UK - PM's response to Cannabis e-petition

[FuBai]

Originally Posted by PM's Website

3 December 2007


We received a petition asking:

"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to safeguard the public from the risks of inappropriate use of cannabis by bringing its control and sales within the law."

Details of Petition:

"Safeguarding the public from the risks of inappropriate use of cannabis by bringing its control and sales within the law is in line with the government's new information campaign "the more you mess with cannabis, the more it could mess with your mind". This regulation would be supporting both the specific health risks and specific benefits of the drug and protect the most vulnerable who are at present at the mercy of the illegal market. The current information campaign also states "cannabis smokers can't be sure what they are getting" - regulation would include quality control, information about strength, as well as clear guidelines about safest use and specific risks, in particular for young people and those with a psychotic illness. Moreover, strict licencing laws would put responsiblity onto adults not to sell to children, and anyone selling to under 18s, for instance, would be prosecuted."

Response

The Government has no intention of legalising cannabis and regulating its control. In response to the Home Affairs Committee report on The Government's Drugs Policy: Is It Working? in 2002, it stated that "We do not accept that legalisation and regulation is now, or will be in the future, an acceptable response to the presence of drugs" and that includes cannabis. Supply and possession of the drug are and will remain illegal.
The Government considers that cannabis is a controlled, illicit drug for good reasons. It has a number of acute and chronic health effects and prolonged use can induce dependence. Most cannabis is smoked and smoking, in any form, is dangerous. Even the occasional use of cannabis can pose significant dangers for people with mental health problems, such as schizophrenia, and particular efforts need to be made to encourage abstinence in such individuals.
Legalising cannabis would run counter to this country's international obligations as a signatory to the relevant United Nations Conventions on drugs and there is no prospect of unilateral action.
Legalisation would also run counter to the Government's health and education messages. The message to all - and to young people in particular - is that all controlled drugs, including cannabis, are harmful and no one should take them. To legalise the possession of cannabis for personal consumption would send the wrong message to the majority of young people who do not take drugs on a regular basis, if at all, with the potential risk of increased drug use and abuse.
The Government's objective is to reduce the use of all illegal drugs - including cannabis - substantially, not to encourage increased consumption due to more ready access to increased supply. While our drugs laws cannot be expected to eliminate drug use, there is no doubt that they do help to limit use and deter experimentation.
The Prime Minister announced on 18 July that, as part of the consultation to review its drug strategy, the Government will also consider whether it is now right that cannabis should be moved from Class C back to Class B under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.
There is real public concern about the potential mental health effects of cannabis use and, in particular, the use and availability of increased strengths of the drug, commonly known as skunk. In these circumstances, the Government is considering whether it is necessary to toughen the penalties relating to cannabis possession to complement its education and treatment programmes.
The Home Secretary has therefore asked the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which advises the Government on drug issues, to again assess the medical and social scientific basis of the classification of cannabis. This review will take into account the fact that there are stronger forms of cannabis that may cause more harm.
The Government will consider carefully the Advisory Council's findings, expected next spring, before making a final decision that will be consistent with its aim of reducing the harm caused by drugs and ensuring that people - and especially young people - are well aware of all the risks.

Exactly the same response was issued to a second e-petition (We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to remove cannabis and cannabis products from the Misuse of Drugs Act and associated laws)

Reputation Comments on this post:

	Thanks for the, rather depressing, information.
	good, if not another example of the current skunk skunk skunk scratched record
	Interesting posts in this thread, thanks for sharing.
	thank you for posting. I'd never thought the government would even reply...

[Lunar Loops]

Were you in any way involved in this petition? Do you know how many names were on the petition?

[FuBai]

Originally Posted by shroomonger

Were you in any way involved in this petition? Do you know how many names were on the petition?

I was a signatory, yes. I have in fact signed quite a few of the drug reform petitions. They are rather obscure and you only get a high number of people if a popular website links to one. Also, considering the sensitivity of formally declaring your support for this issue, some could be forgiven for not signing up. When I signed it I think it was at the 1000+ (it wasn't less but it could have been more, I just remember the number of digits.)

[Lunar Loops]

Thanks for the reply. I fear the number of people signing is rather irrelevant in one respect (unless we are talking about millions of signatures) as the governmental reponse would be the same.

It would be interesting to see how they would repond if a VERY large number of the population were to sign such a petition.

