Drug War Disaster

[Giancarlo]

Again Singapore is an example of a free market society and in my mind capitalism. No absolutely not. The CIA says Singapore is a free market, therefore Singapore is a conservative country and that is demostrated by its laws.

So if you are liking Singapore, you are embracing right wing ideals.

Anyways:

You said Singapore laws were the basis of your entire belief system

Belief system against drugs. Homosexuality, bisexuality or what not is not being discussed here. So take it elsewhere.

[Anodyne]

KONTIKI & FEZ:
TAKE YOUR CONVERSATION ELSEWHERE AND STOP TERRORIZING THIS THREAD!!!

No more posts on that subject!

[Giancarlo]

I said that myself Anodyne. I am discussing drugs, not sexuality. How the hell did that get into this topic? Oh I remember, Kontiki brought it up.

[JCG]

Set up legal drug production and trade in the U.S. of A. and then we'll see.

[Gatekeeper]

Yeah, drug use is all fun and games until someone gets raped, suffers brain damage, ends up maimed for life or gets outright killed. Then it ain't so much fun anymore, is it?

Gatekeeper

[OneFootInTheGrave]

For Dr Strangelove

Some comparison between UK and the Dutch, and I believe UK is still far ahead of the US (but I might be wrong on that).

http://www.observer.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,656121,00.html

and a few quotes, article is longer though.

, Utrecht, population 300,000, has its coffee shops, 40 of them, each selling dozens of brands of cannabis to smoke at the tables or take away. In Holland, ideas considered dangerously radical in Britain attract little controversy. 'There is no war on drugs in the Netherlands,' says Machel Vewer, a senior police detective who has spent the past decade working with addicts. 'What's the point of making war on part of your own country? Drugs are here and they're always going to be. This is a social problem, not a criminal one, and the whole of society has to tackle it - not leave it to the police on their own.

'This means accepting that addicts are people too: that they have their backgrounds, their stories, and you have to respect them. They can still lead useful lives, and they're not a lost group. If you look at England, France, Spain, they all have drug problems. But Holland started thinking about how to deal with this much earlier. We're not deluded we can solve the problem entirely, but we can contain it, make it controllable. You are 20 years behind.'

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The policy may rely on a legal fudge, but the evidence that it works is overwhelming. 'Just look at the figures,' says Wychgel. 'Heroin is just not an issue here in the Netherlands. The number of addicts has been stable, at around 25,000, for20 years. And the addicts are getting older; few youngsters are joining them.'

At an average £20 a gram, Dutch heroin is about half the price it is in England, where the fact that the drug is cheaper than it was in 1990 has helped dealers persuade their customers to transfer from cannabis. Per head of population, Holland has perhaps a quarter of Britain's addicts. Meanwhile, Holland also has significantly fewer cannabis smokers, especially among teenagers. From the age of 10, children are given drugs education. It tries, says Wychgel, to present the facts about drugs in a way which removes any sense of glamour, but leaves the decision up to the individual. 'We say, "It's your responsibility, this is what drugs will do." We don't tell kids simply "no", we say "know".'

Trimbos surveys 10,000 Dutch schoolchildren every four years. The last study, in 1999, showed a small decline in cannabis use - 20 per cent of those aged 15-16 had tried it, and 5 per cent smoked it regularly. Less than one in 1,000 had tried heroin. The same year the European Drug Monitoring Centre found 40 per cent of British children the same age had tried cannabis, and one in 50 had used heroin.

A similar pragmatism, with reducing harm as the governing principle, is visible in the way Utrecht deals with hard drugs. The smoking and shooting rooms at Stationsplein form part of an impressive network of facilities. Some deal with the homeless addict's survival needs. At the Inlope centre, beneath another part of the shopping mall, registered users can get a shower, clean clothes, cheap hot food, a game of pool and a respite from the rigours of the street.

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The addicts used to spend their days in a dark, fetid pedestrian tunnel beneath the Hoog Catherijne mall, which has now been closed. Intimidating and dangerous for passers-by, it also saw frequent violence between addicts. 'It's much easier now to have good relationships with them,' Vewer says. 'It creates a set of rules, and the addicts know they have to abide by them. It makes the scene much easier to control.'

----------------

As we walk, Wisman explains how the thin blue line tries to hold back crime. 'We have a lot of bicycle theft. The addicts steal bikes and sell them to students. And theft from cars: they break the windows, take the stereo; and naturally some shoplifting, and a few pickpockets.' How about robbery, muggings? Wisman stops and the two officers confer. 'I think there may have been one last year. I'm not sure. It's very rare.' Car-jackings? They laugh. 'Not here.'

Official figures bear them out. The Hoog Catherijne may be the centre of Utrecht's drug scene, but crime is no more common there than anywhere else. In 2000, the International Crime Victims Survey confirmed the impression from the streets: the crimes typically committed by drug addicts - burglary, robbery, shoplifting and theft from cars - are all significantly more prevalent in Britain than in Holland.


Before boarding my train for the airport, I ask Wisman if he likes his job. 'Very much,' he says. 'Sometimes I get a little depressed that there's never going to be a real solution to the drug scene. But then again, I certainly don't think things are getting worse.'

His reply speaks volumes about the difference between the British and Dutch approaches to drugs and crime. In Britain, successive politicians and police chiefs have vowed to defeat drugs, and in presenting their rhetorichave pumped up the enemy in the eyes of the public, exaggerating its strength and demonising addicts, using the media to create waves of what criminologists call 'crime panics'. The result has been an almost complete restriction on political room to manoeuvre.

