Answer that question and the rest of the house of cards that is the US War on Drugs will fall. The inherent problem here is that all of the self rightous poloticians in American and throughout the world all seem think they are given the right to dictate morailty when elected to office. The government needs to step back and leave issues like “drugs” and health care to the citizens and to the state so that they, the people who primarily are engaged in this ridiculously complicated system, can figure out what is best for them. Be it unified governmental healthcare or privitized healthcare. Its an issue for the states, not the federal government. Its time to put the monster that is the US government in its place and remind the powers that be that they are ellected by the people, of the people and for the people. Not for political or personal gain. And certainly not to tell us what we can and cannot do based on their own morality. It all comes down to personal responsibility and people being held accountable for that responsibility.

Drugs are inherently evil in this worldview, so they should be prohibited.

There’s little arguing with people like that, although perhaps we can pursuade those who assume those people are correct because they shout loudest…

I mean, if you can’t make a profit from selling crack and have to subsidised it with hooky copies of Transformers you are in the wrong business.i

Well, there will always be nuance, and there will always be people dissatisfied with any system. I’d like to think that patients can seek an alternative viewpoint – and appeal if treatment is limited.

If my comments are disemvoweled, it can only make them more sensible.

Also, you’d be surprised how many “classic” liberals read LC. This site is about building a bustling coalition, not a dogmatic church.

I am all for universal healthcare. But I think it should be about a contract between healthcare provider (be it the state, semi-private or private) and the client, ooops, patient.

and Aaron, for G-d’s sake, don’t tell anyone here that you’ve got private health care – or they will start mess up your comments like they do to newmania. Its such a conservative thing to do.

I would have it – if I could afford it – but don’t tell anyone!

My girlfriend has a major issue with NHS doctors on this front. She smokes and whether she smokes or not is non-negotiable. When she gets ill, the doctors tend to whinge about the fact that she smokes and that tends to be the sum of their diagnosis. They don’t look as deeply and are not as willing to consider treatment than they otherwise would be. This generates an odd power relation where rather than the doctor being there to serve the patient, the doctor becomes the gatekeeper to treatments held back for the ‘deserving’.

I have private medical care, if they decide that injecting Lea & Perrins into my retinas invalidates my coverage, I only have myself to blame. No?

Likewise the NHS. Why does the NHS continue to fund the treatment of people who refuse to act with some personal responsibility towards their healthcare?

If someone makes a commitment to getting off of drugs, then we help and support them. If they ask for help losing weight, we provide some level of assistance. If someone continues to reject medical advice, why should continued and expensive treatment continue?

I think this is the height of mutual responsibility.

I mean in the sense of Switzerland or the Netherlands, where people have the choice to decide which health care insurer/provider to use, and pay more if they engage in more risky activities. I don’t mean like in the US where (crazily) it is usually one’s employer who decides what healthcare scheme you will use, and a combination of government regulation and doctors using cartels allows healthcare costs outside of insurance schemes to rise exponentially.

Do you guys mean more then what we are currently paying for the NHS – because contrary to popular belief – the NHS is not free – we pay a percentage of our salary? Or do you mean like in America where you pay a greater percentage of your salary to a medical insurance company?

“banning things like sugar so that the NHS did not have to provide diabetes care for half the next generation.”

Lets go the whole hog and ban food – Id save so much money!

Please can anyone explain this to me?”

Well, I think people (ideally) should pay for their own health care. In our current context, some limits on drug use/sale would be necessary. One of them, however, is not heroin which can be taken safely indefinitely (especially if the dosage is clearly labelled and understood). Most forms of cannabis aren’t any more threatening than alcohol/smoking so with a small tariff, could support the health provision required for it. Damn… I am sounding terribly social democratic now…

…and yet she says it like a bad thing…

Lilliput, I don’t personally think there is a clear majority in favour of legalization. In fact, I might even suggest that as with capital punishment there may in fact be a majority in favour of getting tougher, zero tolerance, on drugs.

