Drug policy for capitalist conservatives
Friday March 16th 2007, 7:23 am

prohibit prohibition!You don’t have to be a drug user to advocate drug legalisation or decriminalisation- all you have to be is a truly conservative, free-market, small government capitalist.

Prohibition didn’t work in the USA in the 1920s- it created Al Capone. Jail still doesn’t cure addiction, 80 odd years later.

Banning drugs does absolutely nothing to stop people from using them, but free-market forces could go a long way to reducing drug abuse and treating addicts. I’m in favour of legalisation of most street drugs along with a taxation regime to get some sort of a handle on recreational drug markets.

At this moment, it’s the drug dealers who are making the decisions on who to sell drugs to. While dealers rarely target schoolkids (why would they? schoolkids don’t have a lot of disposable income to spend on drugs), when easily avoided zero-tolerance prohibition policies are in force, the resulting unregulated drug dealers are choosing who they sell to- in the ultimate laissez-faire capitalist market.

If recreational drugs were legalised, supply could be controlled by the government. This would offer an opportunity to assure the safety and purity of recreational drugs, avoiding Anna Wood or Annabel Catt type deaths from bad eccies or heroin overdoses caused by ‘unusually pure’ batches.

Oddly enough, ‘droughts’ in heroin supply are directly implicatable in overdose deaths. Users’ tolerance to the drug may reduce after a period of enforced abstinence. When use of the drug is resumed at the last known dosage rate, which may have been during a time of ready supply, the recreational dose can be fatal. Steady supply reduces this proven harm.

A rationing or registration system could pick up on people who use too much of any such controlled drug if drugs were sold in government controlled or regulated recreational drug shops, similar to state owned liquor stores in the US state of Ohio.

Aside from a monitoring system, a government could assert some meaningful control over excessive use of drugs by levying higher taxes on drugs of physical addiction. However, government pricing would have to significantly undercut the street market price to have any effect. If you remove the profit motive in dealing drugs, you also remove predatory, opportunist, violent gangsters from drug dealing. The gangsters will have to find something else to sell.

Moreover, in a true conservative idealist fashion, the cost of recreational drug use is shifted to the drug users themselves, directly recoverable from drug sales taxes- and off the backs of general taxpayers. The self-perpetuating zero-tolerance ‘War on Drugs’ costs billions to taxpayers each year, to absolutely zero effect. Before there was a War on Drugs, 1.3% of any given population was addicted to some drug. 80-odd years of prohibitionist strategy and millions of billions of dollars later- there’s still 1.3% of any given population who are drug addicts.

There’s nothing at all wrong with the Greens’ drug decriminalisation policies. However, community ignorance about the effects of drugs, drug control strategies and drug treatment, caused by about 80 years worth of mis- and disinformation from drug prohibition itself is what allows cockamamie nonsense like Nile’s (and Morris Iemma’s by his failure to come in on the side of evidence based drug policy) to get traction.

Let the free market fix the drug problem- at the drug users’ own expense. Government need only set up the infrastructure and ground rules.

Capitalism rools, OK!

-weez


29 Comments so far
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Ah Weez. It just makes too much sense. What will our moronic politicians scare people with if a common sense approach to drugs is taken? Furthermore, they will be upset because they won’t get to punish all those drug users with jail anymore, but will have to treat drug addiction for what it is – an illness. These people are sick!

Sooner or later though, they’re going to have to realise that this “war on drugs” is a farce and always has been. In the meantime, millions more lives will be ruined.

Of course the Greens drug policy is spot on – it targets all the things that need to be targeted in the right way. It also states that at a very basic level, the formula needs to be flipped around to hit out at mr. big dealers whilst decriminalising drug use for recreational users and getting medical and psychological treatment for those who need it. Of course, they won’t get listened to because idiots like Fred Nile don’t know what the hell they’re talking about – they never do.

