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Post by Horsie on Jan 5, 2015 23:30:26 GMT
I'm afraid I can't get behind that.
As far as I'm concerned people are taking their lives into their own hands when they're using anything more serious weed or mushroom or stuff like that, even more so with illegal synthetic drugs like MDMA. Some of these substances have real medical uses, but in instances where they are being used for medical purposes they would be both produced legally by trained personnel and tested to ensure safety.
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Post by Canuovea on Jan 5, 2015 23:55:29 GMT
And when someone laces weed with this crap and the person smoking doesn't realize?
I can't really blame the victim here, because the point of these laws (to me) is to protect people, not (just) punish idiots.
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Post by Horsie on Jan 6, 2015 0:15:46 GMT
If someone is lacing their weed with something, the customer is probably going to know, they're probably looking for weed laced with whatever it is. A dealer would be losing money if they laced their weed with another drug and didn't bump the price up to cover the cost, and they'd lose business if they bumped the price up and couldn't explain why their weed cost a lot more than what the competition is charging.
I think the idea is to prevent the criminals (and often criminal organizations) who are producing synthetic drugs from being able to make synthetic drugs easily. And as far as I'm concerned that should be more important than ensuring that illegal drugs are safe for people to use. Why should laws protect people who knowingly put themselves at risk by using illegal substances?
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Post by TempestFennac on Jan 6, 2015 6:14:06 GMT
I agree with Renard completely here about people putting themselves at risk by taking illegal drugs in this first place (I'd say that punishing idiocy is also a good idea as well admittedly). Decriminalising them seems like a huge risk due to how I can see it encouraging people to think "Now that it's no longer illegal, it must be safe to operate heavy machinery and drive under its influence" (enough morons drive after consuming relatively large amounts of alcohol or try smoking cigarettes at the wheel, so I'd hate think what would happen if they could use heroin and cocaine without having to worry about being arrested).
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Post by Canuovea on Jan 6, 2015 6:14:45 GMT
Don't be so sure about the laced weed part. That is often apparently one way of making weed profitable involves lacing it to make it more addictive, usually without the buyer's knowledge.
Also, the reason behind these laws in the first place is to protect the populace, which isn't really needed if it isn't mainly to protect those who might use it.
I mean, if you wanted to punish people for taking drugs, all you would have to do is totally decriminalize possession, but then criminalize the safer ways/ingredients for making it. Then they've got a bunch of legal drugs that are likely to kill whoever takes it. Sure, that would be one way for natural selection to kick in, and you know what I think about drugs, but it kind of misses the point unless the point is dead stoners. Actually... lets do that (joking).
I suppose just letting their lives be forfeit simply because they are breaking the law is one way to go about it. That is problematic though, for two reasons. One... you're letting people die, including people who might have just given into peer pressure that one time and never otherwise tried that shit. Two, suddenly the law is more of a guideline than an actual rule. "Sure. Go ahead and take the possibly lethal illegal substance. It might kill you, but if it does we won't care." Might act as a deterrent for some, but others will do it anyway and therefore start treating the law as kind of optional. I suppose you could start handing out serious prison sentences for being high, but we don't actually do that now.
Also, I think built into the original argument is the assumption, or the idea anyway, that these laws do not actually make producing the drugs more difficult for the producers. It just means they use more dangerous (to the consumer, not them) methods to do so. They still make a strong profit.
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Post by TempestFennac on Jan 6, 2015 6:27:12 GMT
That is a good point about it leading to people seeing the law as optional. I am in favour of harsh prison sentences for dealers and users too admittedly. Just thinking about the Swedish anti-prostitution laws; do you think decriminalising selling drugs while taking steps to get drug dealers who want to stop doing it into more useful professions would help? (I can't see it as being too helpful but I'm curious about what other people think.)
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Post by Canuovea on Jan 6, 2015 9:00:54 GMT
I don't think it would work. Decriminalizing the selling of drugs is the problem, because what motivation do they have to stop? It can be exceedingly lucrative, and they aren't put in a negative situation through it. Prostitutes in Sweden were still in a bad place after that law. Sure, prostitution was decriminalized, but that didn't mean there weren't dangers still associated with the job. And with the police still targeting the johns, business probably wasn't exactly booming either. The off of getting help for leaving the business then begins to look good, because it means you'll probably get a better deal.
Drugs bring the dangers associated with gangs and such, like violence, but that isn't stopping people now. Sweden's approach was still a carrot and stick approach, in a manner of speaking. That is, their stick that went after the johns and number of clients (thus sales), while the carrot offered a safer more successful life.
Perhaps in dealing with gangs and drugs we do focus too much on the stick and don't even bother offering a carrot. But decriminalizing it, would, it seems, remove the stick and not replace it with either a particularly enticing carrot or other stick.
As for my position on the matter, I'm not entirely sure. But I do not care for drug dealers. Users? I'm less harsh towards. I think that police resources could be better spent going after other problems, not the users.
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Post by TempestFennac on Jan 6, 2015 10:41:46 GMT
I have to agree with your assessment of why the idea wouldn't work for dealers (and the situational differences). I think some people have suggested having more education regarding the dangers of drugs, but as you said earlier, the risk of bad things happening isn't enough to deter a lot of users.
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Post by Horsie on Jan 6, 2015 14:30:47 GMT
Canuovea, I'm not saying we should be making laws that purposely kill drugs users, and that's not what happened here.
I look at it this way; I could go out and get my kicks doing any number of things that I know are dangerous or just generally bad ideas, but the law doesn't prevent me from doing those things. As far as I can tell, there's no law on the books that says I'm not allowed to drink litres of vodka in the comfort of my own home.
People ought to know that there's a risk when using drugs, especially synthetic drugs, so as far as I'm concerned they're taking their lives into their own hands.
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Post by Canuovea on Jan 6, 2015 18:41:00 GMT
I didn't really think you meant that. But why allow it to be more dangerous than it has to?
Also, if people take their lives in their hands anyway, and they're all rational actors and such, why even have these things be illegal in the first place? What is the point of the law?
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Post by Horsie on Jan 6, 2015 18:43:53 GMT
Because the money from this stuff more often than not goes to criminal organizations, usually ones that are involved in more than just selling drugs.
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Post by Canuovea on Jan 6, 2015 19:27:30 GMT
Right, yet for some reason it doesn't actually seem to effect organized crime. In fact, the illegality of it, paired with the demand, increases organized crime. It is the prohibition effect.
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Post by Horsie on Jan 6, 2015 19:28:58 GMT
So... what? We decriminalize everything? That's not going to happen, so the next best thing is to make it harder for them to do business.
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Post by Canuovea on Jan 6, 2015 19:33:16 GMT
If you're not concerned with the safety of users, why not decriminalize it all? It would do the most damage to the criminal organizations, opening up to give them legal competition and such. We saw what happened when prohibition ended.
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Post by Horsie on Jan 6, 2015 19:55:17 GMT
They can decriminalize weed, that's fine with me, but a lot of the other things out there have no business being decriminalized.
The end of prohibition wasn't just the decriminalizing of alcohol production and sales, it was the legalization. I'm not going to start a petition asking my government to green-light legal sales of meth and MDMA, that's ridiculous.
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