71–80 of 252 posts
I just finished Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari. I highly recommend reading it if you're interested to know more about this topic.
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Normal alcohol dosage doesn't lead to massive loss of control
Neither does normal drug use. It's the alcoholics (read: alcohol drug abusers) who let things get out of hand.
A person can drink far far less than that and suffer ill effects because of alcohol.
I'm surprised they don't also cite the first war against drugs (actualy, a drug) - prohibition. Exactly the same scenario played out then as is, hopefully, coming to it's inevitable conclusion now in the 'western hemisphere'. If the same thing is starting up again in the East, it's going to be a bloody and chaotic few decades to come before the same lesson gets learned the third time over. Fortunately we do have a la…
It's not often that I have the opportunity to feel proud of the legislators in my home country, but Portugal has been on the leading edge of drug prevention and rehabilitation since we moved from a "war on drugs" to a program of health risk prevention and removed the weight of criminal charges and proceedings from the equation. Some interesting articles below: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/03/portugal-drug-de…
This is my fear. The "War on Drug" really is a health issue, but most people I know that are against the war basically want to smoke more and more pot and/or Libertarians and the reply to stop the war is not and we can help more people.
It's not often that I have the opportunity to feel proud of the legislators in my home country, but Portugal has been on the leading edge of drug prevention and rehabilitation since we moved from a "war on drugs" to a program of health risk prevention and removed the weight of criminal charges and proceedings from the equation. Some interesting articles below: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/03/portugal-drug-de…
This is my fear. The "War on Drug" really is a health issue, but most people I know that are against the war basically want to smoke more and more pot and/or Libertarians and the reply to stop the war is not and we can help more people.
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Well given these are crimes against another person, rather than 'crimes' against oneself, that argument is a load of bollocks!
Drug usage goes hand in hand with theft. Once you're addicted to drugs, you have to steal to pay for that habit. It's hardly a victimless crime.
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The acts themselves aren't; introducing external, man-made chemicals to invoke those are usually unnatural though - as in, the body doesn't make them themselves in such quantities. You know what I mean. Recreational drugs shouldn't be a problem though, as long as the user is aware of its effects and doesn't go overboard. Heavier stuff like heroin should remain illegal though.
Why should heroin remain illegal? People consume heroin like crazy in hospitals and very few become addicted. Why keep it illegal? Why not heavily control it. Do something along the lines of; if you want to use heroin recreationally you must also attend 10 counselling sessions at your own cost to reduce the possibility of addiction.
That's a poor argument. People consume heroin and opiate medication like crazy outside hospital, and quite. Few of them become addicted.
The problem here is with inappropriate prescribing of increasing amounts of opiates for long term pain instead of better access to pain management clinics.
I'm surprised they don't also cite the first war against drugs (actualy, a drug) - prohibition. Exactly the same scenario played out then as is, hopefully, coming to it's inevitable conclusion now in the 'western hemisphere'. If the same thing is starting up again in the East, it's going to be a bloody and chaotic few decades to come before the same lesson gets learned the third time over. Fortunately we do have a la…
The difference is that the vast majority of people use alcohol. That was really a situation where the minority managed to impose its social mores on the majority. Drug users are in contrast a distinct minority group.
Drug use _started_ as illegal, and so many who have experimented and might have continued to casually use instead later on shied away.
Alcohol started as a perfectly normal thing (until modern times, beer was considered a safer drink than water and no one ever considered restricting it to _anyone_)
So, I'm not saying you are wrong - only that "Drug users are in contrast a distinct minority group" is not painting a fully accurate picture of America, and so you _could_ be wrong.
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Reality steps in and it's bad. In Russia drug addicts were (and still are, to lesser extent) responsible for very large if not largest portion of crime, especially burglary and theft. It is a major problem, it is there and you can't go around it. And usage isn't punishable here, only distribution. So, don't dismiss parent comment so easily. 'Caffeine and alcohol are drugs' - yes, alcohol comes hand in hand with theft…
>> In Russia drug addicts were (and still are, to lesser extent) responsible for very large if not largest portion of crime, especially burglary and theft ... So, don't dismiss parent comment so easily. My issues with the parent comment are not that addicts never steal, it's the ignorance of lumping all drug use into the same category and then saying 'drugs' make you steal. It's the same in the UK - addicts of one so…
Probably we have different view on who is a drug addict. Hard drugs addicts (like heroin, ketamin, etc) have very large criminality involvement, because those drugs make them fall very fast.
>> Again, a tiny proportion of drinkers may cause a problem
Maybe small proportion of drinkers, but huge proportion of _drunk_ people cause problems. More than half domestic murders are caused by alcohol in Russia. Whole villiages die out because if alcohol, you can hear sometimes in some village there's no one who can work, because all men became total drunks. I think magical removing of alcohol would be single most positive thing crime-wise you can do in Russia. But of course it's impossible.
>> Switzerland basically killed this stuff and proved that heroin addicts could lead quite a normal life if they knew where the next dose was coming from - a government clinic in this case.
Yes, that's what I was talking about - using should be controllable. Special clinics etc. But Switzerland experience can be hard to reproduce elsewhere, this country just has different social structure. So it should be applied carefully.