Comment by Dave 03.16.07 @ 8:14 am

Sensible or not, Dave, some days I scare the crap out of myself. I have this recurring nightmare that I could be a victim of middle-age-onset conservativism. 😉

The drug war system is self-perpetuating because it is profitable. There are big players, well entrenched in the prison and law enforcement industries (and they ARE industries these days) as well as squillions in fines and forfeitures received by government through ‘proceeds of crime’ legislation.

All these people are going to have to get off the prohibition tittie for the general good of the people… but have you ever tried to get a fat baby off a boob? Bring a crowbar.

Comment by weez 03.16.07 @ 8:48 am

The premise behind your article, that “Abolition didn’t work”, is a fallacy that people spread around, but isn’t based on truth.

Abolition reduced the rate of alcohol consumption by 60-70% in the US after it was introduced and also substantially reduced the number of drink driving fatalities.

Drawing the same parallel here, if we legalise heroin/ice like the wacko greens propose, we would have a massive increase in junkies.

Have you seen the ‘faces of meth’ website ? Do you really think what you are saying is a good idea ? Sentencing people to a life of mental slavery to drugs is not the right position to hold.

Prohibition may not be ‘cool’ but it’s right and it works.

Comment by Edwin 03.16.07 @ 10:22 am

Edwin said: The premise behind your article, that “Abolition didn’t work”, is a fallacy that people spread around, but isn’t based on truth.

Did prohibition stop people from drinking alcohol? It most certainly did not! By your own admission, it was an abject failure.

If American prohibition had been effective, there would not have been a “60-70% (where on earth did you get this figure? As IF anyone surveyed during prohibition would have admitted to drinking!) reduction in alcohol consumption” – there wouldn’t have been ANY alcohol consumption. If it had really worked, there would not have been a ‘substantial reduction’ in drink driving fatalities- there would have been ZERO.

Prohibition did nothing but create profit motive in the black market in alcohol, which was exploited by everyone from hillbilly moonshine runners to the aforementioned Al Capone… and my very own grandmother, who at age 5 in 1922, sat on the front porch watching for the cops while my great grandparents made beer in the basement to sell to their friends.

I have seen the ‘faces of meth’ website. Is there a ‘faces of alcohol’ site for comparison? The simple fact is that a certain number of people in a population, on the order or 1.3%, will find a way to not only use but become addicted to some drugs.

Prohibition not only isn’t ‘cool,’ it certainly isn’t right and definitely doesn’t work. If it did, we’d not be having this conversation, would we?

Comment by weez 03.16.07 @ 12:27 pm

Edwin also said: Sentencing people to a life of mental slavery to drugs is not the right position to hold.

Slippery slope there, Edwin. You presume all recreational drug use is both lifelong and slavery. The vast majority of recreational drug users are productive societal participants, have jobs, families, etc. They’re intermittent or ‘weekend’ users, not ‘junkies’ sleeping off the nod in parks. Put simply, not all drug use is drug abuse.

Using substances to obtain an altered state of consciousness is a trait seen in numerous mammalian species, from squirrels ripped to the tits on fermented windfall apples to koalas, said to be normally stoned stupid on gum leaf oils. Humans are a bit more clever at altering consciousness, but there’s no arguing that drug use is a normal human behaviour. Ask anyone in the local pub or cafe.

You can accept humans for the DNA hard-coded drug freaks they are and help them to hurt themselves less when they use substances- or you can yell ‘NONONONONONO! YOU MUSTN’T!” loudly at them or lock them up with much more serious criminals (or hang them) when they break the rules.

You can work out for yourself which one gives more people a greater quality of life.

Comment by weez 03.16.07 @ 12:59 pm

I would agree with all of the article, were it not for one glaring omission.

The two drugs that are most harmful by a massive margin, are alcohol and tobacco.

Are we to believe that it’s a coincidence that these are the two legalised recreational drugs?

Both cost our system massive amounts, whether it’s the violence associated with alcohol, or the hospital bills for smoker’s health problems.

If you can address this adequately, I will agree with you weez… otherwise, it seems to be there is one huge, glaring hole in your argument.

