Posts Tagged ‘prohibition’
It’s Not Drugs, It’s Drug Laws That Killed the Bradford Girls
Forced Here By The Law
If heroin was legally available on prescription the three Bradford prostitutes would be alive today. It is our discredited, ludicrous policy of prohibition that has led these women to their terrible deaths. Cowardly, self-serving politicians who will not address the real issues about drugs policy have blood on their hands.
Today we also learned that the sensationalist, exploitative treatment of the death of two young men in Humberside “linked with mephedrone” was nothing but hysteria. See the story here. Humberside Police shares responsiblity with the media for leaping on a bandwagon, seeking kudos or some unknown advantage through lies, propaganda and misinformation. Trying to look tough.
It’s not a good idea to use heroin or mephedrone but criminalising users and creating a lucrative black market for criminals to exploit is an absurd idea. It’s exactly what America did with alcohol in the prohibition era when, in fact, it created organised crime.
Created By The Law
For those who become addicted to illegal drugs there is very little help available. Almost all street crime is related to feeding a drug habit. If, instead of the unwinnable “war on drugs” we put our money into a regulated supply and treatment facilities we would massively reduce the harm that current laws cause.
The girls in Bradford, the poor people of Jamaica, our young heroes who are dying in Afghanistan, the young man who is selling his body right this minute in Manchester, Baltimore, Hamburg or Singapore, the downtrodden people of Columbia. They are all victims of our absurd, self-defeating drug laws. When will our politicians and leaders stop chasing cheap political points (and expensive bribes) and face the facts?
Fighting For The Law
Legalise, regulate, tax – you pull the rug from under organised crime, you eliminate the need for most street crime, you have the resources to address the issue as a public health problem.
Transform Drug Policy Foundation has the answer.
I Weep For Jamaica
Ocho Rios
The events unfolding in Jamaica are disastrous for the country, its reputation, tourist industry and economy. They give an impression that is completely false. In reality it is a wonderful place, full of kind, warm, generous people. I was astonished on my first visit to find the countryside lush and green, rather like Cornwall or Wales and the people more friendly than anywhere else I have ever been.
I was very privileged to be introduced to Jamaica by a Jamaican. It was no all-inclusive tourist resort for me. There the poor Brits hunker down and never move anywhere. They seem to believe that right outside the gates are a bunch of Uzi-toting crack dealers but it’s simply not true. I’ve been back several times and I love the place. I recommend Ocho Rios on the north coast of the island.
True, the murder rate is one of the highest in the world but it all happens in a very small area of Kingston. The rest of the island is peaceful and probably safer than London. I have been through the Tivoli Gardens and Trench Town districts where all the trouble is. It’s not a good place. You lock the car doors and windows and you don’t stop but it is tiny. According to my memory it’s not much bigger than, say, Regent’s Park so it’s easy to avoid.
My Local
Undoubtedly at the root of these problems is high level corruption and I wouldn’t be surprised if that extended to US officials as well as Jamaican. The cocaine trade is a huge curse on the country but while the world continues with its ludicrous, discredited policy of prohibition it will never solve the problem. Drug laws support and encourage organised crime and corruption. If we stay on our present course things will only get worse.
I weep for Jamaica and its wonderful people. Without radical international action, I have no idea how this problem can be solved.
After The War On Drugs
This is well worth 10 minutes of anybody’s time.
The extraordinary impact that “The War on Drugs” has on our world should not be underestimated. The ludicrous and failed idea of prohibition means that 95% of all street crime and 75% of all organised crime is as a result of illegal drugs.
Legalise all drugs. Regulate, control and tax the supply chain. Pull the rug from under organised crime. Remove the necessity for drug victims to rob and steal. Save billions of pounds/dollars and millions of lives. Transform our society.
Transform Drug Policy Foundation is an extraordinary organisation whose time has come.
Drug Crazed Politicians Promote Crime And Misery
Sir David Nutt
"I'm so stoned...I don't know what I'm doing..."
Nothing more clearly demonstrates the complete absence of integrity in this inane, corrupt government than the sacking of Sir David Nutt. I had always admired Alan Johnson. Now he shows himself to be just as stupid and dumb as any of Gordon’s cronies.
Cannabis is a benign, natural herb that has been used as a medicine and recreational relaxant for over 4,000 years until politicians took a dislike to it just over 100 years ago. Since then, despite dozens of “studies” across the world, each one of which has been specifically tasked to condemn it as dangerous, no harm has been proven. Nevertheless, from Richard Nixon to Gordon Brown, myopic, paranoid, self-serving, tabloid-worshipping politicians have imposed more and more severe penalties for its use.
In the 50s the argument was that it made white women promiscuous with black men. The standard of discussion has barely improved since. The recent government sponsored hysteria over psychosis in adolescents is now revealed as utter nonsense in the face of the facts.
