Why is Cannabis still illegal?

Author
Discussion

Russwhitehouse

962 posts

130 months

Thursday 30th July 2015
quotequote all
I used to be an enthusiastic puffer in my youth, but haven't indulged for many years. The same cannot be said of a member of my wife's family who is a chronic long term smoker of shrubbery. A more useless, un motivated, lazy, oxygen thief you would be hard pushed to find. No question in my mind as to the reason.

hairyben

8,516 posts

182 months

Thursday 30th July 2015
quotequote all
With these debates like many everyone tends to regurgitate their own standpoint and I doubt read half of whats written, and I think that in society most people are dependent on rules and things being banned because something needs to be banned so people can think they're being good without having to think.

What does bother me a little though is the backdoor hardline on pot- few years ago if you didn't take the P you'd probably get away with it, now you have hundreds of coppers showing up at festials to search everyone to get their crime numbers up. Worse than that is the swabs for drivers who will have trace amounts- it's effectively punishment delegated to find a nastier way to impinge on the user - concerning as someone I know has advanced chrons disease and has a choice of a) insufferable pain b) really really nasty prescription drugs with massive side effects or c) smoke a little pot in the evening. Pot basically gives him a bit of quality of life that allows him to go to work etc that nothing else can come close to. This will deny him that.

technodup

7,576 posts

129 months

Thursday 30th July 2015
quotequote all
ikarl said:
FredClogs said:
When I was a young man (mid/late 90s) E cost £15 plus, I don't know what it costs now, but I suspect the price has risen and fallen based on demand and fashion and who and where the market is being run from.
I have no idea of cost now, but have it on very good authority that between 2004-2007 you could buy 20 for £20 or alternatively 200 for £100.
In 95 they were £12ish, dropping to as little as £1in the 00s and now they're a tenner. Apparently.

Fell out of favour due to reduced quality and the rise of coke, mephedrone and other legal highs. Now reported strength is higher than ever.

Slyjoe

1,500 posts

210 months

Thursday 30th July 2015
quotequote all
A short doc by Vice about artificial cannabis which seems to be more of a problem - but legal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6pmc7Tpx4w

FredClogs

14,041 posts

160 months

Thursday 30th July 2015
quotequote all
Slyjoe said:
A short doc by Vice about artificial cannabis which seems to be more of a problem - but legal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6pmc7Tpx4w
Yeah its hard to watch, the idea that legality has any real effect on individuals who are using drugs is daft, this is all lethal and legal stuff (or was legal I'm not sure of the current status)

Frybywire

467 posts

195 months

Thursday 30th July 2015
quotequote all
technodup said:
Now reported strength is higher than ever.
Yep, new precursors = PARTY TIME!!!

Dragoncaviar

67 posts

203 months

Thursday 30th July 2015
quotequote all
FredClogs said:
Ok, so in the real world how is this going to work?

We force schools and other social institutions to track and detail individuals behaviour and target those who we consider at risk from having suffered trauma or likely to suffer trauma, barrage them with support services and offers of psychotherapy? Sounds a bit intrusive to me, sounds a bit prone to error and people taking offense and crying invasion of civil liberty.

The other option is to wait until people start to self medicate then jump on them, surely that's too late they've already replaced the trauma with the blanket of addiction (especially in the case of opiates) - can you really pull them back? Isn't this what we're seeing in Portugal and especially in Switzerland, that once people are self medicating with booze or opiates talking twice a week with a counselor doesn't really cut it and easy access or prescribed access to the drug of choice takes them out of a life of crime but isn't a huge incentive to get them away from the addiction. It's only really the choice of true abstinence that works and the "message" of illegality aids that choice.
The point is you don't force anyone to do anything. You educate people as to why they might not want to make certain life decisions, but ultimately, you leave the decision up to them. Then, if they make those bad life decisions, you make sure there are services and resources at their disposal when they need them. We all know that smoking kills 50% of people who smoke until they die, but we still let people make the decision of whether to smoke or not themselves. We educate them towards the risks, we cover packages in graphic images, and we make sure that no-one can claim to be ignorant towards the risks. We offer the best methods we can to help people who want to stop - be it nicotine patches, gum, electric cigarettes or some of the more out-there therapeutic approaches ... and with all of this, we've seen tobacco rates drop dramatically. The UK launched it's 'Smoking Kills' paper in 1998, and reduced adult smoking from 28% to 21% in just 10 years. Education works. If you tell someone the REAL reasons they shouldn't do something, rather than hiding behind this moral pedestal, they tend to listen.

