars, are fighting national decline by drinking less than 14 units a week? How many millions of people across the country, in responsible positions, are habitually doing a bottle of wine a night? A few large whiskies?
Millions of people wake up every day slightly fuzzy round the edges from a few drinks the night before. The impact on any putative national decline of a few spliffs or lines here and there is tiny in comparison, I’d say.
On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of middle-class parents compete to get their children a supply of amphetamines, which reliably add 10-20 points onto IQ test scores (Leon's not around, so I can safely mention IQ tests, right?).
And tens of millions of us use caffeine every day, which gives much less of a boost but is generally enough to counteract the fuzziness from the night before.
There's a huge amount of humbug and hypocrisy about drug use. But whatever your view, no-one is seriously proposing to give the police the resources needed to end their use. No-one actually wants us to be Singapore, let alone Saudi Arabia.
Sure the War on Drugs has failed, but that doesn't mean that drugs are harmless, just that we have failed to protect our people.
How many of those overdose deaths have occurred from legalised drugs like cannabis?
And how many of those overdose deaths have occurred from prohibited drugs that are still illegal or prescription only?
Seems to me like it is prohibition that has failed.
How happy would you be if your daughters became cokeheads or smackheads?
I'd be disappointed, just as I'd be disappointed if they became alcoholics.
I'd love and want to help them still if that happened.
And I'd want them to be helped through AA/NA style programs, education, support etc - not simply locking them in a prison with other addicts and throwing away the key.
Libertarianism requires free choice.
Addiction is the antithesis of free choice. It is enslavement.
Which is why we should have education and treatment, not police, prison and courts.
Addiction is hard to treat, but not impossible. If the addict wants to break free from their addiction they have the best chance to do so with education, healthcare and support. You can't treat addiction by incarceration.
So why support the latter, rather than former.
I don't want to incarcerated addicts. I want to incarcerated dealers.
Addicts do not have free choice.
But you can't incarcerate the dealers, it doesn't work. And many dealers are addicts themselves, so where do you draw the line?
Healthcare and treatment works. Prohibition doesn't.
That doesn't mean I'm pro-addiction as you are implying, I'm anti-addiction, I just want addiction treatment by a method that works, not a method that doesn't.
Yes, but legalisation increases usage, and addiction.
Is it just me, or does this Trump rant not actually come across as authentically from him? It seems a little too coherent, the rhetorical question about such behaviour being horrible and whether he could do it if elected seems out of keeping with his other statements that he'd definitely weaponise the DoJ to do it, and the final line is rather milquetoast as far as Trump warnings go, not to mention there isn't a single allcaps in word in the entire thing.
48% to form a majority, 46% a minority so it's far from a foregone conclusion the Conservatives will be able to form a Government if the Liberals, NDP and BQ can get enough seats.
Yes, Polievre is an effective Opposition Leader if a little nerdy to Trudeau's more charismatic Liberal PM but he may face the same problem the Spanish PP leader had last month, he wins most seats but not enough to be sure of becoming PM without a majority (and Trudeau like Sanchez should not be written off, both have won tough elections before).
It is certainly hard to see the NDP allowing Polilievre to become PM now they have a confidence and supply deal with Trudeau's minority Liberal government
It's an accepted convention in Canadian politics that the party winning the most seats goes on to form the government, no matter how from they are from a majority. Of course that convention may change at the next election if the NDP does a deal with the Liberals.
It has been previously but convention does not make it law and the NDP haven't had a formal confidence and supply deal with the Liberals before as they do now yes
Having just consumed a bottle of wine (ok, I added a dab to the pasta sauce and Mrs S. sniffed half a glass) I'm bound to ask 'why do people take drugs?' There are, of course, many answers, just as there were in the days of Gin Lane and the Rake's Progress. But ultimately it boils down to the desire to feel slightly better than you did five minutes ago.
It isn't clever and it isn't funny. But it is fundamentally human. We're all tainted with this urge whether we admit it or not. Let's start addressing the problem by conceding that the difference between a bottle of wine, a line of coke or a syringe of heroin is an arbitrary social construction rather than a self-evident categorical distinction.
In order to function, society needs sober workers, sober drivers and sober leaders. Let's start by calling out the hypocrisy of MPs with their subsidised bars, open all hours until the last vote has been drunkenly cast and recorded. Once this issue has been addressed we may consider the plight of lesser folk who are less generously protected.
Having just consumed a bottle of wine (ok, I added a dab to the pasta sauce and Mrs S. sniffed half a glass) I'm bound to ask 'why do people take drugs?' There are, of course, many answers, just as there were in the days of Gin Lane and the Rake's Progress. But ultimately it boils down to the desire to feel slightly better than you did five minutes ago.
It isn't clever and it isn't funny. But it is fundamentally human. We're all tainted with this urge whether we admit it or not. Let's start addressing the problem by conceding that the difference between a bottle of wine, a line of coke or a syringe of heroin is an arbitrary social construction rather than a self-evident categorical distinction.
In order to function, society needs sober workers, sober drivers and sober leaders. Let's start by calling out the hypocrisy of MPs with their subsidised bars, open all hours until the last vote has been drunkenly cast and recorded. Once this issue has been addressed we may consider the plight of lesser folk who are less generously protected.
Do coffee and tea count as drugs? Those are the only ones I use atm. Gave up alcohol last year in order to lose weight.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
Is that in dispute ?
The real question is how best to address that. We didn’t ban cigarettes - but smoking has dropped massively.
Indeed. I'm baffled at the idea there would be an explosion of dopeheads if certain substances were suddenly legal to use. It seems to be presented as if everyone who might conceivably try out a legal dose of heroin would jump immediately to shooting up in an alley.
Some restrictions are surely appropriate (and people do not all agree that every narcotic should be legal), I'm sure if Imperial China had legalised opium consumption as a free for all it would hardly have helped their situation any, but our current approach appears to be to ignore it unless it is too big to ignore, then do some pointless stamping down.
The evidence from places that have legalised is that things are not better:
Legalisation means regulation. It means instead of buying drugs from criminals you can buy drugs from licensed shops, which will sell you regulated strength of the product in a store, subject to taxes, with no criminal activity.
That's not remotely what Oregon has done.
This is what happened in Colorado with Marijuuana legalisation:
"The yearly number of emergency department visits related to marijuana increased 54 percent after the legalization of recreational marijuana (2013 compared to 2017). The yearly number of marijuana-related hospitalizations increased 101 percent after the legalization of recreational marijuana (2013 compared to 2017). Marijuana-only exposures more than quadrupled in the six-year average (2013–2018) since recreational marijuana was legalized compared to the six-year average (2007–2012) prior to legalization. The percent of suicide incidents in which toxicology results were positive for marijuana has increased from 14 percent in 2013 to 23 percent in 2017."
Considering I am proposing healthcare as the alternative rather than incarceration as the alternative, maybe looking at America where poor addicts don't have any healthcare may not provide a realistic vision of how it works?
