Call for drug legalisation by Police Chief [Long boring post alert]

  • Hey - turns out IRC is out and something a little more modern has taken it's place... A little thing called Discord!

    Join our community @ https://discord.gg/JuaSzXBZrk for a pick-up game, or just to rekindle with fellow community members.

Forgot to mention that in that documentary - i talked about in my previous post - some were even able to work normally, because they didn't had the need to search for drugs and money the whole day.
They knew:
At 7 o'clock, 12 o'clock and 18 o'clock i'll get my clean drugs at that medicine station, where i can take them under the supervision of personal with clean and free utilities.
Okay, they couldn't work as rocket scientists or pilots, but they were able to take part of the non-drug community again and earn drugfree money with easy jobs.

Squirrel said:
Martz, good points, but here is the problem I think you, Bart and that general camp misses. It seems to me you separate the people in these classes:

1. Addicts (usually unstable, dangerous people, no matter how much they pay for a fill, hope you agree with me here.)
2. Casual users (people that consume it for “fun” every once in a while, low chance they hurt others, but still a lot higher than class 3 below!)
3. Non-consumers.
4. Traders/Sellers (organized crime, profiting on lucrative prices because of very small/tight control on supply).

Now, I agree with your argument that legalizing drugs would reduce negative impact of group 4, which is in fact a good improvement over the current system.
Also, group 1 negative effects would also see some improvement, assuming though that it’s available to these people in a limited, monitored way, similar to what I was referring to in my last post.
Now here’s where the model starts breaking down. We kind of ignore the effect on groups 2 and 3, and also fail to recognize a fifth group, which I would call 5. Suppliers.
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Nice idea, but i can't see a problem. (see below ;))

OK, let’s take group 2: Would it be unreasonable to assume that if they could easily buy the drugs for cheap at a drugstore, they would be a lot more likely to consume more? They don’t have to bother anymore with where to find it, high prices, shame or fear. Doesn’t this increase the chance they hurt others while “high”, since they will get high more often, while at the same time increase the chance they end up in group 1 (addicts) ?
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Who said that the best way is the dutch-coffeeshop way (Where everyone can go into that shop and by drugs asif they were just cola)?

Well guess i wasn't able to say that mroe clearly: i'm AGAINST general legalisation.

The drug supply should be limited to group 1 only.
I think that a dutch Coffeeshop-way for hard drugs (like heroin, cocaine, etc) can't work reasonable.

In that documentary the station, where the addicts could get their stuff, was equipped with two doctors (psychology and allround) and clean drug utilities.
Before a candidate could take part in that program, he/she has to be checked by those doctors.

Imo that is the only real way how it could work with hard drugs.


Group 5: I see this one becoming huge at this point, compared to a very limited number now. We’re talking about making this part of the normal pharmaceutical industry, which as you can imagine spreads in a very large scale. Do you feel comfortable with huge humanity effort/resources being spent for producing such things as heroine/cocaine and million other horrible drugs, just to get people high? Don’t you think that could be better spent in a much nobler cause, such as cancer research and so on?
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That point aint really valid in my eyes.
If you spent the money for producing drugs in a program approved by the government (laws) for addicts-only
(group 1) i can't see why this won't be a good thing.

Well you can always say: Why we spent so much for <thatandthat> (a popular example is: military), if we could spent that amount for education or aids- / cancer-research.
But who said that such a drug program can't be a good thing. In most cases the community would even benefit from that.

Oh yeah, money......Well, i worked for a local government for 4 years and i saw how much and in what way they waste money. So i always deny to accept that point as valid.
Every government (nevertheless if's in UK, France, Germany or any other european nation) secretly wastes much money for nonsense, which ain't even noticed by the public.

Everything would be a lot easier/better though if the need for drugs was not there in the first place, I hope you agree with that :)
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Don't let Locomouse hear that :teehee:
 
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Really good post, antidote, it was really interesting. I'm glad you didn't get hooked, as it seems to me that that's what dealers rely on to keep people coming back, though they hardly advertise it on the boxes.

I've tried smoking and drinking so that, if I ever condemned them (which I won't - I choose not to do either but I have no great problem with people who do, so long as passive smoke or whatever doesn't afect me), I wouldn't be a hypocrite with no personal experience of the thing I was vilifying. But I won't ever try drugs because, from my POV, they're in a different class of danger to alcohol and smoking. Can't quite articulate why atm, but I'll think about it.

