The War on Drugs, like The War On Terror, has failed. This is because the strategy of both is predicated on fighting the supply of drugs/terrorists and ignores the demand that drives both scourges.
In the War On Drugs and the War on Terror the only way to diminish the supply of drugs and terrorists is to deal with those demand factors that drive the demand for drugs and terrorists.
In the case of the War on Terror the emphasis is now on the 'criminality' of the individual Islamist terrorists, not on the role that Jihadism plays in Islam. Rather than forcing Islam to reject the Jihadist element of the religion and undergo its own internal enlightenment (as Catholicism and Christianity had to do when it rejected Scholasticism and the control the institution of the Church once held over our individual, civil, political and social development) the emphasis is on the 'aberrant' nature of the Islamists and their Jihadist beliefs even though this is contrary to the entire history and teachings of Islam which supports and encourages Jihadism.
Another driver of demand in Islam is the self created 'victimhood status' that Muslims have adopted as regards the 'plight of muslims' even though most of this suffering is self generated by Islamist upon Islamist violence as proven by the fact that the majority of murders of Muslims are due inter-Islamic violence (eg Iraq and Sudan and in Palestine between Hamas and the PLO, the secularists and the Islamists, the nationalists and the Islamists etc). This requires the State tackle hard the lies and propaganda of the Islamists and their Liberal Apologists that seek to minimise and evade Muslim culpability in their own catastrophes.
Before the supply of Islamists stops the demand must first be dealt with.
The same is true in the War On Drugs.
It is demand that drives the supply. Demand must be addresed before supply can be stopped.
Demand for drugs is divided into two camps ;
1) Recreational Users
2) Medicinal Usage
The former is about 90 % of the demand for drugs and is the primary driver for demand. The fix to this problem is stiffer penalties for importation and supply of drugs such as the death penalty, and also stiffer penalties for recreational usage of drugs and testing for the presence of drugs in the bloodstream regarded as a form of 'possession' of the drug. Demand in society for drugs can also be slowed by the arrest and imprisonment of celebrity junkies such as Pete Doherty, Kate Moss and Amy Winehouse who glamorise drugs. The recreational user must be too terrified of being caught to buy and use drugs.
This leaves the Medicinal Usage.
The definition of an immoral drugs policy is one that equates the Multiple Sclerosis sufferer who uses cannabis as a medicine and the recreational user who smokes it for fun.
At the moment the Black Rastafarian cannabis smoker is less likely to go to prison for using cannabis than a MS sufferer, an old lady with a depressive illness and the cancer patient who uses it for pain and nausea relief. This is an intolerable state of affairs and an utterely immoral system.
Prohibition as regards the ill is intolerable. If anyone finds even the slightest relief from pain using any drug then they should be able to access and use that drug safely and lawfully without the fear of arrest and imprisonmnent.
Legalisation of drugs would destroy our society, as we have already seen the damage caused to our society by legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco.
THE SOCIAL HARM FROM THE LEGALISATION OF DRUGS WOULD BE INTOLERABLE, BUT SO ALSO IS THE INDIVIDUAL HARM CAUSED TO THOSE WHO ARE IN PAIN BY THE PRESENT SYSTEM OF PROHIBITION.
Therefore neither prohibition or legalisation are the answer - the answer is the third way which is REGULATION.
Those with a registered chronic medical condition should be able to be licensed by a doctor to use and possess those drugs such as cannabis that help them with their conditions.
THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO GROW THEIR OWN SUPPLY AND USE THE DRUG IN THE SAFETY AND PRIVACY OF THEIR OWN HOMES WITHOUT FEAR OF ARREST AND IMPRISONMENT.
Those incapable of growing their own should be able to contact those who do and purchase their own supplies of cannbis from them without fear of arrest. Such sales should be licensed and taxed and monitored for health and safety.
At the moment those ill people who would benefit from using cannabis are denied the right to use it by blanket criminalisation as regards possession and use.
Those who do use the drug for fun have to unrestricted access it via the criminal market and can buy unlimited amounts of the product from criminals who produce the drug illegally.
This means both quality and strength and supply are comprimised and controlled by the criminals. The only people that profit from blanket prohibition are the criminals that produce illegal drugs, who sell illegal drugs and the prison providing companies like Serco and Group 4 who run prisons holding the drug users.
