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Legal highs to be banned
BillieTheBot
Posts: 8,721 Bot
In a further pointless addititon to the ' war on drugs' the government is going to make GBL and 'spice illegal. Apart of course from the pointless nature of the whole illegal drugs thing there is a massive disparity in the governments policy.
SOCA said a little while ago that before they take actions like bust a big heroin dealer they consider the possibility that it will lead to a drug war and violent deaths.
SOCA said a little while ago that before they take actions like bust a big heroin dealer they consider the possibility that it will lead to a drug war and violent deaths.
Beep boop. I'm a bot.
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Drugs are not legal in Holland, even cannabis. They have a rubbish system where the dealers and importers are criminals and the smokers are civil offenders. Granted its not quite as crap as our system but the main control of the market is still in criminal hands.
When you consider how much shit the government allows food manufacturers to put in our food, like hydrogenated fat where they KNOW it fucks up our arteries etc, this is just plain ridiculous.
Yes they do cost the police force and NHS large quantities of money, probably nowhere near what is made and in turn that also helps the economy as consumers pay tax to the goverment, the government pays people to deal with the issues who then in turn spend the money they are paid, quite often on the above said products.
The government spend far too much time trying to ban or police drugs that in most circumstances cause less issues than legal intoxicants. It would be better if they legalised the majority of drugs, had quality controls to make sure that people were not getting something that had been tampered with, and taxed the product. Yes I agree there may be a problem with organised crime and drug dealing however if the criminals were removed from the issue as far as possible then everyone would be better off.
You add up all the man-hours that are needed to put police and paramedics on the streets on a Friday night and it'll add up to a huge amount.
Add in vehicle costs, detention officer/nurses/doctors back at base, the costs of clearing up criminal damage or sick e.t.c. from the streets, the costs of sending someone to court or doing the admin work after administering a penalty notice.
As a base, in my neck of the woods it'll cost somewhere in the region of £65 for a PCSO or £100 for a PC to have them patrolling for 5 hours in the evening.
Then add in other cops e.t.c. and you've got your total.
The tax on tobacco more than pays for the cost to the NHS from smoking related illness. It's a big earner for the governement.
They more than pay for it though.
You can't be prosecuted for something you have done before a law comes into force.
The UK has to pay about £20bn to mop up after the £30bn alcohol industry, frankly I'm not really convinced its worth it. We need to radically rethink our relationship with alcohol.
But you can make vodka out of wheat.
IIRC an article that mentioned the 20 bln costs statistic included the indirect costs of alcohol which when use as part of an arguement against the use of alcohol are completely spurious. It's just taking an optimum and potential productivity figure and deducting anything that doesnt go plan. People aren't robots. It's like saying Britain could produce a trillion more a year if it banned fag breaks, weekends or letting people go to the toilet when they wanted to.
The direct costs are considerably lower and tax on alcohol more than pays for the public services neccessary to pay for it's extremities, just like the tax on tobacco pays for the costs of that similarly costly product.
Or potatoes.....
they haven't banned on the decent legal highs .. yet .. only a matter of time unfortunately :grump:
Somewhat fair enough, I dont want anything drastic like a ban on alcohol I would just rather the UK had a more grown up attitude to drinking.
But then having said that I think it is more symptom rather than the cause of the issue, our society is fundermentally broken which is the key.
What broke it?
We allow frankly shocking poverty and its just accepted. The values of our society are just plain wrong, basically it boils down to money and fuck everything else - aside from the social problems caused by this we are heading towards total ecological break down and most people just couldn't care less.
A society should be judged by how it treats those at the bottom, and on that measure we are failing miserably.