But the point of this thread sees to be that, no matter what the speculative consequences of legalising drugs might be, in any state or country, the current system just isn't working. In fact it's pretty dreadful on all fronts. No-one's saying legalisation is the magical cure fr all our drug problems, it's just that maybe it will be a bit less terrible, and maybe that's all we can hope for. It sounds like you and people you know have had bad experiences from drugs, which I guess you could expect to be the case, and I get the feeling you think that these problems would get worse or would have been worse if drugs had been legalised. I guess I'll have to think about that too, as it's an interesting point coming from someone with personal experience of it.

Fuck, this is a tough one :banghead:
 
democracy in action

Sunday Independent

By Brian Brady and Jonathan Owen

Published: 20 January 2008

An angry row has blown up over proposals to upgrade cannabis to a class B drug, with leading experts from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) accusing the Government of a "deliberate leak" of its plans.

Ignoring a directive not to speak to journalists about reports that the Government has already made its mind up, ACMD member Professor Les Iversen, a pharmacologist at Oxford University, said: "I was not pleased to read what appears to be a deliberate leak about the government's alleged intention to reclassify, regardless of advice received.

"If ACMD were to recommend no change and this were to happen, I believe it would be the first time that any Home Secretary acted against the recommendations offered and it would call into question the whole function and future of this group."

The outburst followed claims that Gordon Brown and the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, were determined to reverse the decision to downgrade the drug to class C when the ACMD completes its report in the next few months. Although its recommendations are not yet known, ministers are already making clear that Ms Smith is prepared to overrule the expert body.

But one former member of the influential council last night claimed the ACMD was totally opposed to the Government's stance. "There is no way that the ACMD would support any reclassification of cannabis, unless there were some political shenanigans going on," said the Reverend Martin Blakeborough.

Rev Blakeborough, who runs the Kaleidoscope drug abuse charity, said: "There is no significantly new evidence to suggest that cannabis is any more harmful than in the last review we did 18 months ago."

"The only reason that the ACMD is being forced to discuss this matter is because every new Home Secretary seems to want to show how tough they are," he added.

Professor David Nutt, chair of the ACMD's technical committee, which will start taking evidence on classification at a public meeting next month, said: "In the end, as with all laws, it's a political decision – the ACMD only advises."

But David Raynes, of the National Drug Prevention Alliance, criticised the ACMD's stance and said that it was dominated by people who advocate "harm reduction" and whose sympathies lie with pro-legalisation campaigners: "I actually think that the harm reduction/liberalisation/legalisation lobby is too strong in there (and in the Home Office). Some ACMD members are genuine but misguided, some are just the great and good with little understanding of the legalisation game that is being played by others."

The controversy comes days after new figures revealed that almost 500 people are being treated by the NHS every week for cannabis-related mental health problems. Since the Government downgraded it from a class B to a class C drug in 2004, the number of adults being treated for its effects has risen from 11,057 in 2004-05 to 16,685 in 2006-07. Also, the number of children needing medical attention because of cannabis use has increased to more than 9,200 – up from 8,014 in 2005-06.

Fears over the hidden health risks of the drug, particularly on the mental health of young people, have prompted the calls for a review of cannabis. More than 2.5 million 16-24 year-olds have used the drug. The ACMD is expected to make its own recommendations known in April.

In a statement, a Home Office spokesman reiterated that the ACMD's role is confined to providing "advice on classification".


About Red Marked section same shit different days link below

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/m...?xml=/global/2008/01/11/noindex/ncnbis111.xml

Reply From DrugScope


DrugScope response to Daily Telegraph front-page cannabis story, Friday 11 January
12 January 2008
On Friday 11 January the Daily Telegraph published a front-page news article under the headline: Abuse of cannabis puts 500 a week in hospital. You can read the full story by following the link at the end of this article.

The Daily Telegraph piece referred to National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS) figures cited by Minister of State for Public Health, Dawn Primarolo, in a response to a Parliamentary Question about the numbers of people treated for cannabis.

DrugScope sent a letter on Friday 11 January to the Daily Telegraph in response to this story; as yet they have declined to publish it. Our response is reproduced below.

Dear Sir,

The front-page headline on Friday’s Daily Telegraph (Abuse of cannabis puts 500 a week in hospital, 11/01/08) misrepresents figures given by Dawn Primarolo, Minister of State for Public Health, in her response to a Parliamentary Question this week.

We have ascertained that the figures supplied by the Minister do not relate to actual hospital admissions; the source of the figures, the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS) does not collect data on hospital admissions and this was evident in the Minister’s response.

