I'd still be a bit wary of decriminilisation, but I'm interested in finding out what we really are achieving with all these resources. A REALISTIC bang for buck analysis.

My main objection is the way the whole debate is limited. When will we ever be able to have a more complex debate than zero tolerance vs decriminilisation. When can we shed the faux moral grandstanding about what is just a chemical. The feeling of Happiness itself is just a chemical.

The simple logic that is ignored is laughable. Tonnes of the stuff is found, and yet the common belief this massive market worth trillions of dollars is all there to support a few poor people stealing DVD players and selling them down the pub. That all the users will end up overdosing or addicted. The risks are massively over-exagerated.

Of course There are some terrible risks, but they affect such a small proportion of users. If not, how are all these poor addicts with no money and no home affording all these drugs? Why are there so few of them compared to the quantities found and size of the market?

There is also so much contradiction. From sniffer dogs for all the young punters at concerts, but none backstage for the performers. No sniffer dogs at the Logies. None in the Law Firms and Advertising agencies. Drug tests for athletes, but none for politicians, doctors and nurses.

When are we going to be honest, and admit that many, many people enjoy these substances. Those who are rich, can do so with impunity, and it is celebrated in movies and the fight against their dealers is glorified in cop shows, the westerns of this age. Those who are poor end up in gaol, and as slaves in the private US prison system.

There's not even any honesty about how the drug money is used. By governments for political control, arms for terrorists etc. Honesty about the reason for a substantial proportion of the risk to users is to do with the illegality itself.

Doctors operate under oath to maintain good health in community and improve human health problems. Doctors prescribe medications for health benifits so the person can enter again into full and active life. They do not prescribe destructive substances to impair human health or maintain harmful addictive habbits that reduces a person's wellbeing and contribution to community.

U-Sus

Thank you for returning to the discussion you established on Friday. If you had read all the contributions everyone has taken the trouble to write, you would be aware that we have discussed the issue that the upper echelon of the illegal drug trade get off scott-free and that it is the low-level users who are punished. I don't think there has been any lack of honesty on this.

This discussion has since moved on to ways of either decriminalising or legalising drugs, how they could be administered (GP, Drug Clinics) and help for addicts (counselling, control over quality of drugs, measured doses etc).

Prohibition and the war on drugs clearly don't work. Do you have any suggestions as to what may work?

A tighter control of chemical ingredient manufacturers (local and imported) should apply.
"Go to the source my son!"

Don't get snooty Fractelle, I never knew it was illegal to start a topic and not post over the weekend. I did read all the comments and thought them quite good.

I wasn't talking about any posters on this forum in my comments about bringing honesty to the drugs debate, rather just outlining my motives for the topic in the first place. I seem to rememeber you were the one who asked if I was calling for decriminilisation, and I was attempting to explain what I was calling for.

I don't have all the answers, and I don't think one must always have a solution to have a right to critisise. I do know when the people who actually get to make the decisions ignore/distort reality that there isn't much hope of a solution.

For a start, the government could start justifying what they are spending, and measuring and reporting what they are actually achieving as per my questions.

As for my thoughts on drugs themselves, Cevilia summed it up perfectly. 'The problem is not the use of drugs; it’s the abuse of drugs.'

I'm saying drugs aren't the problem people make them out to be. All the unharmed users have been edited out of the analysis, and we are left with a doom and gloom prognosis about legalisation. The starting point as I see it, is to have an honest analysis of the proporting of the population of drug users that ABUSE drugs. I expect this value is much smaller and more constant than most people think, like the percentage of drinkers who end up as alcoholics.

Then their are the questions I outlined at the start. The authorities will never justify these questions with an answer, as all that is needed to illicit support for the so-called war on drugs is
'if we can save just one child from an overdose, it's all worth it'.

Such is the society's propensity for emotion over analysis, need for black and white answers and distorted attitude to risk.

U-Sus

"As for my thoughts on drugs themselves, Cevilia summed it up perfectly. 'The problem is not the use of drugs; it’s the abuse of drugs.'"

Celivia's contributions are well reasoned and come from a wealth of understanding and knowledge.

I'm sure you could've at least acknowledged the contributions in your previous post?

It is a very complex issue and deserves sincere debate.

I don't think there is any single perfect solution either - nor does anyone else who has an understanding of illegal drugs: their effects and side-effects.

One of the worst things is that normally law abiding people wind up connected to organised crime in a way that can ruin lives.

Decriminalisation at the very least would eliminate the drug lords and their sycophants.

BTW the most emotive responses have come from those who do not understand drugs, such as Philo's highly emotive and completely ignorant response. Everyone else has made excellent and rational points on this highly contentious subject.