Thoughts on Drugs

Genghis Khan

Genghis Khan

Ancient Mariner
After reading SMX's post on drugs on this thread http://forum.maidenfans.com/index.php?topic=14455.msg152030#new I tought I'd add this new topic.

I know that the Netherlands and Switzerland, for instance have a more liberal stance on drug use than Thailand or even that in USA.  I know that in Canada some people are looking for safe injection locales.

I am looking for opinions on the following related questions:

a)  What are your thoughts on de-criminalizing Marijuana and/or harder drugs like crack cocaine.
b)  Is the system in the Netherlands and Switzerland working in helping people with drug addictions.  Why or why not?
c)  Do you think punishing drug users with jail term or fighting drug trafficking in countries like Venezuela is only making things worse?

Marijuana helps people with cronic pain and stress.  However, long term use has shown to deteriorate memory.  I believe in de-criminalizing it.  I think that adults should be educated enough to know the risks.  No, I'm not a user  :bigsmile:.  In Canada, a person is allowed a small stash for personal use only.  Yet, we hear all the time of grow ops being busted.  Today, the police discovered ten units of an apartment building in Toronto being used to grow Marijuana.  Last week a house was raided in Newmarket (north of Toronto) for the second time in a row.  There could have been many more in between these two, but I was in Arizona so I probably missed them all.  :D  Some are arguing, with valid proof, that allowing any use of Marijuana will encourage grow ops.  Once again, if a limited amount is used it could be legalized and treated like alcohol.  I would not use it, I'm just expressing my libertarian views on liberty. 

I believe that compassionate outlook on drug users will be more fruitful in helping them fight addiction that arrests and jail time.  I think that American operations in countries like Venezuela are doing nothing to stop trafficking.  However, they do have an unusal distinction in making both the government and citizens of these countries despise America.

What are your thoughts on drug (de)criminilization?
 
I basically agree with you, Genghis Khan. The use of marijuana should be de-criminalized (at least in small amounts) and drug addicts should be sentenced to rehab instead of jail. De-criminalizing marijuana would do more to help the situation I believe because half of the thrill from taking marijuana comes from its being illegal. Isn't it true when your parents tell you that you can't try something, you want to try it all the more? I think its the same with marijuana. However, harder drugs such as crack and cocaine shouldn't be de-criminalized because they don't have any positive properties at all (as far as I know).

I live in Austria which borders Switzerland so you'd think I'd know about the situation in Switzerland. Well, I don't. But since no breaking news on the system in Switzerland has appeared on Austrian media, I can assume it must be working ok.

Yes, I think that punishing drug users with jail term is only making things worse. They should be made to go through rehab and maybe do some community service hours or something. That would benefit everyone. Fighting drug trafficking in countries like Venezuela I think is detrimental, above all for the locals, since they are the ones producing the stuff and earning a living off it. Take their source of income away with no back-up plan and you've got millions of poor starving people. Instead of fighting the trafficking, alternative produce should be introduced and encouraged by e.g. the US. Eventually, the country might find something better than drugs to produce and sell.
 
I was watching this show on drugs on the History Channel like a month ago and something very interesting was pointed out. ALL "recreational" drugs started out being legal, socially acceptable and widely spread, once their effects became known (like those of cocaine), they became socially undesirable, and later illegal (though usually for political and not health reasons).

Important to note: As far as I know only Marijuana and halucinogenic (sp?) Mushrooms are the only legal drugs that are illegal elsewhere, and they have harsher punishments for people who do other "hard" drugs than they do in say... the U.S. However I am very ill informed as far as their drug addiction problems just like I don't know about teen alcoholism problems in countries like Sweden and Germany where the legal drinking age is 16.

However, I think Marijuana should be legalized, taxed just like alcohol and cigarettes (as a luxury) and put that money into public health works.

P.s
  Drugz r koolz n' rad!!111 Like totali kvlt n n3cro n stuff!!!1111111
 
Onhell said:
... teen alcoholism problems in countries like Sweden and Germany where the legal drinking age is 16.
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Legal drinking age in Sweden is 18, and you can't buy alcohol at Systembolaget (the government owned chain of liquor stores which has monopoly on beverages with more than 3.5 per cent (volume) alcohol) until you're 20 (for some reason).
 
Can't comment so much on other countries, but in the UK we have a problem with drinking. It's not new, but we have a lot of young kids binge drinking to such a degree whereby they become ill - sober up only to restart the next day/weekend. And they are not (on the whole) doing anything illegal. so to de-criminalise marijuana in the UK will possibly lead to an explosion in the taking of this type of drug. We don't have the culture to now when to stop!

