My opinion...
The war on drugs will never be won. £ Billions have already been spent and £ Billions more will be spent to maintain the illegal status of drugs. Whilst this goes on, criminal gangs earn £ millions from distribution, addicts commit £ millions of pounds worth of petty crime on a daily basis to feed their habit and all to maintain the moral high ground that "drugs are bad."
In my opinion, ALL drugs should be de-criminalised with immediate effect and ALL drgs should be available from walk in centres by prescription and from where any drug user can get help if needed. Drug sales can be taxed and the supply maintained in accordance with the law. Overnight this will take power and revenue from criminal gangs and reduce the drug fuelled petty crime that blights our society.
Will it be perfect - no
Will it create new problems - possibly
But if the amount of resources, committment and funding that is being used to "fight the war on drugs" were applied to a more rational solution for just one year I am convinced that the £ Billions now being wasted will be seen to have been put towards a more practical solution.
Will it ever happen? - Probably not simply due to the fear of appearing to be "soft on drugs" and that is an ironic shame because dealing with the problem properly requires tough decisions and not the present, easy intolerant policy based on ignorance.
The drug threat is more imagined than real. The current problem is caused by prohibition.
Well, my feeling is that 'substances' should be graded as to harm. And that should be assessed to the individual, their family and friends, their ability to work (and therefore the need to steal), and the impact on support services such as rehabiliation and medical care.
Yes, that would make it complex and subject to constant re-assessment as more data is obtained. But isn't that better than pseudo-science and religion ruling the legal side and the help and support side being almost entirely dependent on charity?
There is already a reasonable stab at damage assessment and that needs to be developed.
Throwing the criminal system at someone who is already addicted is the epitome of shutting the stable door - the horse being in the next county. But if we must do that - prison should be where the addiction is dealt with and the sentence should be "until yuou are clean and employable".
And marijuana should be grown, harvested and supplied in the milder, 1960's form to any and all adults just as alcohol is now. They have limits on strength, duty based on content and laws against public drunkeness - isn't that enough if we can remove Skunk from the market?
As I get older I just can't help but view the whole "war on drugs" campaign being just a complete waste of time, energy and money.
It is nothing to do with whether I see one drug being more dangerous than any other albeit i find it hypocritical that today's Politicians are going to such great lengths to maintain prohibition when the law of averages suggests that at some stage in their lives they would have used marijuana, ecstacy - or both.
The ONLY people benefitting from the failing war on drugs and current status quo are criminals. This has to change.
I am not talking about legalising drugs. I am talking about de-criminalising them and creating drug "walk in centres" where ALL drugs can be purchased on prescription in a controlled environment. Recreational drugs like marijuana, ecstacy and LSD can be dispensed in contriolled amounts as can cocaine and heroin and at any time drug users can be counselled and offered help at the same walk in centres. An open and honest approach to drugs and drug use in society.
The failure of drug policy has been plain to see for anyone with half a brain in their head for decades. Prohibition does nothing to reduce harm. It increases harm, criminalising users forced to buy impure substances on the street at inflated prices that often forces them down a criminal route to pay for their habits, financing gangsters and putting guns on the street in this country, even more guns on the streets in the countries that produce them. Prohibition simply does not work.
The research chemical / legal highs trade is proving this in spades, driving a coach and horses through the legislation. For every substance they ban half a dozen more pop up with only minor tweaks to make them legal. Case in point with the Methoxetamine ( a Ketamine analogue ) ban under a Temporary Class Drug Order in April. Within weeks of the ban RC vendors were offering other Arylcyclohexylamines to replace it, mostly PCP analogues. Newer analogues have come to market since. The same is true for just about any other drug of abuse out there: Opioids, Cannabinoids, Tryptamines, Phenylethylamines, Benzopiazepines, you name it, take your pick, all freely available on the internet. Are these substances more harmful than those they're intended to mimic? Who knows. Noone can say, they don't have a long enough history of use, but potentially much more harmful. It's very likely according to the little research that's been done on these newer drugs that certain combinations of them at least will prove to be dangerously neurotoxic. Much more so than the Ecstasy high users are trying to replicate with some of them for instance, a substance with a long history of use and reasonably well understood dangers. There are designer opioids out there that are to Heroin what Heroin is to Codeine, a 100 times more powerful than Morphine FFS. I don't see how this trade can be stopped. You could bring in broad, sweeping analogue laws like they have in the US, and just like in the US ways will be found around them. The genie is well and truly out of the bottle.
