Class A drugs should be decriminalised - UK Police Officer

[Cormac]

While the drugs laws are pretty silly, its not really up to the police to decide what should be legal or not. That is the people via elected job

Policemen don't decide what laws they get to enforce, but they surely know what laws do more harm than good when they enforce them, and if they dont get the decide, they get to advise the lawmakers and vote on who sits in whaitehall.

Police do get to decide where they apply their resources, and so, in effect, they do get to decide what laws they enforce.

[JimC]

While the drugs laws are pretty silly, its not really up to the police to decide what should be legal or not. That is the people via elected job

Policemen don't decide what laws they get to enforce, but they surely know what laws do more harm than good when they enforce them, and if they dont get the decide, they get to advise the lawmakers and vote on who sits in whaitehall.

Police do get to decide where they apply their resources, and so, in effect, they do get to decide what laws they enforce.

With X amount of political oversight/interference, where X varies considerably from place to place...

[Audley Strange]

Not only would such a move take the wind out of the sails of organised crime, but insurance premia would drop dramatically. It is estimated that 80% of all car thefts and burglaries are committed by drug addicts who need the money to feed their addiction. Oh, and the expense of keeping prisons would also drop significantly.

Unfortunately, all this seems to be lost to the average voter, and therefore to the members of parliament.

You know, I'm genuinely not sure it is lost on the average voter. I think it is lost on the Alcohol, Tobacco and Security State lobbies. I have a couple of reservations. The effective and toxic dosages of heroin can be very close and I'm not sure decriminalisation would take it out the hand of criminals only full licencing and regulation would assist with both.

[mistermack]

What makes me suspect that legalising drugs would be better, is the situation with alcohol and tobacco.
Nobody is proposing to make them illegal. What would happen if you did? They would be made and sold illegally, with all that that entails. People would be drinking and smoking more dangerous shit, and organised crime would be growing stronger every day, and the taxes would have to go up a lot, to cover the tax losses.

So, why wouldn't the situation become similar, if the other drugs were legalised? I think it would probably be exactly the same. You can't be sure, but If I had to put money on it, things would be quite a bit better after legalisation.
Not a utopia, just some improvement.

Keep a really strong deterrent to violent behaviour fuelled by either alcohol or drugs. Maybe, instead of there being a slight tendency to excuse behaviour based on substance abuse, make it liable to an increased penalty.

And/or, make the people who sold the (legal) drugs or alcohol to the person who committed a crime of violence under their influence partly liable...

There's nothing stopping them doing all that now, for alcohol. The current penalties are the current compromise.
And I think the drinks industry is currently taxed as much as the governments think is practical.
So they are already paying for the damage that drunks cause.

[klr]

What makes me suspect that legalising drugs would be better, is the situation with alcohol and tobacco.
Nobody is proposing to make them illegal. What would happen if you did? They would be made and sold illegally, with all that that entails. People would be drinking and smoking more dangerous shit, and organised crime would be growing stronger every day, and the taxes would have to go up a lot, to cover the tax losses.

So, why wouldn't the situation become similar, if the other drugs were legalised? I think it would probably be exactly the same. You can't be sure, but If I had to put money on it, things would be quite a bit better after legalisation.
Not a utopia, just some improvement.

Keep a really strong deterrent to violent behaviour fuelled by either alcohol or drugs. Maybe, instead of there being a slight tendency to excuse behaviour based on substance abuse, make it liable to an increased penalty.

And/or, make the people who sold the (legal) drugs or alcohol to the person who committed a crime of violence under their influence partly liable...

There's nothing stopping them doing all that now, for alcohol. The current penalties are the current compromise.
And I think the drinks industry is currently taxed as much as the governments think is practical.

I agree completely on this point, but ...

So they are already paying for the damage that drunks cause.

Yes, but so much tax revenue is being generated that governments are reluctant to deal with drink-related problems. They know the statistics that say it might be better if there was less drinking and less tax revenue, but they can't bring themselves to act on it.

[JimC]

klr wrote:

I agree completely on this point, but ...

mistermack wrote:
So they are already paying for the damage that drunks cause.

Yes, but so much tax revenue is being generated that governments are reluctant to deal with drink-related problems. They know the statistics that say it might be better if there was less drinking and less tax revenue, but they can't bring themselves to act on it.

We have a very similar situation in Victoria in terms of problem gambling. The state government gets a lot of revenue from poker machines etc. but its efforts to deal with the effects of an addiction to gambling is tokenistic at best.

[mistermack]

I think that that illustrates that there are some things you can't fix. If there was a fix, someone would have found it, tried it, and everyone would be doing it now.
But what generally happens is that everything that you do makes some aspects of a problem better, and some aspects worse.
There's no clear road to something better, or they would be doing it.

That's why I don't think decriminalising drugs would be such a disaster. Some things would be better, some might be worse.
But overall, I just have the feeling that things might be better.

Anyway, if the shit was legal, it might actually be LESS attractive to some people. You wouldn't feel that buzz of doing something illicit. If smoking tobacco was made illegal, I wouldn't be surprised if more schoolkids started smoking.