It is a big job to convince people whose estates’ problems appear all to be wrapped up with the crack house down the road and the blokes in the balcked out beamers that anything other than public lynching for dealers and users alike is the way to go.

And many of us cateorically do not believe is rights without responsibilities. Some of us even think that we should be paying anyway, through mutual schemes and so on, for our healthcare.

But if we took the idea that the state has an interest in anything that could possibly ever end up costing the state some (of our) money to an extreme we would be banning things like sugar so that the NHS did not have to provide diabetes care for half the next generation.

Anyway, the antidote for Worcester Sauce in your eye is quite cheap and simple – Tabasco in the other. You soon forget about the Worcester Sauce…:)

“I think that if you want to smoke, snort coke, or inject Worcester Sauce into your eyeballs while you smoke a banana, it’s your decision and nothing to do with the state.”

Aaron, it patently does involve the state if you expect the State to look after you when you go blind from putting Worcester Sauce in your eyeballs. This is what I don’t understand about liberalism – its all about the right to do what you want without having to take responsability.

Please can anyone explain this to me?

In the US, they have found you could break up a whole gang and remove the drug trade from a city, but a new one would replace it in three weeks. The cause isn’t the drug barons but the fact that a lot of people actually quite like buying drugs!

Muppet.

Criminals sell drugs because customers want to buy them, and the government won’t let them. Criminals make money from selling drugs, which makes them rich. Other criminals see how easy it is to make money and also try to sell drugs. As the whole market is illegal, the other laws that normally apply in business don’t, so the only answer of competition is violence.

The answer? Remove the ability of the criminals to become rich through this incentive.

Make drugs legal, flood the market with drugs so that the street price is only a few pence. The rebellious reasons for drug taking soon disappear as the novelty disappears. (How many people still sniff glue after their 18th birthday?) Criminal gangs dissipate while there is no ability to fund their power base.

There will be a short term problem with excessive drug use, but this is best dealt with through health experts, in much the same way that fat people do diets etc!

everyone ends up happy – except the politicians who have to find something new to help build their powerbase!

“You can’t win a war on a noun”.

Actually I don’t have all the answers. I tend to believe that prohibition has never succeeded, and unless we’re prepared to see the country locked down like some dystopian police-state, it’s a “war” we’ll never have a hope in winning.

The US has proven that draconian punishments don’t work either. Fact.

In the Nordic countries, particularly Finland, targeted drug rehabilitation programmes have proven incredibly successful. Fact. Of course our problems are much worse, and a roll-out of such programmes here may be impossibly expensive.

I think that if you want to smoke, snort coke, or inject Worcester Sauce into your eyeballs while you smoke a banana, it’s your decision and nothing to do with the state.

If we decriminalised drugs, we could control the price and quality of the substances, and discourage people from using seriously daft stuff that could kill a panda, never mind an 8st girl in a club toilet.

I think we’d see a drop in crime and social disorder if we took the trade off the criminal types.

We can’t win a “war” that’s un-winnable. A smart society picks its fights.

“And your opinion on how to tackle the plague of heroin on our streets is”

I would turn the question around. The only way for a chav to fund a decent heroin habit is to become a dealer himself (or, if female, a prostitute). Prohibition therefore ensures a highly efficient pyramid marketing scheme for smack. The smack they are getting is filthy, and it is this which gives them the track lines and general cadaverous palor – medical grade morphine does not do this to them.

Street smack is dangerous. Everything else is pretty harmless. So if we legalised drugs, the long run demand for the serious stuff will fall, the harmless stuff will become more harmless as quality improves.

All the problems associated with drugs will disappear, not quite overnight but quickly, if all drugs were legalised.

Ergo, we should save the billions we spend on interdiction and treat the very small number of genuine addicts, and leave the recreational user alone.

Simple really. Everything government touches it turns to shit – a lesson you pinkos should learn and apply to other areas of Government intervention in our lives. Leave us alone.

Jackart