So with Olivia's killer getting 42 years will people now recognise that dealing cannabis is not a victimless crime ?

[AnyaMarx]

Just as the title says

I work in this area and have for 15 years.

When police raid a cannabis factory all the comments on social media are "go catch some real criminals "
"It's just plants !"

Well done plod you caught some plants .

Do people seriously not realise that cannabis factories and dealing are linked to organised crime groups who run about with guns ?
And who kill people?

Maybe now this
Abhorrent crime has been tried people might realise their spliff isn't victimless.

I've dealt with countless factories where modern slavery has played a part - a couple of young Vietnamese kids living In Squalor , acting as gardeners, all to fund some organised crime group , the likes of which Olivia's murderer was .

Now will people stop vilifying police who raid cannabis factories and shut them down ?

Somehow I doubt it .

To those grasping at straws saying he was connected to other drugs, you're making excuses.

A little girl was shot and killed because of cannabis dealers. Think about that when you smoke your next spliff. Where are your drugs coming from?

It's not fucking ethical or fair trade like your coffee you hypocrites.

Well i watched the program on bbc about it yesterday and apparently he wasn't a cannabis dealer but a hitman for the drug gangs. He was saying he dealt cannabis to explain why he was walking up and down the road all day.

Growing marijuana is also terrible for the environment. But who cares about the environment as long as you're getting high, eh.

It's time to accept that we are never going to win the war on drugs. There will always be a demand for drugs and therefore there will always be a supply.

We need to accept this and legalise, regulate and tax.

I can also recommend Neil Woods book which gives you the street level view of it all.

For those in favour of legalising drug use (and I'm not totally closed to the idea), I'm assuming that if drugs were legalised there would be more users and therefore more costs for the health service? More policing of antisocial behaviour caused by those on drugs (as you see with alcohol). Wouldn't this just be creating other issues?

The problem is the criminology of it all. The country I live in has decriminalised many drugs. Therefore they are regulated and these gangs don't have an outlet

The UK is so backwards

The zero tolerance approach that treats drugs like a criminal law issue rather than a health issue is a failure. You have only to look at outcomes in countries where it's done differently to see that - Portugal is a very good example. But the UK is wedded to the 'war on drugs' ideology.

No, they won't. It's like anything else though really, people do what they want to do - and justify it.

Humans = selfish

No, there would not necessarily be more users. Also in most cases it isn't the actual drugs that cause health service costs (though alcohol is a different issue) - the cost comes from the associated crime, violence and poverty.

If drugs were legal, you wouldn't see the antisocial behaviour because people could just go out and buy them rather than have to associate with criminals to acquire them. Again, it's the illegality that fuels the antisocial behaviour.

And lastly, legalising drugs would mean completely taking away the stigma so that people who wanted to stop would be able to access support services. This is what happens in Portugal.

The problem is that all of the above requires a radical change of mindset and a lot of upfront funding to set up those services. People in Toryland would rather have tax cuts for themselves.

The evidence from places which have legalised or decriminalised some substances shows the opposite. The severest antisocial effects are already prevalent and primarily caused by the illegality of the substance, as a poster who works in the area pointed out: shoplifting, robbery, mugging driven by the need of Class A addicts to have money for their fix; dirty equipment discarded in public areas. Where e.g. heroin has been pharmaceutically licensed and harm reduction policy put in place, addicts don’t have to steal nor do they have to use dirty equipment to inject. And the reality is that there’s been no material uptick in the number of people using heroin. The reason I don’t take heroin, is not that I don’t know how to get any, and I imagine the same is true for you.

Legalisation also ultimately allows for harm reduction. With cannabis, for example, it allows for the legal production of edibles, oils and vapes, which are significantly less harmful to the user than smoking is. Legalising personal cultivation also largely removes the industry of large scale cannabis farms. If everyone can grow enough for themselves, why would they buy an unknown product from an unknown dealer?

legalising it will just make the situation worse.

No criminal slaver is going to pay wages or tax

No druggie is going to pay the full cost of their drugs, with wages and tax

all that will happen is the criminal slavers will still be producing with child slaves, guns and violence, but under the disguise of a "legal" operation

Do you honestly think that's all he was a cannabis dealer? He was a hired hitman and the police are looking into 3 other murders he is allegedly responsible for.