In Holland, a calmer conception of the relationship between the state and citizen, and awareness of the state's limitations, have created a strategy of containment and limiting harm, and where necessary, an expedient, pragmatic fudge. There's little doubt which has been more effective.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by Gatekeeper
Yeah, drug use is all fun and games until someone gets raped, suffers brain damage, ends up maimed for life or gets outright killed. Then it ain't so much fun anymore, is it?

Gatekeeper

On that basis, why haven't we banned alcohol?

You can't tell people what to do in their personal lives - that includes sex, drugs, and rock and roll. If they're going to do it anyway, why make it illegal? That only serves to make the activity more dangerous.

[aahz_capone]

@OneFootInTheGrave

[aahz_capone]

Have you ever seen someone high on weed even try to get violent? It's near impossible! And as for rape, well, when you are moving as slow as a snail it's pretty ahrd to get that far.

[Gatekeeper]

STYOM:

I personally don't have *any* interest in drugs or alcohol, but (obviously) there are people who do. If they want to use such things, fine and dandy. Let them take the risk of incurring society's wrath. And if, by God, they hurt someone other than themselves while on drugs or when using alcohol, then they deserve to be sanctioned for their misdeeds.

One thing I've noticed is that a lot of this stuff wasn't illegal at one time, but folks abusing it and inflicting harm on others as a result seem to have made a lot of things forbidden, it seems. Guess it goes to show that irresponsibility has a way of making things less fun in life for not only the irresponsible ones, but the responsible ones as well.

aahz_capone: **shrug** Tell that two two drunk and/or high people who screw each other and one ends up with an unwanted baby and parenthood (or has to get an abortion) while the other is saddled with child payments/rearing. Perhaps it's an extreme example of what can happen when one isn't in full control of their faculties, but stuff like that is more common than one might want to admit.

For me, this is what it comes down to: You (generally speaking here, not you specifically, capone) want to use drugs and or blast yourself into oblivion with alcohol? Fine. You do that. It's your life to waste. May God (or society, for atheists) have mercy on your soul (or body, for atheists), however, if you hurt or kill me or others while you're out of it.

Unfortunately, people who were "out of it" when they hurt or killed others is why we have these laws on the books today for the most part, IMHO. Irresponsibility, that's what it is. Terminal irresponsibility.

That said, I need my caffeine.

Gatekeeper

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by OneFootInTheGrave
For Dr Strangelove

Some comparison between UK and the Dutch, and I believe UK is still far ahead of the US (but I might be wrong on that).

[/q]

Where in my post did I discuss Dutch policy on heroin and crack? It's the synthetic drugs like PCP, Ecstasy, and LSD that are being manufactured in the Netherlands. These drugs are not being manufactured for local use, but for export. The Dutch policy of leniency is poisoning the youth of the rest of Europe and even the USA, as such it has about as much moral high ground as the British forcing opium on the Chinese in the 19th century. The Republic of the Netherlands is doing nothing more than practicing Narco-Imperialism.

[Giancarlo]

Maybe the government of the Netherlands could be up for international indictment for drug traffiking? It is a long shot... but maybe possible?

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by aahz_capone
Have you ever seen someone high on weed even try to get violent? It's near impossible! And as for rape, well, when you are moving as slow as a snail it's pretty ahrd to get that far.

Yes, I have. I saw two guys stoned silly beat each other with blunt objects. They laughed off the first few blows. I saw another guy, a dope dealer, pissed off drive up to our apartment and blow away our mailboxes with a 9mm as a warning. (One of our guys, also stoned had called the guy and warned him that the state police were following his car. The dealer ditched the vehicle by driving it off a cliff. Later he found out that the whole thing had been a gag.)

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove


Where in my post did I discuss Dutch policy on heroin and crack? It's the synthetic drugs like PCP, Ecstasy, and LSD that are being manufactured in the Netherlands. These drugs are not being manufactured for local use, but for export. The Dutch policy of leniency is poisoning the youth of the rest of Europe and even the USA, as such it has about as much moral high ground as the British forcing opium on the Chinese in the 19th century. The Republic of the Netherlands is doing nothing more than practicing Narco-Imperialism.

Doctor, do you really believe that they make any difference?

There are tons of "illegal" yet government protected heroin making factories in the destabilized Balkans as we speak.

And it's not like there is no illegal production in other EU countries.

Not that the French aren't teearing their clothes apart for the Dutch to change their drug policies but the manufacturing of drugs synthetic whatever happen in many places in Europe.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by paiktis22


Doctor, do you really believe that they make any difference?

There are tons of "illegal" yet government protected heroin making factories in the destabilized Balkans as we speak.

And it's not like there is no illegal production in other EU countries.

Not that the French aren't teearing their clothes apart for the Dutch to change their drug policies but the manufacturing of drugs synthetic whatever happen in many places in Europe.

But the facts of the situation proves that being lenient on druggies doesn't reduce drug use, it just invites the cartels to come in.

When the Cocaine trade bean to increase in the 1970s cocaine use wasn't initially a problem in Columbia even though it early on came to dominate the trade. The stuff was expensive and the big dealers weren't interested in making more local problems than necessary. In the 1980s the chickens came home to roost as gangs fought each other and the government and large amounts of the goodies leaked out into local streets. Maybe we should wait another decade to see what happens to the Netherlands before we found a Dutch Admiration Society.