Comment by Dave D 03.16.07 @ 12:59 pm

Dave, you’re right; I didn’t address alcohol and tobacco as my starting point was really Fred Nile’s silliness on injecting drug use and the Greens’ ‘illicit’ drug policies.

Just because a drug is legal doesn’t mean everyone will use it, any more than teaching children about sex will cause them all to immediately run out and get naked behind the garden shed. The Dutch experience with ‘tolerating’ cannabis has not led to an explosion in use- rather, it caused a slight decline in use which holds steady. Neither did Holland see an explosion in use of ‘hard’ drugs as a result of any ‘gateway’ effect from cannabis. When cannabis use was separated from the general black market illegal drug culture, cannabis users had even less contact with hard drugs and the cultures surrounding them.

Alcohol has been around with humans for several thousand years. Tobacco has been in western culture for a few hundred years. Both are mild intoxicants in moderate dosage, suitable in social drug use settings- and thus gaining ‘legal’ status in most of western culture (but not universally).

Cannabis, though used by humans for at least 5000 years, is seen outside of the western world as a ‘soft drug’ with mildly intoxicating qualities. As such, not being terribly dissimilar to alcohol in behavioural effect (except for absence of inducing hangovers and violent behaviour), cannabis enjoys broad popularity around the globe. It came by its illicit status in California in the early part of the 20th century when migrant Mexican farm workers were observed using cannabis. There appears to be a bit of a racist motive for cannabis prohibition which was later taken up as a political campaign by one Harry Anslinger, then head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (precursor to the modern DEA). With passage of the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act in 1937, hemp and drug cannabis production was finally criminalised despite a thriving American fibre hemp industry- and an embarrassing call by the War Department during WWII to resume hemp production for ropes for the US Navy. ‘Indian hemp’ was criminalised just a few years before in the UK, along with opium for smoking, both on similarly racism-suspect bases.

Cannabis is demonstrably less harmful than alcohol, being that it is not physiologically addictive, yet it remains a controlled substance in most western nations due to the aforementioned historical reasons. If one were to rewrite our drug laws based solely on medical evidence we now have, and with no other prejudices, alcohol and tobacco would be banned and pursued with the same vigor applied to heroin- and cannabis would be sold to adults in ‘packaged goods’ shops.

Comment by weez 03.16.07 @ 1:38 pm

I’ll further recognise one more omission from my notes. Some drugs are unsuitable for the alcohol-style control-and-tax model, notably (but not limited to) methamphetaine, cocaine and heroin.

A ‘prescription’ legalisation model, managed by physicians, trained nurses or other more specialised drug referees would better suit drugs of high addiction potential. Such a model would also put addicts in front of health professionals- hopefully before they wind up in front of legal professionals.

Most people with drug problems don’t realise they even have a problem until they’re in far too deep to manage it themselves. If there were a means of getting addicts in front of real, useful counselors before things get really out of control, perhaps the nadir wouldn’t be quite so low as to utterly destroy lives and families, which is the present arrangement.

What we’re doing now isn’t working. Let’s pull the other one.

Comment by weez 03.16.07 @ 2:39 pm

Edwin said: Have you seen the ‘faces of meth’ website ? Do you really think what you are saying is a good idea ? Sentencing people to a life of mental slavery to drugs is not the right position to hold.
Hhhmmm. Yeah, let’s sentence them to a life in jail instead Edwin – very good! I had a look at the faces of meth website and noticed that many of the shots on there are mugshots. As long as our society treats recreational drug use as a crime and (even more disturbing) addiction, dependence and mental illness associated with these as a crime, people aren’t going to get the TREATMENT they need to help them out of their problem. Instead, they’re going to rot as a withdrawn mess in jail. This doesn’t help the person, doesn’t stop others from taking the drug and certainly doesn’t stop the arseholes who profit from this perpetual cycle.

