Legalisation

[denny]

"There is no drug known to man which becomes safer when its production and distribution are handed over to criminals."

Comments

[cokephreak.livejournal.com]

Asides from the safety aspect, is it really a good thing to hand an industry the produces billions of pounds worth of profit over to criminals?

Last I saw organised crime wasn't great at paying tax's, ensureing employee H&S, contributing to pensions, starting charity schemes etc

Also the money produced from drugs allows people to branch out into people trafficking, arms dealing etc

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Note that that article is six years old now. Still well worth reading!

[fellcat.livejournal.com]

There's a stronger argument for banning the sale of tobacco than there is for banning the sale of heroin: when a heroin user snorts or injects, they don't poison everyone around them, whereas tobacco users who smoke at home poison their own children.

[wechsler.livejournal.com]

:s/drug/anything/

[hythloday.livejournal.com]

s/criminals/the State/

[dreamfracture.livejournal.com]

Interesting point, and I think it would be a very good idea to carefully weigh up the damage caused by the black market against the damage that could be caused by higher availability of drugs which (no matter what the article implies) are harmful and highly addictive.

I don't know enough about it.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

The article doesn't imply anything that I noticed. It completely agrees that heroin is highly addictive, and it completely denies that heroin is necessarily harmful in and of itself.

I know a couple of people who are on continuous morphine for severe back or kidney pains... it doesn't seem to do them any harm, other than messing with the smooth running of their digestive system (which is mentioned in the article and my own experiences in hospital also agree with). I'm inclined to believe that heroin is less harmful than common perception allows for, although I wouldn't be brave enough to claim it's harmless :)

I do agree with you that use would almost undoubtedly rise if it was legalised and possibly even issued free or on prescription. I'm not sure whether or not that could still be a net gain for society at large if those addicts were being better behaved.