[FuBai]

Originally Posted by shroomonger

Thanks for the reply. I fear the number of people signing is rather irrelevant in one respect (unless we are talking about millions of signatures) as the governmental reponse would be the same.

It would be interesting to see how they would repond if a VERY large number of the population were to sign such a petition.

The e-petition against the road taxes that charge you more for using certain roads hit something like 3 million signatures and, to the best of my knowledge, that plan is still under consideration. Hell, over 5 million people marched out to protest against the war in Iraq - and that's full blown marching, not just signing up on-line.

[Lunar Loops]

Originally Posted by FuBai

The e-petition against the road taxes that charge you more for using certain roads hit something like 3 million signatures and, to the best of my knowledge, that plan is still under consideration. Hell, over 5 million people marched out to protest against the war in Iraq - and that's full blown marching, not just signing up on-line.

Therein lies the problem with all attempts at changing drug policy on a national level. For one thing there are not enough people who are interested enough to do anything about the situation and even if they could be persuaded to do so, no government is going to change its policy in this area in isolation from the rest of the world (and in particular our friendly self-appointed global cops in the USA). However, what do we do, simply give up? This is not an acceptable reponse either.

It may be time to re-evaluate the approach adopted by those seeking to change government policy in this area.

[Nacumen]

Originally Posted by shroomonger

Thanks for the reply. I fear the number of people signing is rather irrelevant in one respect (unless we are talking about millions of signatures) as the governmental reponse would be the same.

It would be interesting to see how they would repond if a VERY large number of the population were to sign such a petition.

I'm pretty sure the response would be the exact same, actually.

[FuBai]

If I'm honest I believe that political campaigning is just...gravy. It's superficial and only works after you hit a tipping point. It used to be that the only way to hit that tipping point is with huge amounts of money - you need to get some of the mainstream media on your side, and I don't mean just the news. You need conventional TV programs like soaps as well. Now, with the internet, much less money is needed, but you still need a substantial amount to ensure a high number of hits + you need to put the argument in as many formats as possible. The problem isn't that we haven't got the right argument it's that people are either not hearing or not listening. You have to force the issue into the mainstream and to do that you need the media. We know that 34% of the populace have tried illegal drugs, what we need to do is connect the dots and force it into the open. Political pressure groups on these sort of issues really end up as the rational/academic wing of the movement, the main body and power of the movement comes through convincing the plebeian masses who, whatever people say, do not understand the issues sufficiently. The problem with this movement and movements like it is that it treats people as rational individuals to be convinced, when really they need to be treated like sheep, and herded, because it's exactly that kind of thinking that we are up against.

[MrG]

Damn straight there Foobs.

To quote the Kaiser Chiefs "We are the angry mob, we read the papers every day, we like who we like, we hate who we hate, but we're also easy to sway".

Those who wield the biggest stick as far as getting a politician's attention is the journalist who waves a microphone in front of their face and demands a suitably vitriolic soundbite in response to some perceived threat to that particular journo's target audience. E.g. Daily Mail readers (middle england) want to hear that a politician holds the same unquestioning prohibitionist hard line against any kind of liberal drug attitude. After all they are the type of people for whom Chris Morris's immortal line "alcohol is not a drug, it's a drink" allows them to sleep soundly at night.

It doesn't matter a flying one what the politician actually believes - I'd like to think that Tony Blair, for all his faults, might actually be cool about the idea of a toke or two whilst playing the guitar hero in his front room, but as a leading politician and subsequent PM there was never going to be a chance that he could allow the mainstream media to get wind of his real opinion, he had to give the response that was demanded by the journo - "drugs are bad, m'kay?"

[Purest]

No politician can turn round to the media in this country and say "I think drugs are ok" purely because they know the media will have a field day and discredit them at every possible opportunity. Even if a politician turned round to the public and said "Paying for drugs is funding terrorism" they'd still get slated.

Personally I think its really annoying that they sent the exact same response as they did in July, I also signed the petition and felt physically cheated that the government didn't even try to make the response seem like they actually gave a damn that the same petitions are being brought up over and over again.
One huge problem with e-petitions is that there is pretty much no advertising for them, I stumbled across them purely by chance and frankly the layout and simplicity of the site made me question wether it was actually affiliated with our own government. If they actually advertised the petitions to the media then there would be so many more responses and maybe something positive could come from them.

