Despite your claims of irrelevance Severin, what was very relevant was pelican's last post. I'll take some credit for pushing her into giving information we can all look at, and thus enable us to make our own opinions based on the evidence she has presented.

The evidence on trafficing and smoking was mixed. We have the Canadian experience, but then we have this quote from http://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-13-taxation/13-9-smuggling-a-result-of-tax-increases- "However there is no evidence that tax increases or high taxes per se lead to an increase in large-scale smuggling. ... The prevalence of cigarette smuggling in any given country seems to have more to do with government policing of payment of tax liabilities".

The newspaper articles about one off crimes aren't helpful. We know people break the law. What we need to know is how often they do it.

pelican also cited the Swedish experience. The link she gave was a good summary of what they do, but gave no insight into how well it works. If you look at the "overdose death rate table" here: http://www.ffdlr.org.au/commentary/docs/Swedens%20drug%20policy.htm you can see they don't do too well compared to countries that are more tolerant. Deaths/Million: Holland=0.8, Australia=1.5, Sweden=3.0.

pelican: "Harm minimisation should be the ultimate goal and that goal is also achievable without legalising illicit drugs."

The statement "that goal is also achievable without legalising illicit drugs" is just saying what you believe. I know what you believe. What I want to see is evidence it is right. Something that explains why, after 40 years with drug harms are essentially flat in the last 20, you believe it will suddenly change.

I presume you also believe "legalising illicit drugs" will lead to an increase in harms. It hasn't elsewhere, so I want to know what evidence you have to support that assertion. I know you base it on personal experience, but since that is evidently impossible to share (or at least you haven't attempted to do so), citing personal experience isn't helpful. As an extreme example, runner says his experience is that atheists murder babies.

Pelican:

"My preference is to keep things as they are but to put more resources into policing and border security in relation to drug trafficking and to continue with harm minimisation programs for users in the way of appropriate rehabilitation programs and to deal with the problems of drugs in prisons."

Border security? Around Australia? "Keeping things as they are" isn't working. So here we are back where we started:

1. Drugs users gaining criminal records as well as other experiences from being found guilty of taking a drug.

2. Drug lords (includes politicians, eminent business people, actual underworld figures) will still be raking in the dollars.

3. Crimes committed to raise funds for drugs will continue.

4. Babies will still be born to drug addled parents - BTW I do believe that drug abuse would actually decrease rather than increase, if decriminalised. Just one example is the '6 PM swill', when people drank as much as they could until the pubs closed in the afternoon.

5. Drugs will continue to be 'cut' with far more dangerous substances than the drug themselves.

And so it goes...

Rstuart

If you are going to start making comments on gender as you did with Pelican you can expect to be called out on it. It is particularly stupid, because I happen to agree with your opinion, however there is no need to imply that because Pelican is female, she is out of touch; as you have done. It is not relevant to your argument - I don't care how many times you have crossed swords with Pelican in the past. Play the ball, man.

rstuart
You are still missing my earlier point. There is a lot of literature and media coverage regarding the drugs debate and I can link to numerous articles and papers as much as you want, cherrypicking those that suit my stance, as can you.

I will always try and link with articles that are more reasonably balanced but more often than not most of us will link to that which supports our view.

Your criticism about 'evidence'of what works and what doesn't equally applies to you but you are so blinkered by your own world view you cannot see it.

If world health/law enforcement 'experts' cannot agree about what will work or won't work what makes you think we can solve it here? You could read 20 different articles about the policies in Sweden or in the Netherlands and all would vary in some way as to efficacy.

All we can do is give our own educated guesses, commonsense reasoning and offer why we choose one path over the other.

@Severin: imply that because Pelican is female, she is out of touch ... Play the ball, man.

Oh for Pete's sake, I did not say or imply pelican is out of touch. Given you have twice now accused me of saying something I didn't, accusing me of not playing the balls on the court is a bit rich.

And no, asking Pelican to change her style of debate from presenting personal observations to something based on evidence isn't playing the person either. It is a perfectly reasonable request.

@pelican: I can link to numerous articles and papers as much as you want

Yes, it is possible to link to many articles where people express an opinion one way or the other. The problem is that isn't hard evidence of anything but one persons opinion.

Ideally, evidence is an some observation I could make myself. Thus "grass is green" is good evidence, because I can go out and check grass is indeed green. Unfortunately that sort is usually impossible provide. The next best thing is to quote someone else who has done the observing who I can trust to report in a reasonably fair fashion. Government statistics, peer reviewed science - that sort of thing.

For example, if your point was cannabis is associated with psychosis, you might use this as supporting evidence: http://www.ukcia.org/research/young/psychosis.php It has all the hall marks of being a fair report, not in the least because it in turn cites all the evidence it rests on at the end.

As a counter example, what you would not use is something from Nils Bejerot, the man who championed Sweden's current drug policy. His motivations weren't scientific, rather he was on a political crusade. His arguments are light on hard figures and heavy on "common sense" reasoning. Reasoning isn't evidence.

So no contrary to what you say, there is not that much evidence out there. On a personal note, I don't learn too much by reading posts here at OLO. Instead, learning comes from when I try to justify my position, and find the evidence is scant, or worse.

Rstuart

I am really getting bored with this:

"Oh for Pete's sake, I did not say or imply pelican is out of touch."

Then read through your posts before uploading, please. When I read stuff like:

"You are having a conversation you might have with a friend at the kitchen table over a cup of tea, offering your personal experiences."

You are being patronising and playing the (wo)man. Despite your claim of playing the ball. In fact Pelican has offered plenty of evidence in support of her opinion. I don't happen to think it is valid evidence - that it does not stack up against the evidence that government control over mind altering substances is better than by criminals, but nonetheless, she has constructed her arguments well.

Now this may be simple semantics, but saying someone's opinions are "half-arsed" is the same as claiming s/he is speaking from one's orifice.

There is nothing wrong with arguing from passion, however your arguments lose credibility when accompanied by insults. The reason I am pointing this out to you here, is because I actually agree with you on many points, so you can't use disagreement as the usual lame excuse.

@Severin: In fact Pelican has offered plenty of evidence in support of her opinion.

Nope. She has listed a whole pile of harmful things drug taking does. No one disagrees with any of them, but in subsequent posts she listed more and more as if they supported some point. That point is she evidently believes those harms will increase if we loosen the legal restrictions. The disagreement arises is over that claim and not that drugs cause harm. Most of us disagree with that legalising drugs will increase harms.

There nothing wrong with being the odd one out, of course. But I would like to know why she takes the position she does. In other words, what has she observed that leads her to think loosing legal restrictions on drug taking will lead to an increase in harms. When I pressed on the issue, she said: "I openly claim that it WILL go up" http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10120#163918 which obviously doesn't help. Next we have "Young people who may not have tried heroin when it is illegal may well take it up when it's use has been legitimised by governments. I think many would - that is my own feelings." http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10120#163988 Fine, but that isn't evidence.

As I said at the time, given the dearth of evidence I said those feelings looked more like a wild arsed guess. You apparently think that means the same thing as having a half-arsed opinion, so I suggest you look the term up in a dictionary: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wild%20ass%20guess

Pelican has now said: "I have raised teenagers and worked around youth issues and previously drug/alcohol issues. It is from that experience that my own opinions have been shaped.", http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10120#164048 which is a definite improvement. Now I have an inkling why she feels the way she does. But it still isn't the sort of evidence I am talking about. Neither is her final addition: "involvement in the Hawke Government's Drugs Summit and from working closely with law enforcement and government/community bodies on these issues." http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10120#164232

Where is this evidence you say she has given, Severin?