Its even more interesting when you look at the amount of deaths per year caused by alcohol and then something like Ganja which causes no deaths per year. It makes you wonder why alcohol is legal and Ganja aint but to be honest a saturday at the football is better than any drug anyway its all a mugs game really.
The sacking of Prof Nutt is an absolute disgrace. His paper was published in a peer reviewed medical journal, the lancet, and shot down by bigoted and out of date ideas that form british law. I really hope this blows up into a big issue because it shows the underlying absolute contempt that politicians have for science and scientists.
I always believed that one major hurdle to legalising cannabis was the US and the hard line its government took.
Appears that might be changing:
"You know things are shifting in America when Fortune magazine, the bible for business journalism, runs a cover story titled “Is pot already legal?”. You also know it when Barack Obama’s Department of Justice publishes a long-expected memo signalling that the federal government will no longer raid medical marijuana dispensaries if they are legal under state law. That happened formally this month.
It was not, moreover, a symbolic gesture. Marijuana for medical reasons — to tackle chemotherapy-induced nausea or Aids-related wasting or glaucoma, among other conditions — is now legal in 13 states, including the biggest, California. Next year, 13 more states are planning referendums or new laws following suit. Last week a California legislative committee held the first hearings not simply on whether medical marijuana should remain legal, but on whether all marijuana should be decriminalised, full stop. The incentive? The vast amounts of money the bankrupt state could raise by taxing cannabis."
Cannabis is more or less legal in some states now. California is full of marijuana clinics where - as long as you can get a private doctor to give you a "prescription" for stress or aches etc. you can go to a licensed depository to collect your gear. Now I'd not want to impune the doctors in these places, but they run businesses that make their money out of prescribing one substance and don't knock back many patients/customers who pay the fee.
It not being widely used here, for (real) medical use, is idiotic and a disgrace. Even the most ignorant, hard line anti-drugs zealot that's been mainlining on the Daily Mail can't prefer cancer sufferers to take more expensive and more harmful painkillers purely because some big pharma company is making cash out of them?
Possible exceptions would be crack (which would presumably be less popular with cheaply available and safe coke), meth (same kind of thing), and heroin (which should be legalised and de-stigmatised to help addicts)
Adults should be capable of making this decision for themselves, like they do every day with tobacco, alcohol and other drugs, and with proper use, very few of them are all that dangerous.
At a minimum, cannabis and ecstasy should be legalised straightaway. They're more dangerous illegal than legal (but still not very dangerous)
I couldnt be arsed to read every comment from start to finish, so sorry if i repeat anyones arguments, but i wanted to have my little say on the matter, as the whole cannabis debate is something i have strong opinions on. To be honest, i think its awful that the governments chief drug advisor was sacked just for telling it as it is, that drugs like cannabis, lsd, shrooms etc are nowhere near as bad as alcohol. We have awful records of deaths, illness and expenditure as a result of alcohol abuse, and due to cigarettes, but they wont ever change the legality cos theyre making a mint on it. Unfortunately in the big picture were still paying the costs through the associated NHS costs and crime. The dutch have the best records in Europe for drug related deaths, and i think they got it right. Their system of government controlling the production and supply of cannabis not only makes them a few bob but also keeps it clean and in the right hands. You go out on a friday or saturday night in the UK, town centres are full of drunk idiots behaving like animals and anticosial behaviour is seen everywhere (i myself have done many innapropriate and regretful things under the influence of alcohol), but when was the last time you saw two guys have a spliff and then vandalise stuff and have a fight? Exactly, theyre at home on the comfy couch, probably laughing at the TV and not even thinking about leaving the house, except maybe for an occasional trip to the local shop. Then, in the morning, the drunks are ill and hungover, which leads to costs due to either taking a sick day or underperforming at work, but the stoners are feeling fine and ready for the day ahead. As for the psychological effects, there is no concrete proof of any negative effects, but then again too much of anything is bad for you, and this is therefore a personal choice. If you drink excessive amounts of water it can kill you. I cant say that the dutch are spot on with their drug policies, for example i thought they handled the whole shroom debate awfully, choosing to make them illegal after a tourist threw herself from her hotel balcony after taking shrooms. What seemed to be overlooked was the extreme amount of alchohol also in her system, which leads to the thoughts that (1) why wasnt alcohol made illegal too? Especially as you can die from drinking too much by itself but you cant die of an overdose of shrooms (its physically impossible to eat enough to cause an overdose) and (2) if they were stupid enough to get trashed and then decide to munch down some shrooms then to be honest we dont need them in the gene pool, why punish everyone else for one persons stupidity. Rant over.