[Bikelbees]

I feel the frustration here. I'm not sure if campaigns like this can achieve anything. Whilst its true millions were against the war, herein lies the inherent problem with "single-issue" politics, the issue isn't the big picture, an what unites the 5 million apart from a shared sense of wanting moral absolution from the crime? - Nothing. They say the strength of STOP THE WAR lies in its diversity, not true for if there is nothing substantial to cohere the people, then they can be readily dispersed or placated. I'm not sure why people campaign around cannabis discussing health issues etc, the real problem is the whole ethos of government control over the health of the individual, discussing whether cannabis causes mental health problems is to play into their hands as accepting their policing role over our minds. To distinguish cannabis from other drugs is also a distraction from the real issue IMO.

[FuBai]

Originally Posted by Bikelbees

I'm not sure why people campaign around cannabis discussing health issues etc, the real problem is the whole ethos of government control over the health of the individual, discussing whether cannabis causes mental health problems is to play into their hands as accepting their policing role over our minds. To distinguish cannabis from other drugs is also a distraction from the real issue IMO.

Agreed, however it's "thin end of the wedge" politics. You go for everything you think you can get away with and if that's not everything you want there's always next time after the reforms have sunk in. It's philosophically dubious but it may be necessary to kick-start reform.

[enquirewithin]

The UK government does not care about drugs, or the harm they cause, any more than it cares about human rights. One day there will be democracy, perhaps.

The Government's objective is to reduce the use of all illegal drugs - including cannabis - substantially, not to encourage increased consumption due to more ready access to increased supply. While our drugs laws cannot be expected to eliminate drug use, there is no doubt that they do help to limit use and deter experimentation.

This utter nonsense as they know. They do not state why some drugs are illegal and others are not.

UK politics is a pathetic shape. There is no substantial difference between the two political parties. Labour at least did make possession less of an offense. Anyone who smokes and votes Conservative only has themselves to blame if they end up with a conviction later on.

[Bikelbees]

FuBai's tactical approach is interesting, compromising ideals for perceived pragmatic purposes. I consider that although often the slowly slowly approach is the way to catch a monkey, there is also a paradox inherrent in seeking incremental change in todays world. In the past when there was a cohesive opposition one could consider that small victories were just that, victories achieved through collective bargaining that had a direction. One is readily fooled today into believing that democratic pressure exerts through the ballot box to allow a flux of ideas that ebb and flow with popular opinion which can be manipulated through the media, lobby groups and campaigning. Whilst the government knee-jerks in response to crisis and media hype regularly, this is never progressive as far as freedom is concerned as the language is always about risk-avoidance and protection, which are the sole forms of government-subject contact in contemporary politics. What has changed though is the literal death of opposition politics, and victories are not won incrementally as part of a struggle, no, what happens is that by pleading victimhood rights are carved up into devisive entitlements as hand-outs by the state. Drug users as victims is the best language of their debate and this harm-minimalisation model establishes a weak basis for cognitive liberty.

[FuBai]

The language of politics in certain areas can be changed. The problem is that major changes tend to happen after major events. The change in thinking following the two world wars is stark and it may require another revolutionary event to change thinking patterns again. Thinking patterns can often be seen to swing back and forth between extremes - we think in one way, take it to the extreme where it collapses, then we start swinging back until we push it to the other extreme. I think the best way of changing this, to a certain extent, is Proportional Representation (PR). PR pushes sidelined ideas into the lime light because they are brought up in parliament by a group that has a solid opinion base in one section of society, and may have no illusions about ever achieving power in anything other than a coalition. However PR cripples political decision making speed and coalition governments are often unstable.

As I mentally go through the ways in which we can hope for change I always return to that of the media and money. It has to be a long term investment in changing people's outlook, and they have to be convinced in small ways every day, but it's really the only hope for movements such as this. The only other way that I can think of would take a life-time of effort, careful planning, huge sums of money, political wheeler-dealing and it is still likley to fail; that being to insinuate oneself into a political party and rise as high as possible where upon you can try and influence party opinion and score small victories until you either drop the ball and get the boot (political slang is fun), die of old age or get some small change. In essence you have to want it enough to spend your whole life trying to get it and most of your life lying about it, because you wont get anywhere near the top if anyone knows your true intentions on the matter.

