The War On Drugs , Working Or Not?

[alan s]

Last night i was listening to a talkshow on a local radio station ( Cork Talks Back On Red Fm , They were having a debate about the war on drugs . A ex American police chief was on talking about when he was fighting the war on drugs whenever they used arrest and imprison a drug dealer that person would be replaced a few days later by someone new and worse than the old guy so they weren't making any impact at all. He also said since 1980 the U.S was after spending 1 Trillion Dollars ( $1,000,000,000,000 ) on the war on drugs and so far they hadn't achieved anything major.Because of drugs in every country people get killed over gang wars , Criminals number one source of income is the money they get from dealing drugs , hash , cocaine , heroin , cannabis ,  crack cocaine  are just a few examples. The idea of the ex police chief was that Drugs should be Legalised and there sale should be taken out of the hands of criminals and into the hands of the government so effectively the government would provide people with drugs ( through a perscription from a doctor ). After  he went off the air people from Cork ,Ireland started ringing in to voice there opinions. 58% of people seemed to think legalising drugs was a good idea , 42% said it was a bad idea. At the end a stat was giving that in the U.S 48% of all people aged 15 have smoked marijuana but in the netherlands where marijuana is effectively legal only 22% of all people aged 15 have tryed it.That seems to say that if somethings illegal then more people will want to try it to see why its illegal and experience it first hand.

                      So , The war on drugs , do people thing its working? or is it time for a changed of methods? eg. legalising drugs.

My Opinion : I've never done drugs and i don't intend to either , commen sense tells me that there bad for you and have long term effects on your body , eg. Pot and hash make people infertile. Personally I'm all for getting the drugs away from the criminals but im not sure about actually legalising stuff like heroin will solve peoples problems , there is actually no treatment to get you off heroin the only thing you can do is go down to a substitute which isn't as strong as the proper drug.If you do heroin your hooked for life. Its not a good idea to legalise heroin anyway in my opinion whatever about the rest of the drugs.

What are other peoples opinions on this? should drugs be legalised , do you think the current method of stamping out drugs is working? or do you have any other methods that might work?

[IchBin]

Should drugs be legalized? Absolutely not IMO. I don't care if legalizing would make less people use them. Stiffer punishments for Dealers and Users would do the same thing. Heck, look at things like Crime rate in some of the places that have harsh punishment. They are way down compared to other countries. Indonesia for example if I remember right. The problem with legalizing drugs is that you can't give prescriptions out for these things. Not too many of these illegal drugs are used for medicinal purposes.

You can also say why are we spending money on finding cures for diseases when it seems the money in a lot of cases has not done what its intended to do.

The fight for a moralistic society must not be given up.
WE MUST FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT!

[Xarcell]

The fight for a moralistic society must not be given up.
WE MUST FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT!

I think the morale is is 99% of the problem. If we boost people's morale, everything else will come together on it's own.

I live the in the US and live in a very diverse area. Alot of foreigners come here because they say we are "less" corrupt. Why are we "less" corrupt? Because we have higher morale and values...

We have a long way to go though as far as morality and spirituality.

Drugs kill emotions. With less emotion, how can one expect greater morale?

The focus on war against drugs should be on boosting morale, showing people(not telling) how they can do more with their lives, and that a criminal life is a "choice" that they do not have to accept. Most criminals do/sell drugs, not people who do/sell drugs become criminals.

I've seen alot of black communities be overwhelmed with corruption and crime. Most try music as an escape from the criminal world. While they started as criminals, most say they didn't have a choice because it is part of their culture. Once successful with music, they escaped that culture...

We should focus on pointing out and making alternatives from the beginning, so that one doesn't feel as though a criminal life is the way to go to start with.

It's human nature to feel guilty for bad things. So why would anyone choose  a criminal life if they were offered a reasonable choice?

[Jpg]

Well I beleive ma-ri-jua-na should be legalized. I don't smoke it but a white scientist found out that through a study that ma-ri-jua-na plants give off more oxygen than every other plant in the world. Another white scientist said if we were to grow it in all our backyards we would get rid of all the pollution since the beginning of time. 

[G6Cad]

I think those scientists must have used drugs them selfs 

[Xarcell]

Well I beleive ma-ri-jua-na should be legalized. I don't smoke it but a white scientist found out that through a study that ma-ri-jua-na plants give off more oxygen than every other plant in the world. Another white scientist said if we were to grow it in all our backyards we would get rid of all the pollution since the beginning of time. 

What's that got to do with the war on drugs?

Poeple wouldn't grow it to clean the air. They's cut it down and smoke it. Then you would have more zombies walking around.

I deal with enough dumb zombies at my job. I don't need anymore...

[Jpg]

Well basically all other drugs should be banned.
Including coffee and cigarettes.

[alan s]

Alcohol is the biggest drug in the world and also causes the biggest problems when consumed , Theres actually more danger drinking alcohol than there is smoking marijuana.Alcohol when drunk in excess causes violent behaviour and therefore causes fights and accidents.Ages ago in the U.S i believe they tryed to ban alcohol alltogether and there were massive riots and complaints when it happened and the government were forced to legalise it again.Marijuana doesn't cause violence but it does make people sterile.Tobacco causes lung cancer and yet thats completely legal. Why? because the government get 50% of the tobacco sales.In fact in southern America the government are encouraging cacao ( which is used in the manufacturing process of cocaine i think ) to stop growing it and start growing coffee instead , the government pay the farmers twice the price they paid them for the cacao as encouragement,Yet its going to take 10 or 20 years for that method to catch on.

[IchBin]

I think one thing you need to take into consideration Alan is quantity and quality. Alcohol is something that only becomes dangerous in large amounts. A person can drink one beer and not have any impairment. But you can't smoke a joint and not be impaired. There's a difference. If you were to intoxicate your body with Pot as much as alcohol does there sure would be a difference. But you have to compair apples to apples. I read a study on car accidents once that showed in the 150 car accidents that were studied, over 75% of them the drivers had traces of THC in their system. Pot doesn't have the same affect as alcohol, but that doesn't mean its not as dangerous.

Comparing cigarettes to pot is not really a comparison either IMO. Both have their Cancer causing agents, but Pot has almsot twice the amount of tar if I remember right.

To say that Pot is used for medicinal uses is not really relevant anymore. A friend of mine who is a Pharmacist told me they have a drug called Marimal (not sure on the spelling) that mimics all the effects that pot does.

I guess my point is, is that people need to be responsable. When you put drugs and alcohol into the mix your giving your agency to something instead of staying in control of it. Therefor, you lose your free agency and do things that you normally would. All too often others suffer the consequences.... That is why I say we must fight the GOOD FIGHT!

You give into legalizing these things and it won't make it better. If I had my way I would do one of two things. Get rid or alcohol and Tabaco or really slap it to people for doing the things resulting in harm to others because of its use.

[akulion]

Well I dont expect many people to agree with me - or maybe they might.

But I just feel and believe that we are living in a world nowadays where decency is going down the drain.

With over glamorization of prostution and porn, drug culture being glorified, gangster, mafia life style being portrayed as cool, violence and anger being shown as the traits of 'macho men and women', its just very sad to see.