You absolutely can pull people back from addiction. Aside from that, why is a functioning heroin addict more of a scourge on society than a functioning nicotine addict? In fact, I'd say the heroin addict (provided they've access to pharmaceutically pure heroin) is less of a burden to society than the tobacco smoker who will inevitably end up with some kind of cancer, being treated at a cost to everyone else.

It's a little known fact, but in the UK, there was a doctor (John Marks) who treated some 450 addicts for a period of 13 years. During those 13 years, he handed out pharmaceutically pure heroin on a weekly basis to these addicts who, with this new found stability in their life, were able to function and contribute to society. In those 13 years, he never had a drug related death amongst his 450 patients.

Dr Marks attracted some media attention whilst in the US, and word came down from on high that this program must be stopped. John Majors conservative government merged Dr Marks program with an evangelical christian organisation who opposed prescriptions on principle. There was nothing Dr Marks could do for his patients, and everyone knew what this meant.

“Of the 450 patients Marks prescribed to, 20 were dead within six months, and 41 were dead within two years. More lost limbs and caught potentially lethal diseases. They returned to the death rate for addicts under prohibition: 10 to 20 percent, similar to smallpox.”

AJS-

15,366 posts

235 months

Friday 31st July 2015
quotequote all
I am at heart libertarian on drugs. Up to the individual. However Peter Hitchens is very interesting on this.

I think it's mostly still illegal because of our international treaty obligations.

There doesn't seem to be any serious effort to enforce the ban on possession and even small scale production and supply seems to be largely tolerated.

The amount of spree killers and even Jihadists with a history of cannabis use seems worth investigating.

A good school friend of mine wasted years of his life and is quite possibly still wasting it due in part to being a heavy smoker. Last time I saw him he was a total mess with no grip on reality.

So yes it is up to the individual and you're very unlikely to be prosecuted anyway for having sufficient quantities of dope for heavy personal use. But I do think used excessively by the wrong people it can be extremely harmful.

anonymous-user

Original Poster:

53 months

Friday 31st July 2015
quotequote all

anonymous-user

Original Poster:

53 months

Friday 31st July 2015
quotequote all
AJS- said:
I am at heart libertarian on drugs. Up to the individual. However Peter Hitchens is very interesting on this.

The amount of spree killers and even Jihadists with a history of cannabis use seems worth investigating.
Speak to anyone who's tried cannabis, and likely the last thing they're plotting is a murderous rampage through the streets, well maybe attack a pizzeria and eat a pizza to death. Hitchens and the mail will try to find any connection they can. I read some crap in the mail a while ago, and the headline was trying to pin the blame on cannabis. Yet when you read the whole article, and the judge mentioned the psychiatric assessment it was blamed on amphetamine use with no mention of cannabis!

When such a large percentage of a population uses a substance. When something bad happens, it's very easy to make a connection to a widely used substance, but what about the millions who use it and live their lives without causing any trouble. My opinion is that people with mental illness will go off the rails anyway, whether they use alcohol, drugs, gamble or read hateful articles in cheap newspapers – wonder how many they've killed?


FredClogs

14,041 posts

160 months

Friday 31st July 2015
quotequote all
Dragoncaviar said:
FredClogs said:
Ok, so in the real world how is this going to work?

We force schools and other social institutions to track and detail individuals behaviour and target those who we consider at risk from having suffered trauma or likely to suffer trauma, barrage them with support services and offers of psychotherapy? Sounds a bit intrusive to me, sounds a bit prone to error and people taking offense and crying invasion of civil liberty.

The other option is to wait until people start to self medicate then jump on them, surely that's too late they've already replaced the trauma with the blanket of addiction (especially in the case of opiates) - can you really pull them back? Isn't this what we're seeing in Portugal and especially in Switzerland, that once people are self medicating with booze or opiates talking twice a week with a counselor doesn't really cut it and easy access or prescribed access to the drug of choice takes them out of a life of crime but isn't a huge incentive to get them away from the addiction. It's only really the choice of true abstinence that works and the "message" of illegality aids that choice.
The point is you don't force anyone to do anything. You educate people as to why they might not want to make certain life decisions, but ultimately, you leave the decision up to them. Then, if they make those bad life decisions, you make sure there are services and resources at their disposal when they need them. We all know that smoking kills 50% of people who smoke until they die, but we still let people make the decision of whether to smoke or not themselves. We educate them towards the risks, we cover packages in graphic images, and we make sure that no-one can claim to be ignorant towards the risks. We offer the best methods we can to help people who want to stop - be it nicotine patches, gum, electric cigarettes or some of the more out-there therapeutic approaches ... and with all of this, we've seen tobacco rates drop dramatically. The UK launched it's 'Smoking Kills' paper in 1998, and reduced adult smoking from 28% to 21% in just 10 years. Education works. If you tell someone the REAL reasons they shouldn't do something, rather than hiding behind this moral pedestal, they tend to listen.

