Decriminalise drugs, inquiry by cross-party peers says
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
I don't get David Cameron at all. This may be due to my upbringing, which is working class where Tories are generally hated, sometimes irrationally, but I don't think my confusion is irrational.
He seems very ignorant, down to the core. This is a man who hasn't lived the working class life, hasn't come close to touching it. He is even descends from royalty.
He says his policies are beneficial to the majority of the UK, which simply isn't true. The increase on VAT hit the poorest families hard. The rejig on child support hit the families hard.
The problem is that it doesn't seem like he's even aware of these effects and it seems true here too.
He says that their current policies are working fine and that it's the right way forward yet "over-crowded prisons" have become a meme.
It's costing us money to house people in prisons for these crimes. It's costing us money when these people cannot contribute to society, which some may actually would have done if they weren't in prison.
I see kids influenced by drug dealers into trying things out. I know this, I was one of them (stupid, I admit). Once they've become accustomed to one thing, something harder is introduced.
It just seems extremely ignorant to me.
Like I said, I've seen some great stuff for businesses but awful things happen to regular people e.g people who should spend their time recovering being forced into work and the VAT increase I mentioned.
Not really - working class people in the UK have been voting for the Conservatives in large numbers since at least 1979.
Edit: Some numbers to justify this from the last general election:
"In the C2 class 37% voted Conservative compared to 29% for Labour, and in the DE group 31% voted Conservative and 40% Labour."
NB C2 is defined as "lower working class", DE as "temporarily or long-term unemployed".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/higher/modern/uk_gov_politics/...
While I would never give up my right to vote and disagree with voter apathy, even I'm starting to question the point of it all.
I suppose I should at least be grateful that I live in a democracy; however I can't help thinking that it's all just for show and that us "little people" actually have no power nor influence what-so-ever. It's all the same shit but from a different parties.
Sorry, but I'm at a complete loss as to how that follows on from my post.
I have something in my mind that can't formulate good enough.
It is good that you disagree. I hope it goes further than just disagree.
When you have a friend, you must put a mask in front of you to interact with him. Whenever you talk with your superior, you most likely will put on mask on you. Whenever you have to talk with business partners, most cases, the mask. When you have a wife, many times, you will have to pull up the mask. Police, neighbors....
These rare times, when we talk in this chat box and I do not know you, nor I see you, I do not need a mask.
Rude people, they do have my respect, most of the times, they do not have a mask.
It was more or less about, living in system where only recognizable way of expressing yourself is doing what you are told.
Have a nice day!
I'm also pretty bad at doing as I'm told. whether the two are related I don't know :)
Not your main point, I know, but this is very region and job sector dependent. I became politically aware in the early 80s and remember well that the landslide Conservative victories in '79 and the 80s was fuelled to a large extent by working class votes.
>He says his policies are beneficial to the majority of the UK, which simply isn't true. The increase on VAT >hit the poorest families hard. The rejig on child support hit the families hard.
The poorest are always the hardest hit when times are hard. That doesn't make it OK, but I think most voters realise that's always going to be true. The Winter of Discontent and general strikes in practice barely touched the upper/upper middle class, but it was scorched earth warfare against those most in need. Hence the Conservative clean sweep throughout the 80s.
> It just seems extremely ignorant to me.
I do agree with your main points, criminalisation of drugs is a disaster. Whether Cameron knows this or not isn't really a factor though, any more than it's a factor whether Obama knows it. In reality, no major party is going to support legalisation if they also want to be in government.
Change that, and then we'll find out what they really think.
That being said, I have to agree that the best way to get rid of illegal activity is to tax and regulate a product so as to provide a trustworthy, straightforward source. But there's a question as to whether it's advisable to allow citizens to consume drugs that have normally been known to drastically reduce peoples' health and well-being. These drugs actively cause addiction while suppressing other bodily functions, but so do cigarettes. Did you know that nicotine is as addictive as heroine, cocaine, and other alkaloids[1]? The question as to where to draw the line is very sensitive and I often wonder why did Prohibition stop at alcohol? Why didn't it naturally extend itself towards cannabis and then hard drugs? Does anybody know the history/politics behind this?
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/29/magazine/nicotine-harder-t...
The current approach is very expensive, and very harmful to individuals and to society.
Someone injecting heroin will do so whether it's legal or not. But, if it's legal, they'll be getting clean heroin, and clean needles, and advice about how to safely inject, and be in contact with people helping them move down to other forms of heroin use.
While heroin is illegal people prostitute or burgle to get money; they re-use needles in unclean conditions; they inject dirty drugs in sub-optimal places; they have little or no contact with harm-reduction workers.
The costs to society are obvious: people spend many years involved in criminal activity to feed a drug habit. Police spend a lot of time tackling that criminal behaviour. People end up with life-threatening illnesses, or permanent maiming or losing limbs from dirty needles and poor injection practices.
Treating this as a public health measure is probably sensible. Having said that, alcohol use in the UK can't really be defined as ok.
> That being said, I have to agree that the best way to get rid of illegal activity is to tax and regulate a product so as to provide a trustworthy, straightforward source.
Probably, but look at the huge quantities of smuggled tobacco in the UK caused by the high tax rate.
See, also, garlic smuggled from Norway (not an EU state) through Sweden (part of the EU, which adds a 9% tax for garlic grown outside the EU.)
The legality of an addictive substance doesn't make much difference to whether someone will commit a crime to get their fix.
Consider: people commit crimes to get money to buy alcohol. People also steal other legal goods they want e.g. TVs, laptops.
How can you consider that, without also considering that most people don't? Price does make a difference.
I was responding to the point "people commit crimes to fund their drug habit because drugs are illegal".
One way of verifying this (without de-criminalisation) is to compare drug usage to alcohol usage, and the crime rates of people funding either habit.
It's a hard study to do because there are other factors in play e.g. a pimp keeping his prostitutes dependent on drugs is a different situation to people prostituting to buy drugs.
That's why the fact that most alcoholics don't commit crimes to get their fix is relevant. Sure, some do, sometimes, but on the whole, it's a vastly different picture; and the price, and not being pushed into shady alleys with shady people has to do with it.
Just consider the Prohibition, and also the experiences of all the countries who partially or completely decrimalized hard drugs, which is generally a success story.
Of these, only 6 is cannabis specific. The rest are true regardless of the drug. Many pro-legalization people argue that demand/consumption will not increase because of legalization (I disagree). Even if you think consumption will go up (most economists do because of higher quality, lower prices and reduced stigma) you might think that one or more of those 5 reasons to legalize still outweigh the alternative.
Once this stuff is on the agenda it's only natural that it gets looked at more broadly. It's like free trade agreements leading to free trade zones or unilateral reductions of trade barriers.
I can't edit my post above and have a slight correction -
> Cocaine is not usually a synthesised drug - it's a plant extract.
There are ways to synthesise it but they are expensive compared to an extraction, which is relatively simple and only requires common materials.
I dunno, I would never want to be person to draw a line. I think line drawing is the one that must be outlawed.