If that's true, why do you
need a law to stop him from shoving unknown substances up his nose?
Jon Royle, chief executive of the Bridge project in Bradford, which provides services for drug users, said the new Act would prevent the legal sale of the substances.
"I don’t accept the argument that it's safer for people to buy these drugs legally, it’s evident that the legal suppliers had no concern for the welfare of users and the most vulnerable people in our society found a ready and easily accessible supply on the high street and internet."
Hmm, doesn't that blow the arguments of the 'legalise drugs!' crowd out of the water?
5 comments:
It actually strengthens the argument. The reason these "legal highs" exist is because the other stuff is illegal. "Traditional" drugs are well understood and can be used, if unadulterated, with a high degree of safety. Instead we have people trying to get round the law with wild concoctions of molecules.
The Amsterdam coffee shops prove my point - they are far safer and more civilised than ingesting who-knows-what, previously labelled as "bath salts", to circumvent the law.
The war on drugs has been lost (or won) because if you can't keep drugs out of prisons then you can't keep them off the street.
-richard
Agree with Richard. The "war on drugs" has been and continues to be a vastly expensive failure - not least from the thefts which fund the addicts habits.
For really hard drugs make then free on prescription - cutting out the incentive for crooks to get people hooked in the first place and making them far safer. This used to be the case before prohibition when the problem was tiny.
Who would buy street crap cut with who knows what if they could get a free safe supply for nothing?
This unglamorous nature of being an addict would tend to make the whole thing uncool, lowering the number of people even starting (see vaping where virtually no one who wasn't already a smoker takes it up).
Allow coffee shops as in Amsterdam for softer drugs.
There will then be virtually no business for criminals to exploit. There would be fewer hard drug addicts and those that were addicted would be able to function normally (again, as used to be the case before prohibition when unadulterated heroin, morphine etc were prescribed). There would also be little or no need for addicts to steal to fund their habit.
I agree with the above comments. I would also add that making drugs of any kind, however dangerous they may be, illegal can only be justified if by doing so they can be made unavailable so that nobody gets to use them. As Richard says above, the authorities can't even keep drugs out of prisons so they certainly have no hope of keeping them away from the rest of the population. That being the case, banning drugs gives us all the downsides of drugs being illegal without the upside, the intended outcome, being achieved at all.
I seem to recall that the government sacked their scientific adviser for pointing out that smoking weed was far less dangerous than riding a horse. The fact that this is demonstrably true is seemingly beside the point. The government couldn't admit that logic required that either cannabis should be legalised or horse riding should be banned.
Stonyground
Where's me Rizlas?
""Traditional" drugs are well understood and can be used, if unadulterated, with a high degree of safety."
How does that square with the rise in cannabis-induced psychosis then?
"For really hard drugs make then free on prescription..."
To be followed by Scotch for the drunks, junk food for the food addicts, and...well, I don't want to be the GP who has to satisfy the sex addicts!
"...the authorities can't even keep drugs out of prisons.."
'the authorities can't even keep drugs out of prisons while satisfying the demands of the the Human Rights crowd for treatment of prisoners' There. Fixed that for you.
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