Posts Tagged ‘gangster’
IRELAND. Minister for Justice, Simon Harris TD, Sets Out to Sabotage the Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs Before it’s Even Started
Only the day after the government formally annouces the Citizens’ Assembly on Drugs, Simon Harris TD, the Minister for Justice, pulls that old prohibitionist trope again and blames drugs consumers for the harms caused by prohibition drugs policy.
He’s says he’s “concerned about the growing social acceptance of drug taking in this country…the increasing prevalance and often visibility of drug taking as part of a night out in Ireland.”
He says “there is a direct link between snorting a line, taking a pill and murder, assault, criminality and misery.”
Exactly as there would be if the market in Guinness and Jameson wasn’t properly regulated.
Consumers are not responsible for the harms caused by government’s failure to regulate drugs markets. In every other market, including the drugs market for alcohol, government acts to minimise harm and tackle rogue operators. In other drugs markets, unbelievably if you think about it, government policy maximises all harms and supports the gangsters’ business model.
It is government which has created the gangsterism around drugs. In Ireland the government and the Kinahans are on the same side. They both want drugs to remain banned and the harder government drives the gardai to ‘crack down’ on drugs, the higher the prices rise and the more profit the Kinahans and other gangsters make.
Harris isn’t the first politician to blunder into this trap and he won’t be the last,. It’s a way of diverting attention from the horrendous damage to our society which their dreadful drugs policy has caused. Harris and politicians throughout the world have their hands dripping in blood from the wars, murder, torture, death and degradation their laws have caused.
IRELAND. Politicians And Gardai Who Want To Keep Cannabis Banned are on the Same Side as the Drugs Gangsters.
In Ireland, 90% of people support the use of cannabis for medical purposes and, remarkably, nearly a third support legalisation for recreational use. So cannabis is very popular indeed. A great deal of money is spent on it, all of which goes into the pockets of criminals. Some are just friends of friends and not really causing any harm but move a step or two up the chain and right to the top it’s gangsters and organised crime. What they earn from cannabis goes into funding far more serious criminal activity with violence never far away. And the largely futile efforts to stop the cannabis trade cost Irish taxpayers hundreds of millions of euros.
So why isn’t the government taking action to enable access for medical use, to regulate an adult use market, save hundreds of millions of euros and pull the rug from underneath organised crime?
Evidence from other jurisdictions proves beyond doubt that a regulated market would remove most of the trade from criminals, cut related crime, protect consumers, control the stength and quality of the product and reduce all harms.
So why do they do nothing? Why do they refuse even to engage with the public on the subject?
You’d think they actually choose to be on the same side as the gangsters. I doubt that’s the case but the end result is the same: Micheál Martin; Leo Varadkar; Frank Feighan, the drugs minister; Eamon Ryan, whose party claims to support drugs reform; every member of the government and their officials, including Commissioner Drew Harris, stand right alongside the Hutch mob, the Kinahans and the other peddlers in misery and violence.
What’s most remarkable is that even the government’s efforts to meet public demand for medical access have been nothing short of pathetic. Four years after the Medical Cannabis Access Programme (MCAP) was announced, it is still not operational. In fact it’s nothing but a joke and, short of an outright ban, is the most restrictive medicinal cannabis programme of any nation anywhere in the world. It raises all sorts of important questions why the Irish medical establishment has such well organised opposition to medicinal cannabis and simply dismisses the vast amount of evidence in favour. Ireland is isolated in this backwards and cruel policy.
Several large multinationals have tried to invest millions of euros in developing a medicinal cannabis industry, which would create hundreds of new, well paid jobs. But regulators at the Department of Health and Health Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA) block and endlessly delay as if those are their instructions.
The Irish goverment’s policy on cannabis is confused, irrational and impossible to understand. The bottom line is that it is opaque and no one will respond or engage on the subject. That usually means they have something to hide. It could just be that they recognise their own incompetence on the issue. Or it could be something more sinister.
The Irish Cannabis Market.
According to the 2019–20 Irish National Drug and Alcohol Survey, 20.7% of 15-64 year olds have consumed cannabis in their lifetime and 7.1% report recent use, that’s nearly 300,000 people. Cannabis valued at €15.2 million was seized by Gardai in 2020 although based on typical valuations by law enforcement this is certainly an over-valuation.
Based on research carried out in the UK, adjusted pro rata for population size, the value of the cannabis market in Ireland is estimated at a minimum of €225 million and possibly as much as €675 million. It is costing the Irish state a great deal of time and money in law enforcement costs. Drug offences account for 11% of all recorded offences and of these nearly 69% are for personal possession most of which are for cannabis. With a €3 billion budget for justice in 2021 drug law enforcement would appear to cost around €330 million, most of which is for cannabis.