The figures instead relate to those who have come forward to community-based drug treatment services seeking some form of help, advice or treatment relating to their use of cannabis. DrugScope understands that even if ‘treatment’ consists of no more than an informal chat with a drug worker, this would still have been recorded in the statistics quoted by the Minister.

Some of those clients may of course have gone on to receive treatment in hospital for conditions relating to their use of cannabis. However, figures provided to DrugScope by the Department of Health reveal that rather than 500 hospital admissions a week, the figure was nearer 14 per week (in 2006/07) for individuals with a primary diagnosis of mental health problems due to the use of cannabis. This is 14 admissions too many, but still way below the figure quoted by your correspondent.

In addition, the number of hospital admissions in 2006/07 with this diagnosis (750) was lower than in 2005/06 (946) - and it should be noted that the same individual could have been admitted to hospital more than once in any one year.

The public do need to be aware of the potential risks related to cannabis; it is not a harmless drug. But public information about the drug must be based on sound data and where that data exists, the media has a responsibility to be scrupulous in its presentation.

Yours,

Martin Barnes

Chief executive,
DrugScope SE1
 
Very interesting post and shows the obvious manipulation of the stats for political gain.

There are political parties which support the legalisation of drugs, however these parties are perceived to be worse in other areas than the torries and conservaties. Some how. I don't see how having a fucked economy justifies a goverment doing well.

We need political reform for so many reasons, but the legalisation of class C drugs would be a selfish reason for me to support it.
 
It just gets more ridiculous

------------------------------------------------------------

By Christopher Hope, Home Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 11:42pm GMT 17/02/2008



Tens of thousands of people caught with a single joint of cannabis will get an unofficial criminal record that could blight their future employment prospects under new police proposals, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

The new powers are likely to form part of a summer crackdown on the drug amid concerns about the spiralling mental health toll from super-strength "skunk" cannabis, which now accounts for 80 per cent of the UK market.

Police want tougher powers to be brought in regardless of whether ministers decide to return cannabis to Class B status later this year after a group of advisers on drugs make their recommendations.

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Only a fraction of the estimated three million regular cannabis smokers in Britain are punished.

Figures for the Metropolitan Police show that between April 2005 and January 2006, 24,916 people in London were accused of cannabis possession. But nearly seven in 10 were let off with a formal warning.

Typically, no record is kept of the offence because it is defined in law as a civil penalty with no evidence presented in court.

Yet senior police officers have told The Daily Telegraph they want to treat those being caught with cannabis as seriously as speeding, where a pattern of repeat offending eventually leads to a driving ban.

Under the new plans, people caught in possession of cannabis will be fined and issued with a fixed penalty notice, which are routinely recorded on the Police National Computer.

This would allow police to keep track of repeat offenders and take further action if necessary. The penalty notices would also be disclosed to some potential employers, with the agreement of the particular force's chief constable.

It would not affect anyone's ability to enter countries such as America which can ban travellers with a record of drug offences.

However, officers are also discussing a third option with Home Office lawyers that would see repeat low level possession punished with a criminal conviction and a criminal record.

Simon Byrne, an assistant chief constable and the national lead on policing cannabis for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said sanctions against cannabis possession were not strong enough.

He said: "You can drive a car along the road with no seat belt and get a fixed penalty notice. Or you can use your phone and get points on your licence and an £80 fine.

"But you can walk the streets in possession of an illegal drug and technically you get your wrist slapped."

Mr Byrne, who is Assistant Chief Constable of Merseyside Police, said the new notices would be disclosable to some employers when they were carrying out background checks on potential recruits.

He added: "The sanction could simply be a financial one or it could be a financial one plus a criminal record which obviously then has an impact on your future life if you are trying to go for certain types of job."

The plans are likely to be put to Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, by the end of the spring. They are not contingent on the reclassification of cannabis from Class C to Class B status.

The new powers would allow police to send a message on cannabis possession, Mr Byrne said.

He added: "It is about different forms of sanction within the criminal justice system sending out the message that rather than have your wrist slapped you are going to get a penalty."

A Home Office spokesman said: "The Home Office has not yet received any proposals on this matter from ACPO. The Government will give them careful consideration once received."


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...18/ncbis118.xml

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So how come politicians have not given over 8 million people any careful consideration for legalisation?

