Drug use in Ireland

Whatever about weed , Coke is a selfish drug. You will hoard your fix no matter what . Weed has a social aspect to it. You're more likely to do someone's head in talking sh1te than with fists.

I was shocked at the amount of coke use I saw the last time I was in a pub in Dublin/ Wicklow. That was at a Santa thing and went for something to eat with the kids. The business in the jacks was unbelievable.

Sadly I have been reading your prohibitionists posts. Politically? If Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley could share power then the legalization of coke should be a doddle. No I don't understand what you and any other brainwashed supporters of The War on Drugs believe, always talking about the "misery" of coke, while ignoring the elephant the room, enjoyment. That charity offer is still on, what did I say that's untrue?

Even the taliban are still allowing drug dealers or poppy growers as long as they get paid a per cent of the profits to allow goods to be transported across borders

McCartney could control his drug use, like the majority of drug users he enjoyed them. Likewise Jagger and Keef Richards did, but Brian Jones couldn't.

Nobody experiments with drugs with the intention of becoming addicted. It's always just a few lines with mates on weekends.

And it's all fine and dandy for a while. The problem is, over time, when life throws you curveballs (she will), you will turn to your source of pleasure in the hard times .. Coke, Skag, liquor or why not all three. And here the Law of diminishing returns applies - you're finally taking the stuff just to feel normal

- oh, but you say - "that will never happen to me !'

Yup, sure, youre gonna be different and it's well worth risking addiction to find out.

I read an account (posted below) from a former Coke user (Drugs forum.com)

Gnostic13

" .... back in the early to mid 90s, when I lived in Tucson Arizona, i got introduced to the Lady Cocaine

The stuff was amazing. Always came rocked and had to put it through a grinder to snort. A lot of it was pinkish, super pure, came right over the border at Nogales. I had so much laying around that for months I never ran out.

Then much later, between around 2004 to 2010, I got into crack unfortunately. Started out consuming, ended up cooking and dealing, and ultimately found myself doing a 4 year bid in the state Hilton. Haven't touched it since.

What was it like?

It started out as a party drug. My first taste of it was at a high school buddy's sisters wedding. I instantly fell in love. Was nothing better than to down a few beers and follow up with a couple fat lines on the weekends. But cocaine is a very seductive lady. When she flirts with you, she's playing for keeps. You might think you're in control, and you just might be for awhile, but if you keep flirting, sooner or later you'll find yourself fully hitched. And there's no other lady who is higher maintenance.

It happens very subtly, at least for me. It literally seemed like, one day I was just fooling around, and the next I was in deep. ..... you do a line, or smoke a glass dicks worth, and you think you're fine for awhile. But then, before you put it down to do anything else, you tell yourself, well hell, let's have just one more. And then somehow you're not doing anything else. The anything else becomes just that.

Hours go by. Then days. Then you're so consumed by it you stop going to work. Quit your job and get into dealing the stuff just to have money to do your laundry with or eat.

+¹ And then comes the company. Your friends change from ordinary Joes to addicts. The kind of people who see no problem in knocking incessantly at your door at 3 am until you either answer or scream at them to go away, as they stand there with eyeballs about to pop out their sockets, hoping you will sell them another 20, or 40, or...and they hate taking no for an answer.

And then after word gets around enough, you might just get robbed. I'll let you construct your own scenario for that one, I prefer not to recount it.

In short, it becomes your whole life. And as you look at yourself sometimes in the mirror and see the damage it's beginning to do to your nose, and you realize the obsession it's created in your mind, and you look at your wasted body, it still doesn't even really register. You create excuses for these things. Or say to yourself it isn't all that bad.

Until that day I woke up on a jail cell, coming down, everything lost, facing serious time. Then it clicked. But by then it was too late. And you say to yourself, I wish I had never begun.