Most MS and cancer sufferers dont want to smoke super strength cannabis, they want low strength varieties that aid their muscle spasms, pain and appetite. Yet the only products on sale in the criminal market are genetically engineered, chermically produced, high strength drugs.
The pharmacutical companies are producing artificial cannabis solutions, yet the history of the pharmacutical industries is littered with supposedly safe drugs that are not eg Thalidomide. The natural low strength cannabis srains are natural and have been used by humans with no ill effect for hundreds of thousands of years. Queen Victoria used cannabis for her painful periods,
The weed in its natural form grown in organic conditions is low strength and totally safe.
It is only the fact that the criminal market has sought to produce super strength strains that has led to the rise in mental illness in users of the drugs due to the increase in the level of the active compounds in the varities grown. These varities are not natural strains of the weed, they are produced in laboratories and engineered to have incredibly high CBD and THC levels.
No drugs in existence, either natural or man made, are 100% safe for 100% of people, but the harm caused by low strength natural grown cannabis makes it probably the safest natural (or man made) drug ever in the history of humanity.
The growth in the supply of such high strength varities that are causing social harm due to mental illness in users is due specifically to the domination of the supply system by criminals due to prohibition who are supplying high strength, chemically contaminated drugs to young people and users for profit.
If those medicinal users were allowed to grow their own low strength varieties of cannabis or access low strength varieties legally, then they would not use the criminal markets or access those varities of high strength weed that are causing the problems in our society.
The War on Drugs has failed, prohibition has failed and legalisation would be disastrous.
Therefore the only solution is regulation.
We must be hard on the criminals, yet compassionate to the ill.
In 1988, US Supreme Court Judge Francis L Young in a ruling on a petition for the rescheduling of marijuana to allow medicinal use, held that such rescheduling should occur, finding that cannabis was "one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man". He approved cannabis for the treatment of glaucoma, multiple sclerosis and treatment of the side effects associated with cancer chemotherapy.
In a 1991 report, the World Health Organisation Expert Committee on Drug Dependence recommended that THC and related compounds be rescheduled from schedule 1 to schedule 2 of the Convention on Psychotropic Substances 1971. This effectively recognised the therapeutic value of cannabis compounds, would permit wider use in the treatment of organic diseases, and may lead to a dramatic increase in research devoted to therapeutic applications. Discovery of the "cannabis receptor" in the central nervous system and other areas has led to an increase in recent research into the therapeutic applications of cannabinoids.
" Free The Weed For Those In Pain ", should be the motto of a humane and moral society and this is what I will be pushing for as a humanist and a nationalist. It is only the United Nations, the globalised criminals, gangsters, prison masters and the global pharmacutical corporations that profit from the present system and I am an enemy of all of those repressive systems and criminals.
http://www.idmu.co.uk/hol6.htm
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/hlords/15106.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/hottopics/cannabis/medical.shtml
http://www.slatts.fsworld.co.uk/famous.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,869273,00.html
Good article, but not entirely true. The criminal underworld did not create "super strength cannabis". These strains are the result of cannabis breeders mostly based in Holland growing cannabis legally usually by or for cannabis seed companies.
ReplyDeleteThere is a huge variety of cannabis seeds that range from producing very mild cannabis to very strong cannabis. Prohibition is the sole reason why cannabis on the streets is "super strength" for two reasons. The stronger it is the more it is worth! Its comparable to a litre of whisky costing much more than a litre of beer, so the grower obviously chooses to grow stronger. In Holland there is no set price, each strain is priced accordingly, mostly by strength. Second major problem caused by prohibition, outside of Holland, on the streets there is only one set price within a region; U.K is £20 for 3.5grams, it is very rare to be more or less than this figure. So to get your moneys worth buyer demands high strength and for seller to make a sale he must meet that demand.
In reality most recreational users would rather have mild cannabis for most occasions and use stronger cannabis for special occasions. In this scenario, there would be far less mental health problems.
I disagree with your point that mild cannabis is totally safe. I think it’s far safer than strong cannabis but we still don't fully understand all the chemicals involved in the cannabis plant. Certain cannabinoids have been understood through scientific research. Perhaps extracts of specific cannabinoids that have been found to be safe would be a useful development. Studies show that low levels of THC actually reduce anxiety and depression whereas high levels can do the opposite at least for those already vulnerable of developing these disorders.