You see, your reaction is a prime example of the misunderstanding of the alarmist media and politicians in their responses to the Greens’ policy and policies like theirs. It’s not like they’re proposing to sell heroin and ice over the counter (which is what is always said in the telegraph and other nonsense media outlets)… They’re proposing that the government control the distribution to these people who are addicted to the stuff so we can get them onto programs to help them and not just lock them up in jail. People who turn to ice and heroin who are as you so wonderfully describe “junkies” do so because of many different reasons – mostly problems that you and I should thank our lucky stars that we will never have to face.

They are sick, they need help and treating them as criminals simply because they USE the drug DOES NOT HELP them or anybody else. Oh, wait, it helps the drug dealers who don’t give shit about anyone because less resources are allocated to target them – we’re too busy locking up users.

Since prohibition hasn’t worked – and it hasn’t – perhaps it’s time to try to tackle this problem a little differently and while we’re at it, take the boot off the backs of recreational drug users who don’t harm anyone else… There’s plenty of them – one could even live next door to YOU!

Comment by Dave 03.16.07 @ 2:48 pm

Dave, you touch on the very crux of the matter: Drug use isn’t a problem- it’s drug abuse which must be addressed- and drug abuse must be addressed as a health concern, not a legal nor moral issue.

Comment by weez 03.16.07 @ 3:11 pm

You argument is fine, as long as it is up to the druggies themselves to pay for any medical support required to extract them from their addled state, or repair the damage done. Think: William S. Burroughs, who inherited his fortune and proceded to inject it into his veins.

But the simple fact is that a bleeding-heart Socialist society, such as Australia, will then inevitably want to tax me to pay for their health and rehab, if not to subsidise the drugs themselves.

And then, on top of that, I’ll have to pay more tax to cover the dole to these losers, because who in the Hell is going to employ somebody on crystal meth or PCP?

Comment by Peter 03.16.07 @ 4:08 pm

Had Burroughs more literally pissed his fortune up against a wall, spending all his loot on fine booze instead of injecting it in his veins, would your estimation of him change?

Peter, as long as you are the guy standing at the entry of the operating theatre telling the patients who is and is not deserving of “your” tax dollars- it’s fine by me.

However, I live in a real world community, where everyone gets sick for one reason or another, where ‘deserving ill’ and ‘undeserving ill’ are not differentiated.

Peter, you’ve made the same silly assumption Edwin did- that if drugs are legalised, all people will necessarily use them- but you’ve gone a bit further and suggested that all people would do them all day, every day. That’s not what happens with drugs now- nor what would likely happen as a result of legalisation.

The most obvious effect of decriminalisation and legalisation is that people will stop going to jail for possession of personal use quantities of drugs. The fewer people in jail for minor drug infractions, the more who are working and paying tax- and sharing others’ medical costs- like yours.

Comment by weez 03.16.07 @ 5:56 pm

Legalising drug use will cause people who currently aren’t junkies, to become junkies due to easier access. Meth amphetamine and heroine are incredibly addictive. Addicts destroy their lives, go to jail, rip off their own families to get another hit. They can’t stop. Why would you want more people to live like this ?

Legalising drugs will make Australia a worse society to live in than it currently is.

Prohibition reduces the rate of addiction, and that’s a good thing.

Comment by Leo 03.16.07 @ 10:43 pm

Prohibition has never affected rates of addiction. It simply causes addicts to obtain their drugs via a more circuitous route.

Whether drugs are legalised or not, addiction rates will be similar if not the same. The point of decriminalisation and legalisation is to remove the worst harms from drug use- that’s the legal and prison systems- and replace them with controlled safe supply and necessary contact with drug counselors. Drugs are a health problem- and people with drug abuse problems should be treated by doctors instead of lawyers.

Read back a few comments for a legalisation model that addresses drugs with high addiction potential.

Comment by weez 03.16.07 @ 11:41 pm

Like any issue, what is required is debate. If society was like what many propose (from whatever view) it is or should be, it would mean disaster. It needs people who care from both sides and each keeps the other’s balance.

Decriminalisation and legalisation are two separate things.

Comment by Yarra 03.17.07 @ 11:04 am

Yarra said:

“Decriminalisation and legalisation are two separate things.”

