Sheffield Madness Over Xmas

[blackydog 40]

1 minute ago, onewheeldave said:

That is a strawman- Tesco won't be selling heroin and no has has suggested it would be.

They pay for their drugs now, yes?

With a legal and regulated source the drugs would have to be the same price or less, obviously, as otherwise the users would tend to continue buying the toxic stuff from the criminals.

 

 

It was an example of how drugs might be purchased if they became legal. If they were legal, no reason why Tesco or others wouldn't stock them. Albeit with age restrictions, as there are on other products such as alcohol. 

As regards price, many of us are prepared to pay for quality and  even brand. It isn't just down to price.

[dave_the_m 61]

I'm not suggesting heroin is made available in Tesco. And even if it were available, I still think most people wouldn't go near it with a bargepole.

 

The problem with opioids in the US is that a drug company lied to doctors about their new pain killer being non-addictive. So lots were prescribed. So lots of people got addicted. Then when the medical reason for pain relief passed, doctors could not longer prescribe for pain, and it would be criminal act with severe penalties to prescribe them for addiction. So all these newly minted addicts then had to resort to illegal channels and to things like heroin to treat their continuing addiction. Another example where the law inadvertently makes a problem worse.

[Alextopman 1,424]

1 minute ago, onewheeldave said:

That is a strawman- Tesco won't be selling heroin and no has has suggested it would be.

They pay for their drugs now, yes?

With a legal and regulated source the drugs would have to be the same price or less, obviously, as otherwise the users would tend to continue buying the toxic stuff from the criminals.

 

 

Do they work to pay for their drugs now?.

Presumably the legal drugs would need to be as effective as the illegal ones.

What jobs are drug addict capable of doing to pay for these toxins illegal or otherwise?.

A vast majority of these drug takers are themselves criminals.

[ab6262 202]

On 28/12/2021 at 17:55, dan_999uk said:

Sorry to hear you're disappointed in the products of your society. 

its the product of society we allowed by listening to liberal culture, no punishment is fitting the crime, no kids are brought up in school with proper discipline, reap what you sow.

[blackydog 40]

1 minute ago, ab6262 said:

its the product of society we allowed by listening to liberal culture, no punishment is fitting the crime, no kids are brought up in school with proper discipline, reap what you sow.

School (and family) are where the foundations are laid for society. It does seem to have fell apart a bit.

[dave_the_m 61]

And yet as I keep saying in this thread, crime rates have been steadily falling since the 1990's. So if you think namby-pamby "Woke", "PC" etc schooling and parenting are responsible for the current level of crime, then you must reasonably conclude that this new style of parenting is a good thing, surely?

[Organgrinder 1,946]

2 hours ago, dave_the_m said:

I've already pointed out that pharmaceutical grade heroin is already manufactured in the UK. The people paying for them will be either the NHS or the end users depending on circumstances. They're cheap to manufacture (for comparison the AZ SARS-CoV-2 vaccine costs about $3.50 per dose).

 

The price of a Covid dose is not relevant and tells us nothing about the price of heroin. Heroin is not the only drug which is taken illegally so what abut the others?

 

Why would drugs gangs break in and steal them? There wouldn't be drugs gangs any more, and they'd be effectively worthless - I've already demonstrated this in the example of the end of Prohibition in the USA. There are similar examples to be found in the legalisation of pot in some US states.

 

Why WOULDN'T you expect drug gangs to steal drugs and try to replace    pharmacies? 

 

The UK government has a very good track record on regulation. When you buy a medicine at a pharmacy, you have a very high confidence that it contains the right amount of the active drug and and is completely free of contaminants. When you buy spirits from an off-licence, you have a very high confidence that it doesn't contain toxic methanol or other side effects of illegal distilling, and that the correct duty has been paid on it.

 

The PPE/Covid test comparison is irrelevant - that required going from nothing to huge quantities overnight in a panic.

 

I wouldn't call 2 years overnight.

 

Again, I've given examples where drugs bosses were taken out of the loop post-legalisation.

 

Where are these examples - This really is fairy tale stuff which will never never happen.

 

Like you, I would prefer that users didn't take drugs. But I look around and see that in the Western world, 50 years of an ever-toughening "war on drugs" doesn't seem to have stopped people who want drugs from taking them. But as a side-effect of that criminalisation, a whole lot of bad things have happened - organised crime taking over, gang turf wars, addicts going on burglary crime sprees or resorting to prostitution to pay for their habit, physical wrecking of addicts' bodies due to all the crap the drugs have been cut with, and overdose deaths because addicts can't know the exact strength of the heroin they just bought. Given all that, I think it's time to stop just assuming that making prison sentences even longer will somehow fix the problem and start looking at the issue properly.