But will listen to one or two coppers

after all Its not the police's job to make laws they are there to uphold them

yet you can go out and kick anyone you like into a hospital on drink and you more or less get off with it-!!

take a joint and you get fined and a black mark record that may ruin your working life.

But

No Fix fine for Junkies

No fix fine for Cocaine heads

No fix fine for Crack-heads

You can take heroin or Crack and get pampered.

You can take heroin or Crack and get payed £2000 for doing so by do-gooders in Prison.

You can take heroin or Crack and get Hospital treatment.

You can take heroin or Crack and get holidays.

You can take heroin or Crack and get Human rights.

You can take heroin or Crack and keep your job.

You can take heroin or Crack and they give you a new Job after treatment

You can take heroin or Crack and you get EU rights

and so on and so on

cannabis has none of these things...

THEY are going to destroy your life over a plant


in one word WANKERS
 
a nice read with some good points imo

Pity its from yankland

By Frosty Wooldridge

March 17, 2008

NewsWithViews.com


After the first seven interviews with my brother Police Officer and Detective Howard Wooldridge of Lansing, Michigan (retired) concerning the “War on Drugs,” hundreds of readers responded. U.S. taxpayers do not understand the incredible deception perpetrated on them by the Drug War. You might even term it a “racket” by those who stand in the power corridors of Washington, DC.

Officer Wooldridge talked with Senator Biden (D-DE) last month. Senator Biden (D-DE) said at a hearing in February 2008 that drug prohibition touches 60 percent of all crime in America. Wooldridge advised to dramatically reduce crime, death, disease and drug use, the U.S. must end the prohibition approach on the 10 most used drugs.

“My experience agrees with the senator’s statement,” Officer Wooldridge said. “As a police officer, my goal was to keep my community safe, once they left their homes. What are the steps to ending this 94 year running failed policy of prohibition?

“Many experts agree that the first drug to become legal and regulated will be marijuana. As DEA law judge Francis Young concluded after an exhaustive study of cannabis: “Marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.” Its use has rarely been a public safety issue. One cannot overdose on it. Moreover, its legalization would be a tremendous boost to improve public safety. Why? Road officers spend million of hours searching cars for a baggie of pot. They could concentrate on the deadly DUI and reckless drivers. They would be re-directed to find and arrest the child predators on line looking for a 13 year old girl. Federal agents could completely focus on Al Qaeda and stop wasting time on medical marijuana gardens in California.”

National marijuana prohibition began in 1937. Since then, local and state police officers spent tens of millions of hours searching for and arresting users and sellers. Did this expenditure improve public safety? No! Has prohibition caused an increase or decrease in use? Can we name any positive returns on the investment of money, prison space and police time? These constitute important questions to ask in the century of 9/11 and a recession.

“Starting my police career in the ‘70s, I quickly learned that alcohol use caused the vast majority of calls for service,” Officer Wooldridge said. “More teens died from alcohol use than all the illegal drugs combined. DUIs causing injury and death, drunks shooting each other, assaults, spouse and child abuse cases, etc., constituted the majority of my police work after sunset. During my 18 years, the use of marijuana never once caused me to be dispatched to handle a problem. Alcohol use generated about 1200 police calls.”

Marijuana remains an intoxicating and potentially psychologically addictive drug. Millions use it to cop a buzz. Because it can be destructive, Officer Wooldridge supports it being regulated, controlled and taxed by the government. Currently, criminals control all aspects of production, distribution and use – not good! We must maintain the same restrictions and regulations as the two deadliest drugs in America: alcohol and tobacco.

“In a legal environment, marijuana would lose its glamour and rebellion elements,” Officer Wooldridge said. “According to doctors certified in addiction psychology, at least as many teens try marijuana because it is illegal as are deterred by its illegality. The Dutch demonstrated the validity of this expert opinion. Thirty-two years after they legalized and regulated sales to adults, their 15-29 year-olds smoke half as much as American youth. Even better, Dutch youth no longer come in contact with pot dealers who also offer heroin for sale. Thus, far fewer Dutch teens try heroin for the first time; a win-win situation.”

Will underage youth obtain legalized and regulated marijuana? Yes, the same as they now obtain alcohol and tobacco before they reach the legal age! No one expects perfection.

Public safety will be dramatically improved as law enforcement again concentrates on crimes involving victims. Detectives will spend more time arresting child predators on-line and rapists. Road officers will promptly answer your 911 calls, instead of spending an hour on a marijuana possession case. The courts will run smoother without the thousands of possession and sale cases clogging the docket. Prison space will not be wasted on someone selling pot to an adult.

