In England alone it is estimated that there are 300,000 heroin & crack cocaine addicts. In Scotland the % of users is likely to be worse as Scotland is a grim place to live in many out of City centre places. The worst fact is that in England alone 150,000 of these addicts are state funded drug users at a cost of £500,000,000 to the tax payer, each & every year. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...dicts-hooked-heroin-substitute-TEN-years.html It is about time that our "cardboard" justice system is overhauled and these criminals are prosecuted & sent to jail, instead of the current failed experiment of tolerance. If more people were faced with the seriousness of their crimes of abusing class "A" drugs and were punished by the State instead of being given funds to fuel their habit. We would see a fall in drug use. It is no good arguing for tolerance & understanding, with the notion that these people are suffering some kind of illness & need treating. This idea has been going on for nearly 40 years & has led to year on year increases in drug use & state funded drug programs. This policy has failed & its time has run out. 40 years experiment in tolerance is enough. Time to change the policy & start to seriously enforce the law instead of turning a blind eye to these criminals amongst us.
Drug laws in America have very harsh sentences (even by American standards), sellers and users are punished alike, and yet America still has a huge drug problem. More punishment is not always the way to deal with problems. In fact the whole "war on drugs" in America has led to a whole host of other problems involving enforcement. Likely the rising employment problems in the U.K. have something to do with the rise in illegal drugs. Alcoholism and drug use are as much a symptom of other social problems as they are a problem themselves.
Don't make me laugh, the US state has been peddling drugs to its own people for decades. The CIA has been responsible for flying in tons of cocaine since the 70's in order to fund the groups such as the Contras etc etc ... the list goes on. There is no "such war on drugs" in the US. That is just a media invention peddled by the State. As for unemployment being a cause for drug use. Again what a nieve comment!!!! Most drug users are middle class employed people, with disposable income to fund their abuse. And even if you were to try and use the deprivation caused by unemployment as a reason for people to use drugs, my comment to that would be '" tis one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall ". You might as well excuse theft, robbery & crime on unemployment, when in fact it is a moral decision. There are many poor people that don't take drugs or commit crime & many wealthy people that do take drugs and steal from others. Crime & drug use are a moral issue not an economic issue. And the sooner you realise that fact the sooner you will loose the fetters on your mind.
Except that the actual evidence doesn't agree with you. There is no evidence that tougher sentencing causes a fall in drug use. It doesn't work. What does appear to be more effective, according to the evidence, is treating the issue as a Health one rather than a Criminal one, which is not what the UK has done before, of course.
Well actually, there IS a war on drugs here in the US, and it's been going on for decades. Huge amounts of money have been spent on that, and many innocent people have been killed in the process. Many other innocent people have had their lives and families ruined because of this asinine policy. Now you are absolutely correct that the CIA is very much involved in the black market created by drug prohibition, but all that proves is that there are crooks within the Agency. That should be no surprise to anybody paying attention. No matter the crooks in the CIA, there is very much a war on drugs, and what we have to show for it is a weakened Constitution, and a per capita rate of imprisonment very much higher than the rest of the world.
Balls ! When a criminal is locked-up they don't commit crime against the public. Fact ! The problem is he UK's cardboard justice system doesn't punish these criminal enough, they either don't get custodial sentences or are let out after only serving 1/3 of their sentence. I'm no great fan of excessive public sector spending, but I would happily pay my taxes to building more prisons & locking up drug users for decades, especially for repeat offenders. The current liberal-minded message (that you clearly support) is that if you take drugs you get a slap on the wrist, & if you continue to take drugs you may get work in he community order, & if you continue to take drugs then you may get a minor imprisonment....... It is no wonder that you see drug users continuing to offend. What I am suggesting is NOT the current position which encourages re-offending drug use which we see today & as you say has not had any effect on their habitual use of drugs. NO I am suggesting something that is not in place today. A message that drug users will be prosecuted & locked up for long periods. I would ensure that drug testing is continued in prison in case they get their hands on them & would extend their sentence if hey did. I would encourage any Government to lock these people away from society for decades. If that were the actual facts of the situation & the message sent out to drug users I am sure it would make a difference. If someone is unable to learn the lesson from the potential punishment that awaits them for their crime, then at least they will be locked away for a few decades and free our streets from these malignant influences. The estimated cost of crime due to drug users theft is between £2....£2.5 billion a year http://www.drugscope.org.uk/resources/faqs/faqpages/how-much-crime-is-drug-related Cheaper & better to lock these people up in prison for 30 years than to let these bleeding heart liberals that make excuses for their crimes to win the argument. Tolerance has been tried for 30-40 years & the crime continues. Liberal acceptance of drug use has failed. As for the idea of drug users having a health issue, I can hardy contain my distain for such a fooling idea. Any child can learn the difference between right & wrong if they are taught. To excuse drug users as having a (presumably "mental" ) health issue is laughable. They are just weak willed & know that under the current system their weak will is tolerated. If you rub chilli pepper in your eye, you learn it hurts & you don't do it again. Same applies to crime & punishment. And it is time you liberals stopped excusing criminals as some kind of social victim.