However, there may still be hope yet, read the following:

"In the meantime, it is pointless to persist with the conventional responses to the increase in crime. More police, more prisons and more effective judicial procedures are clearly not working, except in so far as they satisfy a patent public thirst for retribution. No present-day criminal can be unaware that undetected crime is rising while the number of convictions is falling. Deterrence is an increasingly empty threat, and nobody seriously believes that a spell in prison is capable of reforming or rehabilitating the criminal character. A criminal record only makes it harder to re-enter normal civilian life, turning a significant minority of people into career criminals and so making crime an even more intractable problem. The sensible way to tackle crime is to treat not the symptoms but the causes. One cause is the demoralised condition of young people in many inner cities today, and the lack of any culture of self-help and self-improvement in those parts of society where the majority of people are dependent on State hand-outs in both cash and kind.

Reversing welfare dependency and the accompanying sense of helplessness is the task of the various measures outlined in this concluding chapter. By their nature, they will take many years to come to fruition. But there is one cause of crime which can be tackled immediately: drugs. The international trade in illegal drugs is now thought to be worth $500 billion a year. Policing a global industry of that magnitude, in which organised gangs are prepared to resort to violence to protect their markets, is a major problem in itself. But the craving of consumers for drugs has also created an epidemic of theft, burglary and muggings by addicts desperate to acquire the money they need to feed their habits. The costs - in terms of time and money wasted by the police and Customs and Excise and rising security and insurance expenditure by the private sector, to say nothing of the personal distress caused by theft and violence - are unquantifiable, but undoubtedly run into billions of pounds. Drug-related crime is a major problem in need of urgent solution before it gets completely out of control. Yet it is presently being tackled in exactly the wrong way.

The conventional solution to the problem of drugs is to reduce the supply. This is attempted through a variety of methods, including crop substitution, customs seizures, the imprisonment and fining of drug traffickers, measures to reduce money-laundering, the interdiction of drugs in transit and the seizure of assets earned in the drugs trade. In some countries, drug traffickers even face the death penalty. Since President Bush launched his ill-fated war on drugs five years ago, with the stated ambition of reducing the amount of cocaine reaching the United States by half within four years, American taxpayers have spent $50 billion on fighting drugs. But the industry is still booming. The drugs war may even have encouraged the drug barons to improve their business organisations. Repressive measures merely act as a tax on the trade, and so vastly increase the risks of involvement in it. To justify taking such risks, the rewards have to be correspondingly high. Legal supplies of pure heroin, for example, cost the National Health Service £6 a gram. But, on the streets, a gram of heroin of 40 per cent purity has a value of £40. That translates into a price of about £200 for a gram of pure heroin, or thirty-three times the price paid by the Health Service. Similar effects are observable in the markets for cocaine and crack cocaine. The price of a kilogram of pure cocaine rises two hundred-fold between the coca farm and the streets of North America and Europe. 'The most hazardous of all trades, that of the smuggler,' wrote Adam Smith, 'though when the adventure succeeds, it is likewise the most profitable."15

On the supply side, the drugs trade is a high-risk, high-reward business dominated by criminals who have a substantial financial inducement to exclude competition. Their exclusion strategies routinely include corruption and violence, and occasionally demand assassination. In the United States, half of all murders are drug-related - and there are over 20,000 murders a year. In this country, the intimidation of witnesses already makes it extremely difficult to prosecute a drug trafficker successfully. The consumers of drugs, on the other hand, are addicted. This means their demand for drugs is not sensitive to the price. If it was, the exceptionally high price of drugs on the streets would already have reduced consumption to modest proportions. As Samuel Brittan has observed:

Given a high-risk, high-price market for products with an addictive quality, one would expect present worldwide restrictive legislation to encourage criminal activity. The addicts steal to pay for their drugs; and suppliers will stop at nothing to maintain an enormously lucrative trade.16

This is exactly what has happened. A vast international smuggling operation is in train, which the authorities in both Europe and North America are manifestly unable to contain. For suppliers, the rewards are so high that it is worth killing people to retain a franchise. For consumers, the costs are so high that it is necessary for many of them to steal and mug people to obtain the money to buy their supplies.

Efforts can be made to reduce demand by educating people about the dangers of taking drugs - predictably, lessons on the perils of drug addiction are now a part of the national curriculum - but a large part of the attraction of taking drugs is, paradoxically, their social unacceptability. The analysis of the economics of the drugs trade is too compelling to ignore. Logic suggests that the only completely effective way to ameliorate the problem, and especially the crime which results from it, is to bring the industry into the open by legalising the distribution and consumption of all dangerous drugs, or at the very least decriminalising their consumption. This is not the drastic or revolutionary step which many people believe it to be. The police have long since ceased to prosecute casual users of cannabis, and increasingly prefer not to arrest heroin addicts but to encourage them to seek treatment.

