Legalise all drugs, says police chief

[Locutus]

One of Britain's most senior police officers is to call for all drugs – including heroin and cocaine – to be legalised and urges the Government to declare an end to the "failed" war on illegal narcotics.

Richard Brunstrom, the Chief Constable of North Wales, advocates an end to UK drug policy based on "prohibition". His comments come as the Home Office this week ends the process of gathering expert advice looking at the next 10 years of strategy.

In his radical analysis, which he will present to the North Wales Police Authority today, Mr Brunstrom points out that illegal drugs are now cheaper and more plentiful than ever before.

Rest of the story here:

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/article3061279.ece

The tax man cometh?

 

[Niflmir]

Sweet, a police chief has hopped onto the bandwagon.

* The chief constable asserts that current British drugs policy is based upon an unwinnable "war on drugs" enshrined in a flawed understanding of the underlying United Nations conventions, and arising from a wholly outdated and thoroughly repugnant moralistic stance.
* He concludes: "The law is the law. In the meantime, I will continue to enforce it to the best of my ability despite my misgivings about its moral and practical worth."

 

[Unforgiven]

Sweet, a police chief has hopped onto the bandwagon.

Not the first and won't be the last. As always a stupid position.

 

[MikeyDB]

Hey now if you legalize heroin the Poppy Fields in Afghanistan aren't a problem any more...

Put it in the same light as Guantanamo or seizing passengers off planes in America and sending them off to be tortured in foreign jails....just a temporary measure of course until the CIA prison and torture systems came on line....

Bush has managed to castrate the U.N., thrown away the Geneva Conventions and re-defined kidnapping and terrorism....

It seems only appropriate that everyone gets a legal buzz....

 

[Unforgiven]

Hey now if you legalize heroin the Poppy Fields in Afghanistan aren't a problem any more...

Put it in the same light as Guantanamo or seizing passengers off planes in America and sending them off to be tortured in foreign jails....just a temporary measure of course until the CIA prison and torture systems came on line....

Bush has managed to castrate the U.N., thrown away the Geneva Conventions and re-defined kidnapping and terrorism....

It seems only appropriate that everyone gets a legal buzz....

Sure they are. Rmember two wrongs don't make a right.

 

[lone wolf]

Right, in a no-win situation, is the least expensive option. If it's legalized, it's not a crime. Organized criminals lose their bread and butter. Users don't have to murder, mug or pull B&E's to feed the need. Law enforcement doesn't have to spend billions in processing the crime. Cops are freed up for other stuff. Quality is almost always the same from a legal source (less overdoses and lowered medical and processing costs) Doper cleans up or dies. Either way, the drug to keep him/her docile is a lot cheaper than the costs of making him/her a criminal.

Wolf

 

[Niflmir]

Hey now if you legalize heroin the Poppy Fields in Afghanistan aren't a problem any more...

Put it in the same light as Guantanamo or seizing passengers off planes in America and sending them off to be tortured in foreign jails....just a temporary measure of course until the CIA prison and torture systems came on line....

Bush has managed to castrate the U.N., thrown away the Geneva Conventions and re-defined kidnapping and terrorism....

It seems only appropriate that everyone gets a legal buzz....

The funny thing is that the UN like its predecessor the League of Nations was a tool to legitimize interference into foreign affairs.

Actually I support decriminalisation of all drugs, but that comes with some serious stipulations. Clearly one wouldn't necessarily expect any drug to become normalised like alcohol, nor would we want something like heroin to achieve such a level of prominence, but treating it like a choice that can harm yourself is more realistic and accurate than treating it like a choice that harms your neighbour.

 

[Dreadful Nonsense]

Cops are freed up for other stuff.
Wolf

erm this is the other stuff as you put it....Look ya can't legalize a thing that ruins yer life...have you seen what a few years of cocaine does to a human being..it's highly addictive and the average mooch just does not have the will power to know when to put it away....
Heroin yikes a roonio....Any overdose on heroin does huge brain damage...
A friend of mine turned blue from one....they took him to hospitol after standing around worrying about the implications8O..thats another problem that needs to be addressed...anyway..this uber inteligent brilliant guy turned into like some punch drunk boxer from a bad 40's movie....

weed just does not do this to you...i don't advocate a life of smoking weed...hell it turns smart productive people into fat obese internet addicts.....selling their houses to live in apartmentts and call it finnacial reward...LOL!!!!!only to live on this thing 24/7....ROFL....ok we know thats not just true...but it could happen...weed does mess a person mind specially if they smoke it more than twice a week...hell look at the people that do smoke it a lot...it becomes part of their whole schtik in life....anywho......

here we go again ..another thread about drugs....