Legalisation has worked in Canada. It has provided tens of billions of dollars in taxation, addicts in Canada have access to healthcare (as they would in the UK), there are over a hundred thousand legal jobs in the industry there (as opposed to criminal jobs here).
Simply opposing addiction is not a reason to support prohibition. Its a reason to support treatment, something sadly lacking in America.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
Is that in dispute ?
The real question is how best to address that. We didn’t ban cigarettes - but smoking has dropped massively.
Indeed. I'm baffled at the idea there would be an explosion of dopeheads if certain substances were suddenly legal to use. It seems to be presented as if everyone who might conceivably try out a legal dose of heroin would jump immediately to shooting up in an alley.
Some restrictions are surely appropriate (and people do not all agree that every narcotic should be legal), I'm sure if Imperial China had legalised opium consumption as a free for all it would hardly have helped their situation any, but our current approach appears to be to ignore it unless it is too big to ignore, then do some pointless stamping down.
The evidence from places that have legalised is that things are not better:
Yes, I've changed my view on this. I was once pretty libertarian on drugs, for the reasons that eg Bart set out. But my imperfect and rather anecdotal understanding (Canada, the Netherlands, San Francisco, etc) is that legalising or decriminalisinf drugs does rather lead to an increase in drug use, and that the externalities of this are negative.
I think it also a major factor in poor school performance in working class boys.
We may not be winning the war on drugs, but that doesn't mean that we should surrender.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
Is that in dispute ?
The real question is how best to address that. We didn’t ban cigarettes - but smoking has dropped massively.
Indeed. I'm baffled at the idea there would be an explosion of dopeheads if certain substances were suddenly legal to use. It seems to be presented as if everyone who might conceivably try out a legal dose of heroin would jump immediately to shooting up in an alley.
Some restrictions are surely appropriate (and people do not all agree that every narcotic should be legal), I'm sure if Imperial China had legalised opium consumption as a free for all it would hardly have helped their situation any, but our current approach appears to be to ignore it unless it is too big to ignore, then do some pointless stamping down.
The evidence from places that have legalised is that things are not better:
Legalisation means regulation. It means instead of buying drugs from criminals you can buy drugs from licensed shops, which will sell you regulated strength of the product in a store, subject to taxes, with no criminal activity.
That's not remotely what Oregon has done.
This is what happened in Colorado with Marijuuana legalisation:
"The yearly number of emergency department visits related to marijuana increased 54 percent after the legalization of recreational marijuana (2013 compared to 2017). The yearly number of marijuana-related hospitalizations increased 101 percent after the legalization of recreational marijuana (2013 compared to 2017). Marijuana-only exposures more than quadrupled in the six-year average (2013–2018) since recreational marijuana was legalized compared to the six-year average (2007–2012) prior to legalization. The percent of suicide incidents in which toxicology results were positive for marijuana has increased from 14 percent in 2013 to 23 percent in 2017."
Considering I am proposing healthcare as the alternative rather than incarceration as the alternative, maybe looking at America where poor addicts don't have any healthcare may not provide a realistic vision of how it works?
Legalisation has worked in Canada. It has provided tens of billions of dollars in taxation, addicts in Canada have access to healthcare (as they would in the UK), there are over a hundred thousand legal jobs in the industry there (as opposed to criminal jobs here).
Simply opposing addiction is not a reason to support prohibition. Its a reason to support treatment, something sadly lacking in America.
You have a rather rosey view of a rather more problematic outcome:
The best single piece I have seen on the drug overdose problem in the US is a column by Megan McArdle, which ends as follows: "Drug users must understand that if they cannot take drugs without also committing crimes, injecting in public places or camping on the street, they will be forced into treatment.
Now, as a libertarian, I was pretty uncomfortable writing that last sentence, and reading it might well have made you uneasy, too. Many people will no doubt be equally wary of giving up on controlling the use of indisputably harmful drugs. But overdose has become the leading cause of nonmedical death in the United States, and we seem to be out of comfortable options. We might have to settle for one that results in fewer deaths." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/25/legalize-fentanyl-overdose-deaths/
In America overdoses now kill more people than guns and cars combined, in the land of guns and cars.
Not much sign there that legalisation has either reduced consumption or stamped out the illegal trade.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
It just strikes me as futile to continue to ban recreational drugs - particularly when they are, to all intents and purposes, let’s be honest, decriminalised for personal use anyway - when one particular, legal, recreational drug is so central to our culture. Think of all the lovely tax we could be raking in. There is no moral difference between taking one or the other. The damage alcohol does dwarves that of any other drug.
What constitutes a dope head, what level of consumption? 1 joint on an evening? 2, 3? What strength would they need to be? What amount will cause national decline? ‘Cos I know a lot of folk who are doing a lot of boozing every night and there can’t be great for UK PLC. How many MPs, in their subsidised bars, are fighting national decline by drinking less than 14 units a week? How many millions of people across the country, in responsible positions, are habitually doing a bottle of wine a night? A few large whiskies?
Millions of people wake up every day slightly fuzzy round the edges from a few drinks the night before. The impact on any putative national decline of a few spliffs or lines here and there is tiny in comparison, I’d say.
On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of middle-class parents compete to get their children a supply of amphetamines, which reliably add 10-20 points onto IQ test scores (Leon's not around, so I can safely mention IQ tests, right?).
And tens of millions of us use caffeine every day, which gives much less of a boost but is generally enough to counteract the fuzziness from the night before.
There's a huge amount of humbug and hypocrisy about drug use. But whatever your view, no-one is seriously proposing to give the police the resources needed to end their use. No-one actually wants us to be Singapore, let alone Saudi Arabia.
Sure the War on Drugs has failed, but that doesn't mean that drugs are harmless, just that we have failed to protect our people.
How many of those overdose deaths have occurred from legalised drugs like cannabis?
And how many of those overdose deaths have occurred from prohibited drugs that are still illegal or prescription only?
Seems to me like it is prohibition that has failed.
How happy would you be if your daughters became cokeheads or smackheads?
I'd be disappointed, just as I'd be disappointed if they became alcoholics.
I'd love and want to help them still if that happened.
And I'd want them to be helped through AA/NA style programs, education, support etc - not simply locking them in a prison with other addicts and throwing away the key.
Libertarianism requires free choice.
Addiction is the antithesis of free choice. It is enslavement.
Which is why we should have education and treatment, not police, prison and courts.
Addiction is hard to treat, but not impossible. If the addict wants to break free from their addiction they have the best chance to do so with education, healthcare and support. You can't treat addiction by incarceration.
So why support the latter, rather than former.
I just don't see how we end up with fewer addicts with a more controlled and regulated environment than what we have now.
Granted, you shouldn't just grasp at any solution to a problem, some solutions are not effective, but what alternatives are being offered that have not already been tried? Everyone in this debate points to different examples of what happens when you legalise or regulate, so at worst it an issue which is still open for debate rather than some licence for addiction. Otherwise nuanced folk become very polarised on it very quickly.
