I’m fairly certain that decriminalisation is a net positive – it has to be better than the War on Drugs. But I’m a little uneasy about the ever-expanding choice of ways in which to cook your brain. A freely available kaleidoscope of drugs seems to be a common theme in dystopian sci-fi, with (I believe) good reason.
Actually a diminishing of choice. Amphetamine mixed with bath salts is all that’s available, and it has a strong attrition rate. People don’t want to cook their brains at such high speed.
Probably because they read books by writers who lived that life for a bit, and wrote about it in a way that seemed edgy or glamorous. And maybe it was.
I think most of them are older, or have inherited older views.
But we’re in a world now, where glamour is in short supply. Even ‘Breaking Bad’ seems impossibly sunny and optimistic from this remove.
People don’t want flowery, imagination-enhancing, fluffy drugs. They don’t even want to party.
They want a sledgehammer to take them out of an ever-present awfulness.
Have a look at Portland, Oregon if you want to see the results of decriminalization.
ChilblainEdwardOlmos
2 months ago
So, The Wire season 1.
Dumetrius
2 months ago
Think what’s happening here is a cascade of users and dealers from things which are no longer attractive or possible.
And the zeroing in on a bleaker hard core of users who take stuff for different reasons
One would be the amphetamines market which has changed a lot because of substitution and mixing of much of the product with bath salts. I assume this is down to police & international crime agencies making the precursors harder to obtain.
These aren’t party drugs or glamour drugs anymore. That market has gone and so has its product.
The bath salts send people mad. Those still in that market, who can afford it, have retreated to coke.
Those who can’t afford coke, have retreated to the traditional staple of very strong cannabis strains.
At this lower end of the market, it’s people who want to take something that just bashes them on the head, anaesthetising them in order that they can deal with a life they hate.
Douglas Redmayne
2 months ago
Prohibition of soft and hard drugs in lieu of kegalisation, taxation and regulation makes far better economic sense. The only opponents of this who remain are increasingly weird old cranks who die in large numbers every day.
Sophy T
2 months ago
There isn’t much of a drug problem in Singapore & Japan but I don’t think their drug laws would be very popular in the West.
The more fundamental theory – ie tackling the problem at its source – involves the death penalty for users.
The proof of this is possession (which obviously would catch sellers too – no point in proving that you only intended to supply, not to use.)
Tho targeting users sounds more cruel, the reasoning is that you don’t have to do it very much.
When people are given a good excuse not to use drugs, they don’t buy them.
And once the market vanishes – no buyers, so no market – the sellers and suppliers stop, since there’s no money to be made.
This was the Chairman Mao strategy – announce that you are going to shoot the opium smokers, execute a few and all the others will soon find a reason to stop.
“Eddy Sid, a local spokesperson for France’s top police union, Unité SGP Police-Force Ouvrière.”
J S
2 months ago
Decriminalization has been a disaster in the USA, as a visit to any big city will show. Crime, filth, death, despair, with no recourse now except social worker platitudes. Pick this over the “drug war?” I don’t know.
I’m fairly certain that decriminalisation is a net positive – it has to be better than the War on Drugs. But I’m a little uneasy about the ever-expanding choice of ways in which to cook your brain. A freely available kaleidoscope of drugs seems to be a common theme in dystopian sci-fi, with (I believe) good reason.
Actually a diminishing of choice. Amphetamine mixed with bath salts is all that’s available, and it has a strong attrition rate. People don’t want to cook their brains at such high speed.
The people on my estate who smoke Cannabis look at 25 like gaunt, grey, semi-functioning blobs.
The older people who have spent their lives doing allsorts look like the walking dead.
So why do people still claim that there are any plusses to that famous oxymoron ‘drug culture’?
If this is the future, God help us.
Probably because they read books by writers who lived that life for a bit, and wrote about it in a way that seemed edgy or glamorous. And maybe it was.
I think most of them are older, or have inherited older views.
But we’re in a world now, where glamour is in short supply. Even ‘Breaking Bad’ seems impossibly sunny and optimistic from this remove.
People don’t want flowery, imagination-enhancing, fluffy drugs. They don’t even want to party.
They want a sledgehammer to take them out of an ever-present awfulness.
Were drugs to be decriminalised, would anyone be able to walk into a shop – maybe similar to an off-licence – and buy what they want?
Have a look at Portland, Oregon if you want to see the results of decriminalization.
So, The Wire season 1.
Think what’s happening here is a cascade of users and dealers from things which are no longer attractive or possible.
And the zeroing in on a bleaker hard core of users who take stuff for different reasons
One would be the amphetamines market which has changed a lot because of substitution and mixing of much of the product with bath salts. I assume this is down to police & international crime agencies making the precursors harder to obtain.
These aren’t party drugs or glamour drugs anymore. That market has gone and so has its product.
The bath salts send people mad. Those still in that market, who can afford it, have retreated to coke.
Those who can’t afford coke, have retreated to the traditional staple of very strong cannabis strains.
At this lower end of the market, it’s people who want to take something that just bashes them on the head, anaesthetising them in order that they can deal with a life they hate.
Prohibition of soft and hard drugs in lieu of kegalisation, taxation and regulation makes far better economic sense. The only opponents of this who remain are increasingly weird old cranks who die in large numbers every day.
There isn’t much of a drug problem in Singapore & Japan but I don’t think their drug laws would be very popular in the West.
Exactly. Introduce the death penalty for drug dealers and the problem will go away. We are too weak.
The more fundamental theory – ie tackling the problem at its source – involves the death penalty for users.
The proof of this is possession (which obviously would catch sellers too – no point in proving that you only intended to supply, not to use.)
Tho targeting users sounds more cruel, the reasoning is that you don’t have to do it very much.
When people are given a good excuse not to use drugs, they don’t buy them.
And once the market vanishes – no buyers, so no market – the sellers and suppliers stop, since there’s no money to be made.
This was the Chairman Mao strategy – announce that you are going to shoot the opium smokers, execute a few and all the others will soon find a reason to stop.
❝When I ask Sid❞ Who is Sid?
“Eddy Sid, a local spokesperson for France’s top police union, Unité SGP Police-Force Ouvrière.”
Decriminalization has been a disaster in the USA, as a visit to any big city will show. Crime, filth, death, despair, with no recourse now except social worker platitudes. Pick this over the “drug war?” I don’t know.
I think the Dutch have had second thoughts about the wisdom.of decriminalisation, too.