The Drug Laws Need Rethinking
By Dark PolitricksWith the recent changing of Marijuana back up to a class B drug in the UK and the sacking of its head drug advisor due to public comments about smoking and drinking being more harmful than most drugs its worth looking at our crazy drug laws and wondering whether any governing party will ever have the balls to actually try and tackle the problem properly.
The fact is that our stupid drug laws in the west have not led to less drug users but more users, more deaths, more addicts and more money for the people at the top who control the trade. I am of the belief that all drugs should be made legal so that they can be controlled correctly and safely.
Certain drugs like Marijuana should be allowed to be home grown for personal consumption anyway and the more problematic drugs like heroin and crack cocaine should be regulated for the good of society as the current legal framework definitely does not lead to anything good for society just lots of people in jail, high crime rates, millions of addicts and deaths due to the lack of quality assurance that comes with an underground illegal trade.
The biggest problem is with Heroin, a drug that if taken in its pure form addicts can lead normal healthy lives but because of its illegality means that people die regularly.
Not only is overdose an issue because strength cannot be gauged by sight alone and there is no helpful packaging to let the user know how strong it is but because of impurities added to smack, the latest being Anthrax spores from a type of mud mixed in because it looks like the powder, addicts regularly die of other causes.
If the drug was controlled like it was before the 1973 misuse of drugs Act came into action in the UK then addicts could receive their dose from a doctor and lead normal lives with the offer of help to come off it when they are ready.
With a clean, free or cheap supply of the drug then the black market trade would surely decrease if not stop due to their being no money to be made. The only potential customers would be the "new" addict in waiting, the school kid or experimenter as anyone already hooked would be receiving their dose through regulated channels. Why risk banging up brick dust or Anthrax spores when you can get a pure shot from your GP?
As for the crime rate, insurance premiums, prison population size and taxes they would all come down.
Heroin and Crack addicts rob to pay the hugely inflated prices for their dose. An acre of poppy field can be bought in India or Afghanistan for less than a hundred pounds but a gram in the UK can cost up to £50. Therefore the markup on this product is immense and considering that a purity percentage of 30-50% is considered pretty good there is ample scope for dealers to cut the product to bump up their profits.
Most burglaries, robberies and theft is committed by addicts looking for money to pay for their fix.
Prisons are full of addicts and we all know that there is not enough rehabilitation occurring inside due to the high cost of actually trying to solve a problem as complex as an individuals life. However this is very short sighted as the cost of trying to wean an addict off drugs and help them rebuild their life is far outweighed by the costs of policing, insurance claims, court costs and the cost of holding someone in prison and feeding them.
Someone convicted of a theft related crime related to their drug addiction should not be given a criminal record and sent to prison but instead should be sent to special new detox centers which should be built on mass in this country.
Prisons should be kept for those convicted of violent offences or bankers who fraudulently steal billions but an addict who is forced to steal for their habit should be treated not punished. These centers would be locked down unlike open prisons and after detoxing there should be rehabilitation and life training, and before leaving the user should be provided with a Naltrexone implant to give them a clean next 6 months.
The cost of such an approach maybe high in the short term but in the long term it would pay huge dividends. The problem is that no governing party in the UK has ever been able to promote such an approach even if they had wanted to due to the moral outrage that such a policy would erupt inside Daily Mail readers who would think that this was "being soft on drugs".
There were signs that our government was starting to see the light when it moved Cannabis to class C down from Class B.
However with the recent re-classification of it back up to a Class B most people do not realise that this shift has actually meant that the punishments for Class C drugs are now more harsh than ever.
This is because when Cannabis was moved down a class the penalties for all Class C drugs which included non-prescribed Benzo's, Barbs and so on went up. So what we are actually left with is actually a more harsher drugs regime than if the Labour government had just kept Weed as Class B in the first place.
Unfortunately the government is very two faced when it comes to drugs as one side says "Just say no" whilst the other darker side actively supports drug smuggling and uses the money for "off the book" operations that they don't want to have to pass through Government for approval. Governments have always been involved in drugs even before they were made illegal and the UK even went to war with China over their refusal to allow us to sell Opium to their citizens.
