Do you want an end to the war on drugs?

Drella118

The repressive drug policies of most EU countries have failed dismally, have failed to curb drug abuse, have increased criminality, wasted police time, needlessly increased the jail population, and led to unnecessary adverse health consequences for drug users.

Last year December, the European Parliament approved the 'Catania report' . This report contains recommendations for a fundamental change of drug policy in the European Union. It is now up to EU authorities to respect these recommendations in future EU Drugs Policy.

The report expresses the need, first of all, to promote health and stop unnecessary repression. It opens up the discussion about replacing the dogma of drug prohibition with a balanced approach based on science and common sense. European activists for drug policy reform have started a petition to support the Catania report and put pressure on EU authorities to implement it in their policies. In one month, this petition gathered more than 40.000 signatures. The petition will be presented to the European Union on 15 June 2005.

If the EU will adopt the recommendations of this report, it will mean a step with great symbolic value, both inside Europe and towards the rest of the world. The Catania report talks a different language, if it "contaminates" the EU Drugs Policy, many national debates can start on the issue of what this means for national practices.

Join the fight for different drug laws. Sign the petition on http://action.encod.org/ and ask others to do the same. (the report is available on this site)

bonkey

So you are effectively saying the end to the war on drugs is achievable by stopping fighting them, rather than winning?

I gotta be honest...while I'm all in favour of more reasoned legislation on the issue, I find portraying a shift in legislation as an end to the war on drugs somehwat disengenuous.

I can already see those who will oppose this retorting to the effect that surrender is always one way of ending a war, but generally only as a method of last resort, as it is effectively an admission of defeat and thus we would only be legalising drugs because we can't beat them.

jc

hawkmoon269

I am reminded of a headline in a US satirical magazine some years ago - "War on drugs over, drugs declared winner". Funny because it was true.

Quantum

The war on drugs can never and will never be won. Human nature is human nature.

We need to decriminalise drugs and tackle their use through hrealt education.

We spend billions every year in the west on this stupifyingly pointless war - money that could be spent on health and education.

daveirl

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Dead Jack

By the War on Drugs,
Do you mean the cold war-
increased intolerance towards drug users in all countries,
particularly including legislation and mandatory minimums (supposedly actually designed against black communities) in America,

or do you mean the true war-
the stopping of hard drugs at their source by assisting countries in combatting violent drug related organised crime syndicates and cartels
(this war includes bombers and so on, as well as special investigations, spies etc.)

?

Most people mean both, and I just wanted to clear up that I think you are talking purely about the cold, legislative end of it.

Dead Jack

sorry, had to stop there, phone rang,

ok, where was I,

Education, as you say, seems to be failing almost as badly as jail sentences. The obvious solution is an increased use of treatment in sentencing to lower the jail terms and for the purposes of parole, thus emptying the jails considerably.

Perhaps the main problem is in educating the police. They seem to hunt drug dealers in black communities, both in Europe and America, when the majority of drug users are well known to be white.

The key issue here, with the report and so on, is dealing with the reality of drugs, not the myth.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

daithimac

I can see the points of merit in decrimilising hash. so as to take its distribution out of the hands of drug dealers, but that is as far as i would see reasonable. I have seen people who have destroyed themself's through drug use and the worst part is that they don't realise it. the best ad's against drug use are usually drug users and i would be strongly against legalisation of drugs such as speed E and coke and harder types.

Dead Jack

you're right about cocaine, and that seems to be true everywhere, but both softer drugs like marijuana, as well as dangerous amphetamines and methamphetamines are the white domain. I don't know about heroin. Both the largest number of drug users and of hard drug users are white. I'm trying to find sources now, but I thought it was common knowledge.

Oh, not to mention that most of the pill takers I know and know of are white, and the only time I've ever seen LSD that was another lot of white guys.

Dead Jack

from http://www.policyalmanac.org/crime/archive/drug_abuse.shtml
Rates of current illicit drug use among the major racial/ethnic groups in 2001 were 7.2 percent for whites, 6.4 percent for Hispanics, and 7.4 percent for blacks.