“Marijuana users would like the government to tax them!” Officer Wooldridge said. “Dr. Miron of Harvard University studied the topic. Taxing pot like whiskey would generate some $6.4 billion: not chump change! Better, governments waste $10 billion chasing Willie Nelson and his friends and putting them in jail. As the US slides into a recession or worse, that money will become even more important.”

But what about the ‘Gateway’ theory? Don’t all heroin and meth users start with marijuana? Actually no, they don’t. Federal studies show tobacco as the first illegal drug teens use. Alcohol comes second with marijuana third! The Institute of Medicine in 1999 conducted that study. Less than two percent of marijuana users move on to an abusive relationship with hard drugs.

“After 37 years of ‘Drug War’ and the arrest of 38 million Americans, the majority for marijuana possession, we must accept the reality that the state, through its police department, cannot fix personal stupidity and personal self-destructive behavior,” Officer Wooldridge said. “Only family and friends can help in such a situation.”

Today, my brother Howard Wooldridge heads up a task force in Washington, DC to educate and enlighten congressmen at the highest levels. He works for a better future for all Americans. He can be reached at: Education Specialist, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, www.leap.cc, Washington, DC. He speaks at colleges, political clubs, Rotary, Kiwanis and Lions Clubs across America. LEAP speakers in 36 states address this issue to citizens around the country to bring an end to the Drug War. Check out the web site and join. Book a speaker in your state! Wooldridge also presents at political conferences in Washington. [email protected]

The mission of LEAP is to reduce the multitude of unintended harmful consequences resulting from fighting the war on drugs and to lessen the incidence of death, disease, crime, and addiction by ultimately ending drug prohibition.


“Envision a country which employs the principles of personal responsibility, personal freedom and limited/effective government toward marijuana,” Officer Wooldridge said. “I see a growing respect for the police, as they stop intruding into the decisions of adults, made in the privacy of their castles. Teens find it as hard to buy pot as beer. Fewer teens use it because it lost its glamour. Imagine a land where the deadly DUI and reckless drivers kill far fewer, as officers focus on them, not the next pot bust. Envision detectives arresting more child predators as they abandon the time spent arresting someone selling pot to an adult. All this becomes possible, when America becomes wiser and abandons the prohibition approach to marijuana.”


Listen to Frosty Wooldridge on Tuesdays and Thursdays as he interviews top national leaders on his radio show “Connecting the Dots” at republicbroadcasting.org at 6:00 PM Mountain Time. Adjust tuning in to your time zone.

© 2008 Frosty Wooldridge - All Rights Reserved
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Another excellent post DB. You're good at hunting these down.

94 years of prohibition and what are the results?

Is it even possible to say that if it wasn't for prohibition that things would be worse? How could they be any worse? The prisons are full to bursting.

Take back control over production and distribution. Add quality control, checks and regulation. Tax, tax and more tax.

I think the first step would be to decriminalise the cultivation of the canna species.
 
just as an aside I read this morning that it is now cheaper line for pint to do cocaine than to drink alcohol in a pub since the budget how daft is that.
 
Personaly i think the gov. would get alot better results if the "facts" they present more closely reflects reality. Norway has teh worst drug policies on the planet.
 
Martz said:
I think the first step would be to decriminalise the cultivation of the canna species.
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In Holland it's the other way around :lol:. Shops are allowed to sell and customers are allowed to 'hold' weed (5grams max). Yet it is forbidden to grow it :rofl: (5 plants is maximum). There are legal growshops here but they are for medicinal use only afaik.
 
hope people start seeing sense soon this is on the right track


Daily Mail

10th April 2008

For those who warmly applaud Gordon Brown's declared desire to toughen up the law on cannabis, raising it from a Class C to Class B drug, there is always a simple question.
How would you react if your son, or perhaps your grandchild - otherwise law-abiding and blameless citizens - were caught with that drug and at once thrown in a cell and charged with a serious offence which resulted, if not in prison, at least in a criminal record which endangered future employment?

Perhaps you would protest in your grief that you did not believe the sterner law would affect your own family.

What you would certainly not do is praise the tougher regime, declaring how glad you are that your offspring now faces up to five years in prison or an unlimited fine, or both. That'll learn them!

Such a maximum penalty, by the way, would be just for possession. To deal in a Class B drug, which might mean no more than selling some of your cannabis to a friend, could mean up to 14 years in prison.

