Doesnt weed mess up your memory and make you lethargic though?

@1 blanco

You suggesting the British public are stoned? It would certainly explain some of their inconsistent attitude towards drugs.

Has anyone looked to compare official practices for controlling access to drugs in other west European countries?

@Left Outside

It would also explain why they only ever elect the same two parties to government, one after the other, often with the same policies (in the last 30-40 years at least). They elect one, then get stoned and forget why they elected that one in the first place when they elect the next lot to get rid of the first lot.

@Bob B

Portugal? Or does that not exist in Conservatopia?

@5: “Portugal? Or does that not exist in Conservatopia?”

You’d best Conservatives hereabouts.

Britain and other EU member states have recently ratified the Lisbon Treaty:
http://europa.eu/lisbon_treaty/full_text/index_en.htm

When I last looked, Lisbon is the capital city of Portugal.

Another thing about this bone-headed decision: if I was a proper capitalist I’d buy up plenty of 4-MMC from here or here while it’s legal, wait for it to become illegal, watch the markets force the price nice and high (no pun intended), then sell – making a tidy profit quite easily.

I’m willing to bet £4.93 that in 12 months time no-one will remember what mephedrone is/was. Textbook moral panic (booze kills one teenager a day but no-one wants that banned…)

“meow meow”, “baby P” – why are our useless press addicted to nicknames and codenames?

@8 cos they all watched Brass Eye when at journo school and took it seriously.

“Now, Scepticisle’s observations would be completely correct, if it were not for an over-reliance on one fatally flawed assumption: that we live in a country in which predominant attitudes towards drugs exhibit any consistent or broadly logical relation to the question of harm.”

I did actually deal with the likelihood of any such proposal becoming policy in my very first post on Mephedrone:

“Unfortunately this would never be close to acceptable to the “usual suspects” mentioned above. In fact, they’d consider it the government openly sanctioning the use of such dangerous substances, and if someone was to die in circumstances similar to that of the two young men in Scunthorpe where it hasn’t yet been proved that their deaths were anything to do with 4-MMC, then they’d declare that the government had blood on its hands. Like the Private Eye taxi driver stereotype where hanging and flogging is the only thing that “they” understand, so in this instance only a ban is acceptable or likely to be understood. That drug prohibition has almost certainly been the most destructive political orthodoxy of the post-war years in terms of lives destroyed and lives lost continues to be completely ignored by the entire mainstream.”

http://www.septicisle.info/2010/03/mephedrone-what-fucking-disgrace.html

This article seems to be really top heavy. Yes we know the media are going crazy over it, but give me a strong counter argument, an antidote to the hysteria…..? just a lot of questions at the end, if i was going to make statements and at least try and back them up. :/

Here’s an interesting twist:

“One of the country’s most commonly prescribed anti-obesity drugs has been banned across Europe after it was blamed for increasing patients’ chances of suffering a heart attack or a stroke.

“The European Medicines Agency (EMA) ordered doctors across the continent to stop prescribing sibutramine and told pharmacists not to dispense the drug, which is marketed in the UK as Reductil.” [January 2010]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/22/reductil-banned-in-europe

In other words, pan-European intervention was necessary to prevent physicians from prescribing a restricted drug which enhanced the chances of their patients suffering a heart attack or stroke.

With that, it’s difficult to believe that drug control authorities in Britain and the medics really know what they are doing.

‘ Why does the prospect of competent adults feeling a bit happier… ‘

It is not drugs it is the ‘ feeling a bit happier ‘ that tears the Daily Mail types apart. We are governed by the neuroticism of the Daily Mail and their followers. They are the contemporary puritans who are immersed in misery and want everyone else to be consumed by the same misery. The idea of people being happy causes them endless sleepness nights.

If society was really interested in reducing the harm that the use of mind-altering substances causes, then quite simply cannabis would be legal.

Outside the medical sphere, I doubt there are any decisions society makes that have the goal of reducing overall harm.

Everything make more sense once you realise the effective goal of the legal system is not reducing the total of overall harm, but the total harm done to the law-abiding.

By definition, making any drug illegal sets that second total to zero. So if it comes under the political/legal system, and not the scientific/medical one, that will always be the decision.

How many Mail journos sniff a bit of coke at the weekends? I think we should be told.

@14: “Everything make more sense once you realise the effective goal of the legal system is not reducing the total of overall harm, but the total harm done to the law-abiding.”

The argument that I’ve heard from Police is that regular policing to stop use of relatively mild addictive drugs such as cannabis discourages users from escalating to more harmful narcotic drugs like heroin, which certainly generate additional costs for the NHS that taxpayers have to pay for. But then alcohol abuse also adds to NHS treatment costs.

