Illegal
Legal
(Thanks Evilmunky)
Eagles may soar, but weasels never get sucked into jet intakes.
An excellent response taking into account all the subtleties and points of the posters argument.
I would suggest looking at what happened with prohibition in the US, once legalised the criminal gangs lost their stranglehold, some went ligit mind, but there was a reduction in orginised crime.
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14 states in america have the right idea... albeit packaged for medical grounds, it is a legalised way of controlling cannabis... its working, aside from federal agents (federal law prohibits, whereas state law allows) breaking in and stealing confiscating the "evidence"...
when i was over there (LA), seemed to me like it was a pretty good way of doing things...
I loved that i had a choice of strains, for different highs and different experiences...
everywhere i went i smelt the pleasant aroma of cannabis and nobody batted an eyelid...
yet back in this country i have to see "a guy" who gives me little to no choice and i get varying "deals" at different times of the month sometimes the right amount, sometimes short and not very occassionally i get more than i bargained for...
legalisation would mean choices, and education, and finding strains that are right for right people...
I dont drink... i dont like the effect, but occassionally i do like to have a bit of a smoke and chill out...
lets face it when was the last time you saw a bunch of stoners be like "hey lets turn over that car"... hell, when was the last time you saw stoners say "hey lets get off the couch!"...
prohibition has failed, and it will continue to fail because where theres sunlight, cannabis will grow, and whilst it grows, people will smoke it...
cut the crap... legalise it... give us a bit more choice and i'll happily pay for the privlidge, even taxed...
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Erm - assuming you're talking about Mephedrone, it's only just been made illegal, and I'm not convinced anyone is talking about making that particular drug legal. But actually, the issue is more complicated than that - the drug needs testing properly, with long term trials and studies on the psychological and physiological effects of using it.
The problem is, our current system only allows "legal or illegal" - so it's kind of hard to get approval for the kind of testing that would determine whether / in what circumstances Mephedrone actually poses the significant health risk many are claiming. It also leads to the assumption that if something's legal it's OK to chug it as hard as you like - see "alcohol" for how successful that method of control is.
A much better system would be to introduce licensing for all drugs, and simply restrict the issue of licenses: so instead of having offences like "Provision of a Class B Drug", "Possession of a Class C Drug" etc. there'd be a general offence of supplying a controlled substance without a license. The general provision would be that any drug not specifically licensed couldn't be supplied, so there'd be no such thing as new legal highs - each drug would come into the system at the tightest level of control, and as more was known about it a decision could be taken as to whether it should be licensed for more general consumption. And if certain recreational drugs were freely available through licensed retailers, most people wouldn't feel the need to try to obtain drugs through other channels. It would also move the focus of policing into the supply of those drugs, not the possession, as possession of those drugs would be legal as long as they were obtained from a licensed supplier within the terms of that license. Of course, there could also be provision in law to prosecute knowingly obtaining substances from an unlicensed supplier, which would encourage even more people to obtain their recreational drugs from reputable licensed outlets, and (in addition to the tax revenues) the government would have a good indication of how many people were using what drugs, when and where - which is, I'm sure, what they'd like.
Now, please understand that I'm not posting this for your benefit, as I'm pretty sure you'll just come back with some highly reasoned comment like "Drug are bad, m'kay" (since this has pretty much been your only input into this debate over the last month or so that it's been going on), but for the benefit of those who actually want a reasoned debate over the drug control issue - because "legal" or "illegal" simply doesn't work...
Pardon my scepticism but with all the FUD going around about MCAT right now I think I'll wait until there has been a single proven case (I'm talking toxicology reports etc) that MCAT has been the cause of death. Note that I don't mean where MCAT has exacerbated an existing condition.
How many people have suffered death or permanent brain damage directly because of MCAT?
While there's still no conclusive proof that MCAT is directly responsible for any deaths, I think there's been sufficient mortality where MCAT has been implicated to start assuming that it has a negative effect on human physiology. It may well be that it exacerbates an existing condition, or that it increases toxicity of other substances and is only a danger in combination, but that's the kind of information that needed to be determined before a large number of people started taking the stuff.
The danger with MCAT is that we know virtually nothing about its physiological effects, but the fact that it was, for a while at least, legal gave it an air of respectability that will be hard to shake just by making it illegal. You ask how many people *have* suffered death or permanent brain damage directly because of MCAT - but the real question is how many people *should* suffer death or permanent brain damage - directly *or* indirectly because of MCAT - before we start studying and controlling the damn stuff. Frankly, if even one of those deaths is demonstrated to be indirectly caused by MCAT, that's one too many - and it's a situation caused largely by the illegality of other, better understood, potentially safer, recreational drugs...
Agreed completely - there should most definitely be intensive research into this drug. I'd much rather have all these kids taking MDMA over this, given the relative harmlessness of MDMA.
It just gets to me when people attribute severe side effects and death to MCAT when there is yet to be a single proven case of death or 'brain damage' from it. It may be that I will be shown to be in the wrong in the future, and that's fine. But for now, I wish people would base their opinions on fact rather than media FUD.
Better that than driving it underground where there are no controls on what is being sold or to whom and, no avenues to generate revenue for anyone other than criminals.
Can you name a single instance in history where prohibition has actually prevented the use of a substance which the general public wants to use?
If people want to take drugs then they will, the question is just of how you manage it.
mmmm, alcohol, yum yum!! lol
I'm in favour of legalisation, licensing and taxing the bejesus out of it, ideally with the taxes going into helping people with issues out (drugs, social, etc)... Would probably have to introduce them legally at equivalent to street prices and may even have to keep cutting them with other things (known safe things in this case) to avoid heroin users / addicts from OD'ing... Same goes for prostitution, make it legal and control it.
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