Drug report

[KIWI]

the "freemen" must have a man on the inside at the beeb :smokin:

http://www.mindhacks.com/


I've hidden the drugs inside this political football:
The BBC World Service broadcast an interesting programme on the effect of Portugal's 2001 policy to decriminalise all illicit drugs, from cannabis to heroin. Far from what you might expect from your local politician, the effect was rather positive. As also recounted in a recent article for Time magazine, drug use has actually dropped.

Recreational drugs are a fascinating area precisely because the political view and the health view are so completely out of whack in most countries.

As we have reported several times in the past, the UK has a regular public ritual where the government commissions a panel of scientists to report on the health dangers of drugs, and then completely ignores them when they point out that the current policies make no sense and don't reflect the actual impact of the substances.

This week's Bad Science column has another example, where a now leaked 1991 World Health Organisation report [pdf] on the impact of cocaine was suppressed by the US government because it pointed out that it's not as intrinsically poisonous to health or society as it's made out by drug war propaganda.

This political double book-keeping is probably why the severity of drug laws around the world have virtually no relation to the drug use of the population.

I'm morbidly curious about how we've arrived at this odd situation where one of the culturally universal human activities, modifying our consciousness with drugs, must be looked down on publicly to the point where our politicians are free to ignore evidence when it suits them.

It's a conspiracy of ignorance that would be unthinkable if it was applied to swine flu but perfectly acceptable for something that already kills thousands upon thousands of people every year.


Link to BBC World Service on Portugal drug decriminalisation.
Link to Time 'Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work?'
Link to Bad Science on suppressed WHO cocaine report.

—Vaughan

[skunk]

Thanks for the story kiwi. Portugal must have turned into a drug-ridden hellhole if you listened (and believed) drug warrior propaganda. So far, crime is down, use is down, and it turns out hell has not come to earth. Wow.

Link to BBC world report on Portugal's decriminalization of all illegal drugs (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0036wf7)

Time Magazine: Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work? (http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html)

Bad Science: This is my column. This is my column on drugs. Any questions? (http://www.badscience.net/2009/06/this-is-my-column-this-is-my-column-on-drugs-any-questions/)

[theeindiee]

Naturally, if something is forbidden... there is someone out there who's gunna capitalize on it. With criminalization, you've turned a potential business opportunity into a felony crime, and thus you attract criminals who have nothing to lose and are therefore ruthless towards their business because they have to be in order to keep away from the authorities. Sometimes, it's often the case where it turns out that the authorities ARE the drug traffickers... so they're causing their own problems on purpose. It's about control and fear.

Fear of authorities = assumed control, which personaly leads to more risk-taking behavior on the part of people who get dissatisfied with the novelty level society alone provides them with. For kids, it seems like EVERYTHING awesome is illegal. So, kids are the first victims of the drug war. They start doing drugs because they think it's a way to be thought of as dangerous and cool, and accepted by the likes. Come on... did anyone of us ever start smoking weed SIMPLY for the high?

You see a lot of drones on the airwaves talking about how drugs ruined their kids' lives and junk, and how it's just common sense to criminalize these substances, but I often wonder how much of a downward spiral would these addicts have been on if there wasn't some forms of punishment enacted upon them at various stages of their addiction and also the mass amount of social bias wwhich comes with that, making them feel even more helpless and more proned to using drugs in the first place.

Synthesised street drugs are another matter. Crystal meth, PCP, crack, even heroine.... those are killers no matter how you put it. It's curious, because while those are the worst drugs and even I question the validity of decriminalization of them, I wonder if a youth seeing people abstaining from these things out of pure common sense would be much more effective than a youth equating drugs with crime and punishment and that's the only "common sense" reason to abstain. These days, it seems like the criminal nature of drugs is impressed upon youth much more than the physical dangers... so any youth that views cops and authorities as questionable (which is MOST YOUTH) will naturally question what authorities say about drugs. Imagine if it was just known as common fact amongst people that doing heroine kills you eventually. It would be like "don't drink mercury". It would be avoided by those who use common sense, and it would kill off only the complete and utter retards who decided to do it even though its a fact that people die from it.

Unless the nature of certain drugs is never questioned based purely upon the source of information being dubious, you're gunna get a lotta misguided youth all fucked up when normally they would use better reasoning than that.

My opinion, is all.