Further idiotic conequences of prohibition would be the difficulty legitimate researchers have studying the therapeutic applications of some of these substances. out just recently on how even a single dose of Ketamine can prove of immense benefit for some sufferers of depressive type illnesses. Not even new news, largely repeating the findings of a previous in 2007. Believe there are other studies going back still further, and the potential therapeutic applications of LSD and MDMA for instance are perhaps even better known. That researchers should have to jump through hoops because of prohibition to be even allowed to conduct even small scale, tightly controlled research into applications that may be of enormous benefit to mankind truly defies all logic.
There are stirrings at last of a sensible debate on the fringes of power but I don't hold out much hope for reform any time soon. The David Nutt Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs debacle shows Govt will cling to their failed policy against all evidence and rational advice for some time yet at least. What's really interesting at the moment is that David Nutt and colleagues have set up their own as a direct challenge to the ACMD he was sacked from for speaking the truth. Be interesting to see how the ISCD and ACMD are gonna square up to each other in the coming months. A few bruised egos, noses out of joint and professional reputations riding on this in both camps, and no mistake. The cynic in me can't help worrying that it's all a bit preaching to the (mainly) converted so something of an irrelevant side-show to the whole sorry mess really, that won't have all that much of an impact at all straight off, but some on the fringes of Govt some are finally starting to suggest that there must be better alternatives out there to what we've got and we should maybe at least explore them. Hopefully the ISCD will legitimise the attempts of some in Govt to move sensibly in that direction and foster more of it, in time.
I feel so unable to comment usefully in this thread, being a lifelong non-drug user/abuser.
Hell, I feel uncomfortable taking an aspirin for a headache!
However, is there a difference in people's perception about 'natural' substances and 'manufactured' ones - such as the difference between the herbal benefits of c*n*bis and hard core of things like amphetamines?
Or am I totally naïve about such matters?
Hummmmm.
But is it cheaper?
Gulps in :awe: @ neil's knowledge.
Did you actually know that already neil or had you read up on it?
This is for sure a contentious issue but one that could and should be debated. :thumbup:
I looked at the first few posts on here and was hoping that Neil would make his comments, and he has. But I think Neil that you have slightly over complicated the whole issue. That is not to say I do not agree with you, but that I found it difficult at times to follow.
This is a link that I found that has views for and against, and that I found very informative. Also on the right hand side of this page there are all sorts of information which is so informative to all. I found it an amazing insight and one which I found easy to understand.
The problem now is that so many people use drugs for recreational purposes simply doing a night out down the pub. Drugs have also become so much cheaper and therefore much more widely accessible to the young in particular.
My worry with this is that drugs and alcohol most of the time go hand in hand. Also I believe that drug use has many long term affects on some peoples mental state. Drugs affect different people in different ways and no single person knows which way those drugs will affect them on a personnel level.
My opinion is that drugs should remain illegal, but what I would like to see is more money spent on informing the young about the dangers of drug use. Also I would like to see more help available to drug users. I do not think that legalisation would work as I cannot see youngsters being allowed to go into a walk in clinic and buy their drugs for a night on the town. So where would those people then get their drugs from, if not down the legal route?
Decriminalisation has been tried only recently and the difficult thing here is what is deemed for personnel use? Do people really want a law whereby people can openly carry drugs allbeit for their own personnel use on our streets? I think the law is about right on so many levels and to allow either lagalisation or decriminalisation to take place will I think only help to glorify drugs to an even wider audience of youngsters, and that is surely not a good thing.
Help is widely available already for drug users but to allow drug users an opportunity to be able to walk into a centre and get their drugs OTC will I believe glorify the use of drugs to many young people. We need to somehow find a way to make drugs less accessible to youngsters, not to put them for sale in a drugs sweet shop. This issue has been debated by people at the very top and there are no easy answers.
The message should be that drugs kill and any attempt to say otherwise is wrong. There are many web sites that will show the damages and the deaths that drug use causes. Making drug taking legal in any way I believe will only help to increase these figures even further.
