Solve The Debt Problem- Legalise All Drugs

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Gracchus_Babeuf wrote:

What would you do when drug addicts think they can take them all the time and then commit assaults and murders as a result?.

Seriously?

Have you ever actually seen someone on marijuana?

The only thing they'll be murdering is a pizza at the end of the night when the munchies kick in......

And the most dangerous thing about your typical pill head is that he'll commit random acts of affection.

The vast majority of drug related crime is about stealing money to get the drugs, not because of behaviour changes caused by the drugs. If you want to reduce drug harm, both to users And the community, then legalisation is by far the most sensible option.

abaxas

paddyrg wrote: »

One big problem though - you do that, and every smackhead in Europe will move to the UK. Look at how Amsterdam's tolerance of pot use has made it a centre for drug users.

You mean like any UK city centre on a fri/sat night?

nate_dog

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

Firstly, how are you going to define "drug"? Isn't it a drug that Dignitas uses in their Swiss Clinics for euthenasia? Presumably these would now be fully legal here?

Secondly, are you proposing manufacture by the government? i.e. Nationalised? Or simply allow 'shops' to import them and sell them. Maybe you would say 'only UK manufactured are legal. Importing is illegal' in which case how would you square this with our EEC friends?

Thirdly, please estimate (a) the savings in police time now not having to police drug dealing etc., and compare this to (b) the extra police time required to handle 750,000 young 'clubbers' turning out of the clubs 3 a.m. after Saturday night, all as high as a kite, thinking they can stop a 60 mph car with their bare fist, or 'fly' from the top of Tower Bridge....

Fourthly, how are you going to control the 'fake' tax-free market? Cartons of cigarettes seem difficult enough. Anonymous white powder seems almost impossible to control from a revenue perspective.

My advice? Have another 'smoke' and think again.

I think you make a few good points, my idea was obviously a simplistic one and there would be plenty of things which would need to be classified etc. In my mind it would be a nationalised production line with government owned specialist shops that sold it, we would probably need to leave the EU to implement it but hey, that might not be the worst thing

'the extra police time required to handle 750,000 young 'clubbers' turning out of the clubs 3 a.m. after Saturday night, all as high as a kite, thinking they can stop a 60 mph car with their bare fist, or 'fly' from the top of Tower Bridge....'

To me that's a ridiculous comment, there are millions of youngsters taking drugs at the weekends already and do you really think more people would take drugs on a saturday than do already if drugs were legalised? I don't, and does the sort of thing you suggested happen at the moment? No.

Look at the tax revenue we generate from tobacco and alcohol, this could easily be an extension of that. Oh and for the record i have never touched drugs in my life

nate_dog

Gracchus_Babeuf wrote: »

What would you do when drug addicts think they can take them all the time and then commit assaults and murders as a result? What about drug addicts who drive and cause serious accidents? Drugs cause major personality changes which can lead to serious violent crimes.

Do you think that by leagalising drugs this kind of behaviour would increase? i can't see it myself, especially if a portion of the profits was put into helping people to kick the habit.

System

I'm a firm believer that -most- drugs aren't dangerous when used responsibly.

I'm also a firm believer that the vast majority of people aren't responsible. Look at people going out and getting obliterated on booze, replace it with MDMA, Coke, Meph whatever and there's the reason why you simply can't legalise it, dead bodies everywhere.

edit: Aren't responsible, dammit!

grizzly1911

Joeskeppi wrote: »

I there's the reason why you simply can't legalise it, dead bodies everywhere.

Think of the savings in welfare payments to the !!!!less and stupid who would take them.

Whilst at the same time generating tax and reduce the £3bn cost of policing it.

The problems and health care would surely be an extrapolation of the current risk/reward gamble played out now with alcohol and tobacco.

I am sure that a few extra corpses shown on the packaging would deter the sensible.

roundabouthere

I think a reasonable comparison would be to compare how much income is derived from tobacco in taxes. For 2011-12 the income from tobacco was around 2% of tax receipts or around £9bn a year.

Not a small amount but not enough to be a panacea for our current budget issues.

Loughton_Monkey

nate_dog wrote: »

I think you make a few good points, my idea was obviously a simplistic one and there would be plenty of things which would need to be classified etc. In my mind it would be a nationalised production line with government owned specialist shops that sold it, we would probably need to leave the EU to implement it but hey, that might not be the worst thing

I wouldn't trust the British Government, or the EEC to have nationalised production lines making cocoa, let alone Class A drugs! It would be about the least efficient enterprise going.

Mind you. Mrs LM drags me out for a 6 or 7 mile walk every Sunday, dragging through the villages and fields in Essex. THe number of dormant field/land is very striking. An overhang of the "set-aside" era methinks.

To allow commercial Cannabis growing by the farmers may just get us out of the doldrums.

Farmers might make a small profit, but what worries me is the typical clientel for the product. There is already concern about the %age of money amongst the benefit claimants going on booze & ciggies. Now we get booze, ciggies, and weed.

Would the product get 'Royal Appointment', courtesy of young Harry?

chewmylegoff

wotsthat wrote: »

Portugal legalised all drugs 10 years ago. At that time I was travelling there a lot and remember that most people were greeting this change with horror.

A quick google (i.e. not extensive research) shows that drug related crime is down and so is drug use. There seems to be no evidence that Portugal's economy has been improved.

However, I'd quite like to ban smoking and full sugar Coke so it won't be getting my vote.

portugal did not legalise all drugs, they decriminalised possession and use of drugs, which isn't quite the same thing. it's about as far as any country can go in "legalising" drugs without contravening all of the various international treaties about the war on drugs blah blah blah.

however, leaving aside the fact that we would become an international pariah state, and all the problems that come with that, i think the OP needs to set some sums out to show us just how this would solve the debt crisis. the duty raised on alcohol and tobacco in this country is about £20 billion.

it seems unlikely that the tax revenues from a legalised drugs trade would be more than that - especially since for any legalised drugs trade to actually be successful the price of the product needs to be lower than the current street price (otherwise people will just keep buying cheaper illegal drugs). furthermore, i'm not sure you can really grow coca in the UK meaning that either we need to build some rather large greenhouses which sound expensive (to build and to run, resulting in expensive product that once we've slapped a load of tax on it will not be able to compete with the street price), or we need to buy from the drugs barons in south america. i'm sure that would go down with our friends, the USA.

Daedalus

I am not sure about all drugs. Heroin shouldn't be freely sold but certainly made available to addicts on prescription.

The softer drugs, weed, mdma etc should be legalised, regulated and taxed.

The war on drugs in America costs $20 billion, legalising and taxing would turn that into $20 billion in tax revenues. That is before you get into the millions of people who are stigmatised and given a criminal record for minor personal drug use.

Then you have the enviromental impact.

It costs about £100k to fund a heroin addiction a year. Even if you are generous and give the black market value of stolen goods at 50% you are talking £200k an addict needs to steal. Government providing cheap heroin to addicts would cut shoplifting/burglaries massively. £2.5 billion is the estimated cost of acquisition crime, crime committed by addicts to fuel their addiction.

Then you have the civil liberties argument.

I wrote my dissertation on this, there is not credible argument against it.