EU ready to end drug prohibition

ScumLord wrote: »

There is no mastering one drug and moving onto another that's a pretty silly thing to hope for in fairness. There's nothing to say cannabis may have a positive influence on the Irish drinking culture. The fact is if you mix drink and weed all your fit for is bed, it makes you tired. You also can't drink nearly as much alcohol with weed, the alcohol will become nothing more than a beverage when your stoned.

I just don't see how cannabis can exacerbate the problem when what you'll really be doing is allowing people to choose a different drug when socialising. If more and more people use weed for socialising it will take numbers away from the drinking crowd not add to them and make them more mental.

Absolutely

You don't just smoke a load of spliffs and go out on the tear. Weed and alcohol are both depressants, they're both enjoyable, but that's where the similarities end. Weed doesn't give the dutch courage and bullish confidence that alcohol will imbue, it's good for shooting the **** with close friends but causes loud, busy places with unfamiliar people to become uncomfortable. It’s a sitting-in drug rather than a going out one - if you smoke any amount of joints in the house you get comfortable in your cosy bubble, where you’ll stay for the night, with your only interaction with the outside world being one or more phone calls to your fast-food outlet of choice. And whilst I think a few beers synergise well with a bag of sticky, but as you’ve said, the key term is “a few.” Start downing the gargle when you’re stoned and you’ll end up passing out at best, and with your head in the porcelain at worst.

So I could see an increase in cannabis consumption alleviating some of the social problems associated with our drink culture, but this is assuming that legalisation would even cause an significant rise in the use of a drug that’s already widely available and socially acceptable amongst the youth. Lest we forget, the Netherlands has a lower rate of consumption amongst the youth than that bastion of liberal drug policy, the USA.

i dont think the head shops should have been closed down.

they should have been heavily taxed and regulated

The problem I had with the headshops wasn't the fact that they sold drugs, but the kind of drugs they sold were completely untested.

When Whack hit the scene it was pure unadulterated chaos. That stuff was absolutely insane; the horror stories I've heard, people I know going into a mental hospital and never coming out.

This shouldn't be encouraged at all, we shouldn't have to ingest untested, potentially highly dangerous drugs just because no one wants to legalize the ones we actually know how to handle (from both a medical and societal viewpoint).

If headshops sold tested drugs then yes, they should've been legally taxed and regulated. I still don't think they should've been closed down. But what was happening was, in fairness, insane.

Frida Enough Screenwriter wrote: »

The problem I had was the drugs weren't real.

Real in what sense? The cannabinoids and various smokeables had largely no effect, I'll grant that, or at least no impressive one. But they were most certainly real in the same sense any other illegal drug is real.

Whack was what really shocked all of us. We were frequenters of the headshops for various smokeables and snorts (never the pills though), the fact that Whack was sold just like the old generation headshop snorts such as Blow was absolutely insane.

So many people took it thinking it would just be another energy lifter, thinking it was totally harmless. There was no indication at all whatsoever that it would be any different, and then the next thing you knew half the town was in the hospital within a week.

People got violent, they saw hallucinations, underwent massive personality changes, damaged themselves, other people. Some were even unfortunate enough to have it be their catalyst to permanent mental illness. Nobody knew what to do when they saw these massive changes in their closest friends. The doctors had absolutely no knowledge of what they had taken. Like I said, it was essentially chaos.

After that I really started to cop on to how truly ridiculous the whole situation was. Loads of youth were doing these completely untested drugs for the one stupid fact that the ones we knew, for centuries, that had been tested over and over, that our hospitals knew how to handle, were deemed "too dangerous" to be legal, and in an effort to stay above board, these kids resorted to what they assumed to be safe due to the fact it was legal without bothering to put any research into it.

It's a really sick situation and a massively hypocritical one. I definitely learned my lesson from it.

Frida Enough Screenwriter wrote: »

Going off topic but real in the sense that the "buzz" derived from them was not as good as say for example MDMA or shrooms etc. I am not a coke head never liked it, not because I am anti drug but because it did nothing for me, so I wouldn't see the attraction to that type of drug in the first place - maybe they were similar.

I just found it funny looking at my mallet head mates who would spend €30 on a bag of air freshener and thought they were getting stoned. That was my problem. Back on topic - can't see it happening here. Sure masturbation is still a sin.

A few were. It was never one for chemicals, if given the choice I'd just stick with weed, but the guy I lived with was a partier and there were parties at our house 4 nights out of the week. My bedroom was generally occupied and I didn't want to fall asleep near a bunch of drugged out drunk people (I don't really drink much either) so I'd lick some to keep me awake (the idea of snorting bothers me).

I didn't do whack but I know an awful lot of people who did, and a lot of people who did the rest of the headshop drugs. They certainly were very much real and had some very interesting effects. It was a strange time, being a guinea pig for Ireland.

It really just depended on the drug, but I wouldn't call them more or less 'real' because the effects aren't as strong or of a certain type.

Amhran Nua wrote: »

I'm seriously starting to come around to supporting the idea of (careful) legalisation of the lower class stuff, and a zero tolerance policy for the nastier stuff. I'm not in favour of drug use, I think its fairly ridiculous to be honest, but I'm far less in favour of violent criminal gangs.

*Hand ticks Amhran Nua candidate on ballot paper*

mikom wrote: »

*Hand ticks Amhran Nua candidate on ballot paper*

Heh, its not an official policy yet, we still have to investigate it carefully and figure out the finer details before presenting it to the public; the one point of reference, Holland, is not especially encouraging, but the theory is sound. I'd hope we can have it up there one way or the other before the Christmas though. My own feeling on it is its a great way to cut most of the finance to organised crime in Ireland.

mikom wrote: »

Be better having a look at Portugal.

They haven't legalised anything though, only decriminalised it. The main supporters of this policy internationally are the Cato institute, a Libertarian think tank, which again is not encouraging. However by treating drug addicts as victims rather than dangerous people with some sort of endemic flaw, positive results have been returned there. If a good enough case presents itself, we'll advocate a step further. It's hard to see how empowering the likes of the McCarthy-Dundons is a good thing however.

Amhran Nua wrote: »

They haven't legalised anything though, only decriminalised it.

Neither has the Netherlands.

prinz wrote: »

We have already seen that there is a significant section of Irish society incapable of dealing with alcohol maturely despite it's long legal history. Perhaps we, as a society, should master one drug first. When we have responsible partaking of one, we may be able to manage responsible partaking in another.

I keep hearing this argument, and I think it's really silly. It ignores the fact that different drugs have different effects, and the implications of use of different drugs in a society are different depending on the drug. Equally, it ignores that people might potentially use a different drug instead of the currently problematic drug in the country, potentially reducing the harm caused by the former drug.

It's a bit like saying bicycles should be illegal because there are so many car crashes.

It will be a sad day for Ireland if drugs are legalized. The very fact that they are illegal keeps many people from taking up the habit.