Public health will benefit of legalizing all drugs
Public health will benefit of legalizing all drugs
With this remark of Erik van Ree, who teaches Eastern European history at the univsersity of Amsterdam, the article opens. He mentions that he uses a line of coke or a pill once in a while. "A minority of drugusers develop problems, the majority can cope very well with all kinds of drugs in a responsible and mature way", he mentions as well.
The article describes how repressive drugpolicies fail over and over again and in that respect mentions the upcoming UN meeting where the UN will meet to discuss their previous goals, 'to have a drug free world by 2008'. The naivite of this idea, should earn every member of that club a one ride ticket to 'get the fuck out of politics NOW' if 'they' would ask me (but they don't) since this goal is based on such a blatant ignorance, that you wonder how these people can even find the lightswitch of their bedrooms, in the morning when they get up.
The article focusses on the propaganda used by opponents of legislation showing that in most cases, that propaganda is nothing more than... propaganda.
For example the idea that is widespread that whenever drugs are legal, everybody will use them. The situation in the Netherlands, proves this is not the case since we have relatively less problematic drug users as abroad. One comparison is made with cars that can drive over 180km an hour and the fact that people know you can die if you drive that fast and in general, respect the speeding laws.
Another comparison is made with the legality of abortion in the Netherlands: The number of abortions has not gone up since it became legal in the Netherlands. But the ones that are done now, are generally much more safer as they were before the law changed.
A number of arguments have been used by the anti drug lobby over the years. Cannabis for example, has been the subject of ever increasing blackmouthing and a lot of the problems mentioned by repressionists, are directly coming forth from the shady situation which exists in the Netherlands right now: It is illegal but, allowed. The supposed rising levels on THC on Dutch grass has been a concern for several, mostly Christian, politicians over the years using that as an argument to change cannabis to a more restrictive schedule. Ironically, this concern would disappear when cannabis would become legal since out of legalization would arise the wish and legal means of normalizing THC levels and guarding the quality of cannabis (as is norm with basically ALL other goods for human consumption).
Furthermore the article mentions the fact impressive results have been seen with providing herion for free to a small group of heavy addicts. These kind of initiatives prove to work very well often. The mechanics work like:'take away the need of an addict to spend the day scoring, and they will have time to think things through and focus on their life again. As simple as it sounds, a number of projects like this in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, worked very well.
Some figures:
In 2005 almost 19.000 people in the Netherlands died from the direct consequence of smoking tobacco. Alcohol took almost 800 dutch citizens life directly, and another 1000 indirectly. That year, 122 people died of the consequences of drugs.
Makes you wonder who and why and how keeps pouring OUR tax money into this repression machine, which hasn't got any ground scientifically nor from a public health care point of view. Concluding, the article mentions that its impossible to ever find someone from the repression lobby to explain their point of view before an audience. That is probably because that point of view is impossible to defend at all.
*Looks forward to the end of the day to roll another bomber*
Re: Public health will benefit of legalizing all drugs
Quote:
Originally Posted by dutch-marshal
Another comparison is made with the legality of abortion in the Netherlands: The number of abortions has not gone up since it became legal in the Netherlands. But the ones that are done now, are generally much more safer as they were before the law changed.
Never try and make this argument in Britain, where, scince the legalisation of abortion abortion rates have increased exponentialy. It seems to me that the dutch almost inhernetly more responsible, probably a reuslt of allowing people to make mistakes and learn from them, rather than the British idea of preventing them from happening and molly-coddlying everyone.
Re: Public health will benefit of legalizing all drugs
I believe that it would not be impossible for a society to decide to trial the legalisation of some selected drugs and 'try' to measure the positive and negative effects (albeit short term).
Ecstacsy would be a good trial due to the fact that such a huge proportion of under 25's use it anyway in it's adulterated form; legalisation would not hugely affect how many people take it making short term results more relevant.
Things to bear in mind - usage (difficult to measure except by an anon clubbing magazine poll before and after maybe), purity, deaths (do people really die from taking this?!), tax revenues generated, effect on drug dealers incomes, cost of policing and crime.
It is clear that the trial can be ended and the substance re-crimilised with a solid argument for doing so.
05-12-2007, 17:48
Public health will benefit of legalizing all drugs
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