I don’t think the U.K. are ‘backwards’ on this. I wouldn’t vote for legalisation and I’m not that.

Do people hold up the Netherlands as a good example for drugs because more are legalised?

They are one of the main producers in the EU of MDMA and amphetamine and not many other countries are competing for that lead. There’s going to be a fair amount of OC around that production.

I don't want drugs legalised thanks, I've seen the mental and physical damage they cause many people in themselves without even touching upon the human cost of the supply chain.

Oh stop it now, it's been pointed out on here plenty of times that so much of the stuff we buy and use is unethical and people have been harmed or killed so we can have what we want. Stop being hypocrites.

Everyone makes excuses when something they enjoy or do comes under scrutiny.

Take consumer electronics for example, it's well known that manufacturers (including some of the biggest players in the world) make use of raw materials that have been mined/extracted by men, women and children working appalling conditions and who suffer terribly.

Which do you think causes more deaths of children a year, UK cannabis production or DRC cobalt mines? Yet I bet you've never once asked Curry's, Apple, Samsung, Argos, etc, about the origins of their products or the raw materials that they use.

A cannabis/cocaine/heroin user doesn't think about the impact of their drug purchase on others anymore than you do about your phone/washing machine/car purchase. And they are no more responsible for the injustices or atrocities committed in drug dealing than you in the injustices or atrocities committed in any supply chain.

I don't really get this point, are you suggesting because things like mobile phones have a human cost and exploitation attached people should just think fuck it and buy stuff with zero consideration? Surely people doing what they can is better than that even if it means they're not perfect. Drugs are abhorrent, from growing or exporting and smuggling through to people making a tonne of money from sending their usually vulnerable 'foot soldiers' to do their dirty work. If they were legalised it wouldn't change things, there'd always be a black market to undercut anything else. The physical toll on people is often underestimated as well, having worked in MH a lot of people are fucked up by weed.

Sorry, I can't take seriously anyone who makes ridiculous assumptions about total strangers based on an internet post. I wonder why you felt the need though, from behind your screen.

Then cannabis should be legal, regulated and taxed. It would be better quality. Cannabis kills far far fewer people than alcohol

Oh dear, some people don't like to hear that just because they don't use cannabis, doesn't mean they are squeaky clean!

I have questions about legalisation- one would it work unless every country did it? Ie. Currently the Netherlands is a kind of cartel outpost which isn’t great.

two - what would happen in countries which are effectively narcostates? As in would cartels have to be integrated into govt? I can’t imagine all the cartel leaders in eg. Mexico are going to hand over the trade.

ive never seen much written about this so would be interesting if anyone has read anything that mentions it.

People (generally) aren't stealing to get cannabis, they are stealing to fund addictions to crack and to heroin. Often also alcohol.

"Legalising" doesn't mean all drugs would go on an open market, some low harms one's could be treated that way, but others could be distributed like a medical product and although this wouldn't completely kill a black market it would gut it pretty badly.

Hoping people at this stage will look about them and go "oh I'd better not smoke" when that's never ever happened anywhere and will not ever happen with the numbers required to make a difference to the trade, it just won't, is pointless. If you express those opinions then you don't do drugs, you likely never really have done drugs, you clearly don't understand that the reason that many people do is considerably more complicated than simply an inconsiderate approach to the rules of society. Switching focus back to blaming users is one of the most retrograde steps we've taken in understanding drugs use imo.

The government do actually have the power to mortally wound the drug trade, and they've commissioned reports that tell them it's the best thing to do based on harm studies, but they run away from it. Many other parts of the world have woken up to this and Britain will wake up to it at some point, it seems a shame to hang about too long.

Yes, the criminals will still exist, yes there will be other crime that they can carry on doing, but unless there's another untapped criminal market that has the same demand and reward then obviously there will be much less money to sustain those criminals. That seems incredibly obvious.

am not making any assumptions about you,

you have clearly stated you dont care about child slaves in the cannabis industry because there are child slaves in other industries too.

YOU

you said that

you dont care about child slaves. you are colluding with child slavery

YOu have stated that unequivocally

it is a VEREY safe bet that you dont publicly support the old north atlantic slave traders

There could be a "fair trade" label, ethically sourced cocaine, heroin and cannabis, available at your local health food store.