To ask you to stop taking illegal drugs?

[tinyme77]

Bit of a crazy post but there must be a small percentage of people in here who take drugs for pleasure. I don't care about your health: I don't want criminals to get richer, teenagers getting stabbed in gang warfare and any of the other victims of the trade. Also the waste of tax payers money fighting the crime and keeping the criminals in prison. So next time you fancy a line or a smoke please think who is getting richer whilst contributing nothing back to the country.

I never have.

Do I get a gold star?

No!!! Nevahhh!!!

Okay

On a more serious note, I agree with the legalization and taxation method.

(Not that I do) if I did I would stop

To be honest most people who are willing to deal with drug dealers aren't likely to listen to a stranger off Mumsnet, are they?

Reading this whilst stoned. What absolute bullshit 😂. Just legalise it already

Righto

You use the word "illegal". How about illicit use of prescribed meds? Likely as big, if not bigger, issue. Addiction is a cruel and demanding master.

no thanks op youre alright

Nothing will stop casual cocaine use in this country.

While I'm not against the legalization, monitoring, and taxing currently illegal drugs, I can't really see how it would stop the slavery within the supply chain or the black market when there are plenty of legal, monitored, and taxed items with both issues including very legal and easy to get drugs, both of the pharmaceutical and otherwise varieties.

I think, much like the rat experiments on addiction which gave strong evidence that the environment they were in was an even bigger factor than access or how addictive the substance is, that the problems caused by drugs are often caused by the same social issues that drive people to take them in the first place and would need to be dealt with alongside any boycott or legalization for any actual change to happen.

please think who is getting richer whilst contributing nothing back to the country.

Jesus, I wouldn't be starting with recreational drug users if I was thinking of people who fit that brief...

How's about you don't vote tory next time too, so there won't be more police cuts? Cough up please!

The issue is that those who are habitual or recreational drug-users don't necessarily equate their line of coke at the weekend with the sheer devastation of lives, gang warfare in South America that allows them to get their hit.

Even if some drugs were legalised, would people actually stick to the legal ones?

@HollowTalk the people who work removing the cashews from their shells can suffer permanent burns from the acid in the shells. Also they are working for very very little.

If drugs were legalised would one be able to go and buy cocaine or heroin or opium in a shop like going to an off licence?

"If people don’t care about themselves and their own health, why would they care about the issues you’ve listed? Falling on deaf ears I think"

I live in an area of S London within walking distance of some stabbings you will have read about. My kids know siblings of some of the stabbed, or were at school with them (before they got removed or sent to wherever).

And actually the argument that any drug you buy illegally feeds gang activity is a strong and effective argument with idealistic teens.

As is talking about the exploitation of S American women used as drug mules in the Cocaine trade with their vaginas and rectums and stomachs filled with cocaine stuffed condoms, while criminal gangs hold their children hostage pending a safe delivery of the drug.

The gang violence on London estates is driven by the drug economy. Why are people so meh and cynical about it? Drug users are complicit in the effects of the trade.

Unless home grown. And you got your original seeds from a packet of Trill.

Plus there was a report a few years ago that people were being forced to do this work for no pay in labour camps in Vietnam.

Legalisation and taxation is the way to go. Prohibition is what causes the slave labour, the gang warfare, the whole nasty business of it. Prohibition made Mafia gangs more powerful than they could have imagined in the US in the twenties. A really good byproduct of legalisation would be felt in much poorer countries where the country could increase its wealth by selling drugs legally through the state or through legal businesses that would pay tax and eventually ridding these countries of slavery, child and adult.

At our end of the market, it would mean that users of class As would be far more likely to remain healthy and not have to resort to crime and would be less likely to die from either overdoses, hepatitis or HIV. It's a win whatever way you look at it.

They already know OP. They just don't give a shit.

This basically covers it

Watch Cartel Land (a documentary). Watch Sicario (a fictional film, but a pretty realistic one). Look at what drug trafficking does to Ecuador, Colombia, Central America, and Mexico.

And then come back and tell me that drugs are fun.

My answers re: cashews were just to answer a question upthread, not to shift focus from the OP's post about drugs.

I completely agree that being aware of the social and environmental impact of drug production IS a compelling argument that will persuade many not to take them.

I agree about legalisation. To be effective, would it have to be a worldwide movement to legalise? Is that the only thing that would truly stop the gang warfare?