To believe that all drugs should be legalised?

[TheWaryOchreRobin]

If alcohol and cigarettes are legal, why not regulate and tax everything else instead of letting criminal gangs profit?

Yeah but why would someone who isn't addicted to heroin BE PRESCRIBED heroin?
The NHS isn't just going to hand devastatingly life ruining drugs to people? Lol you clearly don't have a clue.

Having thought about it lots

the costs of dealing with drugrelated crime would go up I mean crime committed by people off their face

more addicts

more people committing crime to buy legal drugs unless op thinks they should be free

a government body to oversee it the way any thing you consume is regulated

and the biggest thing is people falling out of work. Now we don't do anything about weed that has increased a lot

in my school we used to say the only thing stopping us was getting a criminal record

I didn't know about Portland but I will look it up
souNds like what I see as the problems have happened there

just walk into a shop and buy heroin?
society would not be better

I thought op meant buy drugs in legal shops

It would be far less likely to be contaminated with fentanyl for one thing.

Oh how lovely I remember constantly having my hand stuck in a bag of pure MDMA in the early 90’s never felt better and I’m still alive and thriving.

As did I,
However people decided to jump on my first post to the OP banging on about people that aren't even addicts being PRESCRIBED it.
But why would it be prescribed if someone wasnt an addict?
Now if shops were selling it, then yes people could just walk in and buy it however people were just jumping on me assuming things I wasn't even saying

I mean the way on drugs isn’t working. I personally wouldn’t buy heroin even if it was legal. I assume the risks etc would be publicised.

In fact I don’t think legalising drugs would make
me more likely to take any of them so if it reduces harm, stops the horrendous supply chain and exploitation and can actually be taxed and help addicts it seems like a good idea to me.

One of the problems with the argument that alcohol ( which is legal) causes more problems than illegal drugs so all drugs should be legal is that alcohol causes more problems because it is more widely consumed and the main reason for that is because it is legal and has a recreational culture around it. Drugs being illegal is a deterrent to a lot of people using them recreationally. It’s hard to know how much consumption would increase if they were legal- it’s almost certain use will increase- it’s just a question of by how much. I do see the theoretical arguments for legalisation but I’m not sure the real life case studies give a lot of reason for optimism.

@MurielSpriggs

It would be far less likely to be contaminated with fentanyl for one thing.

Ok, how would non contaminated with fentanyl heroin be safe if legalised?

If you visited Vancouver before legalising cannabis and since you would not share this opinion. The city is full of stoned people! The place stinks too, it was shocking the difference.

While I agree the war on drugs isn't working and we as a couple try export more medicinal weed than most people realise, I can't think of anything worse than more chavs on coke on the roads. So for that reason it's a hard no from me.

@whereaw

I can tell you have never worked with drug users. I have and alcoholics, those on hard drugs are in a far worse way health wise than alcoholics

*country (I don't export drugs, obviously!)😅

No.

Plenty of people who would try drugs don't currently because illegality is a big deterrent. They're worried its not safe, they're worried about getting caught.

Make it safe and allowed and whats to stop people? Nothing.

People off their faces aren't useful. They do a crap job of looking after themselves, their kids and their property. A lot if controlled substances are addictive or lead to dependency. If you take more and more drugs you get where you aren't safe to drive, operate machinery and often can't do your job at all etc. People then turn to other antisocial behaviour like theft or prostitution to get money for more drugs. Its why so many people with drug problems end up homeless, or lose children they neglect, or wind up in jail. Its a massive cause of family and community breakdown.

As a society we don't need to have a load of useless druggies to support.

I know loads. The effects of alcohol misuse disorder and the withdrawal from alcohol have generally been far more catastrophic than those from heroin.

I'd go the other way and start actually enforcing the law, with extremely harsh punishments, lets see how many would take up drugs if a 10 year sentence was the minimum?
Harsh deterrent sentences actually, over a short period of time, lead to less people in prison

Is society better now than say it was in the 50s or 60s?

So many people smoking skunk, suffering from MH issues, not working.

The amount of class A drugs available in my small village is quite staggering.

Legalising would just lead to even more smack and dope heads, which anyone who is still working, ends up paying for.

Alcohol is legal? ok its harmful, so the logic that we should have even more harmful drugs in circulation is bonkers.

In the interests of adding a bit a quantitative evidence into the discussion, here's a report on some research from 2010 by a very highly qualified team led by David Nutt of Imperial College evaluating the harm done to the user and to society of a range of drugs including alcohol and tobacco.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/94042/alcohol-most-harmful-drug-based-multicriteria/

And where does the cocaine and heroin come from? Are we thinking that the places that produce these drugs will implement workers rights and health and safety measures? Or is that an irrelevance?

So nothing dubious included with it. Has to follow the same strict guidelines applied to food manufacturing.

But that has the potential to make legal heroin (cocaine, etc) quite expensive. Which would mean that there was the potential for a black market to supply a cheaper version, especially since habitual drug users are often not wealthy. So you would need laws to make that black market illegal, at which point you have yourself a new war on drugs. Only this time, instead of ostensibly "protecting our children™" you are "protecting the government's revenue stream", which I suspect is likely to enjoy less popular support than the current war on drugs.

Also, there are dozens of illegal drugs out there. Should the state monopoly manufacture all of them, in the way that the French state tobacco monopoly makes all the varieties of Marlboro?

For what it's worth I'm fairly neutral on legalising/decriminalising drugs. I suspect the overall amount of harm, to society as a whole and to the users and their families, would be roughly the same either way.

Alcohol is an insidious drug, socially acceptable at every level of society and toxic with no beneficial effects

It is deadly in acute and cumulative dosages and is the reason many people die, break up and become violent

There are plenty of long term users of heroin. It's a very bad idea and their lives are overshadowed by the drug in many ways. But it's contamination and other problems associated with unreliable supply and administration of illegal street drugs which is likely to kill them, not heroin.

@MurielSpriggs

There are plenty of long term users of heroin. It's a very bad idea and their lives are overshadowed by the drug in many ways. But it's contamination and other problems associated with unreliable supply and administration of illegal street drugs which is likely to kill them, not heroin.

Heroin doesn't kill people?

Heroin kills many people.

I remember going to Vegas and everywhere stunk of weed. I really hope it doesn't get legalised here.