Two senior police officers - the secretary general of Interpol and the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire - have expressed in public their support for the decriminalisation of drugs, which they rightly see as a social, moral and health problem rather than a matter for the criminal law. Nor are drugs a particularly threatening health problem. Heroin kills about 200 people a year, solvent abuse another 150, ecstasy a handful, and LSD and cannabis nobody at all. Each of these deaths is an individual tragedy but, compared with the number of deaths associated with drinking, smoking or motor cars, the numbers are insignificant. In the case of alcohol, tobacco and motoring the case for dissuasion within the law is already broadly accepted, except by small minorities of fanatics.

Draconian laws against drug trafficking and consumption are anyway of relatively recent origin. Thomas de Quincey published his Confessions of an English Opium Eater in London in 1821, after consuming the drug for nearly twenty years without interference from the State. In the 1830s and again in the 1850s the Royal Navy effectively supported opium traders against the efforts of the Chinese authorities to stamp out an illicit trade in the drug. Gladstone's sister, Helen, was an opium addict, as were a fair number of otherwise respectable Victorians. George Orwell's father, Richard Blair, was for nearly forty years employed in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service. It supervised a state monopoly of opium production for export to China, a trade which at one time accounted for a sixth of the total government revenues of British India. There was no legislation against the consumption of the drug in England until the passage of the Dangerous Drugs Act in 1920. Legislation against the opium trade was not introduced in South East Asia until after the Second World War.

There is no reason to suppose that the number of consumers would increase if dangerous drugs were legalised. A sensible legalisation would retain strict official control over the distribution and quality of drugs, and perhaps include the establishment of a register of users of hard drugs. Evidence from Holland and the United States, where experiments in the decriminalisation of soft drugs are taking place, suggests consumption tends not to rise but drug-related crime does tend to fall. Almost everybody is sufficiently aware of the dangerous side-effects of narcotic abuse to avoid taking dangerous drugs for precisely that reason. But a minority will always prefer to take the risk, just as smokers continue to consume tobacco despite overwhelming evidence of the damaging effect it has on their health. Although the democratic State has a constant urge, as de Tocqueville forecast, to act as an 'immense, protective power which is alone responsible for securing their enjoyment and watching over their fate', it is perfectly respectable to believe that people are the best judge of their own interests, even if they choose to consume harmful drugs. Consumption of dangerous drugs might even fall if the thrill of the illicit was removed. 'Stolen sweets are best,' as Colly Cibber put it. Those irredeemably addicted to nannying people could still take comfort from the fact that decriminalisation would at least save people from the worst consequences of their addiction. The high price of illegal heroin encourages injection, which is the most economical way to take the drug but also the most hazardous. Injection is not only intrinsically dangerous, but encourages addicts to share needles and so spread disease. Decriminalisation would solve that problem at least.

The only compelling obstacle to decriminalisation is that legalisation in one country would attract addicts from abroad. There is a case for multi-lateral action in this sphere, though it is hard to see how this could be agreed in advance. One country would have to pioneer the experiment and, if the results were gratifying, others would soon follow suit. The least convincing argument against legalisation is that it is a counsel of despair. It would be better if everybody could cope without needing dangerous drugs but, since some people will insist on using them whatever the law says, it is more sensible both for the addicts and their fellow-citizens if they can buy drugs of the requisite quality from legitimate and properly regulated suppliers at reasonable prices. It would put violent criminals out of business, reduce burglary, theft and other crimes, and generate a modest tax revenue which would enable addicts to be treated and supervised by qualified medical practitioners. For the truly inveterate addict, science might even be able to devise less dangerous methods of achieving the same effects.

Above all, legalisation would save the taxpayer the many millions of pounds the police and the Customs and Excise spend on a war which they not only cannot win but which they are now actually losing, and at considerable cost to the ordinary people caught in the crossfire. The collateral casualties, including policemen and customs officers themselves, are bound to increase. For those still unconvinced, there is one instructive historical parallel apart from the notorious example of Prohibition. In 1784 Pitt introduced his Commutation Act, which lowered the duty on tea from 112 per cent to 25 per cent. By doing so he finally admitted that an enormously expensive repressive apparatus - public executions, a massive increase in the number of Customs and Excise men, the occupation of coastal towns by Army units, coastal patrols by the Royal Navy and a series of pitched battles with smuggling gangs all over England - would never prevent smugglers supplying the needs of consumers so long as the tax system ensured that the trade remained hugely profitable. The eighteenth-century smugglers were defeated in the end by the price mechanism, not the machinery of State repression. The same fate awaits the drug barons and dope dealers, if the State has the courage to admit its own impotence."