Bear in mind these are percentages of the group, not the population. There are many more white men than black in America, and so white men make up the majority of drug users.

from http://www.drugpolicy.org/communities/race/
Although African Americans comprise only 12.2 percent of the population and 13 percent of drug users, they make up 38 percent of those arrested for drug offenses and 59 percent of those convicted of drug offenses causing critics to call the war on drugs the "New Jim Crow." The higher arrest rates for African Americans and Latinos do not reflect a higher abuse rate in these communities but rather a law enforcement emphasis on inner city areas where drug use and sales are more likely to take place in open-air drug markets where treatment resources are scarce.

edit- I forgot to mention that the minimum sentences on those black convictions are usually longer, because they have racially profiled drug use, meaning that those drugs more popular in black communities have higher mandatory minimums and a lower police tolerance- thus almost 60% of convictions are black, and their sentences for crack cocaine rather than other equally hard drugs are 5 to 10 years longer.

Quantum

Dead Jack wrote:

Most people mean both, and I just wanted to clear up that I think you are talking purely about the cold, legislative end of it.

The legislation and the police action.

The massive scale of organised crime around the world is one of the biggest dangers to our democracy and it is getting worse every year - yet it is created and powered by the obsession with the war against drugs.

If the drugs were not illegal then these crime syndicates would be a fraction of the size. There would be literally BILLIONS of Euros/dollars available every year to expand education and other treatment programs a hundred times over. There would be BILLIONS to spend on rehab and on all kinds of other issues in society.

If the drugs were not illegal then ordinary people who 'play' with drugs would not be dragged into contact with serious criminals.
If the drugs were not illegal then crime would be a fraction of what it is today. The streets would be a lot safer and our lives owuld be a lot better. All police reports say that drug related crime makes up the vast majority of crime.

We need to move to a society with massively bigger education about drugs and where people's behaviour is what matters to the law, not what they do in private. By this I mean that anyone who is under the influence of drugs in public, or in a vehicle or at work or with children should be seriously prosecuted. However what they do in their private lives in their own homes should not be the business of the police or the government.

Dead Jack

Heres some education on why not to abuse drugs, although it does seem to encourage the use of marijuana.

Surely the main worries with anything are knowing your limits.

If trying something new, how can you know what your limit is? Of course to dye from the toxins in marijuana you’d have to have about 5,000 joints in just three days, depending on your limit (that’s if it takes one or two puffs to have any affect on you, if it takes 4 or 5, or even more than one spliff, before you feel anything at all, then you can never die of marijuana poisoning.

Compare this to alcohol.

Think of what it takes for alcohol to affect you at all. Multiply that by just 10. If you have a drop more than that 10 without throwing up, YOU ARE DEAD.

That’s why you do throw up.

But,

Do you know what your limit for amphetamines is? How can you, you’ve never taken them before. What if its 0.3mg, and that’s a pill weighing just under 2 grams, and you’ve been given a pack of 6, or that’s 15 grams of powder in front of you, or even 50.

Dead Jack

I completely agree that taking it off the black market would make drugs both safer to buy and easier to get users in need of help to seek treatment for.

If some were legally grown in the states for example, to supply their own habits, then other countries could regain control of their legal economies and stop famine by growing more food.

The organised criminals would not go away however, although their funding would be cut very short, making it harder for them to support corrupt officials in those countries torn apart by the War on Drugs.

And you'd free up jails allowing harder sentencing for other criminals. But, you have to consider the possibility that in the short term you might be releasing great numbers of criminals unconvicted on other charges, and that while it would be wrong, immoral and legally impossible to hold them without proof, we've all been raised on that kind of fear, and it would certainy cause a panic.

BlitzKrieg

dead jack i wished you knew your limits when it came to alcohol

but in fairness you make good points. any indication on where it should go politically (as it is the politics forum)? I mean with the legal control of certain drugs, such as amphetamines you would have better control of the dosage in each pill. But if you restrict the amount someone buys and they want me, they will return to the illegal sources for larger amounts

is'nt this a fault with the taking drugs out of the criminals hands, that under government control the substance would be under such strict control that while yes, the illegal cannibas markets would cease, other drugs would be more difficult to control .

uberwolf

Dead Jack wrote:

But, you have to consider the possibility that in the short term you might be releasing great numbers of criminals unconvicted on other charges, and that while it would be wrong, immoral and legally impossible to hold them without proof, we've all been raised on that kind of fear, and it would certainy cause a panic.

do you mean that these individuals, once they had served whatever sentences they currently are serving, would have no means of supporting themselves and would turn to alternate crime to support themselves?