It’s Time To Stand Up To The Gangsters From The Fleet Street Mafia.
Brooks Newmark, Victim.
There is no excuse for the Sunday Mirror’s entrapment of Brooks Newmark. It clearly amounts to a criminal offence under the Sexual Offences Act 2003. For causing someone to engage in sexual activity without consent the penalty is up to 10 years in jail and both the freelance journalist concerned and the Mirror’s weekend editor Alison Phillips should be charged forthwith.
The subterfuge involved is also in clear breach of the Editors’ Code and the newly created, sham press regulator, IPSO, should act. Mind you that’s like asking the mafia to lock up its gangsters. It’s not going to happen. IPSO and the sickening parasites who set up this fraud as a successor to the corrupt PCC are the problem and no part of the solution.
Alison Phillips, Sexual Offender
The only defence to the use of subterfuge under the Editors’ Code is if it is in the public interest. After their disgraceful record over many years, anyone who thinks that Fleet Street can judge what is in the public interest, must be a Daily Mail reporter. This sting has achieved absolutely nothing except to show that a man is vulnerable to the provocative enticement of an extremely attractive woman. Frankly, Brooks Newmark would be either gay or impotent if he wasn’t sorely tempted by the delicious 22-year-old Swedish model Malin Sahlén, whose photograph was stolen by the Mirror and used to entrap the MP.
This is all part of the sickening hypocrisy, prurience and dishonesty which pervades Fleet Street. Just like the banks, our pathetic and weak leaders, even in the face of the Leveson Inquiry, allow so-called journalists to act with impunity. These aren’t journalists, they are malevolent, predatory criminal abusers and they should face the full force of the law. The crime is aggravated because it is committed for financial gain and is deeply corrupting of our media and our society.
Malin Sahlén. Who Wouldn’t?
Another side to Fleet Street’s abuse of its power and hypocrisy is the revolting Camilla Long of the Sunday Times, who has been instrumental in the harassment and malicious prosecution of Dave Lee Travis – another life sacrificed on the altar of Fleet Street malice. This vile bitch, for there can be no other description has misused her power in the media to launch the most repellent attacks on a man who is clearly innocent of any criminal intent. I don’t know what is behind her abuse. Perhaps she is sexually frigid and socially inept, incapable of handling herself in a situation of mild flirtation. More likely she is doing it for the money and if you take a moment to look at the smug, patronising drivel she writes in the Sunday Times, she is obviously in desperate need of material.
As if we didn’t know already that Cameron’s cowardly retreat from Leveson would result in more abuse from Fleet Street. Newmark must feel an idiot and highly embarrassed but it seems to me he has done nothing wrong except as far as his wife is concerned. That he was a government minister should have made him more cautious but should afford him stronger protection under the law, just as he might have a bodyguard or personal security against physical attack. The offences against him should therefore result in very severe sentences and the Sunday Mirror should go the same way as the News of the World.
Breakthrough In The Drugs Debate!
Bob Ainsworth
Tomorrow, Bob Ainsworth MP, former Home Office drugs minister and Secretary of State for Defence, will call for the legalisation and regulation of drugs. He is to lead a Parliamentary debate in Westminster Hall, at 2.30pm on Thursday 16th December 2010.
Great credit for this must go to the inestimable Transform Drug Policy Foundation, which has led the fight against prohibition. This is an extraordinary breakthrough. The news literally brought tears to my eyes. We have fought so long for such progress.
Mr Ainsworth said;
“I have just been reading the Coalition Government’s new Drugs Strategy. It is described by the Home Secretary as fundamentally different to what has gone before; it is not. To the extent that it is different, it is potentially harmful because it retreats from the principle of harm reduction, which has been one of the main reasons for the reduction in acquisitive crime in recent years.
However, prohibition has failed to protect us. Leaving the drugs market in the hands of criminals causes huge and unnecessary harms to individuals, communities and entire countries, with the poor the hardest hit. We spend billions of pounds without preventing the wide availability of drugs. It is time to replace our failed war on drugs with a strict system of legal regulation, to make the world a safer, healthier place, especially for our children. We must take the trade away from organised criminals and hand it to the control of doctors and pharmacists.
As drugs minister in the Home Office I saw how prohibition fails to reduce the harm that drugs cause in the UK, fuelling burglaries, gifting the trade to gangsters and increasing HIV infections. My experience as Defence Secretary, with specific responsibilities in Afghanistan, showed to me that the war on drugs creates the very conditions that perpetuate the illegal trade, while undermining international development and security.