Because people engaged in a criminal behaviour don't feel they can seek help. What they're doing makes their actions illegal, so their peers are criminals.
Under prohibition rates of addiction have gone upwards.
Under legalisation with education, rates of smoking have plummeted.
My proposal is if someone wants cocaine, or heroin, or cannabis, or fentanyl or whatever they should be able to get it at a regulated dose from behind the counter somewhere like Boots. Like people go to a counter to buy tobacco today. It should be taxed, there should be warnings on the material (like tobacco) and there should be support available. Someone who wants treatment, should have an easy gateway to get it. And absolutely no criminals involved, from start to finish.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
Is that in dispute ?
The real question is how best to address that. We didn’t ban cigarettes - but smoking has dropped massively.
Indeed. I'm baffled at the idea there would be an explosion of dopeheads if certain substances were suddenly legal to use. It seems to be presented as if everyone who might conceivably try out a legal dose of heroin would jump immediately to shooting up in an alley.
Some restrictions are surely appropriate (and people do not all agree that every narcotic should be legal), I'm sure if Imperial China had legalised opium consumption as a free for all it would hardly have helped their situation any, but our current approach appears to be to ignore it unless it is too big to ignore, then do some pointless stamping down.
The evidence from places that have legalised is that things are not better:
And the other side point to their own evidence. I'll go with the flow on this though my inclination is what we are doing now is not working, but perhaps getting unnecessarily very personal and asking if people would be happy with their daughter as a smackhead (something which could happen now in fact) undercuts the rational basis of the argument whereas sticking to pointing to it not working as a solution would be more convincing. In which case why do it in the first place.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
Is that in dispute ?
The real question is how best to address that. We didn’t ban cigarettes - but smoking has dropped massively.
Indeed. I'm baffled at the idea there would be an explosion of dopeheads if certain substances were suddenly legal to use. It seems to be presented as if everyone who might conceivably try out a legal dose of heroin would jump immediately to shooting up in an alley.
Some restrictions are surely appropriate (and people do not all agree that every narcotic should be legal), I'm sure if Imperial China had legalised opium consumption as a free for all it would hardly have helped their situation any, but our current approach appears to be to ignore it unless it is too big to ignore, then do some pointless stamping down.
The evidence from places that have legalised is that things are not better:
Yes, I've changed my view on this. I was once pretty libertarian on drugs, for the reasons that eg Bart set out. But my imperfect and rather anecdotal understanding (Canada, the Netherlands, San Francisco, etc) is that legalising or decriminalisinf drugs does rather lead to an increase in drug use, and that the externalities of this are negative.
I think it also a major factor in poor school performance in working class boys.
We may not be winning the war on drugs, but that doesn't mean that we should surrender.
I have a real problem with the language around this. What does the "war on drugs" actually mean?
Humans have taken plants that have weird effects since we crawled out of the slime or whatever.
As David Nutt argues (see my previous post) where society draws a line varies enormously in both time and location.
The best single piece I have seen on the drug overdose problem in the US is a column by Megan McArdle, which ends as follows: "Drug users must understand that if they cannot take drugs without also committing crimes, injecting in public places or camping on the street, they will be forced into treatment.
Now, as a libertarian, I was pretty uncomfortable writing that last sentence, and reading it might well have made you uneasy, too. Many people will no doubt be equally wary of giving up on controlling the use of indisputably harmful drugs. But overdose has become the leading cause of nonmedical death in the United States, and we seem to be out of comfortable options. We might have to settle for one that results in fewer deaths." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/25/legalize-fentanyl-overdose-deaths/
In America overdoses now kill more people than guns and cars combined, in the land of guns and cars.
Not much sign there that legalisation has either reduced consumption or stamped out the illegal trade.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
It just strikes me as futile to continue to ban recreational drugs - particularly when they are, to all intents and purposes, let’s be honest, decriminalised for personal use anyway - when one particular, legal, recreational drug is so central to our culture. Think of all the lovely tax we could be raking in. There is no moral difference between taking one or the other. The damage alcohol does dwarves that of any other drug.
What constitutes a dope head, what level of consumption? 1 joint on an evening? 2, 3? What strength would they need to be? What amount will cause national decline? ‘Cos I know a lot of folk who are doing a lot of boozing every night and there can’t be great for UK PLC. How many MPs, in their subsidised bars, are fighting national decline by drinking less than 14 units a week? How many millions of people across the country, in responsible positions, are habitually doing a bottle of wine a night? A few large whiskies?
Millions of people wake up every day slightly fuzzy round the edges from a few drinks the night before. The impact on any putative national decline of a few spliffs or lines here and there is tiny in comparison, I’d say.
On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of middle-class parents compete to get their children a supply of amphetamines, which reliably add 10-20 points onto IQ test scores (Leon's not around, so I can safely mention IQ tests, right?).
And tens of millions of us use caffeine every day, which gives much less of a boost but is generally enough to counteract the fuzziness from the night before.
There's a huge amount of humbug and hypocrisy about drug use. But whatever your view, no-one is seriously proposing to give the police the resources needed to end their use. No-one actually wants us to be Singapore, let alone Saudi Arabia.
Sure the War on Drugs has failed, but that doesn't mean that drugs are harmless, just that we have failed to protect our people.
How many of those overdose deaths have occurred from legalised drugs like cannabis?
And how many of those overdose deaths have occurred from prohibited drugs that are still illegal or prescription only?
Seems to me like it is prohibition that has failed.
How happy would you be if your daughters became cokeheads or smackheads?
I'd be disappointed, just as I'd be disappointed if they became alcoholics.
I'd love and want to help them still if that happened.
And I'd want them to be helped through AA/NA style programs, education, support etc - not simply locking them in a prison with other addicts and throwing away the key.
Libertarianism requires free choice.
Addiction is the antithesis of free choice. It is enslavement.
Which is why we should have education and treatment, not police, prison and courts.
Addiction is hard to treat, but not impossible. If the addict wants to break free from their addiction they have the best chance to do so with education, healthcare and support. You can't treat addiction by incarceration.
So why support the latter, rather than former.
I just don't see how we end up with fewer addicts with a more controlled and regulated environment than what we have now.
Granted, you shouldn't just grasp at any solution to a problem, some solutions are not effective, but what alternatives are being offered that have not already been tried? Everyone in this debate points to different examples of what happens when you legalise or regulate, so at worst it an issue which is still open for debate rather than some licence for addiction. Otherwise nuanced folk become very polarised on it very quickly.
Because people engaged in a criminal behaviour don't feel they can seek help. What they're doing makes their actions illegal, so their peers are criminals.
Under prohibition rates of addiction have gone upwards.
Under legalisation with education, rates of smoking have plummeted.
My proposal is if someone wants cocaine, or heroin, or cannabis, or fentanyl or whatever they should be able to get it at a regulated dose from behind the counter somewhere like Boots. Like people go to a counter to buy tobacco today. It should be taxed, there should be warnings on the material (like tobacco) and there should be support available. Someone who wants treatment, should have an easy gateway to get it. And absolutely no criminals involved, from start to finish.