 

If you can't stop people doing something, it isn't a good idea to make it legal then instead. Should we allow people to commit murder because we have never managed to stop it?

 

Explain WHY should the taxpayer pick up the tab because a lot of people are addicted to drugs.

Should we also pay for alcoholics to be given free booze or for smokers to be given free fags.

 

 

Edited January 1, 2022 by Organgrinder

[dave_the_m 61]

Most illegal drugs are dirt cheap to make. They are only expensive now because they are illegal and people expect to be handsomely rewarded for smuggling them through an airport or whatever. The patent on heroin expired about 100 years ago. I wouldn't expect drug gangs to steal from pharmacies because the drugs would be dirt cheap so there's no financial incentive any more.

 

I've mentioned twice now the specific case of the end of alcohol Prohibition in the US, where by some means or another the US government managed both to make alcohol production and consumption legal, and removed organised crime from the loop. Is that a fairy tale?

 

The murder example is ridiculous - murder is what you do to someone else; drugs (or smoking etc) is what you do to yourself. In general we allow people to do what they like as long as it doesn't interfere with other people. If it does interfere, then we regulate it - e.g. not allowing smoking in workplaces.  Horse riding is quite dangerous for example, but we don't ban it, in fact we even allow children to do it.

 

Why should the tax-payer pick up the tab? The tax-payer is already picking up the tab! We're spending hundreds of millions of pounds to keep people in prison for drugs-related offences. Plus the cost of policing, courts etc. Then there are the billions in costs from burglaries and similar crimes from people feeding their addiction. It seems like we could save the tax payer and society in general billions of pounds by providing free heroin to addicts, for example.

 

[bassett one 449]

is there anything else about xmas madness,anything happen last night new years eve?

[Organgrinder 1,946]

1 hour ago, dave_the_m said:

I've mentioned twice now the specific case of the end of alcohol Prohibition in the US, where by some means or another the US government managed both to make alcohol production and consumption legal, and removed organised crime from the loop. Is that a fairy tale?

I don't accept at all,  that something which worked for alcohol 100 years ago in another country, would work the same for narcotics 100 years later in Britain.

I will accept a comparison of like for like only.

1 hour ago, dave_the_m said:

 

The murder example is ridiculous - murder is what you do to someone else; drugs (or smoking etc) is what you do to yourself. In general we allow people to do what they like as long as it doesn't interfere with other people. If it does interfere, then we regulate it - e.g. not allowing smoking in workplaces.  Horse riding is quite dangerous for example, but we don't ban it, in fact we even allow children to do it.

The consumption of hard drugs very much does interfere with other people.

1 hour ago, dave_the_m said:

 

Why should the tax-payer pick up the tab? The tax-payer is already picking up the tab! We're spending hundreds of millions of pounds to keep people in prison for drugs-related offences. Plus the cost of policing, courts etc. Then there are the billions in costs from burglaries and similar crimes from people feeding their addiction. It seems like we could save the tax payer and society in general billions of pounds by providing free heroin to addicts, for example.

You must be joking. Any saving is irrelevant because most people will not want to pay taxes to provide either free or subsidised drugs for addicts who got themselves into this position.

There is no difference between a drug addict and an alcoholic and we don't,  (nor should we),  provide free booze for them. 

1 minute ago, bassett one said:

is there anything else about xmas madness,anything happen last night new years eve?

Only that madness is not confined to xmas in this country.

[The Joker 10]

7 hours ago, ab6262 said:

its the product of society we allowed by listening to liberal culture, no punishment is fitting the crime, no kids are brought up in school with proper discipline, reap what you sow.

I agree.

 

Look how some badly-behaved children leave Eton, then  get loads of women pregnant, only to abandon them a short while later.

 

Absolutely despicable behaviour, if you ask me.

[dave_the_m 61]

3 hours ago, Organgrinder said:

I don't accept at all,  that something which worked for alcohol 100 years ago in another country, would work the same for narcotics 100 years later in Britain.

I will accept a comparison of like for like only.

The consumption of hard drugs very much does interfere with other people.

You must be joking. Any saving is irrelevant because most people will not want to pay taxes to provide either free or subsidised drugs for addicts who got themselves into this position.

There is no difference between a drug addict and an alcoholic and we don't,  (nor should we),  provide free booze for them.

Sod it. I was going to write a detailed rebuttal but there's absolutely no point. I shall leave you in your comfortable world where organised crime flourishes, addicts frequently die of overdoses, drug-related crime is rampant, and there's absolutely nothing we can do to improve the situation because the exact same technique hasn't already been tried and shown to work.