We don’t hear the public complaining that we are losing the war on car theft, or house burglaries, battles which are equally unwinable, but unlikely to be abandoned any time soon (even if these particular crimes continue to escalate).

Additionally if the drug market was to be legalised here it remains uncertain what the ceiling demand for heroin, say, would be – but given concerns about the grim quality of life in many parts of the UK nowadays, we may, in fact, end up requiring a network of opium dens not seen on a scale since pre-Tung China ?

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/FreedomainRadio/~3/76645264/The_Drug_Wars_Part_1.MP3

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/FreedomainRadio/~3/76569668/The_Drug_Wars_Part_2.MP3

The Podcasts above have a great insight into the drugs war which I thought you might be interested to listen to.

Rgds

I suppose my first thoughts are that if we (in the UK) have been fed disinformation on illicit drugs then I guess this process has been mirrored in many other countries as well – since negative attitudes to heroin and crack, for example, are fairly universal ?

Incidentally if we look at heroin, its use, including the number of addicts has not just expanded dramatically in the UK but across many other markets as well – it’s impossible to consider heroin use as a local problem.

To date none of the EU countries have been willing to pursue the legalisation option, although I understand Holland has a far more relaxed approach to drugs – interestingly Amsterdam remains rife with crime ?

The legalisation question is not simply a matter of pharmicodynamics or pharmicokinetics, of course, it also involves the social meanings we attribute to drug usage as well, and since the type of market being proposed (by the pro-legalisation lobby) has never existed (in the West) it’s effects, to a certain extent, at least must remain an unknown.

Dalrymple cited China as the country which historically had the highest number of opium addicts, by far, at least before Mao Tse Tung came along and threatened to execute those that continued to use opium.
This resulted in two interesting facts:
*provide enough incentive and addicts will quickly abstain.
*Mao Tse Tung was the most effective drug worker in history (if we take abstinence as the only criteria) since the number of opium addicts plummeted after Tungs draconian edict.

It is also worth remembering the two-fold role of the Police in all this ; a)if they can make their funding authorities believe they are fighting a huge and growing (and not easily measurable) something [it used to be drugs but is now terrorism], they get more dosh no questions asked and b) running-in addicts is a lot easier than finding murderers , in the same way as they used to boost their sex-crime detection rates by hanging round toilets and catching men rather than geting involved in complicated stuff like chasing rapists .

Bearing in mind how much guff comes direct from the States , I strongly recommend “Synthetic Panics” by Philip Jenkins (NY Univ. Press) which details the serial panics in that country , and how they all follow a pattern that boosts politicians and media .

Speaking of “dosage” here is an interesting anecdote; Paracetamol kills approximately 200 people each year frmo overdoses; the overdose limit is scarily quite low and considering how many products now contain it you can imagine quite common to make the mistake, though intentional overdoses are common too – dont understand why though; it causes severe organ failure and a very painful death.

Personally I no longer touch drugs; to me its just blank escapism. I’m just fed up with the monopoly with which the state continues to hold us all to in this; as a means of control and keeping us all pumped up with fear of the “reefer madness” it is very effective – and we know its a question of control because if the state wanted to sink drug-fuelled anarchy overnight all they would need to do would be to make it legal and conduct the kind of studies you are able to with current drugs like Tobacco or Alcohol.

No chance of that anytime soon though is there?

I beleive the article would be improved by the use of shorter sentences. Thus:-

If you’re a regular visitor to the Ministry then you’ll already know what to expect. If not, grab yourself a hot cup of coffee (and maybe even a sandwich) and settle down. This is going to be one of those posts where I really go for it.

This may well prove to be the longest post I’ve ever written at the Ministry. I’m going to take a crack a demonstrating precisely where and how the United Kingdom government has been systematically and consistently lying to its people for over forty years. I will show how this lie has been sustained with press support and collusion, exactly how this has been done and the tricks by which the press promote this lie. And without the vast majority of people ever becoming aware that they’re being lied to and manipulated.

So, let me continue with the general theme started in my first post of the new year (Different Year, Same Old Shit). Courtesy of the Home Office, here is yet another futile exercise in evidence-free policy-making:

“…..”[The Independent – xx January 2009]

Admittedly, this is hardly an innovative story, as the reference to last year’s row over the classification of cannabis indicates. Most of what passes for official policy on drugs, not just in the UK but globally, bears little or no relationship to the actual health risks associated with particular drugs. Supplying adults with tobacco (an estimated 500,000+ deaths annually) and alcohol (200,000+ deaths a year) is perfectly legal. Those two drugs play some part in the largest number of deaths on a year-in, year-out basis. Supplying ecstasy (fewer than 50 deaths a year) carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Put in those terms and comparing the annual number of deaths associated with particular drug (legal and non-legal) it’s impossible not to think that there’s something perverse about the system. That system generates billions of pounds in sales (and tax) revenues from the use of drugs which actively contribute to hundreds of thousands of deaths every year. At the same time, it outlaws other drugs which, at most, account for 30-50 deaths a year. It just doesn’t seem rational – and it isn’t.

You have a ton of good material on your blog, are you planning to make a book out of it? I’d buy it, I bought Ben Goldacre’s and that was a good read.

cheers,
marksany

Thanks MOT!

So, we’ve the media selling moral outrage – good for sales, the politicians playing to the gallery and thereby generating good press for themselves, and us fools believing what they tell us. How do we get out of this mess? Maybe the credit crisis will sink a few newspapers…