Merged Scenes From The War On Drugs

[Zygar]

See this is what is always comes down to - people want to toke. "Legalise all drugs" usually comes from MJ users/activists

Do I use it? No. Have I ever? No. Will I ever? No.

Do I see the harm in it? A little, although it has to be said MJ is by far the least problematic substance for people to escape reality with.

However, those who want to legalise ALL drugs I have a BIG issue with.

They wreck lives, families and cause massive increases in crime - not because they are illegal or impure but because they are a voracious cancer that consumes everything about a person leaving them a shell.

"Hard drugs" should get hard sentences.

Pot I could truthfully care less about

I agree with you about pot. However, I think you have a strawman on your hands. There are more reasons to legalize all drugs than simply the desire to smoke up.

The war on drugs simply has not worked. Instead it has caused political unrest in Columbia and Mexico, and has artificially raised the price of drugs in the US.

Also, instead of seeking rehabilitation for drug users, we've instated mandatory prison time. This means more people in prisons and fewer opportunities for drug users to recover.

Overall, drugs are dangerous things, but if we keep on fighting this war on drugs we'll keep wasting lives and resources on an already lost war.

 

[ripsaw_22]

I'm only going from memory so I could be wrong about the diet pills, but the chlorodyne was definitely some kind of opiate. When I was a First Aid Officer, I came across a bottle in the first aid kit at work in the 1980s and was told by a pharmacist then that it was a scheduled drug and had been for some time. The bottle had been lurking in the first aid kit since the 50s/60s and nobody'd ever bothered discarding the old medications until I did the clear out/restock.

In the UK you can buy dihydrocodeine (another opiate) over the counter with no prescription. I do because I need it for the headaches I get, but it's really ridiculously easy to get hold of if you wanted it for other purposes...

ETA: actually dihydrocodeine is an opioid rather than an opiate (meaning it's synthetic)

 

[Brian-M]

I'm not quite that old.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you were. I hadn't realized you were referring to drugs sold in chemists in your lifetime.

And I seem to remember the diet pills they sold when I was a kid were also taken off the market because they were some kind of "upper". I seem to recall there being a bit of press when they banned them because people had been addicted to them and had trouble coming off them.

Probably amphetamines, such as Dextroamphetamine. They were commonly used as weight loss drugs before people started abusing them.

 

[Lolly]

I hadn't realized you were referring to drugs sold in chemists in your lifetime.

Yep, I realized that, that's why I put the grinning head. Yes, I was talking about in my lifetime. I just wonder how many people were abusing the drugs which were freely available, compared to now and how much of the so-called "drug problem" is a new thing and how much has always been there.

 

[Toke]

That kind of raid get me wondering what the police would have said if the family had been armed, just woken up, mistaken them for robbers and killed a few?

911 tape: "My living room is full of dead robbers, they are dressed up as policemen"

 

[rjh01]

That kind of raid get me wondering what the police would have said if the family had been armed, just woken up, mistaken them for robbers and killed a few?

911 tape: "My living room is full of dead robbers, they are dressed up as policemen"

That is a fantasy of mine. Problems
1. I live in the wrong country. Where I live we do not have guns that can carry huge numbers of bullets in our bedrooms (with the ammunition).
2. The police would be wearing bullet proof vests. So shooting them may not kill them.
3. One of them would shoot me.

 

[Toke]

Yes, I realise it is mostly hypothetical, the US police are likely too good at shooting people.

I recall a news story a few years ago where Danish police were raiding a hashish den.
One policeman walked into a room and looked down the barrel of a bikers gun.
The biker put it down fast and explained something about having mistaken the whole thing for a rival gang, he were taken in for illegal weapons possession and maybe? drug possession.

How many desperate and violent criminals are there?