Indeed they are. Decriminalisation is is really only half the quid as there remain legal penalties for personal use and possession, just reduced penalties or less-than-vigorous enforcement of laws.

Comment by weez 03.17.07 @ 11:45 am

It is true that the legal profession benefits substantially from the current arrangements, as does the increasingly privatised penal system. You’ll need more than a crow bar to get those leeches off the tit of prohibition.

Good luck trying to overturn a very cozy arrangement for politians (tough on drugs = votes), bail companies, prisons Inc, lawyers, solicitors, barristers, judges etc. Anyone who preaches a tough on drugs stance has a pretty obvious although transparently hypocritical agenda.

Cannabis use in the Netherlands is very uncool with the 15-25 age group thanks to their liberal polices.

Truth and change is always frightening for the ignorant.

Comment by virro 03.17.07 @ 12:24 pm

Well said, virro.

Community ignorance about drugs and drug treatment is the biggest stumbling block to meaningful drug policy reform. I’m doing no favours to anyone by referring to ‘drugs’ generically and as a whole. Since drugs have differing effects on people, differing policies are required for the individual types.

Some drugs have high addiction potential but that potential varies significantly with the drug. Addiction must further be broken down into the two basic types- physiological and psychological. Opiates, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine and amphetamines fall in this class. Drugs of physiological addiction are so defined because there is a physiological response to cessation of the drug, known as withdrawal symptoms. These include changes in autonomic functions- metabolic rate, heart rate, digestion and so on. Physiological addiction is also indicated when the body develops a resistance or tolerance to a drug, where the user must continue to increase the dosage to obtain a satisfactory effect, which with chronic use continues up to the point where even a toxic dose produces little positive psychological effect but has all of the negative side effects.

Drugs of psychological addiction don’t produce any physiological symptoms on cessation but the patient will show some temporary distresses like difficulty sleeping, irritability, etc.

Any habitual or compulsive behaviour can produce a psychological addiction, independent of use of a substance. In example, one may develop a psychological addiction to having a newspaper delivered each morning or having a working internet connection. One may show psychological withdrawal symptoms if the paper is not delivered or the net connection goes down when one would normally be web browsing. Cannabis is unusual in that the body does not develop physiological dependence on the active component of the drug. The body doesn’t develop a tolerance to cannabis where increasing doses are required to produce an effect. However, chronic users will show some psychological withdrawal symptoms upon abrupt cessation.

virro said:

Cannabis use in the Netherlands is very uncool with the 15-25 age group thanks to their liberal polices.

A great portion of the culture of youth drug use is the element of rebellion. Drug use may be illegal but is largely unpoliceable. No bells ring at the local station house when Joey lights up a joint behind the shearing shed, so Joey both thinks he’s getting away with something and to a large degree actually is successfully breaking some rules, with little harm done to himself or anyone else.

If use and possession of cannabis in particular was not illegal, few kids would be interested. Stoned people are boring, smell bad and burrow stupidly in the refrigerator. However, if a peer group they’d like to identify with uses cannabis, there’s a very good chance that peer pressure will rule the day.

One important effect in the Netherlands cannabis ‘tolerance’ model was the separation of cannabis use from the hard drug cultures. When cannabis and hashish use was tolerated in ‘coffeeshops,’ where one can buy cannabis over the counter as well as use the drug in the shop, in concert with an official police ‘blind eye’ toward growing a few plants, street dealers were cut out of the loop.

Dealers had previously sold not only cannabis but harder drugs like heroin and cocaine. Absent physiological addiction, cannabis users are not likely to exhibit desperate or socially unacceptable drug-seeking behaviours. Consequently, the character of cannabis users doesn’t usually include robbing grannies for their next ‘fix.’ As the greatest number of “recreational drug users” primarily use cannabis, on the order of 65-70% of all illicit drug users, this removed a large number of people from contact with avaricious and often violent culture of ‘hard’ drug users. Street dealers simply could not compete with the pricing and convenience of a ‘legal’ cannabis coffeeshop. Market forces at work!