These are the sort of penalties we normally associate with conspiring to cause an explosion, violent bank robberies, armed assaults and so on.

If you say that such savage sentences would not be imposed then why are they so recently endorsed by the Home Office? This merely makes the law look an ass.

The full absurdity of the drug laws does not end there. Ecstasy is ranked as a Class A drug.

Mere possession can mean seven years in prison or an unlimited fine.

Which means that nightclubs are packed with serious criminals. My own experience of ecstasy is very modest.

I was unknowingly fed a tablet once. It left me full of beans for most of the night but the comedown the next day was tiresome.

On the other hand, it really was not as bad as a hangover. Which brings us to the next absurdity.

There is no evidence that taking drugs such as cannabis or ecstasy is any more addictive or damaging than constant and heavy drinking.

Many of us have witnessed the unattractive phenomenon of indignant - usually elderly - individuals denouncing drugs as they down their third double scotches.

Heavy drinking is at least as harmful to the health of mind and body as drug-taking. Which of us does not know of some tragic case of an addiction to the bottle destroying a marriage, a career or a life?

But no one suggests this makes the case for prohibition. Soft drugs lead on to hard drugs, some claim.

They might or they might not. Wine may also start the downward path to alcoholism.

Moreover, heavy drinking can unleash savagery in some, especially in the home; cannabis is more likely to make the drug-taker silly.

Of course, any drug-taker who drives must be punished - as in the case of a drinker who gets behind the wheel when over the limit. But that is not under debate at the moment.

About half of the young admit to using, or having used, cannabis and/or ecstasy. About half the Cabinet admit to having been users when young.

The other half may deny it but some of us have our doubts - though not in the case of Gordon Brown. He is too joyless by nature to have even tried.

However, crucially, applause by the zealous and high-minded for a drugs crackdown is quite drowned out by the noisy cheers from another quarter - the drugs suppliers; in particular, the obscenely wealthy drugs barons of South America.

Their wealth and power is wholly dependent on drugs being illegal.

This is why drugs will have to be legalised at some time - but controlled like tobacco and appropriately taxed.

Prohibition was the biggest single boost to gangsterism the U.S. ever experienced.

With huge sums at their disposal, the bootleggers corrupted the police, the courts, the judiciary and politicians.

No one was keener on Prohibition then, or the criminalisation of drugs now, than the mafia.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/li...le_id=558748&in_page_id=1772&in_author_id=248
 
Even peeps in cloud cuckoo land are seeeing it

BELLINGHAM — Despite more than a trillion dollars spent, drugs are more available today at lower prices and higher potency than at the beginning of America’s “war on drugs,” the former chief of the Seattle Police Department argued Thursday.

Norm Stamper, chief of the department from 1994 to 2000, spoke at Western Washington University in an event organized by the school’s Drug Information Center.

Speaking for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Stamper called the drug war an “abject failure” that has led to the unjust incarceration of millions and created a system that promotes a violent drug trade that has ravaged Mexico and the rest of Latin America.

“The incineration of human beings … decapitation … this is the kind of violence that a multibillion-dollar drug trafficking industry creates,” Stamper told a crowd of approximately 150 students and community members.

Stamper said the prohibition of drugs is partially responsible for that violence, since it creates a market that dealers exploit.

“The demand has always been greater than the supply, which is why the suppliers make so much on these drugs,” he said.

Stamper outlined some of the “collateral damage” of the drug war, including:

Students who have lost out on financial aid because of misdemeanor drug convictions.

Individuals living in poverty who have been denied federal public housing because of drug convictions. Stamper noted that neither rape nor murder convictions prevent someone from receiving public housing.

Nearly 2.3 million Americans jailed on drug charges, with nearly 90 percent of those convictions being simple possession. Stamper also argued that the drug war has disproportionately affected African Americans, leading to between seven and 10 times more black people being charged with drug crimes than white people.

As a solution, Stamper proposed legalizing all drugs and having the government regulate them — similar to the current system for alcohol and tobacco. Stamper argued that since decades of government intervention has done little to stem the flow of drugs into the country, the government may as well try to cut down on the violence inherent in the drug trade.

Several audience members questioned the morality and practicality of having the government sell drugs that could kill people and lead to addiction.

Stamper was not completely sure of the logistics, but countered by saying that drug addiction would be a reality whether users were getting their substance from the government or a drug dealer on the street.

Why not ensure that people were getting clean needles for intravenous drugs and using proper strength drugs that would limit overdoses, Stamper argued, pointing to the success of rehabilitation programs for addicts in Europe.