It is classed as a lesser offence to carry a small amount of dope for personal use in the UK and if caught, little or nothing will happen (I believe). But to completely make this legal may cause the odd problem or two. It will never be the case were folk will just have the odd spliff on weekends, the will go completely mad for it. I could be totally wrong about this, but I doubt it.
 
Onhell said:
teen alcoholism problems in countries like Sweden and Germany where the legal drinking age is 16.
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With 16, you're allowed to drink beer. Most kids at 16 drink the harder stuff anyway, so that's hardly a factor.

My opinion on marijuhana: Legalize the stuff. I had proff for "my" theory again yesterday, when a friend told me she'd been smoking the crap because it's been banned.
When things like this are legal, a lot of the fascination of it is gone, and many people won't even start with it. And if they do, at least the government gets a bit more tax money, so everyone's a winner.
 
De-criminalizing said drugs are an extreme risk in any country, especially here, where drug users are very common. Drug users almost always have zero tolerance from the government and are expected to recieve long sentences/death terms. Even if the drugs are decriminalized, some might take advantage of it and over indulge, and in the end, the drug kills the user. Crimes caused by the influence of drugs may even rise. Legalizing said drugs for medicinal purposes is completely acceptable, but if they spread like wild fire on the streets, there may be drastic changes.

For me, I agree with the others that drug users should deserve rehabilitation, not just thrown into a cell. They make mistakes, and should be educated on what they have done. Just putting them in prison won't stop their desire for drugs. If they get out, chances are they do it again. If rehabilitated, they will start a better drug free life.
 
Mmm...Donuts said:
Drug users almost always have zero tolerance from the government and are expected to recieve long sentences/death terms.
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:blink: What's the point of that?
 
That's whats often going on here. Buy bust operation, drug users get arrested, sent to jail.
Death terms are usually given to the operators/pushers. Its kind of sad really that they're reduced to that.
 
In Austria you can drink beer and wine with 16, although apparently in Vienna you can drink almost any alcoholic beverage with 16 (I am not making this up, even our German teacher checked on the government website). The problem with the legal drinking age being so low is that kids even younger than 16 seem to think its ok to drink hard stuff (probably because their siblings are 16 or over and if they can do it why can't we?). So now we have 14 year olds swarming the streets drinking hard stuff and lots of it. So yes, I'd say we have a drinking problem, althought the main problem in Austria is smoking. Smoking is just part of the culture and has become so ingrained in people's minds that whatever you teach Austrian kids at school they invariably become smokers by the time they graduate (this is a generalization). Also, more and more kids start smoking at a younger age. I have seen kids smoking that just couldn't be older than 12.

Anyway, back to drugs. I agree with 'Perun's theory'. Most of the fascination in taking drugs is because they are illegal. Take that away, and the fascinations gone.

@Shadow. That is one law I have never understood. Why make the legal drinking age 18 when you can't even buy harder stuff than beer? And it's not like anyone goes by the legal drinking age law anyway (although in Sweden I think its a good idea to have 18 be the legal drinking age since drinking seems to be as much part of the culture as smoking is in Austria).
 
The legal drinking age in Ireland is 18, but the sheer amount of 12 to 13 year olds that start to drink alcohol is disturbing to think about. It is a serious problem, as my sister told me about a girl in her class at school, who had just turned 12. She went to some disco or something and drank way too much. She collapsed, passed out and had to be taken to hospital to have her stomach pumped. I find this terrible, as she could have majorly damaged her body, but this same girl is now drinking and smoking like a trooper. And she isn't a special case.

The problem in Ireland is that it is too easy for these kids to get alcohol, either from older siblings or from random strangers going into the off licence. They are attracted by these "alcopops" as they're apparently known. They are in bright colours and taste sweet (I'm not sure what they're like as I've never had one) but they are easy for the kids to drink and get drunk easily. I'm fairly sure that the whole reason for having a legal drinking age is to stop kids from harming their bodies before they are fully developed, but unfortunately, these kids don't seem to know that. Educating them on the problem in schools is only part of the solution, as they're not going to pay much attention to what a teacher says, as they would just feel that they are being lectured. Someone from Alcoholics Anonymous should come in and tell them about their own experiences. This type of thing brings people down to Earth and lets them realise that it isn't someone up on a podium lecturing down to them, but a real person explaining how they started, what happened to them, and how they stopped.

This usually happens in an optional year in the Irish school system, (a year free from exam stress which is to help you make the transition from they junior cycle of the school to the senior cycle, called Transition year, funnily enough) but I think that this should be expanded to every year and have some sort of recovering addict come in and talk about their problems, such as a recovering heroin addict one year. a recovering alcoholic the next and so on.

