There is never going to be any ideal outcome to any drugs policy. If you legalise drugs more people will have access to them. If you criminalise drugs you send it underground with all that involves.
I come from the legalisation side of the argument. But I'm open-minded. Were I to hear any sensible argument for making drugs illegal I would change my mind.
The huge drugs haul off the Cork coast must make the 'criminalisers' sit down and have a serious think. We have imprisoned hundred and thousands of people for drug trafficking. We are going to build more prisons. We have people killing each other on the streets. We have all sorts of draconian legislation to stop the trade.
I wonder if the people who advocate criminalisation have any realistic goal in mind. Do they actually believe that state power can stop the trade in drugs?
The policy has been a total failure. Both here and across the world. At any given point, of course, you could argue that the reason for failure is that the state hasn't allocated enough resources, hasn't been tough enough.
So let's say that here in Ireland we double the number of gardai to around 25,000. Let's say we double the number of prisoners to around 6,000. Let's say that we set aside habeas Corpus and we bring in internment. Let's say we do all that.
Does anyone believe, in their heart of hearts, that the trade in illegal drugs will stop? I know it won't but I wonder if, deep down, our politicians and senior gardai believe it.
I wonder too if the 'criminalisers' aren't psychopaths to some extent.
A psychopath is a person who has no insight into, or care for, the consequences of their actions. The people who advocate making drugs illegal are motivated, one hopes, by the desire to save people from the disaster of drug addiction. After that single humanitarian impulse all morality can, it seems, be set aside.
I'm talking about the increasing tendency of the 'criminalisers' to blame everyone else for the negative impact of drug trafficking.
Cocaine users are blamed for young people in this city killing each other and for the drugs gangs we have. But the fact is that is is entirely foreseeable that a ban on drugs would have these consequences.
The ban makes drugs more valuable. The more the ban is enforced, the more valuable the drug becomes. Criminalisation involves the transfer of enormous wealth to organised crime.
In underclass areas it also transfers power and influence to these people. It undermines civil society.
The ban destabilises the countries from where the drugs come. In Afghanistan and Colombia, primary sources for heroin and cocaine, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed or turned into refugees in the wars for the drugs fields.
At home, whole generations from some communities are thrown into conflict with the state even as others die from drug addiction. They die anyway even though the whole point of the ban is to save them.
And yet, through all the human misery that they have created, the 'criminalisers' trudge grimly on, calling for more prisons, more detention time, more drugs tests, more powers for the police, more ships and boats, more controls on travel. More, more, more.
The point of all this is to stop the supply of illegal drugs. It has completely failed.
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2 comments:
One could never have physically kept drugs out of Ireland or out of any other country but one could and can create a society where there is no demand for drugs because people are so self confident and self asured and have such a sense of themselves and their wellbeing and such respect for others that they don't think they need chemical crutches such as drugs or alcohol. If there is no demand for drugs then there is no drug dealing. Without customers nobody would waste their time/resources in bringing in drugs.
Concentration on demand reduction provides the best results from rescources committed to the problem. Reduce demand and you reduce suffering, social damage and the medical and custodial costs that that are the result of drug abuse.
go to public inquiry irish corruption,under the two headings"whos watching the watchers"and"unanswered questions"this sender is not computer literate,but is all for forgiveness,compassinon,etc ,etc,my original comment failed and went off the screen,hope i have better look with this one?slan
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