You absolutely can pull people back from addiction. Aside from that, why is a functioning heroin addict more of a scourge on society than a functioning nicotine addict? In fact, I'd say the heroin addict (provided they've access to pharmaceutically pure heroin) is less of a burden to society than the tobacco smoker who will inevitably end up with some kind of cancer, being treated at a cost to everyone else.

It's a little known fact, but in the UK, there was a doctor (John Marks) who treated some 450 addicts for a period of 13 years. During those 13 years, he handed out pharmaceutically pure heroin on a weekly basis to these addicts who, with this new found stability in their life, were able to function and contribute to society. In those 13 years, he never had a drug related death amongst his 450 patients.

Dr Marks attracted some media attention whilst in the US, and word came down from on high that this program must be stopped. John Majors conservative government merged Dr Marks program with an evangelical christian organisation who opposed prescriptions on principle. There was nothing Dr Marks could do for his patients, and everyone knew what this meant.

“Of the 450 patients Marks prescribed to, 20 were dead within six months, and 41 were dead within two years. More lost limbs and caught potentially lethal diseases. They returned to the death rate for addicts under prohibition: 10 to 20 percent, similar to smallpox.”
I can see your arguments and agree with what you've said, but... There are 3 "prongs" to your position that you freely overlap and confuse, being the libertarian argument which boils down to "people should be allowed to make their own educated decisions" - the "it's not as bad as alchohol and tobacco" argument and the argument that controlled and legal use would remove the criminal lifestyle and negative social impacts "treat it as a health matter not a criminal matter".

The last one is very pragmatic and I fully see and understand the argument, and it apparently worked in the UK from the 1920s to 1960 (something) when we had to comply with UN wishes and criminalise drug addiction and it "works" in Portugal and Switzerland - but the example you gave of the doctor shows to me that drugs kill people, he didn't help them with the root cause of their addiction, he didn't get them away from it and it killed them. Heroine withdrawal by all accounts is not pleasant but physically it's no worse than a couple of weeks of flu (so they say) the psychology of addiction is no doubt complex and there is no silver bullet - except abstinence - it's the only way to stop and that is TO STOP, yes it's hard and yes people will fail but abstinence is the only "cure" for drug addiction. I'm pretty certain that the vast majority of the childhood trauma that's been spoken of, in many, is caused by parental absence or neglect as a result of narcotics, I see no reason to continue this cycle and see abstinence as the only way to break it.

I'm also faintly confused by the apparent juxtapose of "Let people make their own decisions" and "People who've suffered trauma are predisposed to addiction". It's either a decision or some fated path chosen for the addicts, or it could be a complex web of the two (most likely, life is not black and white) but you can't argue it both ways, whether people are either a victim of circumstance or their expressing personal liberty or doing both I still don't see why government legislation should not lay down firm boundaries as to what is and what isn't acceptable - even if they're regularly ignored.

The other two arguments are pants, personally I'd be in favour of banning tobacco and putting much stricter controls on alcohol, but two wrongs certainly don't make a right and constant comparison to the alcohol situation isn't winning any arguments because no one is ever going to admit that being an alcoholic is a particularly good idea either or good use of personal liberties either.

Like I said at the top of this thread I've done my share of dabbling in substances and I'm in no way an evangelical christian or some right wing wail reading swivel eyed loon, I've done my thinking on this and accept the reality of life which is people will take drugs, but the only way out of problem use and addiction is abstinence and the law reflects and supports this, it's a hard line but one people must walk to live an addiction free life.

LeoZwalf

2,802 posts

229 months

Friday 31st July 2015
quotequote all
Frybywire said:
The mother of a very good friend of mine.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8AffIZssL4
Quite incredible and very good to see. What a recovery, all the best to her! smile

anonymous-user

Original Poster:

53 months

Friday 31st July 2015
quotequote all
JS748 said:
AJS- said:
I am at heart libertarian on drugs. Up to the individual. However Peter Hitchens is very interesting on this.

The amount of spree killers and even Jihadists with a history of cannabis use seems worth investigating.
Speak to anyone who's tried cannabis, and likely the last thing they're plotting is a murderous rampage through the streets, well maybe attack a pizzeria and eat a pizza to death. Hitchens and the mail will try to find any connection they can. I read some crap in the mail a while ago, and the headline was trying to pin the blame on cannabis. Yet when you read the whole article, and the judge mentioned the psychiatric assessment it was blamed on amphetamine use with no mention of cannabis!