In my opinion, people should be allowed to drink at around the 17-18 year old mark, or when they know to drink responsibly, not just to get drunk, that won't damage their body.

That was the longest post that I've ever written. :smartarse:
 
Yeah, alcopops were cool here a few years ago.* It tastes like lemonade, and we drank it as if it were. Well, it is like lemonade, with the sole difference that it includes a hell of a lot of really hard stuff. From my own experience, I would advise anyone to keep their fingers off this crap.



*Interestingly enough, this stuff doesn't seem to be as cool anymore, most probably for exactly the reasons I mentioned.
 
Yeah, alcopops taste really sweet and nice, and all you want is more of it. The sweet taste disguises all the junk thats in it. Which is why you end up drinking 5 bottles of the stuff without even realizing how much alcohol you've drunk and then you're surprised when you can't walk straight.

About the Alcoholics Anonymous, our school did something where past alcoholics would come and talk about their experiences, but that was way back when I was umm...13 I think? In my opinion our school should have the same thing for kids around 14-16, which is when the issue is actually relevant. I mean, very few kids at my school could relate to anything alcohol related with 13. Now they sure can.

@Hunlord: That story about the 12 year old girl depressed me.
 
Natalie said:
About the Alcoholics Anonymous, our school did something where past alcoholics would come and talk about their experiences, but that was way back when I was umm...13 I think? In my opinion our school should have the same thing for kids around 14-16, which is when the issue is actually relevant. I mean, very few kids at my school could relate to anything alcohol related with 13. Now they sure can.
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I'm saying that there should be at least one visit a year, by some sort of recovering addict, so that the kids get to interact and get new information every time, and it doesn't become a distant memory. Mabye repeat one of them or two in the later years of school life, when a more adult conversation can be had.
 
Totally agree with your proposition Hunlord. That way, the dangers of abusing alcohol might actually sink into our puny little minds.
 
Most people in Alcoholics Anonymous would be extremely reluctant to give a lecture at a high school if all students were required to attend. AA operates under a principle of "attraction, not promotion". This means that we seek to attract those who need and want help, rather than promote our recovery to those who aren't interested.

However, if you want an AA speaker in your school, you can work to make that happen. Most AA groups work together in "districts". In much of the US, a district is a county. For some large cities, that city by itself may be a single district; in very large cities like New York, the city is divided into several districts. If you look up Alcoholics Anonymous in your phone book, you'll usually see a number for the district answering service. Note that a common name for these district councils is an "Intergroup" - if you see such a listing, that's the one to call.

Districts/Intergroups usually have a committee called CPC - Cooperation with the Professional Community. These are alcoholics who have volunteered to work with doctors, teachers, lawyers etc. when such people want information about AA. So all you have to do is call your local district/intergroup and ask for someone from CPC to call you. You'll probably have to give your number and wait for a callback, as the odds of a CPC voluteer answering the phone are quite low.

If that method doesn't get results, you can try attending an AA meeting. Even if your local answering service doesn't have information about CPC, they will have the local meeting schedule available. You may also be able to find a meeting schedule online with Google. If you plan to go to a meeting, go to an "open" meeting ("closed" meetings are for alcoholics only). Show up about 15 minutes before the meeting starts, and ask around for the chairperson. The chairperson of any group should be able to help you get in touch with the right people.

Like I said above, you may encounter some resistance, especially if you attend a small AA meeting. But if you can find a large meeting (more than 50 people), someone there will likely be willing to help you.

As for the idea of sentencing addicts to rehab: This is a very bad idea. Rehab only works if the person wants to quit. Equally important, an unwilling person in a rehab can poison the environment for those who do genuinely want to recover. Rehabs must always be entirely voluntary. I support giving people convicted of addiction-related crimes the option of going to rehab, but it should never be forced on them. The sad fact is that many addicts and alcoholics simply don't want to change. I am speaking from personal experience here. For example, I was sentenced to outpatient rehab when I was convicted of drunk driving in 1993. The experience did me much more harm than good. I've also volunteered at many rehabs, and seen the damage when one or two bad apples are wrecking the collective spirit.

I support the legalization of marijuana not because I think weed is harmless, but rather because I think it's no more harmful than some other legal substances (in particular, tobacco and alcohol). It is ludicrously inconsistent to allow smokes and booze but not weed. Although the libertarian part of my mind thinks all drugs should be legalized, I can't really support decriminalizing hard drugs because I've seen too many examples of destroyed lives due to those drugs. I've lost more friends to overdoses than I care to count.

