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Cannabis laws
BillieTheBot
Posts: 8,721 Bot
I know on the face of it this is a drugs issue, but its also a deeply political one.
So Brown has decided to make cannabis class B again, even though the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs says its not a good idea.
What's the point of having a wide spread panel of experts if you are going to ignore their advice?
Can we trust Brown's decisions if he goes against expert advice?
So Brown has decided to make cannabis class B again, even though the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs says its not a good idea.
What's the point of having a wide spread panel of experts if you are going to ignore their advice?
Can we trust Brown's decisions if he goes against expert advice?
Beep boop. I'm a bot.
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Comments
It's called going through the motions. The Government doesn't listen to the experts they pander to the press.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/03/labour.gordonbrown
Agreed. So why do they have the panel?
As for cannabis being a class B or class C drug, I don't think it makes the slightest difference. People will continue to smoke it regardless of its classification and people will continue to grow it if theres money to be made.
I would like to see our cannabis laws liberalised to the point of being legal.
Yes, of course it should be legal, not because its safe but because its not. The only way to get any control over its sale and use is buy the government selling it.
Yeah I read that. Also since it was reclassified schizophrenia rates have fallen.
Suppose it show classification rates are completely arbitrary and probably only serve the purpose of making the government look tough on drugs.
If anyone saw the BBC programme 'Should I Smoke Dope' you will have seen by having it legal in Holland it was much easier for people to know what they were smoking and what levels of THC were contained in their cannabis.
Are you suggesting that the government should make drugs free and supply them to people whenever people want them? Because if that's not the case, then there'll still be a black market trade in it.
There will always be a black market even if it was legalised. What it would do is decrease hugely the existing black market. If the government started selling the drug this would then mean the government could collect tax from its sale and provide more information to users, which are both non existent at the moment.
As the largest seller of cannabis the government would be in a good position to manipulate the price in the UK, they could put downward pressure on the price in an attempt to make selling cannabis on the black market pointless as there is so little profit to be made.
Either way a black market will exist, but it would be much smaller than the current black market which supplies all of the UK's demand.
He said "sale" and "selling" in the one sentence. Where did you get free from?
If drugs were legal, produced by pharmacutical companies and sold and taxed by the government, there would be no black market. Much in the same way there's no (for all intents and purposes) black market trade in alcohol. Black market trade exists when there's no legal, hassle free and easy way to get your hands on a product; see 1920's America.
Prohibition doesn't work no matter what the drug. Fact.
"Khat is not a controlled substance in the United Kingdom, and recent attempts to reclassify it were rejected.[29] Because of this, and because of khat's short shelf life, the UK serves as a main gateway for khat being sent by air to North America.[30]
Khat is used by members of the Somali and Yemeni community (mainly men), which is concentrated in London, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Manchester and Sheffield. It is currently legal, although there are calls from some sections of the Somali community for it to be banned. In the UK, cathine and cathinone are Class C drugs. The plant Catha edulis is uncontrolled."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khat#United_Kingdom
Where is the media outcry from the Daily Mail, surely its not being ignored due to it being a Somali only thing? :chin:
Fair point - I should have asked 'would you support...'. I was trying to make the point that there will always be a black market trade in drugs unless the government supplies it to people for free.
But the fact that alcohol and smoking, for example, are legal is why so many more people die from those two than from drugs. There would be greater use if drugs were legalised and more suffering as a result.
Same as there is a small black market in Holland too, but if we could move 90% of the trade into legal shops we would make quite a bit of tax for the government, reduce the risk to the customer and reduce the harm to society.
Please point to one piece of evidence that suggests in anyway that the drug laws are a deterant to use.
Why if its quasi-legal in Holland do they smoke a lot less?
And why did use go down when it was moved to class C, surely if the law worked it would have gone up.
Cannabis use went down since it became a Class C drug.
I don't think we should confuse correlation and causation.
I'm not sure more or less cannabis use is be the ground to argue the legalisation of dope on, either.
But Runnymede is suggesting that the law is a deterant to use, so surely if this was the case use of cannabis would have gone up if the law was lax.
Agree.
Ignore me if I'm wrong here, but wasn't it the case that whilst cannabis use went down during the period it was classified class C, use of class A and B drugs increased significantly (especially cocaine)? So it could be argued that its class C status exacerbated the extent of its "gateway" role in drug use...thus class C status increased drug use overall.
Having said that, I've never seen any evidence for this, even if the argument does sound vaguely rational. Also, having just read that back, if the law was a deterrent to use then people would be even less likely to be using class As :banghead:
If you ask me, the whole system is farcical, to say the least.
An example of how this works in reverse is in Holland where the average age of their heroin users is about 15 years older than here.
Never, it's all about money. The government don't give a fuck about logic, just about how much money they can make or break.
Wouldn't they legalise and tax it then?
Surely if that were the case, the government would have legalized all drugs in order to secure the (massive) revenue from the tax they could put on sale, as well as saving money on enforcement.
I'd say its more down to ignorance and fear, and having to pander to "law and order" fanatics.
Surely they couldn't do that after ranting and raving about how drugs affect lives. If they would reclassify or legalise drugs in line with new research they might get somewhere some day.
For taxing it, if it ever is legalised they would need some solid evidence to reason why they are taxing a former illegal drug
So you agree this statement
is wrong then
I see the drug laws as a misinformed subject so anyone can give a feesible answer to why the government can't come to some sort of agreement, too much problem solving and not enough outcome thinking
This is stupid. Honestly as stupid as it gets.
Ten billion quid a year ...this is big big business ...who is going to stop such a massive ammount, of cash in the hand, from circulating ...who's big enough?
Ten billion quid is an alternative economy ...far to much money to suddenly remove ...thats one obstacle.
The next is the drug companies ...people use cannabis for many reasons ...including medication. The drug companies would loose out ...even if they had control of the stuff. Cannabis is being used as a pain killer ...and anti inflamatory ...an aid to increasing apetite in cancer and aids patients ...the only medicine that can stop ...not cure but stop ...glucoma in many people. People using it to cure alcoholism and addiction. Improve the lives of people with aldtimers disease. The list is long but briefly ...tinnitus urinary infection muscle cramps dry vagina tremors heart palpitations The best anti epileptic drug EVER discovered ... the most effective anti nausea agent available especialy for people under going chemo therapy ...an excellent anti depressant for many people.
Nearly all medicines have toxic potentialy lethal effects but cannabis is not such a substance.Researchers have been unable to give animals enough cannabis to induce death. In strict medical terms ...cannabis is safer than many foods we eat ...it is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.
DEA Administrative Law Judge ...FL Young 1988.
This is an impossible situation for the drug companies and their profits ...impossible for governments to deal with regarding employment and investment.
Which is correct, but is that news to anyone?
Labour will loose hundreds of thousands more votes over this single issue ...they are finnished.