 

[lone wolf]

Yeah ... and have you seen what one good highway smack-up does? You don't see anyone out there trying to make cars illegal. One helluva lot more people are killed, maimed and mutilated on the road than there are druggies found dead by dumpsters.

The cop who might have been out there writing script to some loose nut behind a steering wheel was busy with a dope operation.

Wolf

 

[Niflmir]

erm this is the other stuff as you put it....Look ya can't legalize a thing that ruins yer life...have you seen what a few years of cocaine does to a human being..it's highly addictive and the average mooch just does not have the will power to know when to put it away....
Heroin yikes a roonio....Any overdose on heroin does huge brain damage...
A friend of mine turned blue from one....they took him to hospitol after standing around worrying about the implications8O..thats another problem that needs to be addressed...anyway..this uber inteligent brilliant guy turned into like some punch drunk boxer from a bad 40's movie....

weed just does not do this to you...i don't advocate a life of smoking weed...hell it turns smart productive people into fat obese internet addicts.....selling their houses to live in apartmentts and call it finnacial reward...LOL!!!!!only to live on this thing 24/7....ROFL....ok we know thats not just true...but it could happen...weed does mess a person mind specially if they smoke it more than twice a week...hell look at the people that do smoke it a lot...it becomes part of their whole schtik in life....anywho......

here we go again ..another thread about drugs....

But even if I didn't disagree with the outcomes you project from use of certain drugs, I disagree that criminalizing these people has any reasonable basis. So granting for the moment that you are correct on the outcomes of drug use and taking it as established fact that criminalization has failed to prevent usage of those drugs [key assumption on my part, based on evidence of course ] continued criminalization is merely putting the economic power from the sales of such drugs out of the public eye and into the hands of criminal organizations.

I will not try to argue that punishment for self abuse to curb future abuse is illegitimate. What I would argue is that the evidence shows the ineffectiveness of this punishment to curb future abuse, and the fact that criminalization streams money into the hands of criminal organizations is unjustifiable from a social standpoint given the failure of criminalization.

 

[Unforgiven]

Some people have no clue what drugs do let alone anything about the people that use them. Sure you can pretend to have done allsorts of drugs way back when but there is no substitute for actual experience.

The war on drugs was and is a political football used to give the uneducated the belief that the government is getting tough on crime. Fact is the government hasn't controlled the use, import or export of drugs and it's increased steadily since the the beginning of the war on drugs.

That American and now Canadian tax payers, are dumping billions into a slush fund in addition to all the money and sale of seized goods in drug busts that isn't accounted for is criminal.

Those spouting their pseudo intellect on the subject in vague generalities as usual have nothing to offer the discussion other than troll and bait. Lies shouldn't be considered among the real discussion points.

 

[DaSleeper]

We always hear a lot about the war on drugs..........but rarely do we hear about legal drug addiction namely addiction to prescription drugs.......
But that's for another thread.................:?:

 

[Dreadful Nonsense]

ya see ..making it legal takes off the brakes for the average mooch...if that doesn't ring alarm bells ...well...without the big bad ole boogy man kids will just try it more and more....yes/no...lets stay real...


agreed the present state of affairs in dealing with "the abuse" ain't working....whats the solution...come now give me the real deal....ok it's a given it ain't working...you tell us the solution...


taps fingers for the last 5 years waiting for someone to gives us the solution instead of just knocking it.....

 

[Blackleaf]

What do you expect? Britain's police forces today, once the best in the world, are now so Lefty and Politically Correct, like the Government and many other organisations in Britain today, that it often comes up with bizarre, crazy ideas.

This police officer who wants drugs legalised is Police Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom of North Wales Police who is famous throughout Britain for his PC views and for seeming to concentrate more on speeding drivers than catching more serious criminals such as murderers. The public call his police force The Traffic Taliban. Whilst traffic offences may be going down on his patch, more serios crimes are probably rising.

