Last Friday was the 40th Anniversary of the Misuse of Drugs Act & seems like a good as time as any for Release's newest campaign for better laws on drug legislation. As you can see there's a glitterati of celebrities & important folk signed up to be associated with the campaign, mainly because it's headline is about decriminalizing possession rather than anything to do with the controversial subjects of reclassification and legalization.
As I've written about before on the blog, I feel pretty strongly about the failure of the drug education & legislation in this country & around the world. Whilst it is great that this has got into a national newspaper - the Guardian obvs - still we're discussing the minor subjects in view of avoiding the bigger ones. Today also New York has released it's new Global Commission on Drug Policy but have come out against any change to their laws & I feel the UK government will take the same line. With Rupert Murdoch & his followers & against "mad lefties" & well, science.
If we allow the government to continue only releasing drug figures when for some reason unconnected to anything they've done, the drug use (by their estimation) goes down. & to keep painting people who believe the drug laws need to be changed as being "mad lefties" & hippies; then there's no way to get the unfiltered message across. In the early months of the Tory-led coalition in the UK they gave over a House of Commons debate to David Nutt (the fired scientific adviser to the last Labour government) & others, including Caroline Lucus who made some great points based around a trial run in Brighton of which I forget the name... Anyway, unless like me you have a penchant for BBC Parliament you probably didn't catch anything about it in any of the newspapers or media because whilst our politicians are kept in line by businessmen they are unable to have any real opinions that go against them. So let David Nutt's comment above ring in our ears & be fucking ashamed we never listened to him in the first place.
Discuss.
I find it pretty hard to make up my mind about drugs and their legislation. On the one hand my chemistry brain kicks in and I think of the poisons which are one chemical bond different... And then I think of the massive difference that one bond makes, and marajuana and the comparative harmful effects of our good friend alcohol. Because they're all illegal, no proper scientific studies have been done on them, and consequently the only real information we have on them is media hype and negative press. The chemical formula of mephedrone is still not confirmed, yet its banned. And I still can't make up my mind, and I'm not sure if this comment made any sense.
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ReplyDeleteLaura: I'm more physics than chemistry so I've never thought about it like that!
ReplyDeleteBut like you say things like mephedrone & all legal highs are cooked up by someone who doesn't fully understand what they're doing & messing about with bonds to try & make something illegal legal without much thought into what that means to a persons body.
There have been some studies done like in Sweden (or Switzerland) they have really come to face up to the idea of long-term drug users & when they introduced shooting galleries where addicts could inject with clean needles in a hygenic environment it meant that kids were seeing queues of old drug addicts with all the shit that does to your body & use of heroin went down dramatically as it was seen as an old persons drug.
There's also the study Caroline Lucas mentions (wish I could remember the name!) where they gave a script for heroin instead of methodone which meant the addicts could function with a regular dose, but also meant they actually came off it in the end, rather than just switching to methodone as our health system makes people do.
There is also Portugal who quietly legalized possession (& some drugs I think too although I don't know the ins & outs) & have had no rise in drug use but have much more control over it, & it leaves less people with criminal records over minor offenses, which is the goal of this Reach thing.
Because popular drugs like heroin, cocaine, cannabis, LSD etc have been used for decades we actually do have quite a lot of information on them. It's the legal highs & the newer drugs that come through that are less well known & therefore more volatile. But unfortunately, the media doesn't like to report about these kinds of experiments, or scientific fact at all for that matter...
It's the newer drugs that scare me! Some of my friends are really chilled out about it, but having studied science I really can't bear the thought of the damage these things can do.
ReplyDeleteI've actually heard of some of the stuff in Sweden/Swizterland (I can't remember either) and as well as the younger kids being put off, it reduced OD's and diseases for the people taking the drug, which is surely better than letting them contract HIV, or the multiple other risky dieases.
Portugal's method definitely seems more sensible than ours. People who want to get weed now, will, whether it's legal or not - if it's legal, very few people will suddenly be like 'Oh now it's legal I'll do it'. Just the people that do will continue to use it wihtout fear of a criminal record, and they could begin to monitor the components in the drugs and wipe out disreputable dealers and the more dangerous strains that have developed. IF ONLY politicians thought carefully about these things instead of listening to the Sun's headlines of 'MARAJUANA MAKES YOUR CHILD TEN TIMES MORE LIKELY TO BURN DOWN YOUR HOUSE, STATISTICS SHOW' - sigh.
Well I believe the sacking of professor Nutt was disgusting and I think fearmongering and ludicrous legislation that doesn't allow me jurisdiction over own bodies is lucrative and advantageous on a psychological level for the government. I believe that addiction to an illicit substance should be completely decriminalised and addressed with treatment and support, not with a prison sentence. But I also believe that to associate drugs entirely with addiction is naive and that those to whom the idea of having a good time on drugs without some awful end is anathema are idiots.
ReplyDeleteAnti-drug laws do not work, they just create a sordid underworld of sorts and generate shame, fear and misunderstanding.
On another note, I'd LOVE to be involved with Sweat zine, it's gorgeous, well done on a fantastic project! Let me email you tomorrow about it.
:)