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 .

Yes, very depressing. It’s not a lifestyle that I have ever participated in and I’ve done my best to make sure my Dc stay away from it. DH knows I wouldn’t tolerate it - I wouldn’t go to parties where I knew it was a thing.

what is it with you? Calling people "hypocrites" for caring about child slavery?

If you care about child slavery you are calling yourself a "hypocrite"

If you dont care about chid slavery, what does that make you, exactly?

You are completely unable to answer

come on @AllOfThemWitches - tell us

do you personally care about the thousands of child slaves growing cannabis in the UK, or dont you?

Drugs should be decriminalised. The current situation is simply a licence for black market criminals to prosper. Utter madness.

I know right. It's weird.

People on here will tie themselves in fancy bows with their whatabouts..... To defend their right to get stoned whenever they want.

Drugs are illegal because they're really really bad for you. I'm that generation which was scarred by Leah Betts and I've never gone near them. The growing evidence of mental health problems caused/exacerbated by cannabis and skunk seems pretty conclusive.

People on drugs are also really really awful and boring.

And drugs fund crime and lead directly to murders, trafficking and more.

I cannot be friends with people who take illegal drugs.

I care about child slaves in general. I wonder, what are you personally doing to solve the issue? I'm sure latching onto internet strangers makes you feel like a good person but it's not very useful, is it?

completely unable to answer, I see

If cannabis were to be legalised and taxed just the same as alcohol is, just the same as it is in other countries, the crime rate for drug related incidents would fall through the roof.

Jesus wept. You have issues. Like I said, impossible to engage with, enjoy your ivory tower.

sorry, cross posts, I see you have answered. I do a huge amount for child slaves. I also make sure people know the true cost of the "harmless" uk cannabis trade, as there are people who are totally unaware of the thousands of child slaves trafficked into the country and forced into slave labour. Which means getting angry on the internet.

And I dont do it too often, because Mumsnet is somewhere I go for fun, and this topic is deeply distressing, so I dont enjoy it at all

but people need to know what is happening all around them

@TodayInahurry you really need to do some deeper reading around addiction. Yes, people take drugs because they like them. That includes things we think of as acceptable, like alcohol, caffeine and nicotine. Even sugar.

Addiction goes beyond that, though. If you look into the literature on addiction, you'll find that the vast, vast majority of people who become addicted, who are not able to stop and regulate, have major unresolved trauma in their lives. These people are not doing it 'because they like it'. They are self medicating.

Your instantly judgemental attitude is why the UK is where it is - prohibitionist, stuck, ineffective. We don't want to invest in providing the infrastructure for the legalisation of some drugs and the change to a treatment approach for others because it's too comfortable to just judge people as weak and selfish instead.

The evidence is there. Harm reduction works.

Of course all drugs should be legal.

Then they would be harmless, just like tobacco and alcohol.
What could possibly go wrong.

The drugs don't cause the psychosis or mh issues, they trigger an underlying predisposition that may otherwise not have been triggered. That is why many people can do them for fun. Trauma also triggers predisposition, hence why people react differently to similar experiences.

Of course you don't know in advance if you are one of the 1% who gets psychosis after cannabis so don't try it just in case!

Leah Betts didn’t die because she took ecstasy per se. She died because her friends mistakenly told her that when you taken ecstasy you need to drink a lot of water; and because when she started showing the symptoms of water toxicity from having consumed far too much water far too quickly, her friends delayed seeking help because they were scared they’d be arrested for taking an illegal drug.

MDMA as a drug is responsible for about ten deaths each year, virtually all of them associated with its illegality and misinformation around it. We know that the risks of taking MDMA and many drugs like it are hugely exacerbated by their illegality: they’re unregulated and adulterated. The risk is increased because many people don’t know you shouldn’t combine them with other substances or with alcohol. So what is practical is to decriminalise them, provide that information to people, and remove the fear of arrest, rather than put the fear of god into them and hope that by telling them it’s bad they’ll avoid it. Open education: you want to use MDMA, take it in pure form rather than a pill if possible. Buy a home testing kit so you have a good idea what’s in what you’re taking. Don’t take other drugs at the same time. Don’t double dose. Drink about a pint of water every 90 minutes, gradually. Tell somebody if you begin to feel unwell.

Or better yet, legalise them so they’re manufactured through legitimate sources.

I have no problem with people who don’t want to take drugs. We all have free choice here. What I do have a problem with is the peddling of misinformation about substances which leads people to take them unsafely because they can’t get hold of information or are too scared to seek medical attention if they start to feel unwell for fear of the law. I’ve no idea why anybody, regardless of whether they personally use a substance, would want to perpetuate the current system, which simply makes drugs more dangerous.

Addiction was massively downplayed by Purdue Pharma too

Not withdrawal systems but people just needed to increase / double their dose instead

Not just people using a highly addictive substance that ended up ruining lives but the wrong crowd ‘the junkies’ who would abuse anything

The pharma company got away with a huge amount and their arguments sound similar to pp on here

What's the difference though, I mean what you're saying is just your opinion anyway, but triggering issues that wouldn't otherwise be triggered is attributable to the drugs, no?

cannabis damages the brain development of ALL under 25s who use is.

drugs do cause massive mental health issues in many ways. It is not true to say it only happens if you are predisposed to it, any more than saying getting hurt if you are run over by a bus only happens if you are predisposed to it.

drugs destroy braincells, busses destroy bones, it is possible, but unlikely to suffer a collision but not be damaged in any way

nobody is scared to get medical attention for addiction or overdose, Nobody has medical attention withheld from them because they have done something illegal

They don’t, no. But I’m old enough and ugly to know this. Whereas many less experienced people don’t know or believe that (Leah Betts and her friends didn’t, her friends stated as much at the time) and are scared that they’ll get into trouble or, in the case of young people, have their parents informed.

nobody is scared to get medical attention for addiction or overdose, Nobody has medical attention withheld from them because they have done something illegal

The second part of this statement is true. But the fear of being arrested afterwards is real. In practice nobody is going to be arrested for taking an ecstasy tablet, but a lot of people don't know that.

I am seeing a lot of black and white thinking on this thread. The situation around drug use and addiction is not simple. There isn't a perfect solution. But there are so many ways in which the situation in the UK could be made much better, and the legalisation of some drugs would be part of that. Doing that doesn't inevitably lead to an opiod crisis like the one that exists in the US - let's not forget the US is mostly still prohibitionist in its approach, and that pharmaceutical companies over there have ridiculous amounts of power. The US healthcare system is part of the problem, we do not have to replicate that. Again, look at countries which do it better and have better outcomes than we do.

And as if by magic yesterday there was a shooting on my patch .

When firearms officers went to the last known address of one suspect - house is under renovation. Guys working on it said it belonged to a drug dealer .

Drugs dealers = gangs = guns . I am not pro drugs and have never used any - but is it not time to take a serious evidence based review on what's safer for people now ?

And it was a family home where the gun was fired . Someone just pissed off the wrong person who had access to guns and off they went to show what a big Willy they have and fired shots into the house .

Oh and that meant it took up an entire shift of police officers and then into the next shift

So when great aunt fanny gets burgled and there's no police to go - this is one reason why .

Very time consuming , lots and of scenes , lots of police tied up sitting scenes , sitting the idiots who got arrested , maki g door to door enquiries, gathering evidence , writing paperwork.