He was once captured on camera dressed as a Welsh druid during a duidic ceremony.

Now, instead of punishing druggies, he instead wants them to be taken to hospital where they will be GIVEN drugs such as heroin!

 

[Tonington]

ya see ..making it legal takes off the brakes for the average mooch...if that doesn't ring alarm bells ...well...without the big bad ole boogy man kids will just try it more and more....yes/no...lets stay real...


agreed the present state of affairs in dealing with "the abuse" ain't working....whats the solution...come now give me the real deal....ok it's a given it ain't working...you tell us the solution...


taps fingers for the last 5 years waiting for someone to gives us the solution instead of just knocking it.....

Come on now...kids won't start doing it more and more. Legalizing it will probably take the edge off, it won't be nearly as 'cool.'

Besides which, countries that have legalized have seen drops in use, not gains. Probably for one, if you have to buy it from controlled establishments with government taxation, it becomes harder for the undergound to get their hands on it. Use drops.

The solution to problem use is in health care, not criminal justice.

 

[Locutus]

San Francisco is up next for the safe 'shooting galleries'.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/16/BA78SQEG7.DTL

 

[Niflmir]

ya see ..making it legal takes off the brakes for the average mooch...if that doesn't ring alarm bells ...well...without the big bad ole boogy man kids will just try it more and more....yes/no...lets stay real...


agreed the present state of affairs in dealing with "the abuse" ain't working....whats the solution...come now give me the real deal....ok it's a given it ain't working...you tell us the solution...


taps fingers for the last 5 years waiting for someone to gives us the solution instead of just knocking it.....

There is a big difference between legalizing, decriminalizing and normalizing. What you are talking about is normalizing; people will start using heroin willy nilly when it is so socialized that it seems like pixy stix to a first timer, that will never happen. Here in Germany, prostitution is decriminalized but certainly not legalized or normalized, seeing a prostitute on the street is still pretty eerie. In Canada the act of prostitution is legal but the acts that would make it safe are criminal, and it is certainly not normal. In Canada tobacco use is completely legalized, however we are going through a period of denormalization to curb its usage and this is quite successful.

When most people, including me, talk about decriminalization they usually imply further denormalization campaigns to keep usage low. Our current campaign to push tobacco out of widespread usage shows how successful widespread public awareness campaigns can be: make the use inconvenient and most people won't even bother.

 

[darkbeaver]

The War on Drugs rages, of course the real drug problem is the legal crap of which 75% doesn't work, those medicines that do work have an average effectiveness of below 20%. A great many diseases afflictions/conditions can be treated with opium and cannibis but niether drug is patentable.
And for all those waiting for a cure for something , get real, do you really think big pharma will pull the plug on cancer? A steady buying junkie is better than a former user ask any dealer. The capitalist pig dog pharmaseutical pushers are the drug problem.

 

[lone wolf]

ya see ..making it legal takes off the brakes for the average mooch...if that doesn't ring alarm bells ...well...without the big bad ole boogy man kids will just try it more and more....yes/no...lets stay real...


agreed the present state of affairs in dealing with "the abuse" ain't working....whats the solution...come now give me the real deal....ok it's a given it ain't working...you tell us the solution...


taps fingers for the last 5 years waiting for someone to gives us the solution instead of just knocking it.....

The brutal fact is, if the average "mooch" goes hog wild, then he/she becomes very dead - if enough brain cells haven't survived to wake him/her up. The war on crime IS the war on drugs. We all know, every time product is handled, the price goes up and it gets stepped on again. If it's legal, then the crimes committed to pay a crimally inflated price for product drop.

Wolf

 

[Unforgiven]

The War on Drugs rages, of course the real drug problem is the legal crap of which 75% doesn't work, those medicines that do work have an average effectiveness of below 20%. A great many diseases afflictions/conditions can be treated with opium and cannibis but niether drug is patentable.
And for all those waiting for a cure for something , get real, do you really think big pharma will pull the plug on cancer? A steady buying junkie is better than a former user ask any dealer. The capitalist pig dog pharmaseutical pushers are the drug problem.

A whole side of the equation that is rarely if ever heard about. Great insight!