Education works. Treatment works.
Rates of usage are up in states with legalisation:
The best single piece I have seen on the drug overdose problem in the US is a column by Megan McArdle, which ends as follows: "Drug users must understand that if they cannot take drugs without also committing crimes, injecting in public places or camping on the street, they will be forced into treatment.
Now, as a libertarian, I was pretty uncomfortable writing that last sentence, and reading it might well have made you uneasy, too. Many people will no doubt be equally wary of giving up on controlling the use of indisputably harmful drugs. But overdose has become the leading cause of nonmedical death in the United States, and we seem to be out of comfortable options. We might have to settle for one that results in fewer deaths." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/25/legalize-fentanyl-overdose-deaths/
In America overdoses now kill more people than guns and cars combined, in the land of guns and cars.
Not much sign there that legalisation has either reduced consumption or stamped out the illegal trade.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
It just strikes me as futile to continue to ban recreational drugs - particularly when they are, to all intents and purposes, let’s be honest, decriminalised for personal use anyway - when one particular, legal, recreational drug is so central to our culture. Think of all the lovely tax we could be raking in. There is no moral difference between taking one or the other. The damage alcohol does dwarves that of any other drug.
What constitutes a dope head, what level of consumption? 1 joint on an evening? 2, 3? What strength would they need to be? What amount will cause national decline? ‘Cos I know a lot of folk who are doing a lot of boozing every night and there can’t be great for UK PLC. How many MPs, in their subsidised bars, are fighting national decline by drinking less than 14 units a week? How many millions of people across the country, in responsible positions, are habitually doing a bottle of wine a night? A few large whiskies?
Millions of people wake up every day slightly fuzzy round the edges from a few drinks the night before. The impact on any putative national decline of a few spliffs or lines here and there is tiny in comparison, I’d say.
On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of middle-class parents compete to get their children a supply of amphetamines, which reliably add 10-20 points onto IQ test scores (Leon's not around, so I can safely mention IQ tests, right?).
And tens of millions of us use caffeine every day, which gives much less of a boost but is generally enough to counteract the fuzziness from the night before.
There's a huge amount of humbug and hypocrisy about drug use. But whatever your view, no-one is seriously proposing to give the police the resources needed to end their use. No-one actually wants us to be Singapore, let alone Saudi Arabia.
Sure the War on Drugs has failed, but that doesn't mean that drugs are harmless, just that we have failed to protect our people.
How many of those overdose deaths have occurred from legalised drugs like cannabis?
And how many of those overdose deaths have occurred from prohibited drugs that are still illegal or prescription only?
Seems to me like it is prohibition that has failed.
How happy would you be if your daughters became cokeheads or smackheads?
I'd be disappointed, just as I'd be disappointed if they became alcoholics.
I'd love and want to help them still if that happened.
And I'd want them to be helped through AA/NA style programs, education, support etc - not simply locking them in a prison with other addicts and throwing away the key.
Libertarianism requires free choice.
Addiction is the antithesis of free choice. It is enslavement.
Which is why we should have education and treatment, not police, prison and courts.
Addiction is hard to treat, but not impossible. If the addict wants to break free from their addiction they have the best chance to do so with education, healthcare and support. You can't treat addiction by incarceration.
So why support the latter, rather than former.
I just don't see how we end up with fewer addicts with a more controlled and regulated environment than what we have now.
Granted, you shouldn't just grasp at any solution to a problem, some solutions are not effective, but what alternatives are being offered that have not already been tried? Everyone in this debate points to different examples of what happens when you legalise or regulate, so at worst it an issue which is still open for debate rather than some licence for addiction. Otherwise nuanced folk become very polarised on it very quickly.
Because people engaged in a criminal behaviour don't feel they can seek help. What they're doing makes their actions illegal, so their peers are criminals.
Under prohibition rates of addiction have gone upwards.
Under legalisation with education, rates of smoking have plummeted.
My proposal is if someone wants cocaine, or heroin, or cannabis, or fentanyl or whatever they should be able to get it at a regulated dose from behind the counter somewhere like Boots. Like people go to a counter to buy tobacco today. It should be taxed, there should be warnings on the material (like tobacco) and there should be support available. Someone who wants treatment, should have an easy gateway to get it. And absolutely no criminals involved, from start to finish.
Education works. Treatment works.
Rates of usage are up in states with legalisation:
The best single piece I have seen on the drug overdose problem in the US is a column by Megan McArdle, which ends as follows: "Drug users must understand that if they cannot take drugs without also committing crimes, injecting in public places or camping on the street, they will be forced into treatment.
Now, as a libertarian, I was pretty uncomfortable writing that last sentence, and reading it might well have made you uneasy, too. Many people will no doubt be equally wary of giving up on controlling the use of indisputably harmful drugs. But overdose has become the leading cause of nonmedical death in the United States, and we seem to be out of comfortable options. We might have to settle for one that results in fewer deaths." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/25/legalize-fentanyl-overdose-deaths/
In America overdoses now kill more people than guns and cars combined, in the land of guns and cars.
Not much sign there that legalisation has either reduced consumption or stamped out the illegal trade.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
It just strikes me as futile to continue to ban recreational drugs - particularly when they are, to all intents and purposes, let’s be honest, decriminalised for personal use anyway - when one particular, legal, recreational drug is so central to our culture. Think of all the lovely tax we could be raking in. There is no moral difference between taking one or the other. The damage alcohol does dwarves that of any other drug.
What constitutes a dope head, what level of consumption? 1 joint on an evening? 2, 3? What strength would they need to be? What amount will cause national decline? ‘Cos I know a lot of folk who are doing a lot of boozing every night and there can’t be great for UK PLC. How many MPs, in their subsidised bars, are fighting national decline by drinking less than 14 units a week? How many millions of people across the country, in responsible positions, are habitually doing a bottle of wine a night? A few large whiskies?
Millions of people wake up every day slightly fuzzy round the edges from a few drinks the night before. The impact on any putative national decline of a few spliffs or lines here and there is tiny in comparison, I’d say.
On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of middle-class parents compete to get their children a supply of amphetamines, which reliably add 10-20 points onto IQ test scores (Leon's not around, so I can safely mention IQ tests, right?).
And tens of millions of us use caffeine every day, which gives much less of a boost but is generally enough to counteract the fuzziness from the night before.
There's a huge amount of humbug and hypocrisy about drug use. But whatever your view, no-one is seriously proposing to give the police the resources needed to end their use. No-one actually wants us to be Singapore, let alone Saudi Arabia.
Sure the War on Drugs has failed, but that doesn't mean that drugs are harmless, just that we have failed to protect our people.
How many of those overdose deaths have occurred from legalised drugs like cannabis?
And how many of those overdose deaths have occurred from prohibited drugs that are still illegal or prescription only?
Seems to me like it is prohibition that has failed.
How happy would you be if your daughters became cokeheads or smackheads?