At face value It always strikes me as bizarre that we prevent human beings from growing and harvesting, what in the case of most "hard" drugs are derivatives of natural substances.
I've no doubt whatsoever that heroin, cocaine and the like are dangerous. How much more dangerous are they because the distribution is left in the hands of scumbags? I seriously wonder if legalising them, saving money on enforcement and spending it on rehab would not be a better course.
I understand the argument about the US and their attitude plus other countries but frankly it seems to me that all the current policies around the globe do is put sticking plasters over areas where radical surgery is required.
My final point is that since opiates and cannabis and other drugs have been banned, they haven't stopped their use or the terrible social harm the cause to families, neighbours, to the users themselves and the organised crime that is associated with them. So whats been tried up to now ain't working so try legalising them instead.
What was interesting on the radio today was that despite the two main parties hostility to any notion of softening drug policies, one of the country's main pollsters said that the public at large are not against legalising cannabis, and ecstasy.
The whole Prof Nutt thing goes to show the contempt the government have for the people of GB. Didn't Stalin, Hitler etc get rid of anyone who didn't agree with them? Democracy - my arse...
Comments
Appears that might be changing:
"You know things are shifting in America when Fortune magazine, the bible for business journalism, runs a cover story titled “Is pot already legal?”. You also know it when Barack Obama’s Department of Justice publishes a long-expected memo signalling that the federal government will no longer raid medical marijuana dispensaries if they are legal under state law. That happened formally this month.
It was not, moreover, a symbolic gesture. Marijuana for medical reasons — to tackle chemotherapy-induced nausea or Aids-related wasting or glaucoma, among other conditions — is now legal in 13 states, including the biggest, California. Next year, 13 more states are planning referendums or new laws following suit. Last week a California legislative committee held the first hearings not simply on whether medical marijuana should remain legal, but on whether all marijuana should be decriminalised, full stop. The incentive? The vast amounts of money the bankrupt state could raise by taxing cannabis."
Rest of article
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6897958.ece
It not being widely used here, for (real) medical use, is idiotic and a disgrace. Even the most ignorant, hard line anti-drugs zealot that's been mainlining on the Daily Mail can't prefer cancer sufferers to take more expensive and more harmful painkillers purely because some big pharma company is making cash out of them?
Tax them or don't tax them, I don't really mind.
Possible exceptions would be crack (which would presumably be less popular with cheaply available and safe coke), meth (same kind of thing), and heroin (which should be legalised and de-stigmatised to help addicts)
Adults should be capable of making this decision for themselves, like they do every day with tobacco, alcohol and other drugs, and with proper use, very few of them are all that dangerous.
At a minimum, cannabis and ecstasy should be legalised straightaway. They're more dangerous illegal than legal (but still not very dangerous)
I've no doubt whatsoever that heroin, cocaine and the like are dangerous. How much more dangerous are they because the distribution is left in the hands of scumbags? I seriously wonder if legalising them, saving money on enforcement and spending it on rehab would not be a better course.
I understand the argument about the US and their attitude plus other countries but frankly it seems to me that all the current policies around the globe do is put sticking plasters over areas where radical surgery is required.
My final point is that since opiates and cannabis and other drugs have been banned, they haven't stopped their use or the terrible social harm the cause to families, neighbours, to the users themselves and the organised crime that is associated with them. So whats been tried up to now ain't working so try legalising them instead.
What was interesting on the radio today was that despite the two main parties hostility to any notion of softening drug policies, one of the country's main pollsters said that the public at large are not against legalising cannabis, and ecstasy.