Drugs as recreation or abuse are used by persons who see no value or higher purpose for their life. The nation must educate with action on the purpose and reason for life. It is a spiritual problem. Those that have been released from such addiction and use identify deep spiritual need as the basis for its use.

Fractelle, what are you 'sus' about? Are you homophobic or something? It wouldn't surprise me.

Fractelle the only thing Col and myself have in common is an appreciation of your sheer arrogance, flakiness, and high and mighty opinion of yourself. But you just keep putting yourself up as the final word on whose 'contributions' are worthy and welcome, preaching about ettiquette and behaving like a little school girl.

Philo,

'Drugs as recreation or abuse are used by persons who see no value or higher purpose for their life. The nation must educate with action on the purpose and reason for life. It is a spiritual problem. '

Does it ever occur to you Philo, that there is no value or higher purpose in life? I don't see spirituality as any superior to drug use. Both are a distraction to the cold hard fact of life that we're all just going to end up as worm food.

CJMorgan “I see that Col's continuing to raise the intellectual level of the debate.”

As you insist on reducing it. Enough said.

Celevia EVERY product or service for which there is a demand, regardless of its legal use and accessibility or otherwise, will have a parallel illegal “black market”

be it illegal drugs, the availability Illegal tobacco, stolen goods or GST-free plumbers.

“All it can do is somewhat suppress black markets, but it won’t succeed in controlling it.”

And the result, a lower level of black market activity than if the government were to tolerate it.

And that is where the “success” for all anti-illegal-drug strategies lies.

The point you make and the point Fractelle (“the continued 'war on drugs' has had any success”) claims is similar to proving a negative.

An intolerance to drug abuse will never succeed absolutely unless the genes which generate the diversity of our attitudes as rich as it is were limited to those genes which a government decreed allowable and the outcome of that would be far more horrific.

So I accept that just as not all people are good and some are bad and some are weak and some are anarchistic then some will risk using illegal drugs.

That said, we commend heroism and excellence and condemn stupidity and addiction.

Giving up the policing of illegal drugs will encouragement to dealer and users and imply tacit approval for their use.

“All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.”

To ask to Suspend ‘war on drugs”

is to ask for ‘good men’ to do nothing.

Philos comments re reformed addicts are the best, the experience of those who survived the horror of lost and wasted years.

US we agree and disagree across a range of topics and whilst we argue the point both with passion and sincerity, we do not argue the person.

I remain hopeful that the likes of fractelle and a number of others will get the message one day but they are individuals in a liberal society, it is up to them.

Col's view of legalisation is that it will bring about the collapse of modern civilisation via mass addiction. He has given the example of drug legalisation in China as evidence for this. Yet, to my surprise, reading the work of an historian who looked at the evidence, perhaps only 2.5% of the adult population were addicts, and:

"a substantial proportion of these people would have led normal lives."

http://www.upf.edu/materials/huma/central/historia/asiaweb/practics/0708/newman.pdf

As part of the conclusion the author wrote:

"It is not the existence of addiction that requires explanation so much as the fact that, in a society in which opium was cheap and widely available, so many people smoked lightly or not at all."

I would be interested to hear the take of Col and other contributors on this article.

Fester “Col's view of legalisation is that it will bring about the collapse of modern civilisation via mass addiction.”

Interesting how you presume to foresee my ‘view’.

You probably do the same any prediction of the future, by interrogating the entrails of a goat.

Poor goat.

I do not see the collapse of civilization as we know it.

Before that were to happen, I would see the likelihood of several things

1 a serious increase in drug use, just as the liberation of gambling has seen a significant increase in participation in Victoria over the past decade or so.

2 a serious increase in drug related crime, regardless of the “legality” of drugs, there will still be a black market which will vie with the legal to supply and will use barter in stolen goods as currency.

3 a significant increase by government on taxes on working people, required to fund the increasing medical needs of drug addicts and those chronically incapable of looking after themselves, emotionally as well as physically or financially.

4 a backlash by the unaddicted majority in protest to being forced to support the indolent and parasitic existence of the junkies, leading to more a draconian attitude than today where penalties for addiction or crimes to support an addicted habit will include un-supported withdraw, regardless of the health consequences and longer prison sentences for repeat offenders.

Now all you folk who think drug abuse is cool and protest about my stance, I suggest you decide the sort of world you want your children to inherit from you.

One where drugs are commonly and legally available but drug addiction means a mandatory interment until someone decides to let you out or worse,

Or

one where we maintain a prohibition against drugs of addiction, more addictive than the opium which crippled China in the late 19th century and fight those criminals who seek to exploit the weaknesses of some by dealing illegally in drugs of dependency.

For my money I agree with PALE and would welcome the instigation of a death penalty for second offence dealers