Future of Drug Laws in the UK- Get your unfounded speculation here.

[Vader]

So, how's it going to play out? Is the light at the end of tunnel in sight, as the failure of the drug war becomes more widely acknowledged, and it becomes obvious that willful blindness is the only explanation for its continuation? Will cannabis be legalised, and the movement for a total end to prohibition lose all momentum? Will a new arylcyclohexlyamine clause be added to the MDA to stop all these pesky PCP and ketamine analogues? Will we continue to have the minutae of our lives dictated by people who read the red-tops?

Personally, cynical as it may seem, I doubt that we're going to see a turnaround in policy. Politicians will continue to be reluctant to step out of line and admit what they obviously know. The tabloids are going to continue to print their vitriol, whilst the intelligent newspapers will dither and doubt rather than offering any real opposition. People have been thinking that it's all going to come crashing down since drug laws were created, but it never seems to happen.

But what do YOU think, dear reader?

Relevant viewing:
House of Lordz comes good!

 

[pinkpapaver]

thinkthey like em illegal coz it keeps us all naughty!!!

 

[dee_dee]

Im sure wed all agree it would good for it to be legalised once and for all, or id like to think so...

Quality control , honesty, peoples health, safety and education should always come first and foremost.

Ive always had respect for who provides my goodies as and when i can find them.

But with it sometimes can come all the underhand and shady nonscence that quite frankly none of us needs IMO.

 

[charlie clean]

I think the country is going to hell in a handbasket, dear moderator.

There've been calls for the legalisation of cannabis since the Times ad in 67. Every now and then, the Lords, the Lib Dems and individuals from all parites have voiced disapproval of the only statute that punishes a state a mind, gaols you for offences against yourself.

But nothing changes. The powers that be are nothing if not opportunistic and have heavy investmnt in the punishment industry. If they legalised today, hundreds of thousands of placemen in the prison, treatment and help industries would be collecting their P45s. It's like the arms business - shame about the victims but this is business.

What this country needs are more urban guerillas. Peops happy to go out with a bang not a whimper to shake up the legal thieves. They're pretty well entrenched, you know, and give away nothing. Theirs is the pie, yours the duffed forelock and the blind servitude. Pretty soon, you're going to be left with very little to lose.

I wouldn't hold your breath for sensible drug laws. Can't say I'm looking forward to a summer of civil unrest but it might be fun for the yoof. Let's hope the poor, the unemployed or the dopeloving aren't left with nothing to lose.

 

[Vader]

^How are we quantifying standard of living? Also, make predictions about drug legislation please.

 

[badandwicked]

yours the duffed forelock

Ive heard of a doffed cap and a tugged forelock, but this duffed forelock is a new one on me. How does one go about duffing ones forelock?

 

[Transform]

There've been calls for the legalisation of cannabis since the Times ad in 67. Every now and then, the Lords, the Lib Dems and individuals from all parites have voiced disapproval of the only statute that punishes a state a mind, gaols you for offences against yourself.

If you look at statistics, support for MJ regulation has been gradually climbing ever since. [1]

It is not going to be an overnight change. Dedication and perseverance are definitely needed here, but if those who know best how it can help won't speak up because they think it's futile... well then it is futile.
If you take half an hour to get some good counter-arguments under your belt though, there's a good chance hearts and minds can be turned faster. It's pretty hard to refute when given some rational arguments and facts, usually people are starved of them in discussions about drugs.
If we don't stand up for regulation, who will?

 

[B9]

thinkthey like em illegal coz it keeps us all naughty!!!

I vote this

 

[Munroe]

Politicians are all scared of sticking their head above the parapet and suggesting such changes due to fear of being deionised by the tabloids.

I can't see anything changing any time soon. If anything, drug laws will get more draconian, and cover a much wider array of compounds.
Mimosa bark is being seized by customs and the use of DMT in the UK is tiny.
From what I've read, poppy pod imports are being blocked and I wouldn't be surprised if cannabis seeds are next on the hitlist.

The war on drugs is a war on personal freedom, but the majority of people in the UK aren't (illegal) drug users and as a result see no point in protesting the laws as their is no benefit to them. Flawed logic, but hey.

Niemoller put it well:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

...or maybe I'm being over dramatic.

 

[Vader]

^No, many people don't care about impositions on liberties that they do not personally exercise. Lots of people have no interest in gay rights, freedom of speech or assembly, or cognitive liberty, because they themselves are not gay, do not use drugs and do not express unpopular notions.

 

[Munroe]

That apathy is a pretty large brick wall when it comes to drug law reform.