Decriminalising wouldn't be good enough, it would have to a full legalisation, which would give the message of support? it would also have to a world wide 'ok', surely the EU can't produce it's own supply of Opium? Meaning there'd stil be a black market as such - either cheaper, harder, whatever.

Hash was originally made illegal after lobbying by paper manufacturers (at the time a major industry) in britain were threatened by hemp afaik. Nothing to do with a concern for public welfare. Demonstrating that it was an economic decision not a welfare issue, should economics decide again?



/this feels like a humanties thread. Despite the OPs intentions. I'll leave it here for a while, but I or one of the other mods may shift it 'next door'

Dead Jack

Edit- this first few paragraphs are to BK

taking for granted that you wrote that while I was posting the last, the political solution,

I'd like to retort privately that on the occassion I think you're refering to, you were dancing almost naked but for a cowboy hat and an Irish flag, and it was less the alcohol and more a combination of what I was doing outside, and who else was present inside, that broke my limit.

In Politics, yes, its a global problem or at least a global fact, and the EU can't control sonething it doesn't supply, for the same reason that communism doesn't work unless you already have an isolated nation or rule the world- the other countries can supply things at different rates, and you have to work harder to produce your own supply of things that down come naturally from your countries.

Hash is the tricky one because of the lack of dangers compared to other, perfectly legal drugs.

To clarify about prisons, no I meant that you'd have to consider releasing those tried under the earlier, harsher laws, and that if you did choose to, the masses would be terrified of what you are letting out, both criminals already, and those who have learnt to be criminals in prison, the so called "college of crime" whether or not thats the reality.

uberwolf

I don't think there'd be a call for an amnesty at all. They broke the then laws of the land. No more than a new law is retrofitted to try people after the fact.

You would have a stream of 'deskilled' workers though. Are their numbers that significant? How many people rely on income from crime to support them and their families? Would they turn to alternate crime or would they be forced clean.

Is the EU proposal useless as a stand alone - becoming a case study for future generations of how unilateral action couldn't work


edit: - Jack could you keep your private talk just that please, take it to PM

Quantum

Couple of points:

Please leave it as a political thread - it is a major political issue, even though it can be a humanities one as well. But here we should look at the politics of it especially.

As far as prisons go - these are micromanagement issues that could easily be dealt with at the time. I would suggest personally that dealers be left in jail subject to some kind of maximum; users be set free immediately, and those involved in other crimes such as organisd crime left there to do their time.

The first mindset change we have to make in my opinion is to accept that people must be free to do the wrong thing. They must be free to make mistakes and hurt themselves. Society cannot and should not impose itself on individuals so much that they lose this freedom.

Once we accept that concept then we need to adjust our society to treat people acording to their public behaviour, not their private practice. If an individual choses to take cocaine at home then so be it. It is not the business of the government or the law. However if they are drugged in public, or in the presence of children, or at work, or in a vehicle etc. then they should feel the full weight of the law irrespective of what drug is involved.

This is the way alcohol should be treated also. We need to allow people to have access to pubs and alcohol at any time that premises wish to make it available. However we need to put in place strict laws about being drunk in public or in the company of children.

The same goes for drugs.

People just don't realise the damage to our society that the obsessian with this war against drugs has done. The changes in society. The astronomic increase in street crime, assaults, murders and organised crime. The costs of prisons, the police costs, the court costs, the international crime costs, the destruction of lives NOT because of the drugs themselves but because of the criminality they induce.

If this astronomic amount of money were applied to rehabilitation, education and behavioural enforcement I believe our society could roll back a hell of a lot of what we have lost in the last fifty years.

However Ireland could never do this alone. But I tend to believe that the enlarged EU could. It is big enough and self sufficient enough to do so.

Dead Jack

granted about the private.