Either way, Stamper said America has erred in treating drugs as a criminal-justice issue instead of a publichealth issue.

“We spend seven times more on enforcement than we do on prevention and treatment,” he said. “Think about all the good that would be caused if we reversed that number.”
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source: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/102/story/370673.html
 
More great links DB, you've still got your finger on the pulse :)

Who woulda thunk The Daily Mail would publish a story like that? The Daily Mail is partly responsible for forcing the pro-prohibition pill down the publics throat for all these years, and now they suddenly u-turn. Crazy, but hopefully it will reach out to the demographic that needs it most, the gullible and manipulable.


I've also realised more and more that the UK will never be free until we gain true independence from the United States in terms of law and policy decisions. We went into an illegal war in Iraq because they said so, we spilt our own soliders blood for no worthwhile reason on foreign soil due to their pressures. I somehow doubt we'll be able to legalise anything without being penalised by the US.

Damn shame, but will the world have its moment of clarity during our life times?
 
aye uk and us linked in wars of all kind inc drugs

some more reading maybe the press has finally seen the thruth

Laid-back approach is best for cannabis



RESEARCH: Cannabis


Gordon Brown wants to take a tough stand on drugs, starting with the regrading of marijuana as a class B drug. But, as Chris Marshall discovers, there are many doubts about his approach.
ALMOST as if it was imitating the effects of the drug itself, the debate surrounding the reclassification of cannabis has become increasingly hazy of late. The Government's drug advisory body is expected to recommend it keeps its current class C status, ranking it alongside painkillers and stress medication, rather than return it to class B with the likes of amphetamines.

That would once again require police to arrest anyone found in possession of the drug rather than simply caution them.

Gordon Brown, though, wants to upgrade it – a move he believes would send out a clear message that smoking dope is damaging to health and socially unacceptable.

Opinions on the matter are deeply divided, even among the agencies working with drug users, and mental health charities.

It takes time to cut through the haze, but after a careful study of the facts, a clearer picture does emerge.

The new report – commissioned amid fears about the growing availability of stronger "skunk" strains of cannabis – cites one important piece of evidence.

Significant new research from Keele University has severely dented the theory that cannabis use can cause schizophrenia. It has found that far from cases of the illness increasing in line with growing cannabis use in the UK in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, they have actually fallen. The same goes for incidences of psychosis.

Concerns of a link, however, remain, with a growing consensus that the drug seems to trigger or exacerbate the condition in a relatively small number of cases. There is also no doubt that its long-term usage increases the risk of lung cancer, high blood pressure and infertility.

The other great fear about former home secretary David Blunkett's downgrading of the drug in 2004, that it would lead to an explosion in use, also appears to have been unfounded.

Official research suggests cannabis use has actually fallen slightly over the last four years. Although that is probably unrelated to Mr Blunkett's decision, the reclassification has certainly not led to increased problems.

John Arthur, of Crew 2000, an advice and support group for Edinburgh's young drug users, is convinced that keeping cannabis class C is the right decision.

"Cannabis must be the most researched drug in terms of mental health problems," he said.

"There're around three million regular users of cannabis in the UK and if there were associated mental health problems you would think it would come through a lot more.

"There's absolutely no doubt that it can make existing problems worse, but it's completely dose dependent and will pass when the drug is out of the system. There's no evidence that's been produced to show it actually causes mental illness.

"Cannabis is like any other drug, including nicotine, alcohol and caffeine. All of them have an impact on mental health.

"There's always been strong cannabis around, but people don't tend to use the same amount, in the same way they don't use the same amounts of stronger types of alcohol. They only use the amount it takes to get them where they want to go."

Others working in the field remain concerned about the growing perception of cannabis as a "soft drug", an idea clearly reinforced by the C grading.

Chris Denmark, a research officer at Action on Alcohol and Drug Edinburgh, said many younger users were ignorant of the drug's dangers.

"A lot of people don't even view cannabis as a drug – it's become almost accepted," he said. "We've got really quite a young population smoking hash and that's been going on for a few years now. There has been two recent surveys of Scottish schools and there are kids under the age of 16 smoking it. I do think it's a dangerous drug. Calling it a 'soft drug' is a bit of a misnomer. Over the last few years there has been more and more evidence of a lot of potential problems being stored up by using cannabis."

One of the ironies of the debate is that it will have no impact on the approach of police in Scotland.

