A Select Committee (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmhaff/184/18402.htm) has proposed the establishment of a Royal Commission to consider the effect of decriminalising certain drugs. The use of marijuana has been legalised in the states of Washington and Colorado. Is it not odd that those states that are the fiercest guardians of the environment – no smoking, curbs on alcohol, taxes on flights and fuel and so on – don’t seem to be as bothered about drugs that pollute the body and the brain? Taking drugs is regarded as smart by some people, just as smoking was in the 1920s. There are two arguments put foward for relaxing drugs laws. One is that they don’t really do you much harm, no worse than alcohol and cigarettes. I am no scientist, but I have read a bit about it, and as I understand it, the effect of drugs on the brain and the foetus is permanent; they can cause schizophrenia and reduce IQ; they prevent students from studying (as I saw for myself in my teaching days); they can lead to traffic accidents and overdoses are fatal. We have read too many sad stories of young people dying as a result of drugs. Alcohol has some of the same effects, but unlike drugs, there is such a thing as a small safe quantity, and it is expelled from the body fairly quickly. Many people wish we could ban cigarettes, (if tobacco was discovered today, rather than centuries ago, we would), and certainly there is an increasing crackdown on where they may be bought and smoked. I read that smoking drugs can give you lung disease in the same way as cigarettes. In my view they should not be legal, and there should be no change in the law. The second argument is that “the law does not work”, that is many people flout the law. The same is true of the litter law. Nearly everyone every day drops litter where they should not. But not for a moment would we consider changing the law, because it is a bad thing to do and we need to do all we can to stop it. The same is true of sexual abuse. There are thousands of sexual abuse and rape cases every year, and one might argue that since so many people break the law, and claim to have a certain addiction, the law should be changed. Well, of course not. It needs to be enforced without hesitation – as we are now seeing, unfortunately rather too late, in the sexual abuse cases surrounding Jimmy Savile’s career. Just because people break the law in their thousands, or even disapprove of it, does not mean it is a bad law. The existence of the law, and its proper enforcement, sends a message. The activity is bad for individuals, bad for society, and no matter how widespread the breaches and how fashionable it may be to ignore the law, it should be upheld.
A good argument for the status quo that I agree with. A common fallacy among those advocating legalisation of drugs is that it is anomalous to outlaw them when alcohol and tobacco are as harmful yet are perfectly legal. Of course, the anomaly is with alcohol and tobacco, a situation that can’t easily be resolved for a whole range of historical, political, social and economic reasons.
Even Prof David Nutt, who famously resigned when the Government ignored his advice on the classification of cannabis, is in favour of a consistent approach that would see the laws surrounding alcohol in particular tightened up. Recreational users should be careful what they wish for.
So lets see. Stop the wine subsidy. Sell off the wine cellar (how many millions were spent there?)
Breathalyse all Peers and MPs on entering Westminster.
Prosecute all those caught trying to legislate whilst p****d. I suggest stripping them of their jobs.
If its good enough for pilots, its good enough for you.
Prosecute all those caught trying to legislate whilst p****d. I suggest stripping them of their jobs.
The “Due decorum” of parliament requires members not to comment about the level of inebriation of other members; just a tradition of parliament……I could rattle off a list of members, over the past few years who have died of overdoses of spirits, partly due to the worries of the job.
Would you let them drive you whilst p***d?
Why should we tolerate and subsidise them getting p****d?
Why should we put up with the stress of being poor because of being taxed and having our retirement money looted by a bunch of fraudsters taking money for themselves.
For the mods, it is a fraud.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/section/2
Section 2 of the fraud act. Fraud by false representation
Conditions are
1. dishonestly makes a false representation
Proved. Government accounts do not contain or report the state pension debt.
2. to cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss
Again, given the size of the debt, it can’t be paid. Given that the same person could get a better pension elsewhere, it is a loss.
Given the increase in retirement age, it exposed people to a loss.
…
Fraud all the way. All so that MPs and Peers can keep claiming money, because if people knew the true extent of the fraud, they would be in jail
I think a new requirement should be the same for those in Parliament and government as for those who are in employment elsewhere. The American system of drug testing every Monday. Especially for cocaine. And that should be from top to bottom starting with the PM. To have people running the country who may be on cocaine, heroine, whisky or any other mood or mind altering substance is a safety issue we all should worry about.
Of recent history so many peculiar laws and ideas being dished out at a rate that is more than uncomfortable suggests people who are ruling over us may not be able to function adequately, as they may have problems with addiction.
Lets take this enormous situation with Tony Blair and his involvement as a go between for torture surrounding the Libyans, for an example. And the tax payer being socked between the eyes for a £2.2m bill now to be paid. Why is Blair not paying this out of his own pocket? It’s not as if he is hard up after making all that loot from the tax payers largesse. His government acted unlawfully and in secret, in a conspiracy with the American administration. The public and tax payers of this country were completely unaware of any of it. Now we have to hand out compensation to those Blair and his cronies abused. What kind of an outrage is this?
