British Officials Finally Declare Defeat in War on Drugs

Splinterguitar69

Splinterguitar69

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http://www.allheadlinenews.com/brie...tish+officials+declare+defeat+on+war+on+drugs

"To address the worsening menace caused by wide availability of prohibited substances such as heroin, British MPs and members of the House of Lord formed the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform. The group is pushing for the crafting of new policies on drugs based on scientific evidence."

This might even be home page worthy.
 
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The War has been lost for a long time.

"Damn dude, I just found out Prop. 19 failed. Weed is still illegal."
Fuck, that sucks. Wanna hit this blunt?"
 
In the article it says that a large portion of the government is finally admitting defeat, and even officially created a panel on drug law reforms. They are leaning toward decriminalization and harm reduction. This is big
 
Will be interesting to see how this plays out. It's inevitable really, even the most blind and deluded are starting to realise that the war on drugs has failed utterly, as well as being a massive drain on resources.
 
The legitimacy of this article is dubious. For starters, the grammar is all fucked. Paragraph 1, incorrect preposition:

Various British leaders have virtually admitted defeat on the country’s war against drugs.
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paragraph 1, inconsistent tense:

Despite large amounts of cash allocated to stopping the sale and use of drugs, the illegal trade goes on and drugs had become more accessible to Britons.
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paragraph 2, reference to nonexistent government body:

British MPs and members of the House of Lord
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paragraph 3, incorrect preposition:

However, such a stand could lead to decriminalization of drugs or no jail terms of residents caught with small amounts of prohibited substances.
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mangled syntax in paragraph 6:

Meacher cited Portugal’s experience which decriminalized drug use [the country, not the experience, decriminalized drug use] a decade ago, but continues to enjoy one of the lowest drug addiction rates in Europe.
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The clumsy writing makes one wonder whether the article is accurately reporting facts. And what event is the article actually reporting? Just this:

British MPs and members of the House of Lord formed the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform. The group is pushing for the crafting of new policies on drugs based on scientific evidence.
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Ask yourself, can the above reasonably lead you to conclude this:

Various British leaders have virtually admitted defeat on the country’s war against drugs.
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Don't be misled. The international police apparatus will continue to oppress you until you extirpate them.
 
Umm I heard of some Ex-British MPs and other people saying that the drug war has failed but nothing on any of the current leaders.
 
You guys are all so damn optimistic and gullible sometimes it makes me LOL for real. The UK will NEVER make any amount of illegal substances 'legal' or 'decriminalized.' The US and UK make too much money from imprisoning and fining people caught with scheduled drugs..
 
Herbal~Jah said:
You guys are all so damn optimistic and gullible sometimes it makes me LOL for real. The UK will NEVER make any amount of illegal substances 'legal' or 'decriminalized.' The US and UK make too much money from imprisoning and fining people caught with scheduled drugs..
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IDK about the UK but the US doesn't make money as a whole. It gets wasted so bankers who own private prisons and launder cartel money have a win-win situation going, and everybody else who doesn't get a job out of it is losing.
 
Herbal~Jah said:
You guys are all so damn optimistic and gullible sometimes it makes me LOL for real. The UK will NEVER make any amount of illegal substances 'legal' or 'decriminalized.' The US and UK make too much money from imprisoning and fining people caught with scheduled drugs..
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, nothing ever changes, there's no point in ever fighting, we should just all accept that we're slaves to the past and never hold any dreams, never have any ambitions, never hope for a better world... Some people are making money off of terrible injustices, they should be allowed to leech on society forever, they have money now and never has any injustice in the world been corrected by people, it's always capital that controls the world and we might as well just give up, the public has never achieved anything...

FUCK THAT! You want to act like a slave forever? Fine, but nothing here on this planet lasts forever so don't be surprised if you one day find your masters having changed a bit. There is a window of opportunity now and it's best to seize that opportunity, recognize your allies, recognize your enemies and be practical about it. It's politics, it's slow and disgusting but it is not impossible if you're willing to empathize with your enemies, understand them and see where the opportunities are.

The UK is not the only place where people are taking action, this year the Drug Policy Alliance is organizing a big campaign against the drugs war in the USA, the AIDS community is uniting to take a stand against the war on the 2012 International AIDS conference in DC, with the Vienna Declaration(which you should go and sign and ask everyone you know to sign it too) signed by former presidents of Mexico, Columbia, Brazil, the city of Vancouver, some nobel laureates and various scientists, doctors and judicial workers.

Even the current president of Columbia is criticizing the war and calling for all alternatives to be explored: "There are some fundamental structural contradictions in this war on drugs . . . We in Colombia have been successful, but our success is hurting the whole of Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean, Africa, and eventually it will backfire on us again. So are we pursuing the correct long-term policy? I don't object to discussing any alternatives but if we are going to discuss alternatives, let's discuss every alternative… what is the cost, what is the benefit of each alternative?"