Gordon Meldrum, deputy director of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, said: "When cannabis was reclassified, the Scottish Police Service effectively made no change and the day-to-day reality is that there has been no change in policing style or stance.

"We still treat people found on the street with cannabis in exactly the same way. We still see cannabis as a dangerous drug and a number of recent studies have confirmed that. Cannabis is still viewed very much as a gateway drug – it's still the first drug that children and young people will try. We've a focus on cocaine and heroin, but we've never taken our eye off the ball as far as cannabis is concerned."

Given the latest medical research and drug use studies, it is hard to resist the logic that cannabis should be graded class C. Smoking dope is certainly a lot less dangerous than taking amphetamines, so from a clinical point of view C does make sense. The argument, though, is also about the broader message, as the Prime Minister points out, sending out signals to young people at some level about the dangers and acceptability of drugs.

But is there not as much danger of sending out confused signals about other drugs if we are to artificially raise the status of cannabis? Should drug laws encourage people to think amphetamines are no more dangerous than cannabis when they clearly are?

Our approach to drugs as a nation needs to be based on honesty and facts if the important warnings about their inherent dangers are to carry any weight with an increasingly savvy generation of drug users.
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source:http://news.scotsman.com/opinion/Laidback-approach-is-best-for.3953772.jp
 
More
MP calls for rethink on 'failing' drugs laws

By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor

Friday, 11 April 2008


A Labour MP in one of Britain's drug abuse capitals has called for the decriminalisation of drugs in an attempt to reduce the harm they cause and wipe out the dealing trade.


Des Turner, MP for Brighton, said the zero tolerance policy on drugs was not working and a fresh approach is needed.

"I want to make drugs available through safely controlled sources such as pharmacies. Brighton has a serious drug problem with 60 drug-related deaths a year because of the variability of the strength of heroin on the streets."

"I would like to decriminalise drugs for personal use but I am not advocating the legalisation of heroin. By making drugs available through pharmacies it would take away the incentive to push drugs, if the dealers couldn't make any money out of them. It is what I have been thinking for a long time and it is what the professionals are thinking."

Mr Turner said that current arrangements under which registered addicts can get heroin from pharmacies on prescription were "too restrictive". On soft drugs, such as marijuana, he said he had "some sympathy" with the practice in the Netherlands of allowing customers in licensed coffee shops to buy small amounts of cannabis for their personal use on the premises.

A spokesman for the charity Drugscope said Mr Turner appeared confused about the law. "You don't need to change the law to make drugs available through pharmacies because they already are. In the Netherlands, the government has taken an administrative decision not to prosecute [drugs offences] in some cases. Exactly what Mr Turner is proposing is a bit unclear."
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Source:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...for-rethink-on-failing-drugs-laws-807796.html
 
And you german guys be careful is this not enough reason ffs

GERMAN DEALERS 'ADD LEAD TO MARIJUANA'

Drug dealers looking for extra profits apparently added lead flakes to packets of marijuana, inflating their value while causing dozens of cases of serious poisoning, doctors in Germany reported today.

The lead made up, on average, 10 per cent of the material in the marijuana packets, boosting profits by about $US1,500 ( $A1,613 ) per kilogram, Franzika Busse of University Hospital Leipzig reported.

"One package contained obvious lead particles; this strongly indicated that the lead was deliberately added to the package rather than inadvertently incorporated into the marijuana plants from contaminated soil," the researchers wrote in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine.

The problem was discovered last year when the first of 29 patients, aged 16 to 33, started showing up in four Leipzig hospitals with abdominal cramps, fatigue, nausea and varying degrees of anemia. One was ill enough to be suffering from hallucinations.

It took eight weeks to uncover a common pattern: all were young, smoked, had body piercings and were either students or unemployed. All regularly used marijuana.

Three patients brought in their stashes. All samples tested positive for lead contamination, with one having lead flakes that were obvious under a microscope.

After two more weeks, an anonymous screening program for marijuana users uncovered 95 other people who needed treatment.

Busse's colleague, Dr Michael Stumvoll, said in an email that about 200 people had now been identified. The screening was continuing, he said, although it did not appear that the practice was continuing among dealers.

"The medical community, including pediatricians, should consider adulterated marijuana as a potential source of lead intoxication," the German team wrote.
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more info

http://transform-drugs.blogspot.com/2008/04/more-casualties-of-prohibition-lead.html

http://ukcia.org/wordpress/

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/reprint/358/15/1641.pdf
 
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