Too tough on drugs mules?

More food for thought cockney!

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-waves-white-flag-in-disastrous-war-on-drugs-1870218.html

Hopefully in years to come the issue will become an issue of public health rather than criminalisation!

maybe this is the issue at hand
phama stand to loose again

yeah, and don't forget that diamorphine.

cockney wrote:I dont base my views on drugs on their legality. Illegal drugs destroy lives as do the people who supply them. Technophobe, you are obviously a user of these substances and this has had an effect on your judgement which is a known side affect of drug abuse. You should give drug concern a ring.

You seem to have changed your mind, one minute you're saying that you stay away from drugs because they're ILLEGAL, next minute you're saying that you don't base your views on their legality. You can't have it both ways chum(p).

I have used lots of different drugs in the past, some of them legal and some of them not. Nowadays I only use legal drugs such as caffeine, nicotine, alcohol etc. Does that make me a better person? Absolutely not, it's just that my drugs of choice happen to be lagal whereas the choices of others may not be so.

As for having a pop at my judgement, you think what you like. I'm quite happy the way I am, not condemning others for what they choose to do, whereas you seem to prefer a more hard-line approach. Bullied at school? Still wet the bed?

Even more food for thought:

http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LayaGk0TMDc

Food for thought indeed. Weigh the meal up against the amount of crime carried out as a direct result of the trade in illegal drugs. Theft, murder, extortion, prostitution, people trafficking etc etc.

Still hungry?

Alcohol and ciggies are of course drugs, albeit legal ones and the drugs of choice for DMR/Techno, but whilst they undeniably cause many problems they don't give us the banquet of despair which the likes of heroin, cocaine et al afford us.

What's on your menu?

Stan
There is only one by product of illegality, and that is more illegality.

To deny that there is, and has always been a market, for every or any 'hedonistic' medium can only be naive. The illegal drugs trade, and its concurrent economy, is a more pure version of 'capitalism' than anything with any form of legal regulation.

The very fact that, if you can be bothered, you can score anything you like, pretty much wherever you are, shows the fallacy of the entrenched demonisation of drug users.

Legalisation will not fix the social problems overnight, nor is it a viable route to take at a stroke. But if users were somehow able to be perceived the same as we perceive, and allow, the drunken mayhem that causes more deaths, more pressure on emergency services and more generational social decay as happens now through legally available alcohol, then maybe more sensible reactions to the deeper malaise would lead to more sensible legal and social pressure to minimise the damage.

What supporting the failed 'war on drugs' strategy entails is the support for a trade that makes the most horrible criminals billionaires.

The posts by cockney above are the fuel for more crime, not less, by the very fact that it entrenches its underground superiority, and so remains untouchable by any social decency standard.

There is no doubt whatsoever that if users were able to 'come out' at an early stage in the illness of addiction without the stigma, that the 'drug related' crime could be reduced dramatically.

Fear drives low level criminality. Eliminate the fear and the market for the psychopaths that control the market reduces.

There is an endemic shortage of medical quality diamorphine. There doesn't have to be if there was global coordination in production and regulation. I could go on about global governmental corruption, the US in particular in South America - now spreading to West Africa, to continue the cocaine trade, and so continue a lucrative and guaranteed arms budget to privatised armies, but I won't.

stan wrote:Food for thought indeed. Weigh the meal up against the amount of crime carried out as a direct result of the trade in illegal drugs. Theft, murder, extortion, prostitution, people trafficking etc etc.

Still hungry?

If you have looked at my last links, you can't really argue with an organisation which has 15,000 + members worldwide, all members or former members of the Criminal Justice System, people who have been on the frontline in the "War on Drugs", who all wholeheartedly agree that it has complete and utter failure which has caused many many more problems than it has solved!

You can also not argue with the evidence that in countries that have decriminalised drug use goes down, crime goes down, and the number of people in treatment goes up...

caballero wrote:

stan wrote:Food for thought indeed. Weigh the meal up against the amount of crime carried out as a direct result of the trade in illegal drugs. Theft, murder, extortion, prostitution, people trafficking etc etc.

Still hungry?

If you have looked at my last links, you can't really argue with an organisation which has 15,000 + members worldwide, all members or former members of the Criminal Justice System, people who have been on the frontline in the "War on Drugs", who all wholeheartedly agree that it has complete and utter failure which has caused many many more problems than it has solved!

You can also not argue with the evidence that in countries that have decriminalised drug use goes down, crime goes down, and the number of people in treatment goes up...

Caballero, very true and very difficult to argue against but the question to start with was "too tough on drugs mules" and sorry, but you can not argue against the fact that certain drugs are illegal. Therefore drug mules deserve to be punished and until the law changes that should remain the status quo, whether the fight against drugs is won or lost.
So we will all have to agree to disagree!!

I can't disagree with that plimmerton, i don't advocate breaking the
law (although i'm sure many of us do from time to time, even if it's
just breaking the speed limit by a few miles per hour)...

Ian Le Marquand is correct though. Drug mules are more often than not
deeply impoverished people who are exploited or threatened into
carrying these substances. These people deserve help and protection
from the criminal gangs at the top of the chain, not being locked up in
La Moye on long sentences.

Good on Senator Le Marquand that he has had the guts to speak out with
a bit of common sense and humanity. Very rare when Politics and Drugs
are concerned!!