Check all of them for drugs. There has to be a reason for this madness and why they look so stoned all the time.
And, as we are always being asked about our views on Capital punishment or the death penalty, here is my view on that. I am against it for the ordinary man, but, I do feel it should be reintroduced for treason. Those who dupe the rights of democracy whilst pretending what we have as a nation is freedom. Colluding in killing Irish solicitors, as well as torture is something only those out of their minds would contemplate.
Freedom is not being party to secrecy. Freedom means being aware of the ambitions and actions of those who lead us, and of us giving our consent for the goals in our vote. Democracy means we are part of those ambitions and actions. If we are kept in the dark there can be no democracy. So any treasonous act, such as the inroduction of mass immigration with the intention of changing the ethnic make up of our society for the purposes of diversity, without first freely telling the people this is what is intended, and, asking for permission via referendum or some other method, is an act of outright treason.
The same way it is treasonous to collude with another nation to send human beings, via rendition, to a country to face torture once there. That is not democracy within any stretch of the imagination.
And to now put a bill through parliament asking for more secrecy to hide more of it, is blatantly machiavellian.
What are you all thinking of? Or, are you on some kind of drug?
Legalise the lot, tax them, change the law so that criminal acts under the influence attract double penalties (include alcohol in that), allow employers to fire those who turn up at work worse for wear, remove NHS cover for drug-related medical problems except helping people to quit, make being under the influence in public an offence and let nature take its course.
With any luck, those who are susceptible will die off quite quickly, the rest will either not try the drugs or will see sense in time. Many things are only attractive because they’re illegal and/or expensive, so making drugs legal and taxable will remove this lure. Those who want to kill themselves in this fashion should be allowed to do so.
It’ll probably be a lot cheaper than the war on drugs and in the longer term, harm less people.
The only thing I’ve seen work is what they do in Switzerland.
So long as you inject in a drugs clinic, you won’t be prosecuted.
They are in industrial areas, the odd caravan. Manned by 2 nurses, they are spartan, plastic chairs etc.
The drugs will be tested if you want. Clean needles etc.
I didn’t hear of any deaths.
However, its interesting to see the effect. 10% year on year reduction in the number of addicts.
A large part is that its not cool to be a druggy. Kids see that its for losers.
For the addicts, they get medical help.
My view is that this is the cheap option.
Is it not odd that those states that are the fiercest guardians of the environment – no smoking, curbs on alcohol, taxes on flights and fuel and so on – don’t seem to be as bothered about drugs that pollute the body and the brain?
And people who are also the guardians of it, and unbothered about them. Being a vegetarian but clocking up 40,000 airmiles per year to visit family is somehow inconsistent.
Just because people break the law in their thousands, or even disapprove of it, does not mean it is a bad law.
If people cower because they know they have broken the law, but have not got caught, then it may not be a bad law. That may even have been the intention of those who drew up the law in the first place!
I should say ,to contradict the opinions of the two noble ladies, that schizophrenia is just as likely to be the effect of certain kinds of drug taking, as it is the cause.
A close examination of the Portugues case and how it could work today,for “us”, will certainly be one of the first chapters of the Commission’s report.
The criminal justice system cannot remain an expensive way of giving the public a break from offenders, before they return to commit more crimes.[255]
But it will. There are those who are dedicated lifelong professional criminals, and they are incorrigible. Eventually they remain outside, having realized how to evade the law successfully, and make a ‘good’ living by doing so.
The word “good” there may mean what it says; that there are so many law which are non enforcable or can be seen from two different points of view, or are just ignored by tradition or default, that the canny criminal has learnt how to avoid the law.
A Prison term is their rite of passage.
There are much bigger ‘overshadowing’ and ‘underlurking’ contexts behind this Drugs issue;
please see my submission to Lord Norton’s blog, above.
I thought this report about drink and drug use amongst young people in the last 10 years might be an interesting addition to the debate…
http://www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs/sdd11fullreport
A decline in the number of drug-users/boozers admitting to it (???)
or a decline in the numbers of ‘users’ reported ‘treated/caught/registered’ by the monitoring-authority (?)
Why has the Noble Lady the Head of State separated her subjects and her conscience from their rightful protection under Constitutional Law in the High Court of Parliament?
Text SHA-1:bc137d8f348e4109fad419dbf61318242b80c70d
Rhodri Mawr
Can you give references to your assertion about schizophrenia-like illnesses?