So why do politicians continue to persecute those who use cannabis? What’s in it for them? After all there is overwhelming evidence to show that a properly regulated cannabis supply could be a huge source of new taxation revenue for government and that regulation would drastically reduce all the harm that is caused by prohibition.
Off His Head
It’s more difficult to accept this argument in respect of heroin and cocaine because these are harmful substances but look at the evidence from Holland, Switzerland, Portugal and many other places. There can be little doubt that if the supply and distribution of drugs was regulated rather than prohibited then the harm caused would be reduced enormously. Furthermore, decriminalisation would drastically – and I mean DRASTICALLY – reduce crime at all levels. Street crime is all about theft and robbery in order to fund the purchase of drugs. International organised crime and terrorism is all about the drugs trade. End prohibition, start regulation and you pull the rug from under criminals at all levels. It would transform our society and save thousands of lives.
So I ask again – why? What do politicians gain from such a fundamentally stupid policy? At a stroke they could cut out the majority of both street and serious crime and massively reduce the funding of terrorism.
Cannabis was first demonised because hemp was an early rival to the oil industry. Before diesel came biodiesel. Rudolph Diesel designed his engine to run on peanut or hemp oil. Henry Ford designed his Model T to run on bioethanol produced from hemp and planted hundreds of acres on his own farms for that purpose – then along came oil. More importantly along came the early investors in the oil industry, specifically Randolph Hearst, owner and controller of the biggest propaganda and disinformation machine ever known to man. He started the the “Reefer Madness” campaign and promoted the lie against cannabis. Hemp was outlawed in favour of oil and we have since spent 100 years burning oil, becoming more and more reliant on its byproducts, destroying our planet and persecuting those who use cannabis.
Politicans are cowards. They were bribed and cajoled by big money to turn against cannabis in the first place. They do not have the vision or the common sense to see past the mess they have got themselves in over drugs policy. In a very real way they are more responsible than anyone else for the misery, death and chaos casued by the drugs trade which they actually support through their stupidity.
This government might as well have a committee of tabloid newspaper editors advising it on drugs rather than scientists. All over the world politicans have let us all down over drugs policy. Why? Because they are cowardly, self-serving and only interested in short term political expediency.
Cannabis
God's Herb
I have smoked cannabis since I was 14. There have been a few breaks, some of a few months, some of a year or two but those apart, I have smoked cannabis every day of my life for nearly 40 years.
I have come to regard weed or hash, in all seriousness, as the Rastafarians do, as “God’s herb”. It is a sacrament, a truly positive, honourable and precious thing in my life. Something that I thank God, I did not miss.
I grew up with smokin’ dope. It was a fundamental part of my adolescent culture with the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, with a heady summer living the love and peace dream in Amsterdam. LSD blew my mind in those days but a joint was always a sustaining experience. Something I held onto.
As I grew up and got interested in business, I relished the delicious and maverick escape that I enjoyed. I took it seriously and wrote a 40 page report for the Home Affairs Committee entitled “An Unaffordable Prejudice”.
The prejudice, misinformation and sheer nonsense has continued throughout my life. The idiocy of downgrading cannabis to a Class C drug and then, just two years later, back up to Class B is only outdone by the crass stupidity of failing to decriminalise it completely. Prohibition has proved time after time to be an ineffective solution. Worse than that, the law makes a complete ass of itself by sustaining the criminal supply and distribution of a product that is never going to go away.
Regulation is the only viable solution and would provide the framework to care for those very few who may suffer from cannabis use.
What are the dangers? Clearly any intoxicant offers more potential for harm when used by the young, when the brain is still developing. Despite my own experience, cannabis use should be for adults only. In adults it has been proved to be one of the least harmful substances known to man time and time again – despite the fact that most have actually set out to prove the opposite.
Recently the popular argument has been against skunk, a strain of cannabis that can be up to 20 times stronger than that previously known.
To claim this is a recent development is simply wrong. For at least 20 years it has been difficult to buy anything but skunk and other F1/F2 hybrids of the plant. There are many others: Northern Lights, Haze, Blueberry, etc. In my teens it was difficult to buy anything but Lebanese or Moroccan hashish. In Holland where the market is partly regulated there has always been a wide choice of grass or hash from all parts of the world grown and/or processed in many different ways.
The latest suggestion is that skunk is causing psychoses in adolescents – yet the incidence of psychoses in adolescents has remained constant since records began. This is just the lastest scaremongering. 60 years ago it was said that cannabis caused young women to be promiscuous with black men. The standard of the argument has not improved.
It really is time that this hopeless policy against a benign, natural herbal product was stopped. Hemp is one of the most ecologically friendly, sustainable crops in the world. As regulated cannabis it would pull the rug from underneath a great swathe of criminality and produce billions in additional tax income. As biofuel, building materials, fabrics and cattle feed it could help to revitalise agriculture and many other businesses.
Peter Reynolds 