Prisons have long had a tradition of reskilling and being known as opportunities to get degrees. If drug use was decriminalised it might become less of a taboo to employers that their potential employees were once convicted for drug offenses, making this re-educating more valid. The only true career criminals beyond this are those that think they are above the law, and so are likely to continue, but I doubt there would be many who haven't already had other convictions than drug offenses alone.

I don't think the EU proposal is useless, I just think its unrealistic to believe that legalisation or decriminalisation solves many more problems than zero tolerance when two peaceful nations have disagreeing policies. The EU is a good medium in this case, as it would do something to regulate law between countries- however on the other hand that is an invasion of that country's rights as a free nation.

Dead Jack

Quantum wrote:

Couple of points:

The first mindset change we have to make in my opinion is to accept that people must be free to do the wrong thing. They must be free to make mistakes and hurt themselves. Society cannot and should not impose itself on individuals so much that they lose this freedom.
...
However Ireland could never do this alone. But I tend to believe that the enlarged EU could. It is big enough and self sufficient enough to do so.

I agree with all your points, but these especially.
I would like the freedom to talk about the humanities of the issue, and so may set up a thread there at a later date and hope you join me for it, but this is someone elses show, and on this forum, and so we deal with the politics from here on, at least where its possible to distinguish.

Sand

The first mindset change we have to make in my opinion is to accept that people must be free to do the wrong thing. They must be free to make mistakes and hurt themselves. Society cannot and should not impose itself on individuals so much that they lose this freedom.

Id agree with this - with the important qualifier that people arent free to then place the consequences of their mistakes on society at large. Hence if people want to do drugs, fine by me. I honestly dont care that people are doing drugs right now as long as they dont bother me, hence I dont care if its legal so long as they dont bother me. They can drink ratpoison for all I care. But when they suffer the health/lifestyle consequences of their choices then they should be held accountable for their own costs. The state - i.e. me the tax payer - shouldnt have to pay a penny to clean up their lives.

Freedom without responsibility is reserved only for children.

spanner

i was in mountjoy on a tour a while ago and they said 82% of women prisoners were there for drug related offences, not sure about the men

Dead Jack

And that's got to be a problem, that they're all in jail on drugs charges, a mistake of the system, even if all of them are guilty and deserve it at some level.

Sure its the law and they broke it, but they're ultimately only hurting themselves, so let them, but make other options like treatment available, spend more on educating them to seek treatment, and give them a chance to save themselves a lot of pain.

The innocents- the young, the insane and the seriously old, should not be held responsible however, and I think perhaps they should be helped rather than having that choice, but I'm not an expert.

Yes the money ends up in the wrong hands, possibly hurting others, but we've shown that that could be solved more easily by changing the direction of the War on Drugs, by lessening its prohibitions and taking the drugs market out of those wrong hands.


So, is there another solution to stopping the madness of jails so heavily populated by drug abusers rather than other criminals, other than decriminalisation?

I seriously doubt it, but anyone want to take a shot?

And please no one say capital punishment, (which would turn every drug use a form of overdose suicide, strangely enough).

jman0

News from the War on Drugs front lines:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=638590
Spraying seems a fairly extreme measure to adopt you'd have to agree.
A big FO to coca farmers trying to scrape a living, I remember hearing a debate on the tele years ago and it was some Americans saying, they could grow oranges instead of coca, which is ridiculous considering the price of oranges compared to coca.

Dead Jack

But there aught to be an alternative.
I believe that if their country had a stable economy, true government and order- in other words if the criminals were taken out of play, (either by force or by their losing control of the market, [possible through decriminalisation])- then alternatives could be found, at least enough so that many would no longer be under either pressure or temptation to grow coca, because they could support themselves without it and know the consequences.

Americas failing plans have been quite successful in punishment, in providing consequences, but have had no effect because of a lack of serious alternatives, and because the growers live in a world where the criminals are clearly winning, are in power, and have more money and freedom, and so they have little respect for the American’ punishment, and, I suppose, see it as something they must overcome if they want to make enough money to survive.

jman0

Of course the real alternative would be to change the drug habits within the western world (or America as the case may be).
Why should certain psycho reactive drugs like alcohol be acceptable while others get banned?
If society wants a war on drugs they should really start with alcohol, it's the most common, it's domestic, and it's deadly.