Comment by weez 03.18.07 @ 6:53 am

I just love Leo’s lovely assumption: “Legalising drug use will cause people who currently aren’t junkies, to become junkies due to easier access.”

Hah! So you reckon that prohibition is actually successful at limiting supply do you??? (You also seem to think tarring drug users as “junkies” is a sensible way to go about conducting a reasonable debate on the subject, so why should I be surprised?)

I’m sorry to disturb your lovely bubble world, but thats not actually the case. For young folks today with some disposable cash, most any drug is merely a phone call away… all you need to do is know someone that indulges. And believe me, most any young Australian will be able to name one, if not a substantial number of their peers that recreationally use one drug or another. In my current workplace, as with most of my previous workplaces, the definite majority of my coworkers have at some time consumed an illicit drug.

I’m not sure you realise just how many people are being criminalised by the current legal regime.

Comment by Marcus 03.19.07 @ 7:39 am

Marcus warned:

I’m not sure you realise just how many people are being criminalised by the current legal regime.

Too right. Given the extreme penalties for drug use and possession in many localities, I have always suspected that numerical estimates of drug users in the general population are artificially low. The way one uses drugs without going to jail in a prohibitionist environment is by not discussing the matter with anyone not directly concerned with said use, certainly not with government surveyors.

Low or not, estimates of cannabis use in Australia are staggering. Australia is #2 in the world with almost 18% of the population (3,586,000 people from 20 mil, about the population of Sydney) being cannabis users. NZ is even more stoned than Australia, leading the world with more than 22% of Kiwis (~911,500 of 4.1 mil) said to be smoking up.

That’s a WHOLE lot of people to throw in jail.

Comment by weez 03.19.07 @ 9:24 am

Great stuff, weez.
Year after frustrating year of pounding the pulpit on this I’ve settled on the notion that drugs are currency, they’re not illegal because Joe Blow might harm hisself and his neighbors, or because society may fall apart – they’re illegal because that’s what gives them value! Col. Oliver North was Hopalong Regan’s personal guns-for-drugs dealer. To legalize drugs would would do to the White House what prosecuting insider trading would do to the NYSE et al.

Ice and meth would disappear overnight if we stopped the profitable manufacture of the precursor to it all – pseudo-ephedrine. (Ephedrine itself was banned decades ago.) That wouldn’t help the 1.3% of the population biologically destined to chemical addictions, though.

Chemical addictions we can see and easily ameliorate without resorting to violence – it’s the insidious, invisible addictions loose in every human’s psyche that are driving our culture raving mad. Prohibition is one symptom of that, Peter’s gut response is another. Zero tolerance is a religo-fascist Utopian ideal, completely unrelated to the human condition. All of this is maintained by fools, incapable of thinking critically for themselves, screeching self-righteous dogma.

Hypocrisy rules, let he who is without sin decide.

Comment by theHippy 03.19.07 @ 6:50 pm

What’s the point writing this?

No one who is anti-drugs is going to read it and think you’re right. No one who is anti-drugs will even consider this argument, sound or not.

They’ll throw every bullshit argument and false fact at you, and demonise you as a green-washed, fag-enabling, drug pushing commie.

Simply put, if some of the greatest musicians in the world can’t get it legalised, there’s no way you will by blogging about it, homeboy.

Comment by FunkyJ 03.19.07 @ 8:10 pm

The point in writing this is that it was a topic of debate and accusation in the NSW Parliament last week- and there’s an election on here next week.

You’re right- the general response of zero-tolerance crusaders is to ad-hominem smear the proponents of any leniency in the legality of recreational drugs.

However, my message may get through to people who are undecided because they’re underinformed about drugs and the impacts of alternative drugs policies.

You change the world one mind at a time. I change one, someone else changes another… and so it goes until a new idea reaches critical mass. It can happen- maybe not at the next election, but certainly within my lifetime.

