Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Wayne Robert Smith on October 20, 2011 at 10:00am

 

Legalise cannabis, says drug expert

 

 CANNABIS is easier to buy than a pizza, says a drug expert

 

Dr Alex Wodak, the director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital, says cannabis will soon be Australia's smoke of choice.

 "In a few years time, we'll have more Australians smoking cannabis than we have smoking tobacco and by default that market is largely taken over by criminals," Dr Wodak told AAP.

 

"Having a black market of that size is not good for anybody and inevitably big black markets can only survive if there's significant police corruption."

 

He heads the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation.

 "At the moment, we have no control over cannabis at all because the trade is run by criminals," he said from Lismore.

 

"By taxing and regulating it, we would start to have some influence over the way people use cannabis. Overall, the aim should be to try and reduce the harm."

 

Cannabis prohibition was expensive and ineffective, Dr Wodak said, with surveys showing up to 2.5 million Australians will smoke cannabis in 2010.

 

"It's easier for most Australians to purchase cannabis than to buy a pizza - it's a readily available substance," he said.

 

Permalink Reply by Rob Moore on October 20, 2011 at 7:29pm

Yeah but a pizza costs as little as $5 on a Tuesday.

 

Beats me where these deadheads can find $300 an oz??? ( how would I know).

If this post is gone tomorrow -don't anyone be surprised! 

Permalink Reply by Ruth Bonnett on October 21, 2011 at 4:57am

I think that this issue should be aired publicly; I do not favour legalising drugs personally but I have not had much experience dealing with the societal impact of drug use.  I am sure there are families who can tell more stories of the impacts of drug use: young parents who have difficulty looking after their kids, young lives wrecked, petty crime, and on it goes.  And I am sure that police and emergency services workers can contribute to the debate.

Permalink Reply by Wayne Robert Smith on October 21, 2011 at 10:56am

Prohibition has never worked. This industry would never exist if a sizable chunk of the population wasn't demanding recreational drugs and it is not up to politicians to decide how others should live. Nobody died last year from smoking pot. Thousands died from alcohol and tobacco. So ethically you don't have a leg to stand on. Especially since government rakes in exhorbitant tax revenue on both those toxic substances. Yeah those $5 tuesday pizzas rock.

"Beats me where these deadheads can find $300 an oz??? ( how would I know)."

Easy. They can get a quarter ounce for around $90 and that can go a long way if used with a water pipe instead of rolling it up in reefers. There isn't much for kids to do in todays world. Many are unemployed with little hope of finding payed work. So they buy a quarter, sell it off in gram bags to their mates for $25 each and smoke the profit. Its a bit like amway or herbalife. Sales are through friendship connections so its very hard for police to make a dent in the industry. Ofcourse there are so many smokers in Australia they are bound to catch a few. But it isn't just kids. People from all walks of life enjoy smoking pot. Some of them are a lot smarter than you or me so calling them deadheads is fallacious. Carl Sagan the guy who wrote accurate predictions of future technology and acted as an advisor for NASA smoked pot.

The US government has spent 70 years and countless millions of dollars trying to find something negative about cannabis usage to back up their immoral prohibition. Years back they claimed that it caused brain damage and based this upon tests with rhesus monkeys. After many years of requests NORML was finally able to get details of the test and showed it to leading scientists who then laughed at it. The monkeys had been force fed the equivalent of hundreds of reefers an hour. No oxygen was getting to their brains. Therefore upon autopsy they were found to have a large number of dead brain cells. I take any research by the US in relation to cannabis use with a grain of salt. Alcohol turns normal people into psychopaths. Nicoteine causes cancer. Atleast pot isn't addictive. If people prone to schitzophrenia are made worse by smoking pot then they should probably stay clear of it but my experience is that prohibition dioesn't make a blind bit of difference. I know many schitzophrenics who smoke pot and have nothing but contempt for government trying to stop them.

Permalink Reply by Wayne Robert Smith on October 29, 2011 at 1:20pm

 

Chicago aldermen propose to decriminalize possessing small amounts ...