I'd be disappointed, just as I'd be disappointed if they became alcoholics.
I'd love and want to help them still if that happened.
And I'd want them to be helped through AA/NA style programs, education, support etc - not simply locking them in a prison with other addicts and throwing away the key.
Libertarianism requires free choice.
Addiction is the antithesis of free choice. It is enslavement.
Which is why we should have education and treatment, not police, prison and courts.
Addiction is hard to treat, but not impossible. If the addict wants to break free from their addiction they have the best chance to do so with education, healthcare and support. You can't treat addiction by incarceration.
So why support the latter, rather than former.
I just don't see how we end up with fewer addicts with a more controlled and regulated environment than what we have now.
Granted, you shouldn't just grasp at any solution to a problem, some solutions are not effective, but what alternatives are being offered that have not already been tried? Everyone in this debate points to different examples of what happens when you legalise or regulate, so at worst it an issue which is still open for debate rather than some licence for addiction. Otherwise nuanced folk become very polarised on it very quickly.
Because people engaged in a criminal behaviour don't feel they can seek help. What they're doing makes their actions illegal, so their peers are criminals.
Under prohibition rates of addiction have gone upwards.
Under legalisation with education, rates of smoking have plummeted.
My proposal is if someone wants cocaine, or heroin, or cannabis, or fentanyl or whatever they should be able to get it at a regulated dose from behind the counter somewhere like Boots. Like people go to a counter to buy tobacco today. It should be taxed, there should be warnings on the material (like tobacco) and there should be support available. Someone who wants treatment, should have an easy gateway to get it. And absolutely no criminals involved, from start to finish.
Education works. Treatment works.
Rates of usage are up in states with legalisation:
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
Is that in dispute ?
The real question is how best to address that. We didn’t ban cigarettes - but smoking has dropped massively.
Indeed. I'm baffled at the idea there would be an explosion of dopeheads if certain substances were suddenly legal to use. It seems to be presented as if everyone who might conceivably try out a legal dose of heroin would jump immediately to shooting up in an alley.
Some restrictions are surely appropriate (and people do not all agree that every narcotic should be legal), I'm sure if Imperial China had legalised opium consumption as a free for all it would hardly have helped their situation any, but our current approach appears to be to ignore it unless it is too big to ignore, then do some pointless stamping down.
The evidence from places that have legalised is that things are not better:
Legalisation means regulation. It means instead of buying drugs from criminals you can buy drugs from licensed shops, which will sell you regulated strength of the product in a store, subject to taxes, with no criminal activity.
That's not remotely what Oregon has done.
This is what happened in Colorado with Marijuuana legalisation:
"The yearly number of emergency department visits related to marijuana increased 54 percent after the legalization of recreational marijuana (2013 compared to 2017). The yearly number of marijuana-related hospitalizations increased 101 percent after the legalization of recreational marijuana (2013 compared to 2017). Marijuana-only exposures more than quadrupled in the six-year average (2013–2018) since recreational marijuana was legalized compared to the six-year average (2007–2012) prior to legalization. The percent of suicide incidents in which toxicology results were positive for marijuana has increased from 14 percent in 2013 to 23 percent in 2017."
Considering I am proposing healthcare as the alternative rather than incarceration as the alternative, maybe looking at America where poor addicts don't have any healthcare may not provide a realistic vision of how it works?
Legalisation has worked in Canada. It has provided tens of billions of dollars in taxation, addicts in Canada have access to healthcare (as they would in the UK), there are over a hundred thousand legal jobs in the industry there (as opposed to criminal jobs here).
Simply opposing addiction is not a reason to support prohibition. Its a reason to support treatment, something sadly lacking in America.
You have a rather rosey view of a rather more problematic outcome:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cannabis-changed-canada-1.6219493 Russell Callaghan, a professor in the UBC Northern Medical Program at the University of Northern British Columbia, is researching the impacts of legalization on a range of public health indicators. He says research in that area is still in its early stages.
What has stuck out to him so far, however, is that many of the concerns around legalized cannabis — including potential increased cases of cannabis-induced psychosis and schizophrenia, and driving under the influence of drugs — have not materialized.
Callaghan says his research on traffic injuries in Ontario and Alberta does not suggest legalization has had a significant effect, at least not yet.
A recent report from Mothers Against Drunk Driving Canada (MADD) says the number of drug-impaired driving charges is "extremely low" — accounting for just 11 per cent of the 5,506 impaired driving charges across Canada in 2019.
Some provinces, such as Ontario and Quebec, saw a significant increase in drug-impaired driving charges that year, but the report attributes that mainly to new laws and enforcement powers.
The best single piece I have seen on the drug overdose problem in the US is a column by Megan McArdle, which ends as follows: "Drug users must understand that if they cannot take drugs without also committing crimes, injecting in public places or camping on the street, they will be forced into treatment.
Now, as a libertarian, I was pretty uncomfortable writing that last sentence, and reading it might well have made you uneasy, too. Many people will no doubt be equally wary of giving up on controlling the use of indisputably harmful drugs. But overdose has become the leading cause of nonmedical death in the United States, and we seem to be out of comfortable options. We might have to settle for one that results in fewer deaths." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/25/legalize-fentanyl-overdose-deaths/
In America overdoses now kill more people than guns and cars combined, in the land of guns and cars.
Not much sign there that legalisation has either reduced consumption or stamped out the illegal trade.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
It just strikes me as futile to continue to ban recreational drugs - particularly when they are, to all intents and purposes, let’s be honest, decriminalised for personal use anyway - when one particular, legal, recreational drug is so central to our culture. Think of all the lovely tax we could be raking in. There is no moral difference between taking one or the other. The damage alcohol does dwarves that of any other drug.
What constitutes a dope head, what level of consumption? 1 joint on an evening? 2, 3? What strength would they need to be? What amount will cause national decline? ‘Cos I know a lot of folk who are doing a lot of boozing every night and there can’t be great for UK PLC. How many MPs, in their subsidised bars, are fighting national decline by drinking less than 14 units a week? How many millions of people across the country, in responsible positions, are habitually doing a bottle of wine a night? A few large whiskies?
Millions of people wake up every day slightly fuzzy round the edges from a few drinks the night before. The impact on any putative national decline of a few spliffs or lines here and there is tiny in comparison, I’d say.
On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of middle-class parents compete to get their children a supply of amphetamines, which reliably add 10-20 points onto IQ test scores (Leon's not around, so I can safely mention IQ tests, right?).
And tens of millions of us use caffeine every day, which gives much less of a boost but is generally enough to counteract the fuzziness from the night before.
There's a huge amount of humbug and hypocrisy about drug use. But whatever your view, no-one is seriously proposing to give the police the resources needed to end their use. No-one actually wants us to be Singapore, let alone Saudi Arabia.
Sure the War on Drugs has failed, but that doesn't mean that drugs are harmless, just that we have failed to protect our people.
How many of those overdose deaths have occurred from legalised drugs like cannabis?