Don't pull a me. Even with unlimited supply, she always wins in the end. And she's a black widow. She will eat you as your anniversary gift ... "

Gnostic13

Now, why would anybody want to legalize this **** ?

If you can't accept life on life's terms, can't find hobbies to bring you joy, then the problem is not the drug laws - it's you

Jackanory, Martin Scorcese might be interested in that story, with a backing track from famous coke-users, The Rolling Stones.

True but members of the The Rolling Stones did use cocaine, google it. They did ok despite that. Many people paid good money to see them perform live.

It is not as complicated as you seems to think it is.

Maybe you can "do a bit of history" (aka 'Research') yourself.

I've been reading about alcohol use in Australia. Alcohol is legalized in Australia and distribution and consumption are subject to regulations there - as elsewhere.

Quality control, Licensing, hours of sale are restricted and there are minimum age laws and secondary supply laws to restrict sale and supply of alcohol to young people.

Despite these restrictions, alcohol causes significant harm to Australians. Every day, 15 Australians die due to alcohol- attributable disease or injuries and 430 Australians are hospitalised because of alcohol use.

Alcohol is the most common drug that Australians seek treatment for, and alcohol-related harms cost Australian society an estimated $15.3 billion a year

It’s important to recognise that legalisation does not solve all the problems associated with a drug’s use and people’s experience of potential adverse impacts of that drug.

I don't know the stats for Alcohol use / deaths / accidents in Ireland

Maybe you can "do a bit of history" on the Stats for Ireland and come back here to let us know ?

Reading all these 'drugs are bad' anti legalisation posts, you'd think the war on drugs had been won and no one had access to them or were using them anymore. Banning drugs doesn't work and it's very expensive for the taxpayer.

Portugal dramatically softened it's approach on drugs, decriminalising drug consumption and drug use did not spiral out of control:

"Seventeen years on, the U.S. is suffering its worst addiction epidemic in American history. In 2016 alone, an estimated 64,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses—more than the combined death tolls for Americans in the Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq Wars. In Portugal, meanwhile, the drug-induced death rate has plummeted to five times lower than the E.U. average and stands at one-fiftieth of the United States’. Its rate of HIV infection has dropped from 104.2 new cases per million in 2000 to 4.2 cases per million in 2015. Drug use has declined overall among the 15- to 24-year-old population, those most at risk of initiating drug use."

They also saved a considerable amount of tax payers money:

"A 2015 study found that since Portugal approved the new national strategy in 1999 that led to decriminalization, the per capita social cost of drug misuse decreased by 18%. And according to a report by the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit with the goal of ending America’s “War on Drugs,” the percentage of people in prison in Portugal for drug law violations has decreased dramatically, from 44% in 1999 to 24% in 2013."

https://time.com/longform/portugal-drug-use-decriminalization/

Lol you completely missed the point.

What I said still stands. Nearly every illegal drug was at some stage legal and some of them were legal for far longer than (when they were made) illegal.

Maybe you just need to read slower and then think a while about what was said.

To me personally there is no difference between alcohol and cocaine. Both are destructive and with potential of abuse. But since some people will be using them there is no need to waste time and resources trying to stop them.

Sugar is also highly addictive substance and abusing leads to enormous strains on health system and eventually to a death of heavy addicted person.

Cannabis is fairly to an extent legalized in Netherlands and some other EU countries decriminalized use and possession of some class A drugs and somehow did not changed to a failed states full of addicts.

The figures are actually far higher. It is also a fact that state take in more than they spend, otherwise they would try to outlaw them in no time.

This is from article from a decade ago.

The Government rakes in an estimated €2 billion a year in tax revenue from cigarettes but roughly the same amount is spent on treating illness caused by tobacco.

Irish people puffed their way through 5.4 billion cigarettes in 2011, making smoking a lucrative habit for the Government.

Your posts are very well informed but they fall on deaf ears on a forum like this lol.

That will happen as the older generation (65+) pass away. Ireland is objectively a very liberal country.