Firstly, I think that there is some confusion here over the difference between legalisation and decriminalisation. What the op is talking about is, in fact, legalisation. It would be necessary to legalise the production and supply of drugs in order for the State to regulate that supply. Legalisation is not possible in the UK because of current UN conventions.
The term "decriminalisation" simply means that there are no criminal offences in connection with certain acts. This means that those acts remain illegal, but shift from constituting a criminal offence to constituting an administrative offence. In relation to drugs, decriminalisation usually relates to possession and consumption. Following decriminalisation it is still illegal to buy, possess and use drugs, but it is not a criminal offence. Instead, there are administrative sanctions (e.g. fines), and it is treated as a health issue (so rehabilitation may be offered).
Examples of decriminalisation in relation to drugs can be found in Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Luxembourg. In all cases, it is not a criminal offence to possess certain drugs, but there are administrative consequences. So, for example, in Spain if a person is caught in possession of drugs for personal use (provided there is no evidence of a criminal offence - e.g. drug dealing), the drugs are seized and the person is referred to the administrative authorities. They may then be fined and invited to attend counselling sessions or undergo rehabilitation treatment (if they present signs of addiction).
By way of contrast, an example of an industry where legalisation is more prevalent than decriminalisation is prostitution. Where prostitution is legalised, it is controlled by the government and is only legal under specific conditions. The sorts of controls that tend to be introduced include licensing and mandatory health checks. There are a number of jurisdictions where prostitution is legalised, for example: the Netherlands, Germany, Iceland, Switzerland, and Austria. This is not to be confused with jurisdictions where prostitution is entirely unregulated (i.e. where there are no laws in place at all), which is predominantly found in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
The final point that I would make is that it is also important to avoid confusing decriminalisation with tolerance. Many people think that smoking marijuana is legal in the Netherlands, but it's not. Personal use of marijuana is not even decriminalised in the Netherlands, let alone legalised: it is merely tolerated by the authorities. Possession of marijuana in the Netherlands is a crime, but coffee shops have flourished because the prosecution guidelines mean that coffee shops will not be prosecuted as long as they sell under certain conditions.
Coming back to the actual debate now, I do not think it is as simple as the op suggests. I am a trustee of a charity that works with people who have committed crimes in connection with substance addictions (in a voluntary capacity in my spare time). So I know a reasonable amount about the effect that drug misuse can have on people, having seen it first-hand. I agree that criminalising drug addicts, locking them up and throwing away the key is not a solution. However, our system is more sophisticated than that, and people are not simply thrown into prison on a first offence. My charity works in conjunction with the local authorities and every single person who walks through our doors has committed a drug-related crime. I agree that the system is not working and something needs to be done to improve the war on drugs, but I do not agree that legalisation is the answer.
My fear with the sort of legalisation of drugs that the op describes is that it would ignore the serious damage caused by drug misuse and it would entirely blur the message - are we supplying drugs over the counter or are we trying to stop people from using drugs? It would be like holding an AA meeting in the local pub. You talk about offering rehabilitation at these "walk-in-centres" at the same time as providing controlled amounts of the very drugs that the individuals are addicted to. Do you actually know anything about drug rehabilitation? Do you understand how difficult it is to work with a drug addict and successfully get them to stop using? The process is extremely difficult, requires an individual, tailored approach, and would not be helped at all by supplying that person with the very drugs they are trying to stop using.
I do not think that legalising drugs is the answer. That is why no jurisdiction has ever tried to implement the sort of scheme that the op describes. Decriminalisation is a solution that I think could work and has been shown to work in other jurisdictions. The reason that I think it works is because it does not mix messages: the possession and use of drugs remains illegal, with administrative fines and the requirement to undergo treatment as the consequences of being found in possession. Decriminalisation moves drug use from being a criminal issue to being a health issue, and means that taxpayers money is spent on rehabilitation rather than imprisonment.
In my opinion, it is very important that any sensible discussion of decriminalisation of drugs is properly understood, and what has been outlined by the op is, in fact, legalisation. I do not agree that legalisation is the solution.
I was trying to cover a lot of ground and you know me, succinct and to the point is not one of my strengths! 
;)