Baroness Murphy (a professional psychiatrist) wishes to have references concerning “schizophrenia-like (illnesses)”
———————-
[ perhaps Rhodri Mawr should have said
“schizophrenic-behaviour, signs, symptoms, ‘side-effects*’ is caused by other primary-conditions than psychiatric-schizophrenia”
* the anti-schizophrenia medical-drug ‘Resperidone’ (or suchlike) actually causes schizophrenic behaviour/conduct/experience, as signs and/or symptoms,
as a pharmacological side-effect ]
Toxic, lipotoxemic, or just plain ‘wrong’ foods, drinks, environmental-influences (possibly including magnetic-fields, and negative-infrasonics)
can therein give rise to schizophrenia-like behaviour;
as can and does certain popular TV programming and advertising.
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Off the top of my head
“Life Energy” by psychiatric-professor Dr John Diamond gives some insider experiential insight into the fallibility and negativising-effects on both patient and psychiatrist of the Psychiatric Profession’s regimens;
and one does not need to be a cum-laude thinker to figure out that the psychiatrist, drawing multiple human livings from the Common Purse is thereby her/him-self multipally-deluded, into thinking her/him-self to be many-human-beings
when the fact of this Earth is that s/he is still at best only one-human-being, needing only one-human-living, and surely needing to live as an emulable example to patients and those in need of body-mind-spirit functional help ?
—————–
“Lifestreams” by David Boadella is a deeply insightful, and hereto-relevant, professional work,
‘though only in thin ‘pamphlet’ size; but because so ‘small, most of it will be ‘graspable’ by the average reader;
whilst alas! his in-depth work with schizophrenes and other ‘imbalanced’ persons, might be ‘challenging’ even to some professorial psychiatrists who actually train ‘ordinary-level’ or ‘run-of-the-mill’ psychiatrists.
=========
(“Drugs” and “Behaviours” are no doubt compound and in places very complex Human-developmental, and individual-human-developmental, Matters –
and I give way gladly)
That there is serious impairment of at least one, governance-essential -&- citizenship-essential, mind-function
dominantly and effectively throughout the top levels of the Civil Service,
and both throughout the two Legislative Houses, the Judiciary, & the Establishment,
and throughout the Controlling and Curriculum-Setting levels of the Education, Training, Health, and Community sectors
is a strongly-inferrable danger-warning-conclusion.
Maude Elwes speaks cogently, and with sober conation and affective-balance; I think herf submission to be well worth multi-copying and even voluntary-democratic-citizenlike-distributing;
—————–
and so does Lord Blagger speak clearly, objectively and honestly with his ‘searchlight-spotlighting’ of an effective and affordable method of reducing ‘street-drug’ taking and addiction, being achieved by at least one other “western” nation, Switzerland.
===========
I have previously been submitting that there is probably a much more insidious, deeply-reaching, and partly-disabling evil-brood of Corruptions running from top-to-bottom, other than just “drugs & booze”
[and NOT the other way round from bottom-to-top,
although there is evidently (or ‘inferrably’) much underdevelopment of mind-functioning and of emotional-maturation, throughout the People-in-General*, also].
I appeal to the Moderators to allow this, please:
[* Whilst both the Lifeplace-educational and Workplace training sectors are in several ways corrupted, and limiting of the generic mind, heart and spirit of The People-in-General,
good-guidances are available to be purchased in CD, DVD and serious-book form,
by any and every individual
(who can pluck up enough individual-courage** and scrape-up enough cash***) to ‘go it alone’ for some of his/her after-work time:
((** in Britain any-one can buy individual-human-development guidance quite reasonably and securely privately online
and pursue it very reasonably safely in one’s own time
e.g. knowledge-books complete with practical know-how CDs such as
“Mindfulness “–
and
“Relaxation”-
for “Dummies” –
[ i.e. for serious but so-far largely ‘unversed’ “beginners”; both books and their included-CDs are by Aldina MA(Education) and MA(Engineering) an internationally recognised Mindfulness teacher sought by Middle East peoples as well as by European countries and the USA ].
——————
“Relaxercise” guidance manual , is excellent for individual self-help as well as being mutual share-able (but remember to move yourself slower than the dynamic-arrows (of this in all other respects ‘miraculously effective’ self-help guide) unwittingly and perhaps subliminally ‘suggest’; the succinct four-point word guidance at the opening of each chapter (body-part) begins all thbe way through with “Go Slowly”,
but the directional-arrows on the body-diagrams might suggest a ‘quick’ and even fairly strong all-in-one single and complete-movement, rather than the intended slow, gentle and carefully-self-aware movement ‘exploration’ that is the main guiding spirit and practique of this ( and other such) manuals.
(((*** All of these sources appear to me to be affordable even by the poverty-level diadvantaged or unemployed)))
——-
Once again, I may be appearing to be “straying off-topic”
(yet I do honestly think the above is essential to the Whole Issue within which Baroness Deech’s focal-topic on Drugs and the Law is inescapably ‘set’)
so in the interest of polite-democracy, I wish to “give way” at this point…