“As Professor Edwards of the National Addiction Centre and other experts have stressed, access to drugs has been shown significantly to encourage use of drugs. With legalisation, the number of people dependent on drugs would increase, with severe personal health consequences, including death”
“TACKLING DRUGS TOGETHER HMSO Publications October 1994
Pg 111”
Drugs are addictive. They rob the user of free will. A drug user cannot make an informed and rational decision to continue using drugs because the use of the drug eliminates that user's ability to think logically. Nor can they disseminate themselves from drug taking. There is also the opinion that the use of soft drugs, such as marijuana, leads to the use of hard drugs and legalising drugs will send a message to children that drug use is acceptable.
All of these arguments are strong but on the other hand if they were legalised, legalisation would allow greater regulation. Cigarettes come with warnings. Alcoholic beverages are clearly marked with the amount of alcohol. Currently legal drugs contain a listing of all active and inactive ingredients. Illegal drugs could be sold legally with ingredients lists, warnings and purity levels clearly marked. Legalisation would reduce health care costs by reducing the probability of overdoses and accidental ingestion of an unintended drug through standardisation of drug purity by state-sponsored production and sale.
Drug users exercise free will when they chose to use drugs; a person has the right to give up his or her own freedom. No drug eliminates free will. It is possible to quit using any drug. Many banned drugs are significantly less deleterious to free will than legal alcohol or tobacco. Severe physiological addiction has been demonstrated for tobacco (stronger than cocaine), but no strong physiological addiction has been shown for marijuana.
It is not worthwhile for a law to forbid people from willingly exposing their own bodies to harm by using drugs, any more than by overeating or bungee jumping. Obesity is a national epidemic in some countries, killing millions every year, but the government has no right to regulate how much citizens eat.
In agreement legal prohibition does not stop consumers from consuming drugs; it does not stop trafficants from producing and selling it. The price of the final product increases to abnormally high values because of the black market status, which together with the powerful effects of drug addiction causes users to commit crimes in order to fund their addiction. If worldwide legalisation came into place, this would hugely reduce organised crime, by reducing their current drugs income.
(Radio quote from a visiting American policeman: ”These guys don’t count their money they weigh it”)
Why “drugs” should be legalised NTC LRC research files
Drug related deaths and killings would also reduce, because the law would settle turf wars, not violence. With legalisation police would be more available for other investigations were people are being directly harmed, rather than engage in their secret army on the war against drugs were only the user is being harmed by choice.
Besides drugs seem less likely to cause harm than alcohol, in the form of car crashes and street fighting. If a drinker became a stoner the mayhem and chaos on a Friday night in the town would be less.
The government when discussing this policy tend to forget that they themselves have broken their own laws in the name of research. Take the case of their huge plantation of cannabis, which they say was okay because they were testing it for medical reasons. Surely as a democratic society the people should have the right to chastise our government for this or have the right to grow and use it ourselves.
People use drugs for different reasons, just like people drink and smoke for different reasons. Take Rachel a 16-year-old student from London.
“ The first time I tried drugs was when I was about 11. I was on holiday in Wales with a group of mates who were all older than me-most of them were about 15 I reckon. I liked it-it was kind of cool, if y’know what I mean. It was fitting in that mattered. I mean, after being a kid I enjoyed it. I puffed before I smoked any fags. I never smoked fags much till now. I always stopped and started. I was never a real fag person.
I find what the government says and what parents say about drugs is bullshit. “Don’t take drugs, they’re illegal, they’ll lead on to harder drugs. If you take acid, you’ll see these 3D hallucinations for ever after.” I think that as soon as someone tries drugs and finds it’s not like that and finds the pulses, they try doing it again.”
“ The User The truth about drugs, what they do, how they feel, and why people take
take them. Aiden Macfarlane, Angus Macfarlane, Philip Robson.
Oxford New York Oxford University Press 1996”
As we can see in Rachel’s case it was the coming of age, the fun, the buzz and the sheer enjoyment of drugs. Peer pressure can be a major factor, but this is the same with legal drugs such as tobacco and alcohol. If young people are at a party and there is no adult supervision, young people will drink, but there not breaking the law. Simply because they may be to young to by it, but as the age of consent to drink alcohol in this country is 5 years old they are quite legal to do that. However if that drink turned into a spliff, which is less harmful than alcohol, they automatically become criminals.
People also claim that it has a medicinal and therapeutic quality. It has been well published that cannabis relieves the pain and suffering of MS and other arthritic conditions, also like tobacco it relieves stress.
Countries who have experimented with legalisation/decriminalisation have had positive results.
The use of cannabis is not something new. Its use as a medicine, coming from the hemp plant, was first recorded in Egypt in the sixteenth century B.C. and in fourth century B.C. the Chinese were cultivating it. It was used as rope by the Romans, and originally brought cultivation to Britain where it became a major industry.
The use of cannabis to affect the mind was not introduced until about a thousand years ago. Mainly among artists and musicians and also intellectuals. Its full potential as a “fun drug” came in the mid 1950’s when the influx of people from the Jamaica’s and the Caribbean rose significantly. Despite of the medicinal effects as pain relief, sleep inducer, and appetite stimulant, the use of cannabis was outlawed in Britain in 1928.
Large-scale tests and research has been carried out worldwide. None of these have produced enough evidence to prove the use of cannabis causes physical or mental illness, leads to anti-social behaviour or changes the personality of users permanently. So in any objective reckoning cannabis must have a cleaner bill of health than our legalised recreational drugs. At present a man made synthetic cannabinoid called nabilone is legally being used to suppress the unpleasant side-affects of chemotherapy in cancer treatment, as well as the benefits from other diseases.
When we look back in time we see the people who have broken these laws but still receive huge credit. Like The Beetles Sir Paul McCartney busted in Japan for possession, Sir Mick Jagger reportedly known for the request of “no snow no show” in his reference to the request for cocaine before the Rolling Stones gigs, and Sir Elton John who widely discussed his addiction to cocaine. They are not what we class as the drop out’s, but the very greatness of our country, and there is our authors Lewis Carroll, Conan Doyle both of their books obviously inspired by drugs. Our national hero Sherlock Holms addicted to opium. Which in those times was widely accepted.
In this essay we have looked at the current laws, effects and opinions for and against legalisation. In my own opinion it’s about time our society caught up with reality and realised that in its own way cannabis is part of what made Great Britain. Our songs, our literature, our industry, none of them possible with out the influence of soft drugs. On a lighter note “God made grass, man made beer, who do you trust?
It has now come to my knowledge that as of the 29 January 2004 the Government will reclassify cannabis from a Class B to a Class C drug.
Barry Hollinshead H.E.F.C. English Language Word count 1793