And how many of those overdose deaths have occurred from prohibited drugs that are still illegal or prescription only?
Seems to me like it is prohibition that has failed.
How happy would you be if your daughters became cokeheads or smackheads?
I'd be disappointed, just as I'd be disappointed if they became alcoholics.
I'd love and want to help them still if that happened.
And I'd want them to be helped through AA/NA style programs, education, support etc - not simply locking them in a prison with other addicts and throwing away the key.
Libertarianism requires free choice.
Addiction is the antithesis of free choice. It is enslavement.
Which is why we should have education and treatment, not police, prison and courts.
Addiction is hard to treat, but not impossible. If the addict wants to break free from their addiction they have the best chance to do so with education, healthcare and support. You can't treat addiction by incarceration.
So why support the latter, rather than former.
I just don't see how we end up with fewer addicts with a more controlled and regulated environment than what we have now.
Granted, you shouldn't just grasp at any solution to a problem, some solutions are not effective, but what alternatives are being offered that have not already been tried? Everyone in this debate points to different examples of what happens when you legalise or regulate, so at worst it an issue which is still open for debate rather than some licence for addiction. Otherwise nuanced folk become very polarised on it very quickly.
Because people engaged in a criminal behaviour don't feel they can seek help. What they're doing makes their actions illegal, so their peers are criminals.
Under prohibition rates of addiction have gone upwards.
Under legalisation with education, rates of smoking have plummeted.
My proposal is if someone wants cocaine, or heroin, or cannabis, or fentanyl or whatever they should be able to get it at a regulated dose from behind the counter somewhere like Boots. Like people go to a counter to buy tobacco today. It should be taxed, there should be warnings on the material (like tobacco) and there should be support available. Someone who wants treatment, should have an easy gateway to get it. And absolutely no criminals involved, from start to finish.
Education works. Treatment works.
Rates of usage are up in states with legalisation:
The implication is that all that matters is reducing the numbers or frequency of using.
Aren't there a shed load of other factors?
I was replying to a statement that rates of usage drop in places with legalisation. I don't see evidence that that is the case.
Who said they do?
I was saying addiction can be treated better with legalisation.
We see this with alcohol. More mild consumption of people consuming low strength alcohol, but better access to treatment for alcoholics.
Prohibition forces people into the hands of criminals, cuts off support if needed, and means people are pushed onto stronger and stronger substances. The strength of 'skunk' under prohibition has been rising over time.
Plus its early days for treatment to work and simply measuring "consumed within the last year" is a meaningless stat to equate as "addicts". If someone tries it once in the past year as experimentation and doesn't end up addicted then they show in that stat. If you have 22% trying it in the past year, of whom 20% are addicts, then that is worse than 27% trying it in the past year of whom after treatment etc only 7% are addicts.
Having just consumed a bottle of wine (ok, I added a dab to the pasta sauce and Mrs S. sniffed half a glass) I'm bound to ask 'why do people take drugs?' There are, of course, many answers, just as there were in the days of Gin Lane and the Rake's Progress. But ultimately it boils down to the desire to feel slightly better than you did five minutes ago.
It isn't clever and it isn't funny. But it is fundamentally human. We're all tainted with this urge whether we admit it or not. Let's start addressing the problem by conceding that the difference between a bottle of wine, a line of coke or a syringe of heroin is an arbitrary social construction rather than a self-evident categorical distinction.
In order to function, society needs sober workers, sober drivers and sober leaders. Let's start by calling out the hypocrisy of MPs with their subsidised bars, open all hours until the last vote has been drunkenly cast and recorded. Once this issue has been addressed we may consider the plight of lesser folk who are less generously protected.
Sometimes it is clever or funny, though. Alcohol can definitely be funny. Amphetamines and caffeine and phenethylamines can be clever. Entactogens and some hallucinogens can help us be creative or give us new insights.
Sobriety is good too, but it's not the be all and end all of human experience. We can do more than that, and chemical assistance has been an important part of our culture for most of our history.
The thing about taking drugs is that, for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of times they do it, it is very enjoyable and perfectly safe.
Most of us like a drink. That is taking a drug and it is very enjoyable and is usually perfectly safe. Smoking dope, snorting coke or taking MDMA is very enjoyable and most of the time is perfectly safe.
The war on drugs has manifestly failed.
We know that it isn’t good if you are pouring whisky on your cornflakes, but as a society we accept that some people will end up addicted to alcohol because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We tolerate the costs to the police, to the NHS, of the fights and the battered women and the people killed by drunk drivers, because for most people, most of the time, taking alcohol is very enjoyable and perfectly safe. We control the strength of alcoholic drinks - so people have an idea of how much they’re taking on board - and tax them.
Why can’t we do the same for other recreational drugs? Because for most people, most of the time, taking recreational drugs is very pleasant and perfectly safe. Yes some people will become addicts. Yes drug drivers will kill people. Yes coke, sadly, does make you an arsehole. Feels very pleasant though, which is some consolation.
But why do we tolerate a certain level of those unfortunate occurrences, the millions it costs us as a society, when the drug is alcohol, but contemplate it for any other drug and everyone clutches their pearls?
Decriminalise, regulate and tax. Control them. If someone wants to take drugs, they will take drugs. They are everywhere. Coke is cheap as fuck. You can get middling coke for £30 a gram, banging coke for £60 a gram plus. I haven’t taken any drugs for ages - it’s a young persons game really I can’t handle the lack of sleep anymore, it’s shit getting old - but if I really wanted some I could have some within 30 minutes, delivered to my door. It’s easy. They’re everywhere. A phone call to a mate, he’ll give me a number of someone else, bosh.
Oh, and educate. Smoking a spliff isn’t the same as doing a gram of coke. It’s like having a small sherry compared to doing a pint of absinthe. People need to know that shit. I smoked dope pretty much every day for 20 years and got two degrees, learned to drive, got a job, got a mortgage, lived a perfectly normal life. But I knew not to smoke skunk all fucking day long. Like I don’t have a double gin and tonic every half hour.
And fund all addiction services properly.
I have seen too many lives destroyed to be so complacent about drugs.
Yeah I get that. But, with respect, you’re at the sharp end. You see the very worst outcomes.
The point is, it’s happening anyway. Millions of people take drugs everyday. Or at the weekend. Or more rarely, every few weeks, or maybe only once or twice a year. Most people don’t, but a lot of people do. And the vast majority of people who do never have any ill effects.
The police don’t care. For the casual user the possibility of any legal consequences are vanishingly remote. It’s not worth their time to do you for a bit of personal. They’re too busy, they don’t have the resources.
I have an alcoholic relative. It’s horrendous. They’ve lost 60% of their liver function but they’re still boozing. Many people want to get intoxicated, and some will go too far and get addicted, or cause themselves, or someone else, permanent damage. It’s awful, it destroys lives, tears families apart, but it happens anyway.
I see it at work, but also in family and friends.
When young I took a different view, but as time has gone on, I have seen more and more damage.