The CIA has been a well known drug smuggler since the days of their predecessor the OSS, Air America during Vietnam, the original Russian Afghanistan war, The Iran Contra scandal and now the new rise in Afghan poppy production that Blair and co promised to eradicate. I
n fact the biggest drug dealer of the 80's, a Burmese war lord named Khun Sa claimed that the CIA were one of his best customers!
by 1986 he was refining 80 percent of the opium harvest in the Golden Triangle. The king of opium trade, Khun Sa had risen to become the world's largest single heroin trafficker by controlling 60 percent of the world's illicit opium supply.
In 1986, Bo Gritz went to Burma with White House approval to meet with Khun Sa who supposedly had information on American MIAs. Khun Sa said that he wanted to end the opium and heroin traffic in his territory and to expose American officials involved in the drug smuggling.
Gritz claimed that he took this message to the United States government and was told by Tom Harvey of the National Security Council that "there is no interest here" in the Khun Sa overture. Gritz had in his possession 40 hours of video tape of Khun Sa who "charged American officials, both past and present, with being the chief buyers of drugs produced in that part of the world." He also claimed that he wanted to stop drug trafficking, but that the United States government would not let him.
Khun Sa said that the CIA were some of his best customers. He offered support to the DEA to alert them of drug movements, but this was rejected at the headquarters level.
For more information about the CIA's involvement in drug smuggling please read the following articles:
Also more recently we have been at war in Afghanistan for almost 20 years and it is intrinsically linked to the rise in Opium production which the Taliban banned in 2001. Also the current Western puppet rulers of the country, President Karzai and his brothers are supposedly the biggest Opium dealers in the country that supplies over 92% of all Heroin/Opium used in the world today.
With all these powerful vested interests that are involved in the continuing black economy of illegal drug smuggling it is no wonder that there is no serious move by any western government to come up with a sensible drug policy.
Just by being illegal, the price of drugs is pushed up beyond any other commodity and the drug industry is worth billions of pounds a year which is a pretty powerful incentive by those making money out of it to carry on with the status quo.
People worry about drugs being legal thinking that this would drive demand up but many studies have shown this not to be the case and in fact there is a certain kudos involved with the substance being illegal which actually stimulates demand especially in young people.
We all know the types of children that if you told them they couldn't do something they would go out and do the opposite purely because its a "forbidden fruit". We already have a huge demand for illicit drugs in this country as well as the rest of the world so any increase would surely be negligible and by legalising or even de-crimilising and regulating the market we would save billions of pounds and hundreds of lives a year.
Maybe the New Year will bring along a politician with the balls to create a proper public debate about this matter and not be scared by the "moral majority" on the right which like to shout loud about other peoples indiscretions whilst keeping their own kinky fetishes, perversions and misdeeds locked behind closed doors.
If the good of the country matters anything to anybody then the hypocrisy must stop.
Talking tough on drugs and sacking advisers who give rational scientific advice whilst allowing the sale of cigarettes and alcohol to continue even though they kill hundreds of thousands a year makes no sense.
If the government wants to pay off our national debt quickly then maybe the legalisation of drugs could be the answer. Just imagine all that tax revenue that would be brought in by the millions who smoke weed every day and pop E's each weekend.
I have never understood the hypocrisy that says that if a doctor prescribes me a Valium for anxiety its perfectly fine but if I take an non-prescribed one for pleasure or to help with a plane flight its considered morally wrong.
This dubious moral line is one which is illogical and should be scrapped straight away. Millions of people every day and night in clubs, pubs and homes across the country are sticking two fingers up and saying "Fuck You" to the stupid drug laws. We just need someone to listen.
The politicians need to realise that any war on drugs just like any war on terror cannot be won as its an illogical concept in the first place.
There will always be drugs and always people willing to take them.
Maybe if the country wasn't such a shit and depressing place where people could see a future that they could control and take a part in forming then taking drugs wouldn't be such a good escape. So maybe if the government wants to continue with its current policy and avoid legalisation like the plague it should concentrate on making the country a better place to live.
Just a thought for the New Year!