I'm afraid to say that I feel you are only half correct & a bit naïve. It is not just a few crooks, it is sate policy. The vast majority of drug deaths are within the non-white community, so a few less (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)s don't matter to the establishment. The phoney war on drugs is just a media hyped illusion. It suites the state for a section of its population to be drug users. Justifies an excessive police force & keeps numbers of people in fear. If drug users were executed on a three strikes & your out policy & the US government stopped shipping in tons of cocaine across its border then their would be no need for a war on drugs, as only a few well off people would be in a position to abuse drugs...
The prohibition causes a black market. Rogue agents within the government, CIA and other agencies too, have long participated in the drug trade. Killing drug users will not stop people from using drugs, any more than killing "terrorists" will stop terrorism. If anything, it makes it worse.
I disagree, the biggest drug users are white professionals and a policy of extermination will have an effect on their recreational behaviour. There is a World of different between the commitment of an Islamic terrorist that believes he/she will go to heaven for their acts & a white boy taking cocaine for fun. If you hadn't already realised this fact then well ..... I wonder about you As for your use of the term "black market" ... how appropriate !!! The US state policy of allowing massive imports of cocaine is one that definitely targets the black community. They hate the negros & want to destroy them and see their weakness for drug taking as an opportunity. You might say, how dare I say such a thing & that my comments are racist. I say that the US state is racist & peddles drugs to its negro population. I wonder if the PC filter will blank my post of N c E g G d R O d O with ***** instead of the latin word negro simply meaning "black" PS . YES it does the pathetic PC filter of the forum, replaces my words with "****" Just goes to show how hateful the Liberal fascist control has spread !!!! It is no longer up to a moderator it is automatically deleted without reference to any contexts or intended offence.
Sending addicts to jail is a recipe for disaster. There is zero effort within the prison system to treat addicts or to even prevent drugs getting in. Unless you're going to imprison every drug user and life, they'll ultimately be released with more problems and fewer prospects. How do you know? As the article demonstrates, the current system (certainly at the state level) is making no effort towards actually treating addiction, just ongoing management to reduce the resultant criminality (with some success to be fair). What is needed is a system of firm but fair mandatory treatment for hard-drug addicts, addressing all of the causal factors so they aren't just removed from the criminal environment of illegal drugs but can become productive members of society. And don't say it can't be done because I've see it for myself.
Rubbish !!! Sending addicts to jail would be a change from he current "flim-flam - cardboard" justice system which we have at the moment that does NOT send them to jail & only encourages them to persist in their criminal activity, Sending them to jail will be an effective change to 40 years of failed drug policy. It is the current "liberal" system that prolongs the suffering of users & crime associated with drug use that perpetuates the problem. You make my point, at the moment the state is making no effort. As for "treating" these criminals..... Well the only treatment is to imprison them for decades & use drug testing to ensure that they are not receiving their illegal fix from any external source. This will send a message to people thinking of the illegal use of drugs better than your liberal view that to take drugs can be excused as a health issue... It is NOT.. It is a moral issue & if you can' understand that .. then you simply lack a moral compass to enable you to understand the issue & your parents are to blame for bringing you up as a degenerate human. As I said, any child will learn, if you rub chilli in your eye ... it hurts & you won't do it again. If you punish & are seen to punish illegal drug use effectively you will not only deter drug users from habitual use, you may even dissuade the liberals from actually excusing illegal drug users from their drug habbis. As a liberal. why don't you equally excuse drink drivers from taking alcohol to excess & getting behind the wheel of a car? Well the law states that is illegal, so why excuse the use of class A & B drugs in any form.. Not politically popular enough for you? Doesn't Russell Brand agree with you ? That gives you enough confidence to spew your rubbish o popularise an illegal activity such as drug abuse does harm to the user, their family & the victims that live amongst them. Maybe it is that you have a sympathy for drug abuse.