 

Supporters say the ordinance -- which Alderman Daniel Solis plans to introduce at next week’s City Council meeting -- will raise revenue for the city and free up police to chase more serious criminals.

 

 

Chicago Aldermen Support Ticketing, Not Arresting Low-Level Marijua...

 

Their call for ticketing possessors of small amounts of pot, reported by NBC Chicago, echoes a similar suggestion made by Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle this summer. After calling the "war on drugs" a failure, she said the idea would reduce the county's inmate population, both saving money and potentially stymying future crime. Preckwinkle has floated the idea to Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and his department was reportedly looking into the issue as of this summer.

 

FURTHER READING.

 

Brain Damage and Dead Monkeys.

http://www.electricemperor.com/eecdrom/HTML/EMP/15/ECH15_03.HTM

 

Marijuana Myths.

http://www.paulhager.org/libertarian/myths.htm

Permalink Reply by Wayne Robert Smith on October 29, 2011 at 4:09pm

 

Friday October 28th.

California Medical Association recommends legalization.

Permalink Reply by Michael Petterson on October 30, 2011 at 11:28am

Once you start legalizing harmless recreational users where does it end,as people could start saying that the harder drugs like Heroin are recreational. I can see this seting a dangerous legal precident,as once it starts,where does it end? Also the churches will fight this to the end,if any such scheme is proposed, and public outrage on such an issue could be detremental to such a scheme,once the churches get involved,unless it's handed carefully. I beleive Italy tried such a scheme and there drugs-related crime shot up by around 200% once it was implemented. Also I've heard that pushers of heroin use marijuana as a precursor to introducing the "client" to heroin,so by doing this you are in essence making their work easier for them.

Permalink Reply by Wayne Robert Smith on October 30, 2011 at 5:44pm

Hopefully it'll end with all drugs being legalised. The drug war is a complete failure and should never have been initiated in the first place. Human beings are individual sovereign beings capable of making their own choices in life without nanny states thinking for them on every little conceivable matter. The world is far too overregulated and draconian drug laws are a costly nuisance. All drugs are recreational. Thats the point. People use them to have a good time. They aren't hurting anybody and shouldn't be penalised for it. If drugs were legalised and controlled we'd have less overdoses and bad batches of drugs killing users. Drug use would be out in the open and problem users could be easily identified and treated.

 

The churches are largely an irrelevant institution to most people nowadays. Australia has the highest percentage of atheists in the western world. If the churches truly claim to want the best for people then they won't stand in the way of cleaning up the drug industry and removing the black market. Street drugs are expensive just like any other illegal commodity and heinous crimes are perpetrated by addicts to aquire the cash for their habit. Churches and charities deal directly with the general public and are more aware of the social issues than politicians who are frankly out of touch. The public is already outraged, sore as hell that this senseless drug war has been going on for so long. 

 

A real world example of what happens when marijuana is readily available can be found in Holland. The Dutch partially legalized marijuana in the 1970s. Since then, hard drug use ( heroin and cocaine ) have declined substantially. If marijuana really were a gateway drug, one would have expected use of hard drugs to have gone up, not down. This apparent "negative gateway" effect has also been observed in the United States. Studies done in the early 1970s showed a negative correlation between use of marijuana and use of alcohol. A 1993 Rand Corporation study that compared drug use in states that had decriminalized marijuana versus those that had not, found that where marijuana was more available ( the states that had decriminalized ) hard drug abuse as measured by emergency room episodes decreased. In short, what science and actual experience tell us is that marijuana tends to substitute for the much more dangerous hard drugs like alcohol, cocaine, and heroin.

