I think all drugs should be legal
I think Marijuana should be legal & have smoked it myself
I think Marijuana should be legal but have not smoked it myself
I am undecided.
I think Marijuana should be illegal & have never smoked it myself
I think Marijuana should be illegal & have smoked it myself
I think all drugs should be illegal including Alcohol & Tobacco
But like heroin just makes u fall asleep and lie there half asleep, MDMA makes you happy and super nice to everyone, cannabis doesnt make u violent generally....
But alchhol makes you angry and violent if you are already in a bad mood and drink too much.... MDMA, opiates or cannabis do not do this...
Originally Posted by perfectmark
I don't think you really understand. The only way to beat illegal drugs is to sell the drugs at a loss or give them away free. Then you have to factor in what that person does when high as a kite. I explained it in my previous post: substance abuse, illicit or not, causes violent crime. To drop the figures relating to theft et al, you have to beat the pushers at their own game.
Research commissioned by ASH has shown that the cost to the NHS of
treating diseases caused by smoking is approximately £2.7 billion a year.
5
Another study put the estimated cost as high as £5.2 billion.
6
A report by the
Policy Exchange in 2010 estimated the total cost to society of smoking to be
£13.74 billion. This includes the £2.7bn cost to the NHS but also the loss in
productivity from smoking breaks (£2.9bn) and increased absenteeism
(£2.5bn). Other costs include: cleaning up cigarette butts (£342 million), the
cost of fires (£507m), the loss of economic output from the death of smokers
(£4.1bn) and passive smokers (£713m).
7
However, it is also estimated that
about £380 million a year is being saved by the NHS as a result of public
health strategies such as the ban on tobacco advertising and the creation of
the stop smoking services which have resulted in fewer people smoking.
5
The problem with using current income from tax, with current expenditure on the economy as a whole, and to the NHS, is that smoking-related illnesses are not something that happen the day after or during that period. The true cost cannot be understood until much, much later as cancer, bronchitis and other respiratory illnesses often happen with a huge lag.
Again, this is a complete assumption that people would buy it legally. Addicts only go for their methadone doses if they cannot get access to heroin or they are obliged to, should there be an embargo on their benefits/probation should they fail.
Please stop using assumptions as facts. I already stated the cost of primary care for drug rehabilitation treatment from one centre and treatment has several stages.
It costs £3.6bn a year to treat 320,000 drug addicts. That's £11,000 EACH. Of which only 4% successfully complete treatment. And that doesn't include the social and economic costs.
Again, (a) assuming that there is an income greater than the cost of proving the drugs; (b) that that income also pays for the vast numbers of personnel and land required to treat addiction; and (c) that the income from drug taxation pays for the lost economic hours and long-term effects of drugs that may or may not have been established.
You're living in cookoo land. Land of the fairies.
Yet you feel these drugs should be freely available to anyone. I mean, you're calling for them to be legal. That means a 5-year-old can be allowed to purchase a bag of smack with his/her packet of Love Hearts.
That, in itself, raises a major flaw: if you were to make drugs legal but illegal for underage (LOL contradiction), where do you draw the line?
The problem here is testing. There is not a reliable way to get quick and accurate results on whether a person is intoxicated without doing long-winded lab testing. It's possible this sort of equipment will be available soon, but, again, this all has to be paid for from unknown revenue.
Explain. Again, assumption. No facts or even anything to back up your claim.
Another innocent casualty in the idiotic War on Drugs:
http://gothamist.com/2012/02/04/bron...le_with_po.php
Some other things that should be taken into consideration.
Human nature - some people have a psychological makeup that gives them an addictive nature, with some it may be alcohol, others chocolate, cocaine, tobacco or whatever. it's up to them to make the decision, and stick to it, whether they want to avoid that to which they are addicted.
Genetic makeup - some people are born with a genetic makeup that causes them to be physically addicted to some things, like alcohol or dope.
Brain structure - some people have underlying mental health issues that are brought out under the influence of various 'recreational' drugs. I've had friends who developed paranoid tendencies and my sister's best friend at Uni' had a bad reaction to Acid and killed herself when on home release from the institute she was put in for treatment.
The culture of those around the alcohol/drugs - some societies have lived centuries around various natural drugs without abusing them, or using them for religious ceremonies -
Public drunkenness and binge drinking seem to be relatively new practices amongst young people - probably due to boredom, relatively cheap alcohol compared to disposable income and a fair bit of acting out. That some get very agressive or look from trouble may be partially due to the lack of risk taking available in modern society, the lack of ways to establish peer order through beating challenges or bettering each other - also will probably be due to mating pressures/high testosterone having them put on shows for the women (although there may be a latent homosexual element as they also do it to show off to their 'mates'.
I think this is why you get girls/young women drinking till they pass out risking sexual assault, men drinking to get their nerve up to get into fights, kids taking strange drugs when offered without considering what it may be or do to them, people taking drugs that are KNOWN to cause health issues!
NOTE, the drinking culture here (NZ) is probably coloured from the old days when the bars closed at 6pm and the men would rush to the bars and drink as much as they could before closing - then go home (beat the wife, kids, pass out or whatever) and so there's still a legacy of the 'measure of a man' being how much they can drink!
In short, drugs aren't the problem, people are the problem! Countries where there's an educated population with legally available drugs seem to have had a far lower level of drug use and associated problems with addictions.
My personal opinion, having seen so many with problems from their use, is that you've got to be freaking stupid and/or have one heck of a poor social life to want to lose themselve in using them.
Lastly, of five school friends who were using heroin, four simply stopped and went on to be successful in life while the fifth already had alcohol issues and ended up in jail with the last I heard of him was he'd turned his life around by finding Christ.
russ, I work with mental health patients, but the vast majority self medicate. I really feel things would be better, and crime would decrease if a certain amount of a substance became decriminalized, or at least a summary offense. I can't tell you how many people I have seen with a drug related crime in their background, something that shows up on a criminal background check, and it usually perpetuates the problem. If little Billy was caught with weed, or cocaine at 20 years old, why should he spend the rest of his life under that cloud? That just fuels more abuse, and it causes people to commit crimes to feed their addiction.
There´s a big difference between legalizing and decriminalizing something.
Btw i don´t believe drug users should get jail time for abusing if anything their own body.
Fines/penalties > Jail time.
Yeah, there is a big difference between decriminalizing and legalizing all drugs. I am all for decriminalizing substance abuse. But ****ers that push drugs on kids in junior high shouldn't see freedom for a while, imo. You get caught smoking crack or shooting heroin, you go to a mandated treatment center and if you have money you are paying for every cent of it. No money, you will work cleaning side of the highway as part of your rehabilitation to pay society back for them paying for it. Just the hard drugs mind you. I am still for legalizing pot.
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