Commentators on the police and their ways sometimes observe that the scheduling of cannabis provides the police with a valuable pretext and rationale for stop ‘n’ seach operations in the course of which they may find evidence of other crime.

A parallel is the policy to suppress child porn – for the best possible reasons – which happens to provide a compelling political rationale for regular surveillance of email traffic and if discoveries of child porn start to decline, preventing terrorism is made the next rationale.

IMHO all the rationales are bull. Drugs never presented a serious social problem until they were criminilised. Apart from labellimg ingredients, age restrictions at 16 and some compulsory warnings, there should be no regulation. It is up to individuals to decide what to put in their bodies.

Nick @ 17

Agreed.

The argument goes that it in our very human nature to be driven by our fears, and as social creatures it makes sense that we look to collective “hysteria”. But you’re right, it’s something we should be rising above, not pandering to.

Interestingly just saw some stuff on Discovery about the media and public reaction to Garotting in the 1860′s. Law’s created to clamp down on a widespread fear propagated by the media for a problem that really wasn’t as big as people thought.

Maybe it is just in our blood…

‘Commentators on the police and their ways sometimes observe that the scheduling of cannabis provides the police with a valuable pretext and rationale for stop ‘n’ seach operations in the course of which they may find evidence of other crime.

‘A parallel is the policy to suppress child porn – for the best possible reasons – which happens to provide a compelling political rationale for regular surveillance of email traffic and if discoveries of child porn start to decline, preventing terrorism is made the next rationale.’

And terror, of course. Drugs, child porn and terror. They’re a licence for the police – and the State of which they are the oppressive arm – to do absolutely ANYTHING they want.

What gets me is that a huge number of those suporting the ban must have tried drugs themselves. When I first took drugs in the 80s I thought legalisation couldn’t be far off – surely the generation coming into power must have done drugs in the 60s? But no, apparently not. Or maybe they *had* taken drugs and we’d all underestimated the effects they had on memory.

@17: “Drugs never presented a serious social problem until they were criminilised.”

Post hoc ergo propter hoc IMO.

Drug abuse correlates with many social trends and with the gamut of factors characterised as globalisation. Also, it’s not safe to assume drug addictions will conveniently subside if addictive drugs are declassified and the costs of coping with and treating the consequences of addictions do fall upon taxpayers.

There is some evidence that after drug laws are loosened – public attitudes actually harden against drug liberalisation because of the perceived impact. So the future doesn’t look very bright.

http://bit.ly/91RBUU

Everything make more sense once you realise the effective goal of the legal system is not reducing the total of overall harm, but the total harm done to the law-abiding. By definition, making any drug illegal sets that second total to zero.

Tell that to someone who’s had their house burgled by a junkie.

“Also, it’s not safe to assume drug addictions will conveniently subside if addictive drugs are declassified and the costs of coping with and treating the consequences of addictions do fall upon taxpayers.”

There is virtually no market cost for controlling a drug addiction. Regular doses of heroin, for example, could be afforded by anyone, even someone on benefits, so long as it wasn’t restricted by especially high taxes. I believe the cost without tax would be something along the lines for 5p per dose. So the social cost of addictive drugs, things like crime, can be easily avoided through legalisation. Of course, you might see a few more addicts but that is not a problem in itself. The problems with being addicted are also mostly a consequence of being made into a criminal and made to associate with other criminals.

Suirely we now need to understand that by simply banning something will not make it go away. Statistically it draws more TO that banned item rather than deter away from it. There are far better ways to discourage useage. Tax the damn things, as for guns the Govt of the day once again listened and bowed to media hype and pressure and banned those, look at us now with the highest number of gun related crimes in Europe.then there was the much talked about dangerous dogs act , today more people are harmed by dog bites from that group of allegedly banned animals than ever before.
Yet in stark comparison cigarettes which have never been banned their useage has gone down across all group within society, why? Because every consecutive government taxed them. Alcohol is a different story however, but one that has yet to reach a plateau of use and one that is subsidesed heavily by Tax payers for use by those in Westminster, so maybe this reflects the lack of taxation across the board .

[24] Society is ageing. Recreational drugs are taken mainly by the young.

“Drugs policy” – and indeed information – has always been useless. Thirty years ago I was horrified to discover that the young mums at the local nursery were snorting coke. I knew it was a very dangerous and wicked drug, unlike the dope & whisky I had at home. But that’s what a lot of teenagers in the 60s thought – we believed the law’s distinction between “hard” and “soft” drugs had something to do with what they did to you.