It is impossible to use hard drugs on a regular basis for any significant amount of time and not become addicted. I'm not saying that everyone would become addicted if they tried heroin once (although some would). But if you tried it once a day for as little as a week, you'd be addicted by the end of that week. The drug is too strong; no one can resist. I think public safety is legitimately served by keeping hard drugs illegal, although I'm not happy about the black market that gets created in the process.

Perun mentioned something like "if drugs are legalized, the fascination with the forbidden will be gone, and drug use will drop". To some extent, this is certainly true. But I do not think the drop will be substantial. People use drugs (including alcohol and tobacco) because they like the effect of the drug, not simply because they're trying to rebel. The usage of mind-altering substances goes back to the dawn of the human race; for example, there is archaeological evidence for marijuana use dating back to 10,000 BCE. The desire to alter our state of mind is a universal human trait; drugs are not the only methods that have been employed. (Meditation comes to mind as another method.) Removing the desire for drugs is not a good argument for legalization.

The best argument is the elimination of the black market and crime created by keeping drugs illegal. I'm too lazy to look up the stats right now, but IIRC the US has one of the largest prisoner-to-free-person ratios in the world, and about a third of those prisoners are drug offenders. Perhaps some deserve jail, but many don't. The burden of these prisoners on US taxpayers is huge; lifting it would be one of the first benefits.
 
SinisterMinisterX said:
Perun mentioned something like "if drugs are legalized, the fascination with the forbidden will be gone, and drug use will drop". To some extent, this is certainly true. But I do not think the drop will be substantial. People use drugs (including alcohol and tobacco) because they like the effect of the drug, not simply because they're trying to rebel. The usage of mind-altering substances goes back to the dawn of the human race; for example, there is archaeological evidence for marijuana use dating back to 10,000 BCE.
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That is correct, but in most (I am not saying 'all') cases, drug usage was for ritual purposes, and thus severely restricted up to the point of major punishment if you used the drugs outside of those rituals. The use of such drugs was regular, but not excessive.
 
Most cases? I find that hard to believe. I can see how in some cases, drugs which were part of a ritual were not allowed to be used otherwise. But that most likely had little to nothing to do with the drugs; it was more likely a protection of the ritual. Furthermore, we don't know how alcohol and other drugs were used 10,000 years ago. There is evidence that they were used in rituals and as painkillers, but that does not mean that these were the only uses of these drugs. Alcohol in particular has been abused for recreation for thousands of years.

My point was that it is a universal human tendency to seek mind-altering experiences, and drugs and alcohol provide an easy way to achieve that. Other means include music, art and religion. But drug use has always been around and always will be.


Click here to read a very good editorial from the San Francisco Chronicle (printed last Thursday there, I found it because it was reprinted in today's Denver Post) which is relevant to this thread.
 
My point was that it is a universal human tendency to seek mind-altering experiences, and drugs and alcohol provide an easy way to achieve that. Other means include music, art and religion. But drug use has always been around and always will be.
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I think we agree here- the only thing that I'm trying to say is that in smaller social groups, the community regulates the usage of drugs so nobody has to do without them, but it doesn't get out of hand. Yes, drugs and alcohol have always been around, probably ever since someone ate a fermented fruit or put some strange weeds into a fire, but that doesn't mean we are honouring our cultural heritage next time we're letting a bottle of vodka flow down our throats.
 
I read some statistics a while ago that said that most of the people in American jails are there because of drug offenses and related crimes.

That got me thinking - the drug cartel world, and all the violence associated with it, is a lot like the alcohol cartels which thrived in the 1920's in the United States, when they prohibited the sale and consumption of alcohol.

Clearly drugs are bad for you and society. But so is alcohol and tobacco. People are going to buy all of these things whether they're legal or not. When you make something that people will always buy illegal, criminals will begin to break other rules to get it to the market.

So, I theorize this - if drugs were legalized and regulated like alcohol and tobacco, there would be fewer people in jail for selling and using them (duh! it wouldn't be a crime anymore!). Furthermore, fewer violent crimes would be committed in the supply-distribution process. If I can buy joints at the corner store, how likely do you think I would be to take my 9mm and rob some guy in order to buy from some nutjob dealer on the street?

The power of the violent drug lords is that they supply something people want. If we take that monopoly away from them, giving people a legal alternative, they no longer have power. It happened exactly that way with Al Capone's gangs. As soon as Roosevelt cam to power, he overturned Prohibition and the mobsters' sources of income dried up.

To repeat the old mantra: legalize it and then tax it to death!
 
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