David Cameron too dared to say this: "We found some of the arguments of the legalisers quite persuasive; we are acknowledging that there may be a day when the balance may tip in favour of legalisation, and basically we wanted to have a genuinely open- mind about this. "

This isn't something that has happened before, this is an unique opportunity. The UNODC(or UNCOD as it should be called) is weak, this year's CND couldn't come up with any better issue than drugged driving. Nobody even talks about a drug free world anymore and it was just in the 90s that the UN declared that we'd be drug free by 08. Kerlikowske is weak, he even claims he ended the war on drugs, he's desperate for anti-legalization allies while alienating his main supporters, the hawkish people, by talking about treatment over incarceration. Obama even called legalization worthy of debate.

They can't survive without their scary propaganda, the whole point of the Vienna Declaration is that there is enough scientific evidence to prove that the War on Drugs causes more public harm than it's worth, they took the idea for it from the Durban Declaration which was used to argue that HIV causes AIDS to AIDS denialists and AIDS denialism isn't that prevalent these days anymore.

It may not be enough, but goddamnit it is an opportunity and there is no point in giving it up. I don't want anyone to have to live in this world plagued by global war and every step away from it is worth EVERYTHING! It is not an acceptable state of affairs, it has to be fought to either its end or to our end.
For sure I am naive and gullible, but if you're unable to imagine something better then life just isn't worth it at all.

"Which is more beautiful:
believe, that freedom will come
hope, that light will win
and fight for light
or fight
knowing that, light wont come
knowing that, freedom wont win
but at least fight?

Which is more beautiful:
to think: if freedom wont win
to ponder: if light wont come
why do I fight then?
or to think:
a child of the sunset I am, not of dawn,
a man of light I am, but not of victory,
so break I must."
-Eino Leino

Changes in the world don't just happen by themselves, but we aren't alone in this fight.

http://drugpolicy.org/
http://www.tdpf.org.uk/
http://www.icsdp.org/
http://www.leap.cc/
http://www.countthecosts.org/
http://inpud.net/
http://www.undun.org/
http://www.beckleyfoundation.org/
http://www.soros.org/initiatives/drugpolicy
http://drogriporter.hu/en/
http://encod.org/info/-English-en-.html
http://www.drugequality.org/
http://www.idpc.net/
http://www.ungassondrugs.org/
http://www.release.org.uk/
http://www.harmreduction.org/
http://www.mapinc.org/
http://www.drugscope.org.uk/
http://stopthedrugwar.org/
http://www.drogasedemocracia.org/English/Default.asp
....
 
Herbal~Jah said:
You guys are all so damn optimistic and gullible sometimes it makes me LOL for real. The UK will NEVER make any amount of illegal substances 'legal' or 'decriminalized.' The US and UK make too much money from imprisoning and fining people caught with scheduled drugs..
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You failed to read the article, apparently. This isn't some "British sociologist says War on Drugs causes damage". This article is "British government forms a panel to put it's drug war to an end". Do you not realize that in the next five years Britains entire drug policy is going to be changed, drug offenders will be out of prisons and jails, and your taxes will go towards much better uses and thus helping the economy of Britian and every other country that does the same? Think about it for a minute: Britain does this, and the rest of Europe will then call that the final straw and follow suit. After seeing the success of such a large population undergoing such a massive change in policy and governmental predisposition, Canada will most likely try it out followed by here in the US. This is the first step toward all of humanity saying "Okay, enough is enough. Let's shut the hell up, be sensible, and have some reason. Let's make prison for people who really belong there, let's bring our troops home, and for fucks sake let's fix all the damage we've done before we blow ourselves up."

That's how I see this going. The world is changing as it does every few generations. Get behind it or get out of the way
 
Splinterguitar69 said:
This article is "British government forms a panel to put it's drug war to an end". Do you not realize that in the next five years Britains entire drug policy is going to be changed, drug offenders will be out of prisons and jails, and your taxes will go towards much better uses and thus helping the economy of Britian and every other country that does the same?
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I missed that part of the article.
 
When I see something like this on the BBC or Guardian website I'll pay more attention, never heard of that news site before and they don't have any links to sources.
 
PredatorVision said:
When I see something like this on the BBC or Guardian website I'll pay more attention, never heard of that news site before and they don't have any links to sources.
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Is the Telegraph okay?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukn...iled-say-former-heads-of-MI5-CPS-and-BBC.html

Or parliament.uk?
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmallparty/register/drug-policy-reform.htm

Here's also the Beckley Foundation's article on it: http://www.beckleyfoundation.org/20...-cps-and-bbc-say-the-war-on-drugs-has-failed/
I'd trust the Beckely Foundation's judgement, their advisory board includes Alexander Shulgin, V.S. Ramachandran, David Nutt and David E. Nichols among others and Albert Hoffmann was a founding member.
 
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Lol. The US is definitely going to fight legalization anywhere in the western world tooth and nail. If it happens before I'm 40, I'll be beyond surprised. Not to be a downer, I just don't see the US doing anything like this and the US spends a lot of money to keep drugs illegal in other countries as well as our own.

In my opinion, there's no sensible argument against full legalization and regulation. Countries like Portugal have shown that legalization doesn't cause a surge in drug use or abuse and it clearly limits the collateral damage that stems from illicit drugs. Unfortunately it is very very difficult to shake up the status quo in the US and many places around the world.
 
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