Legalisation would not stop burglaries. Its proponents never say what tax régime they would apply to the newly legalised substances. And for the very good reason that cigarettes are legal, and yet – because of their tax status – they are much smuggled. Drug dealers would hardly notice legalisation – they would carry on in business, undercutting the taxed price. And unemployable addicted users would carry on, er, burgling (or selling their bodies, or whatever).

Paul:

Fine article. In answer to your end question; every drug that was in widespread, common use before 1649 is legal (in the UK, that more or less means alcohol, coffee and tobacco). Everything new has been banned, and once the 20th century started the bans began to stick. “Puritans” is exactly right; UK drugs policy is based on the idea that having fun is bad.

BobB:

The argument that I’ve heard from Police is that regular policing to stop use of relatively mild addictive drugs such as cannabis discourages users from escalating to more harmful narcotic drugs like heroin

Otherwise known as the “gateway drug” canard. It was originally coined by Harry Anslinger when one of his previous lies about cannabis had been exposed by later scientific research. It did not become a significant policy-forming slogan until Nancy Reagan, who also *spit* gave us “Stranger Danger”, made it a significant plank of her husband’s escalation of the “War” on drug-users (that don’t smoke tobacco or alcohol or coffee, or take prozac, or … you get the idea).

In any instance of prohibition, there is an ‘Us’ with the power to criminalize, and a ‘Them’ who do the thing. No-one was passing laws against whiskey in the early 19th century; whiskey was drunk by Us. They drank gin. In the case of marijuana, the ‘Them’ was Hispanic Americans, with the exception of one law which was aimed at Mormons. The criminalization of cannabis was and to a lesser extent remains an explicitly racist prohibition. The picture has been clouded by the extent to which it is an ageist prohibition; the majority of cannabis users are under 40, and those who pass laws are over 40.

The eventual ascendance of marijuana as the poster-child for the brand-new, shiny War on Drugs is in some ways even more interesting. When that happened, the ‘Us’ were right-wing war sponsors and authoritarians, and the ‘Them’ were left-wing peace protesters. Tony Blair is better in front of the cameras than Dickie Nixon, though. And has much better legal advice.

28. Mike Killingworth

‘ Legalisation would not stop burglaries. Its proponents never say what tax régime they would apply to the newly legalised substances. And for the very good reason that cigarettes are legal, and yet – because of their tax status – they are much smuggled. Drug dealers would hardly notice legalisation – they would carry on in business, undercutting the taxed price. And unemployable addicted users would carry on, er, burgling (or selling their bodies, or whatever). ‘

Drug dealers would be unable to undercut the market price of decriminalised drugs. The price of illegal drugs is not driven by production costs but by scarcity, which is driven by their illegality. Dealers face costs transporting drugs from where they are produced to where they are consumed. There are risks involved in being caught in possession of large quantities and this also adds a premium to the price. Selling decriminalised drugs through pharmacies would result in the price being near intrinsic value i.e. production costs with a small margin. Illegal dealers would be unable to compete because they still be faced with their former costs. They would be competed away.

Our idiotic ‘ war on drugs ‘ attempts to attack supply. However, the more successful the state is on interrupting supply will only result in more crimes to feed the same demand. If you change supply then for marginal users demand will fall. However, for the addicted demand is constant and the only variable to move is price. Someone who has to commit 4 crimes per day to feed their habit is forced to commit more crime if supply falls and price rises when demand is constant. The solution is to decriminalise and regulate all drugs.

@29: ” It did not become a significant policy-forming slogan until Nancy Reagan”

It shows my age but I first heard the Police claim about the supposed benefit of policing cannabis use when I was a student back in the 1950s, long before Nancy Reagan got the notion.

An informed response at the time was that drug abuse is, in fact, often associated with above average consumption of alcohol and household painkillers such as aspirin, codeine etc. I’m inclined to credit the observation of various writers about the police that the scheduling of cannabis provides a valued rationale for stop ‘n’ search operations in the course of which evidence of other crime may be uncovered and this is the de facto reason for the official bans on cannabis and other soft drugs.

Recently, there has been publicity for been researched medical claims that heavy cannabis use is associated with later development of incapacitating schizophrenia:

“Experts estimate that between 8% and 13% of all schizophrenia cases are linked to marijuna / cannabis use during teen years. It is also notable that some research suggests that alcohol abuse is a stronger predictor of psychotic symptoms than regular cannabis use.”
http://www.schizophrenia.com/prevention/streetdrugs.html

On the hard evidence, the medical case for banning alcohol is at least as robust as the case for banning a wide range of soft drugs.

[30] Richard, try reading what I wrote. You have simply ignored the taxation issue.