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Simplepowa
In Pursuit of Knowledge


Registered: 03/06/09
Posts: 4,310
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When class A drugs become cheaper than the average pint, criminalisation has failed 1
#18614994 - 07/26/13 01:37 PM (10 years, 9 months ago) |
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It's easier for a teenager to buy dangerous drugs than alcohol. Our policymakers need to wake up and fix this
On Saturday Martha Fernback, a 15-year-old girl from Oxford, died after taking what she believed was ecstasy. She bought the pill that killed her for just £3 – 21p cheaper than the average pint of beer.
That ecstasy, or MDMA, is now more affordable than a pint demonstrates beyond all doubt the failure of the policy of criminalisation. Everything, legal or not, has a price, and if such a policy works it is by pushing the cost of undesirable substances up to levels that reduce consumption. Despite the carnage of the war on drugs, the trend has instead been for a steady and significant decrease in average prices across the board. Ecstasy is now half the price it was in 2001, while the most recent drugs report from the Department of Health suggests that the mean street price of both cocaine and heroin decreased by £9 per gram between 2005 and 2010.
The end result is that ecstasy is as readily available as cheap alcohol; far more so if you're a 15-year-old girl. Drug pushers have a positive incentive to target curious, rebellious, gullible children with a lifetime of potential addiction ahead of them; pubs have everything to lose by selling to under age customers.
If legal, the same strict age restrictions could and should be enforced on the sale of recreational drugs. A determined 15-year-old might still be able to obtain ecstasy, as they currently obtain alcohol, but they wouldn't be the subject of a targeted marketing campaign. They would also be sure that the substance they'd got their hands on was, as promised, MDMA – not plant fertiliser, or rat poison or, as suspected in Martha's case, the super-strength amphetamine PMA.
If recreational drugs were standardised and bought in a box from Boots alongside "behind the counter" medicines, users would know exactly what they were getting. A packet of paracetamol stresses that the safe dose is one to two tablets every four to six hours; a bottle of wine points out that it contains 13 per cent alcohol and an aspirin box warns against mixing its contents with ibuprofen. Unlike the 17-year-old boy arrested on suspicion of supplying Martha with the fatal pill, the manufacturers of these products were well aware that they would be held accountable for any mishaps or misinformation. Had Martha known the true composition of what she was about to ingest she almost certainly wouldn’t have taken it, but a purported ecstasy pill is a totally unknown chemical cocktail – alone and unlabelled in a small plastic bag. Far more unknown, indeed, than it was 10 years ago: between 2003 and 2009, the purity of the ecstasy seized by police decreased by 21 per cent; for cocaine it more than halved.
Supporters of the current approach argue that criminalisation deters drug users as well as suppliers. The real effect of this deterrent has simply been to engineer a surge in the use of legal highs: drugs that are not permitted because they have been deemed safe after rigorous testing, but because they are so new and mysterious that authorities have not yet had time to ban them. The past five years have seen a fourfold increase in the number of deaths attributed to such substances. Hardly a preferable alternative.
For every £3 pint of beer, around £1 goes to the Government and helps fund heathcare, education and infrastructure. For every £3 ecstasy tablet, £3 goes to criminals and helps fund organised crime. As stamping out the use of recreational drugs has proved impossible, it is surely far better that the trade is properly regulated; children are protected and some financial public benefit is gained to balance out the undeniable costs.
The Americans didn’t abandon prohibition in 1933 because they changed their minds about the harmfulness of alcohol, but because it became apparent that the primary effect of making its sale illegal was to amplify the damage it did to society. Re-legalising alcohol was a piece of admirably evidence-based policymaking after a worthwhile but failed experiment with criminalisation. Martha’s case illustrates the need for a similarly level-headed approach to Britain’s drug problem.
By Carola Binney 1:13PM BST 24 Jul 2013 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/10199276/When-class-A-drugs-become-cheaper-than-the-average-pint-criminalisation-has-failed.html
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Carl Sagan - "Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people." --- Robert Pirsig - "When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion." --- Brian Cox - "[One] problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion AND have others listen to it. The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense."
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Absent Minded