Guess the party membership of the person who wrote the above.

[Bikelbees]

Whoever it was perhaps deserves a mention if they are going to be quoted verbatim, thanks.

[FuBai]

Alan Duncan, Conservative Party member for Rutland and Melton, the biggest RURAL constituency in the UK. I've met him, talked to him and he's one of the reasons I can get away with saying my views can be reconciled with my Conservative Party membership. The quote was taken from his book "Saturn's Children" which is an excellent if idiosyncratic work on libertarian political ideals. He was the first openly homosexual Conservative MP, Conservative Party Vice-Secretary in 1997 and Parliamentary Political Secretary to the Party Leader.

[Lunar Loops]

This from UKCIA (Legalise Cannabis Alliance) site:

UK government not interest cannabis users safety or opinion

The Legalise Cannabis Alliance, a major UK pressure group for cannabis
law reform, is outraged by the Government’s responses to three
e-petitions raised by members of the public concerning cannabis law.

The e-petitions were hosted on the Downing Street web site.

The petitions read:

“to remove cannabis and cannabis products from the Misuse of Drugs Act
and associated laws and thus enable consumer protection.” (1)

“to safeguard the public from the risks of inappropriate use of cannabis
by bringing its control and sales within the law.” (2)

“to initiate a test program whereby cannabis users may purchase up to 5
grams in a “coffeeshop” to reduce the flow of funds to organised
criminal gangs.” (3)

Potent quotes from government responses to these petitions;

“The Government has no intention of legalising cannabis. We do not
accept that legalisation and regulation is now, or will be in the
future, an acceptable response to the presence of drugs.”

“The Government has no intention of legalising cannabis and regulating
its control.”

“The Government's message has always been that cannabis is a harmful and
illegal drug that should not be taken.”

“The Government has no intention of legalising cannabis and regulating
its control.”

“The Government's message has always been that cannabis is a harmful and
illegal drug that should not be taken.”

Dilys Wood, spokesperson for the LCA said: “The attitude and similarity
of these responses highlights the futility of e-petitions and the lack
of respect shown by this Government to the members of the public who
raise them.”

The Legalise Cannabis Alliance believes that cannabis prohibition is a
crime against Human Rights, illogical and unworkable.

The UN Declaration of Human Rights preamble makes it clear that the
Rights were acknowledged in order to stifle the need for rebellion.

Unfortunately the Government's continued refusal to accept the Rights of
Privacy and Freedom of Belief for it's citizens who are otherwise
law-abiding and tax-paying citizens but who wish to use cannabis means
that rebellion may once again be the only option.

Dilys Wood said: "Rebellion against this unjust law is already happening
in a peaceful way. The Home Office has estimated that some 4 million
regularly use cannabis in the UK - we suspect the figure is much higher
- and they are unjustly being criminalised despite doing no harm to others.

"Prohibition has failed to control the use of cannabis and has created
many problems of its own, not least a blatant and illegal disregard for
the Human rights of cannabis users, their safety or even their opinion".

[Purest]

Honestly, I think the petitions are being set out the wrong way.

As soon as your "Average Joe" reads "legalise cannabis" they will instantly have a down on the idea because of the propoganda that surrounds the term.

What if instead of saying "Legalise Cannabis" people wrote "Stop funding terrorism" Average joe is instantly thinking how is that possible that we are paying for terrorists unless they are living off benefits, average joe of course hates the majority of people living off benefits and will read on with a more positive light.When your average joe then reads about how drug users are "paying for terrorism" they'll instantly want to fix it, either by killing all drug users or by allowing for regulation.
The problem is the arguments need to hit a national stage (aka the press) very hard, and it has to be done in such a way that it doesn't criminalise drug users, only drug barons. However in theory if the articles were effective enough, the masses would all support the cause for legalisation, and when theres tyranny of the majority thats where democracy begins! Remember everyone, 2+2=5

Reputation Comments on this post:

yes!