 

[Shambles]

I may have to go against the tide here and say that I honestly do see things improving in the not-too-distant. I think the influx of RCs that get around drug laws recently may well have some unexpected benefits. The fact that as soon as one selection of them are banned a new load take their place surely must say a lot to even the most braindead politicians. It's clear that prohibition was bad enough with traditional drugs but with a whole new generation of chemists prepared to put the work in to find handy loopholes (and scant regard for public health in many instances - yes I do mean you Eric) that prohibition stance is looking shakier by the minute.

Surely it is getting increasingly evident that there is an overwhelming desire and interest even amongst "non-druggies" in using recreational drugs - the meph craze being a prime example. Those people wouldn't even think of trying oldskool drugs in many cases but will buy absolutely anything claiming to be legal and "the new meph". And each round of contenders for that poison chalice seems to be more toxic and cause more problems than the last. And seeing as the one that kicked the whole thing off there is fuckin' meph that really is saying something :D

I can't see a blanket ban on all new chemicals being at all workable, to be honest, and I really do think I see signs to be hopeful. Would be a very good time to remind your local MP and the like of your views on such matters, in my opinion.

 

[Munroe]

Its interesting to wonder how far politicians and the press are willing to let the whole RC fad spiral out of control before raising questions about why its happening.

 

[timps]

time for change maybe?
if they go easy on what we all know is relatively harmless and cheap to the nhs, perhaps we'll all anaestsatise ourselvelves while they really shaft us.

 

[RLP]

I think the country is going to hell in a handbasket, dear moderator.

There've been calls for the legalisation of cannabis since the Times ad in 67. Every now and then, the Lords, the Lib Dems and individuals from all parites have voiced disapproval of the only statute that punishes a state a mind, gaols you for offences against yourself.

But nothing changes. The powers that be are nothing if not opportunistic and have heavy investmnt in the punishment industry. If they legalised today, hundreds of thousands of placemen in the prison, treatment and help industries would be collecting their P45s. It's like the arms business - shame about the victims but this is business.

What this country needs are more urban guerillas. Peops happy to go out with a bang not a whimper to shake up the legal thieves. They're pretty well entrenched, you know, and give away nothing. Theirs is the pie, yours the duffed forelock and the blind servitude. Pretty soon, you're going to be left with very little to lose.

I wouldn't hold your breath for sensible drug laws. Can't say I'm looking forward to a summer of civil unrest but it might be fun for the yoof. Let's hope the poor, the unemployed or the dopeloving aren't left with nothing to lose.

This man or woman speaks the truth. Good post.

 

[Vader]

Shambles, I think that the way they're going to put an end to the cycle of new designer drugs circumventing laws is by shifting legislation from banning substances with a particular chemical structure to banning substances with a particular pharmacology. With the cannabinoid ban, rather than try to prohibit anything derived from napthoylindole in such and such a way, they just banned all synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists. I think they could do the same for NMDA antagonists/5HT-2a agonists/any other potentially recreational drug.

However, in order to do that, they'd have to do tests to show that new drugs did actually effect those receptors, so they'd end up creating temporary grey areas, which they really don't want to do. I don't know, maybe you're right. I certainly hope that you are. But the problem is that the general public generally don't have the same kind of understanding of these issues as we do (unsurprising really), so when they see a mother on TV saying that 4-MeO-XYZ killed her daughter and needs to be banned, they take that at face value. I'm sure there are plenty of politicians who can see the light (it's fucking obvious to us, and these are highly intelligent people who are constantly thinking about policy), but know that saying "we shouldn't ban these drugs, we should make them all legal!" is suicide, given the guaranteed cries of "won't somebody think of the children". Anyway, I'm rambling, and it's getting late, so I'll leave this one for now.

 

[Shambles]

^ Wasn't meaning that it would be an instacure, Yerg. More so that the issues are becoming more and more brought into focus with the RC fad and it's not making the prohibition policy look too good even in the eyes of Fail readers. One can but hope and all that...

Its interesting to wonder how far politicians and the press are willing to let the whole RC fad spiral out of control before raising questions about why its happening.

Indeed. Even politicians must start feeling uncomfortable when every time they go down the traditional "ban it all then hang 'em high" route it only makes thing far, far worse - and now within weeks or months at most rather than the drip-drip effect of the past. I could see the public passion for shonky RCs actually becoming HR in it's highest form at some point not too far away. If nothing else it means the issues and debates are almost constantly in the headlines now it's not just a few druggy fucks that don't count being screwed over and killed. Those meph kiddies have the vote, so I hear. And there are lots of them. And their ilk. Times is a-changing either way. I'm stupidly optimistic enough to think that the politicians innate own-arse-saving instincts may come to our rescue on this one now it's become a Big Thing.