Registered: 04/13/12
Posts: 3,300
Loc: Way Down South
Last seen: 9 years, 1 month
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Re: When class A drugs become cheaper than the average pint, criminalisation has failed [Re: Simplepowa]
#18616014 - 07/26/13 04:46 PM (10 years, 9 months ago) |
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I like reading articles like this because it kind of shows people finally waking the fuck up. Shame about the girl, though
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Beats More Beats sheekle: fuck peace love and unity sheekle: death despair and misery sheekle: is where it's at
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gulper2323
Unknown Landscape Climber



Registered: 06/17/12
Posts: 1,282
Loc:
Last seen: 1 year, 3 months
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Re: When class A drugs become cheaper than the average pint, criminalisation has failed [Re: Absent Minded]
#18616232 - 07/26/13 05:15 PM (10 years, 9 months ago) |
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As of recently the idea of legalizing all drugs has been receiving a lot of support from the UK (this article being the most recent promotion of the idea to come from the UK) and yet the UK government seems very reluctant to change anything so far. Now support for banning internet porn is something that I have yet find anywhere in the UK and yet David Cameron wants internet service providers to ban porn. So seriously why the fuck does the government not listen to their voters .
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lessismore
Registered: 02/10/13
Posts: 6,268
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Re: When class A drugs become cheaper than the average pint, criminalisation has failed [Re: gulper2323]
#18617050 - 07/26/13 08:03 PM (10 years, 9 months ago) |
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25i-nbome 1000ug is $0.05 each here if you buy 100 :-)
legalize
then I would have no need for 25i-bome which has unknown health risks ,especially if you got high BP/cardiovascular problems
would buy lsd at $0.1 each instead 
I got some fake synthetic weed once didn't know it was fake right away but then I found lots of people have died/had kidney problems from that stuff..
doesn't surprise me, was hard to ignite and like it had plastic in the middle, had to cut it with a plier to smoke it..
had smoked 10g before I found out it was fake, it still got me high if I smoked enough, but no munchies...
prohibition has great health risks for the public
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lessismore
Registered: 02/10/13
Posts: 6,268
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Re: When class A drugs become cheaper than the average pint, criminalisation has failed [Re: lessismore]
#18617078 - 07/26/13 08:10 PM (10 years, 9 months ago) |
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'good' E (although speedy) is usually $3-4 if you buy 3-5 pills or so, at least 5 years ago or so
prohibition will not remove the market, the market is enormeous
E and weed is in every city in the country most likely
the state's job is to ensure freedom to its citizens, freedom of body and mind as long as you don't hurt others
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lessismore
Registered: 02/10/13
Posts: 6,268
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Re: When class A drugs become cheaper than the average pint, criminalisation has failed [Re: lessismore]
#18617111 - 07/26/13 08:16 PM (10 years, 9 months ago) |
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good article btw as usual from OP
I hope some people contact their local politicans(and perhaps write articles for the media too) like I often do
instead of just sitting back hoping they change their minds 
they depend on feedback on their laws, every email you write makes a difference
constructive positivism emails 
tell them it's a real good system, but they need to make it even better 
tolerance in every law they make is essential nowadays i.e. tolerance for speeding/bad driving, so you don't lose your driving license for 10mins worth of bad driving tolerance for smoking weed < 5g i.e. tolerance for class A drugs if it looks like for personal consumption and you got no previous offences
Edited by lessismore (07/26/13 08:21 PM)
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egodeathflux
Guttersnipe



Registered: 02/02/10
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Re: When class A drugs become cheaper than the average pint, criminalisation has failed [Re: lessismore]
#18619574 - 07/27/13 12:39 PM (10 years, 9 months ago) |
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You smoked 10g of fake weed you had to cut with pliers before you noticed?? 
Ecstasy was widely available for £1-2 a pill well over 10 years ago, I would imagine the decrease in purity went hand in hand with the popularity and availability of pure MDMA powder, leading pill makers to adulterate to increase their margins on a product becoming rapidly less popular.
Also the decreased price of heroin and cocaine no doubt correlates directly to a severe drop in purity and quality.. The price of decent cocaine and heroin has essentially doubled in the last 5 years or so.
Some truth in the article, and good the prohibition issue continues to be looked at, but I am still waiting for a properly researched article that raises the same ideas about decriminalisation etc.
-------------------- "Atrophic interludes weave through my life far too often, for me to fight the biggest enemies" "Standing on the corner of 5th and Vermouth"
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