We need to consider the reason behind drug abuse.

Why do many young people have such terrible lives
that the only solution they can think of is to buy some
unknown powder at a railway station & inject it up their arm?
The powder could be Ajax for all they know - and instantly kill them.

We need to understand why people are so miserable
& help them to discover a happier life.

Drug USE, and drug ABUSE, are not one and the same, and as rightly pointed out by Ammad, ever since the guys were out chasing wooly mammoths, and the ladies out gathering, noticed they got a nice buzz on when they ate the mushrooms with the purple stems, people have been using the gifts that our divine creator(wink) provided us with, to better enjoy our temporary existence upon this mighty rock.
So to just condemn any and all things which alter us from our natural state is small minded and foolish.
Many people need drugs to function, and as such they have them prescribed to them, and many people find a glass of wine a pleasant addition to a fine meal, as such, these people are all DRUG users, but the whole drug issue needs to be considered in relation to the harm that may flow from any particular drug use, and we all know that Alcohol, and tobacco, both fully LEGAL drugs, produce the greatest harm, and the greatest costs to our society, so to marginalise, and criminalise others who do no harm to any, but who happen to indulge a desire to get off their nut on some drug occasionally, is a strange decision for a civilised society to make.

chicken_lipsforme wrote on Sep 14^th, 2010 at 9:25am:


You sound like someone who wants simple answers to complex problems.
Idiots?
Sometimes very intelligent & successful people are
destroyed by drugs - especially heroin & cocaine.

Amadd wrote on Sep 15^th, 2010 at 8:57am:


Amadd - I think society should take a medical approach to drug abuse.
Surely it's a medical problem & we are wasting time & money
turning it into a policing problem?
For many harmless pot users the legal problem is the only problem.
They contribute to society - harm no one & pay taxes yet they are treated as criminals.

Bobby. wrote on Sep 14^th, 2010 at 8:37pm:


I've always found that the simple answer is usually the best one in life.
We can procrastinate and find excuses to do nothing looking for complex answers till the cows come home, but the problems remain.
Just because someone in considered to be very intelligent by some and are successful in life, doesn't mean they don't make poor life choices as we have seen many times before.
There has been enough education in the last thirty years in this country on the use of illicit drugs, so they have no excuse for not being informed.
So yes, that does make them idiots.

Some years back I was on a course where as an exercise we were split into teams and told to come up with a solution to the drug problem.

Our team came up with:

Addicts do not go to prison for minor possession but are encouraged to attend rehab. Addicts convicted of criminal offences are not sent to mainstream prison but to a secure rehab facility. They will be helped over their addiction and given vocational training and education to enable them to function on the outside. There will be no fixed sentence, but a panel will review progress and decide when an inmate is ready for release. If they reoffend all bets are off and the traditional prison system will deal with them.

Traffickers will be dealt with harshly, with mandatory sentences and asset seizure made easier.

Not a perfect solution, but the world is not a perfect place. The course participants included Police who were very definite that the system as it was was failing.

I agree that there is really little concern for the drug user per se'. The concern seems more about how to force them to contribute to society as others would see fit.
And people clammer to rip the arms off of drug users in an attempt to "save" them. Sometimes, you'd have to wonder who is need of being saved.

Obviously, drug use is an extremely complex issue. No mathematical formula could realistically ever hope to input all of the variables where the desired result is a variable.

Usually, I think, the question of what harm a specific drug is doing to the user is not the issue. The issue is wtf are we getting out this person's decision to partake in a certain drug?

In tablet form, it would be hard to argue that many of the "recreational" drugs out there are any more harmful to the human body than many of the manufactured and controlled drugs in the same form.

It would be a sin to stop anybody trying to stop anybody going to the edge for the promise of mediocrity.

Is adrenalin a drug? Should it be banned?

Bobby. wrote on Sep 16^th, 2010 at 10:41am:


I agree. Make it easy for drug users to get health checks in a non-judgmental environment.

However, There is no such thing as harmless pot.

Drug dealers deserve no mercy.