There is also the economics and politics. A nation of dopeheads is destined for decline.
Is that in dispute ?
The real question is how best to address that. We didn’t ban cigarettes - but smoking has dropped massively.
Indeed. I'm baffled at the idea there would be an explosion of dopeheads if certain substances were suddenly legal to use. It seems to be presented as if everyone who might conceivably try out a legal dose of heroin would jump immediately to shooting up in an alley.
Some restrictions are surely appropriate (and people do not all agree that every narcotic should be legal), I'm sure if Imperial China had legalised opium consumption as a free for all it would hardly have helped their situation any, but our current approach appears to be to ignore it unless it is too big to ignore, then do some pointless stamping down.
The evidence from places that have legalised is that things are not better:
Legalisation means regulation. It means instead of buying drugs from criminals you can buy drugs from licensed shops, which will sell you regulated strength of the product in a store, subject to taxes, with no criminal activity.
That's not remotely what Oregon has done.
This is what happened in Colorado with Marijuuana legalisation:
"The yearly number of emergency department visits related to marijuana increased 54 percent after the legalization of recreational marijuana (2013 compared to 2017). The yearly number of marijuana-related hospitalizations increased 101 percent after the legalization of recreational marijuana (2013 compared to 2017). Marijuana-only exposures more than quadrupled in the six-year average (2013–2018) since recreational marijuana was legalized compared to the six-year average (2007–2012) prior to legalization. The percent of suicide incidents in which toxicology results were positive for marijuana has increased from 14 percent in 2013 to 23 percent in 2017."
This is a weird summary because they don't tell you the actual numbers. They only give actual numbers for traffic deaths. Are a lot of people getting hospitalized for smoking weed or not? Also you'd expect that more people would tell the hospital it was weed after it was legal.
The problem with legalising drugs is that it wouldn't just affect the people taking them, it would inevitably affect other people as well. The only solution I can think of is to have special hotels where people can go to to take whatever drugs they want without their behaviour affecting anyone else. They wouldn't be allowed to leave until the effects had worn off.
The problem with legalising drugs is that it wouldn't just affect the people taking them, it would inevitably affect other people as well. The only solution I can think of is to have special hotels where people can go to to take whatever drugs they want without their behaviour affecting anyone else. They wouldn't be allowed to leave until the effects had worn off.
Because third parties aren't affected by illegal drugs currently?
OK so on their numbers the proportion of people smoking weed increased by 94%, so all things being equal the proportion of suicidal people who were smoking weed would also increase by 94%. But it turned out the proportion of suicidal people who were smoking weed only increased by [100 x (23-14)/14 =] 64%.
I'm not advocating smoking weed but from those numbers it seems like it's helping prevent suicides?
The problem with legalising drugs is that it wouldn't just affect the people taking them, it would inevitably affect other people as well. The only solution I can think of is to have special hotels where people can go to to take whatever drugs they want without their behaviour affecting anyone else. They wouldn't be allowed to leave until the effects had worn off.
We should probably extend that to alcohol which also damages other people
Late to the drugs debate, but one thing that is really critical is that the current prohibition creates criminals and crime - not meaning the middle class drug takers that everyone agrees shouldn't be sanctioned for their actions - but poor kids pulled into drug trafficking or county lines. It is a key driver of the murders we see on our streets, and a key source of finance for criminal gangs involved even worse activities such as human trafficking.
Legalisation in various forms can take money off these gangs and stop the associated violence, improve the purity/quality of the drugs which reduces harm, permit greater education on the risks at the point of every sale, and change the conversation to helping and not locking up addicts.
Now where I would differ to Bart is I'd potentially have different levels of 'legal'. Marijuana and others (e.g. some party drugs) that have harm but are not highly addictive (less so than tobacco) could follow the tobacco route of being available behind the counter for those over 18 with health warnings.
Other more highly addictive substances such as opioids/heroin (already legal in medical usage as diamorphine) I would probably only offer through prescription from your doctor such that usage can be monitored and actively discouraged. Existing addicts of these drugs can't just 'stop' so potentially free, controlled access avoids them committing crimes to fund their addiction and give a regular means for medical intervention and rehab.
I don't have the expertise to tell you the right approach for every drug, but a science-based approach to assessing addictiveness and harm would a key part of any legalisation drive.
It's possible that this could result in a short-term increase in usage, but the improved education should result in a long-term downward trend over time as we have seen with tobacco. And the overall harm of that usage - to users and to wider society - would be reduced dramatically.
Comments
But I would legalise, regulate and tax all drugs. Cocaine, heroin, all of them. Get them out of the gangsters hands.
But seriously educate people about them too. Take resources away from law & order/prison services, and put them into treatment and rehabilitation. Tax the drugs, and use the taxes to educate people as to why they're a bad idea. Stamp warnings on them, like cigarettes.
Education works.
Prohibition doesn't.
I'd love and want to help them still if that happened.
And I'd want them to be helped through AA/NA style programs, education, support etc - not simply locking them in a prison with other addicts and throwing away the key.
Some restrictions are surely appropriate (and people do not all agree that every narcotic should be legal), I'm sure if Imperial China had legalised opium consumption as a free for all it would hardly have helped their situation any, but our current approach appears to be to ignore it unless it is too big to ignore, then do some pointless stamping down.
Addiction is the antithesis of free choice. It is enslavement.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/07/oregon-drug-decriminalization-results-overdoses/674733/?utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
Addiction is hard to treat, but not impossible. If the addict wants to break free from their addiction they have the best chance to do so with education, healthcare and support. You can't treat addiction by incarceration.
So why support the latter, rather than former.
Addicts do not have free choice.
Legalisation means regulation. It means instead of buying drugs from criminals you can buy drugs from licensed shops, which will sell you regulated strength of the product in a store, subject to taxes, with no criminal activity.
That's not remotely what Oregon has done.
It's an emotional scare tactic that if there's any chance of someone going down a dark path with something, then of course it must mean they should never have the chance to go down that path, yet there's any number of things which do that which we permit, with drugs, lifestyle choices like gambling, and more. And they still might go down the path anyway.
It's weird that the pro-legalisation side are the ones to least attempt attempt arguments which are more logical, even if someone could still reasonably decide those arguments are not persuasive. I am not convinced by bartholewroberts' libertarian extremes on this issues, but a Helen Lovejoy appeal whilst not without any merit at all, is a thin plank on which to hold everything up.
UK drugs policy has been an abject failure.
Alysha Duran, 46, allegedly tried to grab a gun when she was pulled over July 25
Shocking footage captured the moment a Colorado cop fired in response
The killing has divided viewers over whether the police officer was justified"
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12424297/Horrifying-moment-Colorado-woman-Alysha-Duran-shot-dead-cop-stopping-car-wrong-road-reaching-gun-officer-approached-her.html
(It was effectively legalized before then in much of the state, when sold for "medical" purposes. At one time there were more marijuana "medical" dispensaries in Seattle than there were Starbucks. The ads for them were not subtle, with many advertising doctors on site.)
