Should drugs be legalised?

[Mankind]

If so, which ones.

I think cannabis, anabolic-androgenic steroids and magic mushrooms should be legal.

[sparda]

This i feel is a very gray area

It both good and bad to legalise them and good and bad not to legalise them

You legalise all of the illegal drugs then drug related crime is stopped over night
but this is the same as have no murders in a country because they don't see murder as a crime

But i believe that drug use itself is not a bad thing, it the lengths that you will take to keep up the addiction.

On a lighter note i believe they should leaglise cannabis as people can smoke it without too much of a problem form the police

[Detomah]

My opinion of drugs has swung both ways dramatically over the years.

When I was 16 I would have kicked up a huge fuss at the thought of anyone taking drugs and would have always said the laws should be far stricter than they were and that people dealing drugs should never see the light of day again, not just for hard drugs but any drug, including alcohol, cigarettes and even coffee.

By the age of 21, having become a smoker, coffee drinker and frequent p**shead, who liked chilling out with a nice joint, my opinion swung radically in the opposite direction, where I would have fought the legalisation of drug corner adamantly.

Since around the age of 25 though, my opinion has gradually swung back year by year to the opposite direction and although I am still a smoker and coffee drinker, the idea of drugs now repulses me and I feel even more that they should all be fully illegal, having been through that scene and survived through to the other side, intact with all the memories and feelings of what it did to me, how it made me feel in the long term, how it effected others around me, both takers and watchers. I know I need to quit smoking because it is killing me and I know I also need to drastically cut down on the amount of coffee I drink, but now I do not touch alcohol and seriously see how much money I wasted and how much it spoiled so many things for me when I was drinking myself to stupidity.

Right now i'm at a completely different point regarding drugs, now I feel I just want to get as far away from areas where people are dealing, not have to walk over used needles as I walk outside my front door, not have to hear the police turn up at 3 different safe houses within spitting distance of my own home, not have to regularly see and hear people being beaten to a pulp from my upstairs window, not have to have the police turning up at my door asking for statements about related incidents, yet the moment the police have left the area again, 30 or so asian kids between the ages of around 10 and 16 all swamp the drug house again to pick up their next stash for them to sell and i'm seriously not joking when I say that either, that is seriously how bad it has become right on my own doorstep. Made even worse recently that they've dumped a half way house 4 doors up from me, where there's something like 7 young white male "rehabilitating" drug user/criminal knuckle dragging neanderthal types crammed into a 2 bedroom house who are clearly starting a turf/drug war with the local asians, but all the while being cared for and funded by the council at the tax payers expense. So with that, i'd hope you could understand my next comment, in that i'd like to see the government flooding the local drug market with cyanide laced drugs, so that all the users and dealers alike would all drop down dead, so at least my last couple of weeks in this house would be at least a little more peaceful with me being able to walk my dogs on an evening without fearing for mine and Robyns lives.

Am I anti-drugs biased, i'd say maybe a little, but that's what comes from seeing so much of this stuff right up close and personal in my face type thing, its what comes from having been there and done it myself in the distant past but from a much lesser extent and without robbing people for drug money and without endangering other peoples lives.

Right now I don't care about scientific reports and statistics on the subject or from reading news reports or watching TV, i'm living right smack in the middle of it and it scares the living crap out of me every single day.

So to answer the original question - NO, I don't think any drugs should be legalised, they should all be reclassified to the highest category and people in posession should get prison time and dealers should never see the light of day again.

[Sabretooth]

Cannabis should be, Shrooms shouldnt. Alcohol causes more damage than any class C and alot of class B drugs so I find it funny how all these anti-drug campaigners dont even mention the illegalisation of alcohol regardless of how futile it might be.

[Detomah]

Originally Posted by Sabretooth

I find it funny how all these anti-drug campaigners dont even mention the illegalisation of alcohol regardless of how futile it might be.

You didn't read my post then... Although I did put the emphasis on drugs due to the actual topic of the thread, I did however mention more than once a similar view of alcohol.

[Sabretooth]

Originally Posted by Detomah

You didn't read my post then... Although I did put the emphasis on drugs due to the actual topic of the thread, I did however mention more than once a similar view of alcohol.

It wasnt aimed at you . I pretty much agree with your post, Im happy for all drugs to be kept illegal apart from Cannabis. I dont use any other currently-illegal drugs and from past experiences id be perfectly happy if they were kep so.

[teflon]

I find it ridiculous that it can be illegal to ingest anything in the privacy of your own home.
Obviously when driving or directing air-traffic, you have to be sensible and side with the anti-LSD on the job brigade, or even if you are going to be in a city centre perhaps, it's best not to be totally rubbered.
But we shouldn't legislate for the lowest common denominator.

Weed and shrooms would be a start, I also don't care if steroids are legal either unless they turn people angry and likely to bop lads. Even 'caine should be allowed in private, especially when you always see chat-show guests on it on tv.

[emma roids]

i think cannabis should be legal,it could be taxed and the government would get back some money there losing on folks stopping smoking?

i dont find it a bad drug, having smoked my own body weight in it in my youth i have turned out ok (well, almost )

[Sash]

No, for many many reasons.

[MaKo]

And what are those 'many many' reasons then? You can't just post that and expect people to go "OH OK THEN!"

I'm an ecstacy user, I've tried cannabis and didn't like it, have tried coke and didn't like it, and have no inclination to try any other drugs. I take ecstacy because of the quality of experience you get when raving on it, so i've never taken it in any other situation than a rave, i don't 'chill and pill' as some people call it. Despite this i still have very mixed views about drug use. In many ways i'm still against the legalisation of drugs as it would almost certainly encourage use of drugs amongst the "on the fence" types that only refrain from taking it because it is illegal and they perceive illegality=bad (which in almost all cases, is correct of course). Being purely an ecstacy taker, the risks involve with the drug i take are almost entirely down to two main things, ignorance about how to take it and what to do while you're taking it, and a lack of knowledge of the "filler" materials that go into each pill to make it...pill-like. Thus the legalisation would eliminate almost entirely the two biggest problems associated with ecstacy taking, and Leah Betts would still be alive etc.
However, I think it's safe to say that people who take drugs are largely irresponsible. Taking ecstacy it's possible to check websites for what 'type' (Mitsubishi's, Love Hearts, etc. They're basically branded, albeit occasionally falsely) of pill you are buying and if you're well informed and careful you can have a relatively safe experience. So it is already possible to be fairly responsible about ecstacy usage already, and i guess most people aren't, so even if it was legalised and more regulated, whether people would be any more responsible remains to be seen.
As well as this, legalisation would have the bonus of cutting down on organised crime, which would be hugely important, but how long would it be before the crime returned, merely undercutting the price of legal drugs? Can't really tell with that one.
All in all i really can't decide which way i'd swing with legalisation of drugs. I certainly wouldn't legalise cannabis, having seen a fair few friends of mine turn into nigh-on vegetables because all they do is smoke weed and laze around. It's an anti-social drug and has really big effects on things like your willpower etc. I'm not a fan.
Coke was boring, expensive, and apparently really addictive so i wasn't really feeling that substance either. Plus it tastes like a camels crack when it hits the back of your throat. Bit of a control-freaks drug basically, and why spend £40 for a gram of coke when you can spend £20 and get 10 pills and have three or so awesome nights?

[chakotay]

When I see this debate I always think of the fact that Amsterdam , where certain "soft" drugs are legal , has the lowest drug related crime in Europe & one of the lowest teenage pregnancies / terminations . Surely educated liberty works better than criminilisation & taboo ?