Permalink Reply by Michael Petterson on October 30, 2011 at 6:37pm

Even if those decisions affect the lives of others? I don't see how legalizing drugs would make the problem go away,when you have people selling the drugs to other people and adiciting them to pay for there own habits. As long as there is serious money to be made from selling the stuff,legalizing it is a recipe for disaster,as I remember as I said Italy trying a similar thing and there drug-related crimes increased by around 200% as soon as they legalized it. All people don't use them to have a good time,also some are just selling the stuff for the hard money,and they don't care those lives they ruin to get it,as teenagers aren't aware of the dangers that the drugs bring as it only takes a couple of hits to become addicted.

 

As to your quote "The churches are largely an irrelevant institution to most people nowadays. Australia has the highest percentage of atheists in the western world" That may be true but people still respect the churches,especially the Salvation Army. It still has quite a big influence on the community of Australia as a whole. Trying to legalize it would bring their influence against legalizing it,on the grounds that it exempts people that use every force under their control to literally force drugs on a unspecting teen populace,that has no idea just how much damage it can do. I had a friend that was addicted to drugs in this way,and it took him years to recover from it.

Permalink Reply by Wayne Robert Smith on November 1, 2011 at 9:38am

"Even if those decisions affect the lives of others?"

 

Everything affects everybody. The question which must be asked is whether legalisation affects other people in a positive or negative way. Clearly the answer is both so we have to weigh the positive against the negative. At present addicts are paying exhorbitant prices for drugs and crime is their way of meeting those prices. Old women having their bags snatched. Asians getting rolled at ATM's. Peoples homes getting invaded. Legalisation would eliminate the high black market prices and negate the need for users to resort to crime. People are going to continue to use drugs whether legal or not. Legalisation brings the industry out of the dark murky underworld.

 

"I don't see how legalizing drugs would make the problem go away,when you have people selling the drugs to other people and adiciting them to pay for there own habits."

 

Do you see a lot of drug related crime with tobacco junkies? Alcoholics often break the law but nobody is calling for another alcohol prohibition. It didn't work last time and wouldn't work today except in countries where the populace is religiously opposed to drinking such as in the middle east. Clearly prohibition has never made the problem go away. Besides, addiction is treatable when people aren't hiding their habit from authorities out of fear of being locked up in a cage with murderers and pedophiles. How does locking up a uni student in jail for smoking a joint help them? What about that kid in indonesia facing years of imprisonment for less than 2 grams of weed? Indonesia has followed americas lead and taken drug laws to the extreme. Yet drugs are plentiful there. We need to go in the other direction if we pride ourselves on being a fair democratic nation which upholds the rights of the individual.

 

Cannabis is not physically addictive although it can be psychologically addictive in the sense that users enjoy the experience and wish to repeat it. Like TV or chocolate is psychologically addictive. Quitting causes no cold turkey shakes or other ailments. Unlike alcohol and tobacco which are horribly addictive.

 

"As long as there is serious money to be made from selling the stuff,legalizing it is a recipe for disaster."

 

If it is legalised then there wont be any serious money to be made. Do you hear about many bootleg alcohol arrests? How about chop chop tobacco? There is not much of a market for them because they are legally available in shops at reasonable prices.

 

"Trying to legalize it would bring their influence against legalizing it,on the grounds that it exempts people that use every force under their control to literally force drugs on a unspecting teen populace,that has no idea just how much damage it can do."

 

It would be hypocritical of Churches to take a stance against cannabis after making so little effort to stamp out the evils of alcohol which causes domestic violence, hooliganism, vandalism, riots, murder, automobile deaths and teenage liver transplants to name but a few.

 

"I had a friend that was addicted to drugs in this way,and it took him years to recover from it."

 

I'm sorry about your friend. My best friend died about 8 months ago. He was a chronic tobacco smoker. Legalisation of drugs isn't going to fully resolve all the problems related to drugs but I believe it is a step in the right direction. Prohibition has been a complete waste of resources. It has achieved nothing. Tax payers are footing an enormous bill with no apparent benefits. Meanwhile australian citizens are being arrested and jailed for disobeying unjust laws. Otherwise law abiding citizens I might add. The fact that so many people are refusing to obey these laws is indicative of how little respect the public has for them. Even politicians and police smoke dope in australia.