Since 2012 usage here has increased, along with deaths from car accidents caused by impaired drivers. As in the rest of the US, potency has increased signficantly. (The US has some very good agricutural scientists, so that shouldn't be a surprise.) There is still a large illegal market -- and always will be, as long as there are significant taxes on marijuana.
(These results may be better than the results of alternative policies, but I wouldn't say they are an obvious win/win.)
Addictions can certainly be destructive, and we should ensure that those affected receive all the love and support they need in order to overcome their problems.
But occasional cocaine or opiate or amphetamine or opiod or alcohol or substituted phenethylamine or caffeine or whatever use doesn't imply addiction. There's a qualitative and quantitative difference. We can support one without condemning the other.
Healthcare and treatment works. Prohibition doesn't.
That doesn't mean I'm pro-addiction as you are implying, I'm anti-addiction, I just want addiction treatment by a method that works, not a method that doesn't.
"The yearly number of emergency department visits related to marijuana increased 54 percent after the legalization of recreational marijuana (2013 compared to 2017).
The yearly number of marijuana-related hospitalizations increased 101 percent after the legalization of recreational marijuana (2013 compared to 2017).
Marijuana-only exposures more than quadrupled in the six-year average (2013–2018) since recreational marijuana was legalized compared to the six-year average (2007–2012) prior to legalization.
The percent of suicide incidents in which toxicology results were positive for marijuana has increased from 14 percent in 2013 to 23 percent in 2017."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6913861/
Granted, you shouldn't just grasp at any solution to a problem, some solutions are not effective, but what alternatives are being offered that have not already been tried? Everyone in this debate points to different examples of what happens when you legalise or regulate, so at worst it an issue which is still open for debate rather than some licence for addiction. Otherwise nuanced folk become very polarised on it very quickly.
Looks like about 5 days of summery weather left, even in the warmest places in the UK.
It isn't clever and it isn't funny. But it is fundamentally human. We're all tainted with this urge whether we admit it or not. Let's start addressing the problem by conceding that the difference between a bottle of wine, a line of coke or a syringe of heroin is an arbitrary social construction rather than a self-evident categorical distinction.
In order to function, society needs sober workers, sober drivers and sober leaders. Let's start by calling out the hypocrisy of MPs with their subsidised bars, open all hours until the last vote has been drunkenly cast and recorded. Once this issue has been addressed we may consider the plight of lesser folk who are less generously protected.
Legalisation has worked in Canada. It has provided tens of billions of dollars in taxation, addicts in Canada have access to healthcare (as they would in the UK), there are over a hundred thousand legal jobs in the industry there (as opposed to criminal jobs here).
Simply opposing addiction is not a reason to support prohibition. Its a reason to support treatment, something sadly lacking in America.
We may not be winning the war on drugs, but that doesn't mean that we should surrender.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/05/stoners-cheered-when-canada-legalised-cannabis-how-did-it-all-go-wrong?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Under prohibition rates of addiction have gone upwards.
Under legalisation with education, rates of smoking have plummeted.
My proposal is if someone wants cocaine, or heroin, or cannabis, or fentanyl or whatever they should be able to get it at a regulated dose from behind the counter somewhere like Boots. Like people go to a counter to buy tobacco today. It should be taxed, there should be warnings on the material (like tobacco) and there should be support available. Someone who wants treatment, should have an easy gateway to get it. And absolutely no criminals involved, from start to finish.
Education works. Treatment works.
Humans have taken plants that have weird effects since we crawled out of the slime or whatever.
As David Nutt argues (see my previous post) where society draws a line varies enormously in both time and location.
https://www.colorado.edu/today/2022/08/25/cannabis-legalization-boosts-use-double-digits-new-study-suggests
Aren't there a shed load of other factors?
https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/ca/Documents/consumer-business/ca_cannabis_annual_report-en-aoda.pdf
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cannabis-changed-canada-1.6219493
Russell Callaghan, a professor in the UBC Northern Medical Program at the University of Northern British Columbia, is researching the impacts of legalization on a range of public health indicators. He says research in that area is still in its early stages.
What has stuck out to him so far, however, is that many of the concerns around legalized cannabis — including potential increased cases of cannabis-induced psychosis and schizophrenia, and driving under the influence of drugs — have not materialized.
Callaghan says his research on traffic injuries in Ontario and Alberta does not suggest legalization has had a significant effect, at least not yet.
A recent report from Mothers Against Drunk Driving Canada (MADD) says the number of drug-impaired driving charges is "extremely low" — accounting for just 11 per cent of the 5,506 impaired driving charges across Canada in 2019.
Some provinces, such as Ontario and Quebec, saw a significant increase in drug-impaired driving charges that year, but the report attributes that mainly to new laws and enforcement powers.
I was saying addiction can be treated better with legalisation.
We see this with alcohol. More mild consumption of people consuming low strength alcohol, but better access to treatment for alcoholics.
Prohibition forces people into the hands of criminals, cuts off support if needed, and means people are pushed onto stronger and stronger substances. The strength of 'skunk' under prohibition has been rising over time.
Plus its early days for treatment to work and simply measuring "consumed within the last year" is a meaningless stat to equate as "addicts". If someone tries it once in the past year as experimentation and doesn't end up addicted then they show in that stat. If you have 22% trying it in the past year, of whom 20% are addicts, then that is worse than 27% trying it in the past year of whom after treatment etc only 7% are addicts.
Sobriety is good too, but it's not the be all and end all of human experience. We can do more than that, and chemical assistance has been an important part of our culture for most of our history.
https://youtu.be/eQbmkPEFluE
Oh dear .....
https://bsky.app/profile/alastairmeeks.bsky.social
I'm not advocating smoking weed but from those numbers it seems like it's helping prevent suicides?
He could also smarten himself up a bit, couldn't he?
He's a CEO, not a hobo.
Legalisation in various forms can take money off these gangs and stop the associated violence, improve the purity/quality of the drugs which reduces harm, permit greater education on the risks at the point of every sale, and change the conversation to helping and not locking up addicts.
Now where I would differ to Bart is I'd potentially have different levels of 'legal'. Marijuana and others (e.g. some party drugs) that have harm but are not highly addictive (less so than tobacco) could follow the tobacco route of being available behind the counter for those over 18 with health warnings.
Other more highly addictive substances such as opioids/heroin (already legal in medical usage as diamorphine) I would probably only offer through prescription from your doctor such that usage can be monitored and actively discouraged. Existing addicts of these drugs can't just 'stop' so potentially free, controlled access avoids them committing crimes to fund their addiction and give a regular means for medical intervention and rehab.
I don't have the expertise to tell you the right approach for every drug, but a science-based approach to assessing addictiveness and harm would a key part of any legalisation drive.
It's possible that this could result in a short-term increase in usage, but the improved education should result in a long-term downward trend over time as we have seen with tobacco. And the overall harm of that usage - to users and to wider society - would be reduced dramatically.