Cannabis should not be decriminalised - AIBU?

I very much doubt the new 'legit' dealers will be filling in their end of year tax returns?!

Can you link me to the crime statistics please?
it appears more people kill themselves through alcohol than drugs but I am taking about crimes against other people.

I agree.
I went to New York a year ago and the whole place now smells of weed. It was awful and it ruined the trip.

The smell is absolutely horrific. Do people who smoke it bother realise how bad it smells? It’s way worse than tobacco.

Yes, diamorphine is used to relieve pain during childbirth. Fentanyl is more commonly used now as it is more potent but both are drugs that are considered safe in moderation.

It seems like some just want to decriminalize a drug that can induce psychosis and cause huge mental health problems, not to mention being a source of funds for violent gangs, to protect ethnic minority rights. The drug is illegal for good reason and not part of any ethnic 'culture' so simply don't carry it. How much overlap is between drug carrying by youth and violent gang related behaviour?

I noticed, when I was younger, as you walked around walking the dog the smell from houses was cigarette smoke. These days it's weed. It's not just 'student' areas, It's everywhere. My neighbours are all pensioners. Over half smoke joints daily. The smell carries over the gardens.
It's vile.
Worryingly, it's when cars drive past and the smell hits you. I think it's a bigger issue than Drink/ drive now. That's become socially unacceptable, so weed has replaced it.

I wish they would legalise anyone who is currently paying hundreds of pounds a month for medical cannabis to grow their own. Licence which varieties they can grow, make them have the plants tested a couple of times a year to check they are only growing what they should. I'm a chronic pain sufferer & would much prefer to be using it than taking all the pharmaceutical stuff I have to now, I can't afford to pay for the prescribed stuff & I can't get it on the NHS.

No. It’s not a gateway drug .

Do they?? They gave me fentanyl

Yes. If it wasn't they wouldn't give it to women during childbirth.

The UK is actually the biggest producer and exporter of cannabis

Why has it become so prolific through ?
I don’t think police prosecute anymore so people walk around blatantly smoking & in their gardens & homes
it’s a blight on people who hate the smell , it’s vile .

I dislike the smell, but not liking things doesn't make me support banning them.

The quality and selection of cannabis products from dealers is far lower than you can buy from the store in countries where it's legalised. Even if you're saving money, it isn't always that appealing because you're not getting exactly what you want, and you can't be sure of the dosage or the freshness, etc. The dealers here in Canada don't sell cannabis which is stronger than that you can buy in the store.

Of course there will still be some black market activity but on the whole, legalisation reduces the ability of dealers and organised crime to profit from cannabis sales, and collects large amounts of tax revenue for the government instead - all money which can be spent on things like policing, medical research or on healthcare itself.

Both of which society is trying together people to cut down on if not give up.

Cannabis is also not a uk drug ( like tobacco). It’s an import. Unlike alcohol which the northern hemisphere has had for millennia. Cancel it as being part of our colonial past ( I too really dislike it)

I live in Canada, where cannabis has been federally legal now for several years. One of the good things about this is that you can just walk into the cannabis store and buy whatever strength, strain, smell or form factor you like. They have sodas, chocolate bars, sweets, all sorts. If you don't want to ingest something crazily strong, you don't have to - you can buy something more mild and choose how much of it you use. Buying from street dealers, you often have no clue what you're getting and that just isn't the case when buying from a store. They also have a return policy if it you don't like it or you have problems. Can you imagine trying to do that with a street dealer?!

I used to be a fairly prolific weed smoker when I was at university. I have close to zero interest in it now, but if I ever do feel like enjoying a gummy or a joint at a weekend or in the evening, it's really easy to go and get one.

I think people assume that availability always results in an increase in consumption - it doesn't.

I smoked it when young.felt out of it after for a few days. If legalised surely. More chance to drive look after DC while stoned.i think it's a bad idea .the poor little girl who fell 6 storeys to her death while her mum smoked weed. Enough drugs already

I don't see how they can legalise it when they are talking about making cigarettes illegal for people born after a certain date.

At a minimum we need to analyse what has happened in all the countries that have recently legalised it. I don't see the rush - why not wait until there is a few years of data to look at?

If they do legalise it then I just hope it doesn't become mainstream culture like I've seen in the US. After it was legalised there I went to visit family and was shocked. Massive billboard signs advertising cannabis, shops all over the place, the horrible smell when you're walking down the street as people are smoking it everywhere. Worst of all though were friends and family just using it openly expecting that everyone was ok with it. It's one thing if people use it privately in their own homes, but I don't particularly want it to become a social activity that I'm regularly exposed to or expected to be ok with.

Yawn o rama. Legalise it. Tax it.

In the US there has been some research but results are contentious as different studies seem to have different findings! As far as I can tell, most likely seems to be that gang/organized crime goes down, but non-gang property and violent crime goes up. But there have been confounding factors which might account for at least some of the changes in crime rates.

Most places that legalize cannabis don’t target cannabis dealing for years before legalization, so you wouldn’t expect to see arrests for large scale drug smuggling go down after legalization.

I think the point on crime reduction is that on a kind bloody obvious scenario then if you legalise then you stop allocating resources to enforcement and that element of crime declines. And in some areas where there has been legalisation there has been a decline in associated crime.Largely because dealers move their markets to places where they can totally dominate.

People don’t have personality transplants when they use drugs. We probably all know nasty alcoholics and nicer ones. The same is true for weed smokers. You will not change them. About all you can do is change the rules on social housing to be much stricter than they are, which is cheaper and easier than securing criminal convictions. You would have to change tenancy rules and probably have on site enforcement.

Arsehole people don’t respond to anything less than a personal consequence. If they weren’t dealing weed it would ketamine or coke smashed with dental powder. If you could make their market smaller and their influence less I would say it’s worth it. The cannabis market isn’t totally clean in other countries due to legalisation but it is a lot better than we have in the UK.

I don't really find comparisons to alcohol that useful tbh.

The basic differernce is that while cannabis is simply a drug that people take to change their perceptions, alcohol, although it can be used as a drug, is also a food, and can be and often is used as such.

Historically alcohol products were primarily a means of preserving harvested fruits, grains, and other vegetation for human use - you can pick grapes, or corn, and they will only be good for so long. Ferment them and they will last longer and also have some advantages over water where contamination is a factor. In the middle ages for example quite a lot of people's daily intake of beer accounted for a good portion of their caloric intake.

If you distil the products like wine or grain liquor, you are then preserving all those calories in a very small amount of space that will last indefinitely, so your extra harvest will not be lost to rot, mold, or mice.

The amount of available product in the past was kept in check because of the limits or agriculture and production. It was the industrialisation of the production processes that led to the easy availability of strong cheap booze, and that has of course been a problem for many people.

However, I don't think that changes the fundamental fact that alcohol is a food product as much as a drug.

@RaininSummerthey don’t contact the job centre about the job applicants no, but the job centre contacts the companies and asks how the applicant was in the interview. To check they haven’t deliberately scuppered their chances of the job.

I suspect that's true with kids. Dogs, maybe not, I have heard of dogs eating cannabis that isn't meant to be edible at all.