20 years ago, you’d do jail time in California for simple possession. These days, it’s all you can do to keep Der Governator from spliffing out at his desk… damn anti-smoking laws…

Comment by weez 03.19.07 @ 8:18 pm

A note from Lee Rhiannon just popped in my inbox.

The Greens are coming out swinging on drug policy:

We write to you to set the record straight about the Greens NSW policy on drugs and harm minimisation and correct the usual pre-election media inaccuracies.

The Greens do not encourage drug use. In particular, our policy aims to eradicate the use of methamphetamines including ‘ice’. We support tough penalties for importers, manufacturers and suppliers. See this link: Greens policies – Drugs and Harm Minimisation

Prohibition has failed to protect the lives of young people and it has failed to make society safer. The major parties’ policies based on criminal penalties for users have not prevented the growth in ‘ice’ use, dependency and addiction. There are now more than 37,000 regular methamphetamine users and 28,000 dependent users in NSW and the number is growing rapidly.

The Greens want to eradicate ‘ice’. We believe the best way to do this is with significant increases in education to strengthen the resistance of young people to the drug, and new treatment and rehabilitation programs.

Heavy criminal sanctions on users have failed to control the epidemic. And they keep ‘ice’ addicts away from counselling services and treatment programs.

The choice is this: do we want to gaol addicts or do we want to cure them?

The Greens believe that police resources are better focused on the importers, manufacturers and suppliers of ice. We want to destroy the supply chain.

The Greens policy breaks with the bipartisan ‘law and order ‘ approach but it enjoys broad support from public health professionals, with specialist experience with drugs. See below.

The full story on the Greens drugs and harm minimisation policy is available here.

Please pass this email on to interested friends, colleagues and family.

Regards
Lee Rhiannon
Greens MP

Good on Lee for not being intimidated by Fred deNile.

Comment by weez 03.20.07 @ 5:01 pm

I find this hard to accept because I see the harm that is done by drugs, but it may be the “least bad” solution, and I am certainly no dogmatic free marketeer.

Adrian

Comment by Adrian 03.22.07 @ 10:54 am

These drugs don’t need legalising they need RE-LEGALISING. Cannabis,opiates,coca etc were formally legal drugs and should be again,drug laws are nothing more than BIGOTRY,”my filthy drug ALCOHOL is acceptable and the donations provided by the drug peddlers of the drug alcohol help keep me in office”…. Anyaussie Politishun.
Cannabis was initially banned in Australia by Britain signing the League of Nations Second Convention on Opium Appendix 2 1927 on our behalf it was added to the 1925 2ndOpium Convention at the behest of South Africa to control those “Darkies on Dagga(cannabis)” as a tool of racist repression much like Australia’s first anti-drug laws ,enacted in Queensland in the 1880’s to prevent the sale of opium to – you think I’m going to say Chinese ,don’t you? But it was to prevent the sale of opium to ABORIGINALS !!! Oh my god not RACISM ,how unusual for Queensland and Australia in general(as he rolls his eyes in sarcasm)
Isn’t it interesting that the Industrial Revolution was fueled by drugs yet society didn’t collapse because opiates,coca and cannabis where LEGAL ,it didn’t bring about the fall of western civilisation,it didn’t cause moral decay in fact the world progressed in leaps and bounds during the drug fueled Industrial Revolution so those spurious arguments against RE-legalising drugs are a nonsense.

Comment by Jess Stone-DrugTestScam.com 04.09.07 @ 4:03 am

For what it’s worth, I was browsing readership stats and found that this post and its comment thread have drawn more than 50,000 unique IP reads since publishing, putting it in the top 5 most popular mgk items to date. While 50K uniques is spit in the sea to big American political blogs, it’s not too bad for this neck o’ the weeds.

Comment by weez 10.29.07 @ 10:07 am

very interesting opinions

Comment by colleen seignior 08.13.08 @ 5:48 pm

NSW is almost bankrupt. Why not legalise cannibas and govern and tax it like alcohol and tobacco? The state would be out of debt in no time.

Comment by colleen seignior 09.09.08 @ 10:29 pm



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