 

[Mr Smokes Blunts.]

If you look at statistics, support for MJ regulation has been gradually climbing ever since. [1]

It is not going to be an overnight change. Dedication and perseverance are definitely needed here, but if those who know best how it can help won't speak up because they think it's futile... well then it is futile.
If you take half an hour to get some good counter-arguments under your belt though, there's a good chance hearts and minds can be turned faster. It's pretty hard to refute when given some rational arguments and facts, usually people are starved of them in discussions about drugs.
If we don't stand up for regulation, who will?

I used to agree that every person I converted to the cause was one more person in the world who would be pro-legalisation. But the fact is, the 90%+ of this country who don't consume drugs couldn't give a crap about drug laws and certainly wouldn't ever use their vote to go out of their way to get the party with the most progressive drug laws in (I don't even do that, because I have to be honest and admit that the economy, military etc. is far more important). On the flipside there is a hard-core of Daily Mail reading cunts whose mind you simply cannot change because their viewpoint is based on emotion and was never a rational response to a problem our society faces. These people will happily vote against a party proposing legalisation in their droves. This is how, i'm afraid, a small number of people perhaps as low as a few million have managed to fuck the system up for us, and will continue to fuck the system up in the future.

Furthermore, an integral part of our UN membership is that we monitor and keep on top of the banned list, so America will have to first legalise before anyone else can feasibly move on the issue. However, it seems America (perversely) is much closer to legalisation in several areas, especially given that it is wedged between two of the biggest consuming and producing countries in the world. These people, however, weren't swayed because a few drug users went around preaching the good word. They were swayed because a few drug users campaigned heavily in the most reasonable states for there to be a relaxation of medical marijuana laws, and this opened the door to the rest of America seeing that cannabis isn't the evil weed they'd been brainwashed to believe. This would be a very hard fight in the UK, because we aren't separated into little states as such... although I could foreseeable see the Scottish SNP proposing legalising medicinal cannabis use just to piss off parliament if you lobbied them hard enough.

 

[BecomingJulie]

Sometimes I despair of what is happening to this country.

I remember the miners' strike of 1984, the poll tax riots and the Criminal Justice Bill protests. Between then and now, something seems to have died in our national psyche. There is no longer a sense of "Cut one of us and we all bleed".

I can't see a way for it to get better without it getting worse first. Probably a lot worse.

I'm also not convinced that Tescoisation hasn't had something to do with it all. I grew up in a village where everybody shopped in the same village shops - you didn't even need to drive to town; they would order stuff in if they hadn't got it - and everybody knew everybody else. In that environment, you soon learned not to mess up your own doorstep. An action and its consequences were visibly, tangibly connected, at an almost visceral level. Today, local shops are being converted to private residences and nobody speaks to their neighbours.

 

[Transform]

The fact is, the 90%+ of this country who don't consume drugs couldn't give a crap about drug laws and certainly wouldn't ever use their vote to go out of their way to get the party with the most progressive drug laws in (I don't even do that, because I have to be honest and admit that the economy, military etc. is far more important).

Yes, they won't vote, you're right, but they also won't vote against, they'll be less prone to believing the knee-jerk responses and they'll, be more understanding of drug losers. There's certainly nothing to lose by teaching them. If you teach them the economic benefits, they may even argue a little in our favour.

On a side note, I wholeheartedly believe that a change in drug law would be a HUGE step towards fixing the economy. The drop in crime would need less funding for policing - a few billion right there. Then there's tax revenue if the government is regulating supply. There is no way that potential harms, establishing regulatory bodies and education will cost more than we currently spend on policing and harms. [Quick economic summary]

Shambles, I think that the way they're going to put an end to the cycle of new designer drugs circumventing laws is by shifting legislation from banning substances with a particular chemical structure to banning substances with a particular pharmacology. With the cannabinoid ban, rather than try to prohibit anything derived from napthoylindole in such and such a way, they just banned all synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists. I think they could do the same for NMDA antagonists/5HT-2a agonists/any other potentially recreational drug.

They could do this if they really thought that banning worked and that was what they wanted. In reality, new prohibition laws are for show and they know that this won't help and will be VERY costly to enforce. While it would be the most effective blanket ban, it is simply not feasible.

That apathy is a pretty large brick wall when it comes to drug law reform.

That apathy is our biggest barrier. That's why it's up to us to do something.


Even changing the way we act in Afghanistan would help. Spending our attack budget on subsidising farmers to grow wheat instead would cut the legs off of the taliban, weakening them significantly as well as cutting the supply of heroin. If we spent our Afghanistan military budget on subsidising farmers, even assuming 20% of the country's population farm poppies we could double their yearly wage with subsidies.