When such a large percentage of a population uses a substance. When something bad happens, it's very easy to make a connection to a widely used substance, but what about the millions who use it and live their lives without causing any trouble. My opinion is that people with mental illness will go off the rails anyway, whether they use alcohol, drugs, gamble or read hateful articles in cheap newspapers – wonder how many they've killed?
yes

"99% of murderers eat eggs. Therefore, eggs make you murder people."

killingjoker

950 posts

192 months

Friday 31st July 2015
quotequote all
Yeah i mean look at Howard Marks. That guy was thick, lazy, and never amounted to anything. He never made much money, or wrote a book, or worked for the govenment, or toured and sold out venues, lived all over the world, met loads of different cultures, or the like....

Edited to say: Or cool of cool 70's style smuggling weed in Ford Capri's smile

FredClogs

14,041 posts

160 months

Friday 31st July 2015
quotequote all
killingjoker said:
Yeah i mean look at Howard Marks. That guy was thick, lazy, and never amounted to anything. He never made much money, or wrote a book, or worked for the govenment, or toured and sold out venues, lived all over the world, met loads of different cultures, or the like....

Edited to say: Or cool of cool 70's style smuggling weed in Ford Capri's smile
I'm not sure Howard Marks had a life he or anyone else should be proud of, consider cool or be painted as some kind of loveable rogue...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Marks

What next? The Krays were just misunderstood? El Chapo is a community leader? Pablo Escobar loved his mum?

anonymous-user

Original Poster:

53 months

Friday 31st July 2015
quotequote all
Violent criminal gangs created by prohibition. We don't have that problem with alcohol manufactures. The United States did, but only in the prohibition era.

Petrol Only

1,592 posts

174 months

Friday 31st July 2015
quotequote all
FredClogs said:
Slyjoe said:
A short doc by Vice about artificial cannabis which seems to be more of a problem - but legal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6pmc7Tpx4w
Yeah its hard to watch, the idea that legality has any real effect on individuals who are using drugs is daft, this is all lethal and legal stuff (or was legal I'm not sure of the current status)
Wow, that was horrible. This is a clear example why prohibition does not work. All he wanted was a bit of bud. Now he rattles like a legal crack addict. Time to get real. People have liked to get "wasted" for one reason or another since time began.


mph1977

12,467 posts

167 months

Friday 31st July 2015
quotequote all
Gecko1978 said:
JS748 said:
Blue Cat said:
Make it legal and I can see loads of new users causing all types of problems, rather like just taking away speed limits and trusting people to drive sensibly.
Why? It's not like it's hard to buy now, is it? Anyone who wants cannabis now, will find it. Would it not be better if they bought regulated cannabis with labelled THC levels? Plus if you buy from a legal store, they will not have other more dangerous drugs for sale.
you make a good point but I think it comes back to the "Fun" issue. From what I understand thalidomide (spelling) worked really well for morning sickness. There were some downsides though. It was not a fun drug so was band. Now you want a new drug to be legal which we know can cause illness. Why should it be legal whats the benefit of encouraging its sale and use. I am not sure putting people in gaol is helpful in these cases but having it on sale next to marlboro lights etc which we are trying to discourage use of is just not logical.

Perhaps better to study health effects of cannabis like we have with alcohol etc then tell people the truth i.e. slight risk of mental health issues, respiratory illness risk, and constant talking sh!t an going to petrol station late at night for munchies.
thalidomide isn;t 'banned' and never has been , just de-licensed for use in morning sickness . it has other extremely valid clinical uses.


another issue with decriminalisation of durgs of misuse , is that most of them are legal as PoMs or PoM (controlled drugs) ... so legalisation would subvert the whole medicines safety system

MrBrightSi

2,912 posts

169 months

Friday 31st July 2015
quotequote all
Rather than all this prohibition and forcefully barring people from using stuff, we just need to educate better.

I've smoked and dabble now and again, it can become all consuming or recreational depending on who you are.

It should be entirely down to educated individuals, no added jeopardy or drama from the powers that be, only the simple adage that everything in moderation.

I can entirely understand a lot of the vitriol from people on here against drug use, but where you see lazy stoners i see destructive drinkers.

Prohibit it and it becomes a glorious fk you to the man.

I remember when i was deep into smoking, one thing that helped me was a Swedish paper: http://droginfo.com/pdf/guideuk.pdf

This helps deal with a lot of the addiction without making you feel a criminal or a complete loser.

One of the few things i agree with Brand on is that drug users when they are benign and existing with their habit and causing no bother shouldn't be criminalized when they seek help to quit.

wolves_wanderer

12,356 posts

236 months

Friday 31st July 2015
quotequote all
God knows why it is illegal. Such a boring drug that makes people so docile would be encouraged you'd have thought. Although from knowing a few people who smoke a lot of it, it doesn't exactly breed the thrusting go-getters of tomorrow.