We generally don't jail people for drug addiction but we do imprison people who are addict for other (often related) crimes. With no treatment or rehabilitation efforts in prison, they just come out with more addictions and less prospects and go on to use more drugs and commit more crime. How is that effective. So you're proposing putting 300,000 people in high security prison for decades? £500 million would be a drop in the ocean compared to the cost of that! Drug use is a moral (and legal) issue. Drug addiction is a health issue (usually with underlying health, psychological and social issues). The problem can't be resolved on an individual basis without addressing all of those aspects. Again, this isn't theory, it's experience. I'm not going to respond to the rest of your post since it pretty much descended in to rhetoric and (misdirected) personal insults from here. If you want an intelligent debate, please continue. If you want to spew politico insults and pejorative assumptions, don't waste your time.
doesn't work, the war on drugs just funds gangs and costs even more in prison costs and enforcement.... and in the end.... you still have the addicts either way, the only change is now those that use with getting addicted are also considered criminals you take a nice family drinking wine with dinner, arrest them for nothing more then drinking wine with dinner, give them a criminal record, it's the gateway to crime for many .
how well did alcohol prohibition work..... you arrest people for committing crimes on drugs.. not the drugs themselves... as those are the real criminals
Drug addictions IS a moral issue & not a health issue. It is moral weakness that leads people to desire to take drug. A lack of any real purpose & meaning in their lives. Locking them away for decades would be an effective punishment for their immoral behaviour & associated criminal activity. To be honest I don't really mind too much about the deterrent effect, although I'm sure it would make a difference. But Jail sentences has never been about deterrent it is about punishment for their crimes. I would happily pay taxes to send drug users to prison for decades. And I laugh at those liberal that say it is not effective... Of course it is, if a criminal is in prison & not on the streets their immoral drug taking is out of the public arena. And if effective drug screening is actually deployed in Prison, instead of the current lacks liberal attitudes where inmates are allowed to consume drugs, due to the Prison service turning a blind eye or simply not enforcing effective screening programs. Then any prisoner caught with drugs in their system, should be welded into their cage for a further 10 years onto their sentence. And see how that effects their habitual immoral behaviour. It is no good people saying, harsh punishment is not an effective solution to the drug problem, when after 40 years of failed liberal tolerance the problem has doubled & tripled decade after decade. Enough of liberal weak minded tolerance to drug users. I suspect that liberals only wish to be lenient toward drugs users, as many of them are in fact drug users themselves. ......
The U.S. already has the largest prison population in the world most of which is drug offenses and many of those being possession convictions. The U.S. has about 2.5 million people locked away which cost around 55 billion a year. It's a multi billion dollar industry in the States. Now guess what? There are just as much if not more drugs IN PRISON. You can't even keep them out of where your locking drug offenders up! How is an expansion of this even a serious consideration? You really think your ink and paper is going to keep people away from a estimated (high end) 40 billion dollar business? And secondly what exactly makes using a drug morally wrong?
Except that you don't usually lock people up forever just for using a drug, and if you do it's pretty extreme. So when they get out, they are a much more savvy criminal having learned from other inmates. Secondly, just using a drug doesn't inherently hurt anybody. So if you want to lock somebody up (especially for a long time), how about locking people up who commit actual crimes against other people? Drug use may be a motive behind some of that, but if you only lock up those who victimize others the end result is that the problem-users go to jail and the casual or in-control users do not. That is what prisons are for - to protect us from each other. Not to protect us from ourselves. Don't you think it would be better just to lock everybody up who hurts others rather than waste resources on somebody who's just getting high? If they're one in the same, they'll get locked up either way. I would just argue that use per se does not need to be a crime. The article you posted in the first post suggests that some kind of reforms and oversight are needed. But locking people up for victimless crimes will not make your society better. You should probably offer up proof for something that sounds so much like a conspiracy theory. Except the problem users one should worry about aren't just doing it for fun anymore. It's more important to them than eating and they will risk their lives for it.
Correct we don't generally send people to jail for drug use & that is a problem, since the 60's drug use has step by step become condoned by the state, due to the left-wing so called liberal thinkers that infect main-stream media. Yes I propose to lock up 300,000 drug users for as long as it takes, maybe decades. Get these people out of society. In fact I would (although it will never be adopted) lock up apologists for drug users, that claim drug use is not a moral issue. As these malignant forces are corrupting the nation & once removed the "moral majority" will prevail. Again "Balls" drug use is a moral issue first & foremost. Tell me what medical condition a person has that decides to take drugs for the first time? There is none. You either choose to take drugs, choose not to take them, or after taking drugs you decide to stop taking them. The only problem is that some people, like yourself have no moral compass & excuse drug abuse.
No, lock them up for decades or until they die. Once in prison these immoral law breakers are not amongst society to effect others & commit their crime. If my policy fails, then execute drug users.
Sorry, but I think that is one of the most pathetic statements I have ever heard. We all have the ability to make our own choices to make such as statement as you have done, only leads me to think you are a middle class socialist that has no real idea of real life.
I'd like to see authoritarians locked up for espousing demands for more government and more prisons and spending other people's money to create their narrow-minded, hate-filled "paradise". Unfortunately, that would be very authoritarian, and, like drug use, there's nothing criminal about speaking one's mind. North Korea would be a nice place for them. - - - Updated - - - The Nazis felt the same way about Jews and other undesirables. There's no significant difference.