My departure from the front benches gives me the freedom to express my long held view that, whilst it was put in place with the best of intentions, the war on drugs has been nothing short of a disaster.
Politicians and the media need to engage in a genuine and grown up debate about alternatives to prohibition, so that we can build a consensus based on delivering the best outcomes for our children and communities. I call on those on all sides of the debate to support an independent, evidence-based review, exploring all policy options, including: further resourcing the war on drugs, decriminalising the possession of drugs, and legally regulating their production and supply.
One way to do this would be an Impact Assessment of the Misuse of Drugs Act in line with the 2002 Home Affairs Select Committee finding – which included David Cameron – for the government to explore alternatives to prohibition, including legal regulation.
The re-legalisation of alcohol in the US after thirteen years of Prohibition was not surrender. It was a pragmatic move based on the government’s need to retake control of the illegal trade from violent gangsters. After 50 years of global drug prohibition it is time for governments throughout the world to repeat this shift with currently illegal drugs.”
Peter Lilley MP, former Conservative Party Deputy Leader said;
“The current approach to drugs has been an expensive failure, and for the sake of everyone, and the young in particular, it is time for all politicians to stop using the issue as a political football. I have long advocated breaking the link between soft and hard drugs – by legalising cannabis while continuing to prohibit hard drugs. But I support Bob Ainsworth’s sensible call for a proper, evidence based review, comparing the pros and cons of the current prohibitionist approach with all the alternatives, including wider decriminalisation, and legal regulation.”
Tom Brake MP, Co-Chair, Liberal Democrat Backbench Committee on Home Affairs, Justice and Equalities said;
“Liberal Democrats have long called for a science-based approach to our drugs problem. So it is without hesitation that I support Bob Ainsworth’s appeal to end party political point-scoring, and explore sensitively all the options, through an Impact Assessment of the Misuse of Drugs Act.”
Labour’s Paul Flynn MP, Founder Council Member of the British Medicinal Cannabis Register said;
“This could be a turning point in the failing UK ‘war on drugs.’ Bob Ainsworth is the persuasive, respected voice of the many whose views have been silenced by the demands of ministerial office. Every open rational debate concludes that the UK’s harsh drugs prohibition has delivered the worst outcomes in Europe – deaths, drug crime and billions of pounds wasted.”
Proposition 19. Just Say Now!
It looks as if, on 2nd November 2010, a small but very significant part of the world will at last come to its senses and legalise cannabis.
On that date, California voters look likely to approve Proposition 19 on the state-wide ballot that legalizes various marijuana-related activities, allows local governments to regulate these activities, permits local governments to impose and collect marijuana-related fees and taxes, and authorizes various criminal and civil penalties. Currently the polls show that about two-thirds of voters are in favour.
Over the age of 21 it will be legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana and to cultivate an area of up to 25 sq ft on private property. The state estimates it will collect about £1.4 billion pa in new tax revenue. save $200 million pa in law enforcement costs and generate an additional $12 – $18 billion pa for California’s economy, with 60,000 to 110,000 new jobs. As the Americans say, with one of their most unpleasant expressions, “It’s a no brainer”.
In America they finally seem to have got past listening to the stupid scare stories and propaganda about the cannabis plant. The misinformation has ranged from the idea that marijuana makes white women promiscuous with black men to the suggestion that it causes psychosis in adolescents. Both of these ideas are as impossible to prove as each other. America also recognises the huge medicinal benefits of cannabis with medical marijuana legal in 14 states and planned in 15 more. As a recreational drug, cannabis use is almost never associated with the sort of anti-social behaviour that alcohol causes. It produces an essentially peaceful, happy and soporific effect.
Instead of insulting and ignoring their scientific experts as we do in the UK, Americans are now more interested in the facts and a pragmatic approach to drugs policy. The “war on drugs” is now universally recognised as having been an abject failure. We should, of course, have learned from the experience of alcohol prohibition in the early 20th century. That created the whole idea of gangsters and organised crime. We managed to repeat the same mistakes all over again with drugs.
In ironic appreciation of Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say Nc” campaign, those in favour of Proposition 19 have adopted the slogan “Just Say Now”. In addition to the direct financial benefits, the state expects to be able to focus police priorities on violent crime, cut off funding to violent drug cartels and better protect children, road users, workers and patients from illegal, unregulated use.
The UK will eventually follow down this inevitable path. The only questions are how many lives will we ruin and how much time and money will we waste before we finally get there?
See here for the latest updates and news on Proposition 19.
Peter Reynolds 