NHS to open free heroin ‘shooting galleries’ nationwide

Posted by the Narrator... on September 15, 2009, 06:02 AM | #

Big deal.

The British government already legally distributes the BBC.

...

Posted by Dan Dare on September 15, 2009, 11:38 AM | #

If nothing else, this development highlights the utter futility of pursuing a US-style ‘War on Drugs’. Since the UK embarked on that path the number of heroin addicts has grown from 300 to (conservatively) 400,000 and a £10 billion illegal drugs trade has sprung up where none existed before.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on September 15, 2009, 12:31 PM | #

“this development highlights the utter futility of pursuing a US-style ‘War on Drugs’. Since the UK embarked on that path the number of heroin addicts has grown from 300 to (conservatively) 400,000 and a £10 billion illegal drugs trade has sprung up where none existed before.”  (—Dan Dare)

That was the intention.  Just as race-replacement is the intention of current immigration policy.

Posted by Retew on September 15, 2009, 04:06 PM | #

Fred, who do you think is responsible and why? The only person I’ve heard say he thought this was deliberate was David Icke (before he discovered lizards).

He claimed it was done for the same reason as the British got the Chinese addicted to opium; the better to control them by pacifying them.

I think it’s possible he’s right but proof is lacking and always will be until someone smuggles a tape recorder into a Bilderberg meeting.

Posted by Retew on September 15, 2009, 04:09 PM | #

BTW, he was able to say this in an interview on BBC radio (this was 1994). Things have changed since 1994, he’d be less likely to have the chance to say it now as anyone who mentions the NWO / Brotherhood / Illuminati now is instantly dismissed as a crank. It was newer than and therefore more sayable.

Posted by Frank on September 16, 2009, 12:38 AM | #

Maybe the drugs are cultural. The problem over here is culture, which yes is dominated by Jews.

Posted by Felim on September 16, 2009, 01:14 AM | #

Just send drug users to prison.  This is what they do in Japan/South Korea; in those countries even possession of a small amount of drugs (including marihuana) always results in a few years in prison and heavy fines.  As a result, they have no drug problems like the West.  Drug use is not a victimless crime.  Drug users (especially marihuana users) rarely if ever go to prison in the West.

Posted by Felim on September 16, 2009, 01:22 AM | #

The good Professor Nils Bejerot on drugs.

Sweden was the first country in Europe to be afflicted by drug abuse of epidemic type immediately after the end of the Second World War. The Swedish epidemic has been extremely extensive, it has spread to neighbouring countries and to the continent, and it has presented dramatic phases during its development. In addiction it is probably the drug epidemic which has been most closely studied and documented. Therefore Swedish experience is of considerable international interest.

There are several different types of drug abuse, regardless of the nature of the drug. It is important to differentiate between these types of patterns of abuse, since they differ fundamentally in regard to prevention and control.

Therapeutic Type

First we have the classical medical use of dependence producing drugs which may give rise to abuse and addiction of therapeutic type. Those affected are usually middle aged , socially stable people who developed a drug abuse as a result of an error of medical treatment. These people are ashamed of their drug abuse, they try to keep it hidden, even from their physicians and relatives, and they rarely draw others into their abuse.

Cultural Type

The other main type of use and abuse is coupled to the culturally accepted consumption of certain inebriates - a consumption that often stretches back to the prehistoric times. It is no breach of norms within a culture to enjoy these drugs, but severe cases of dependence may arise, even though the use is ritual in accordance with ancient rules and traditions. This cultural form of abuse may be exemplified by the coca chewing of South American Indians, cannabis smoking in certain Muslim countries, opium smoking in the Far East and alcoholism in the Christian world.

Epidemic Type

The third main type of drug dependence is epidemic abuse. Characteristically is arises in bohemian circles where small groups of romantic dreamers or risk-taking norm breakers experiment with exotic or new intoxicating drugs in the pursuit of novel experiences. After years or decades of use of the drug in isolated groups, the first phase of the epidemic, there is a spread in the second phase to new categories, often to other groups of norm-breakers, and then particularly to criminal circles. In the third phase, drug consumption spreads to broad groups of the normal population, and then first to those which have the weakest impulse control and the least stable system of values, that is the youth. In the fourth phase the epidemic abuse tends to spread upwards through the age groups, and may begin to resemble drug use of cultural type. That is, it is no longer considered to be a breach of norms. A new, permanent drug problem has now been added to those already existing in the culture. Regardless of the country and the drug, these epidemics present a number of characteristics in common.

Spread

Spread of drug abuse occurs almost without exception through personal, psycho-social contact between an established abuser and a novice in very close friendship relation, often between sexual partners. Initiation usually occurs in an early phase of the initiator’s abuse, during the period which is commonly called the honeymoon of addiction, before the negative physical, psycological, social economic and legal complications have commenced. The honeymoon is short in the case of heroin, usually about a year, but far longer in cannabis abuse. Initiation via pushers and incidental contacts is rare. Pushers enter the scene at a later stage, when they play a very destructive role in maintaining an established abuse or provide for a relapse.

Exponential Growth

Epidemics of drug abuse often spread very rapidly. In most countries it has been possible to observe an exponential growth for long periods of time. For instance, intravenous abuse of amphetamine in Sweden doubled every thirtieth month during a period of twenty years, 1946-1965. In England the number of heroinists doubled every sixteenth month during a period of ten years, 1959-1968.

Other characteristics for drug epidemics are their restriction by historic boundaries, and also, for long periods, within small coteries and by age, ethnic, geographical and national boundaries.

Youth

Drug epidemics are for long periods checked by such boundaries, but when these barries are broken through, the abuse spreads in the new population strata. For instance the Jews lived side by side with cannabis smoking Muslims in the Middle East for a thousand years without, as far as I know, any Jew smoking hashish. It was not until young American-Jewish cannabis smokers came to visit Israel that Jewish youth began to smoke the drug.

Fashion

Drug epidemics are extremely sensitive to fashion regarding the type of drug and method of administration, with sometimes rapid changes in the panorama of abuse. An example of this is cocaine, which, for a long period, was only consumed in the traditional way by chewing. With the production of pure cocaine, sniffing was introduced, later followed by intravenous injections, and finally by smoking the free base and coca paste.

The more drug epidemics spread in a society the more common will be the occurence of mixed abuse with different drugs and varied mode of administration.

Interaction

Exposure and susceptibility interact in a predictable way. The fact that there was no one in Europe before the Second World War who injected drugs intravenously was due to the same simple reason that we had no syphilis or tobacco smoking before Columbus. Nor was there any tuberculosis or alcoholism among the Eskimos before they were colonized by the Danes. There had been susceptible individuals before, but they had not been exposed to these factors.

Massivity

The pressure of exposure, also called massivity, causes people to react differently: some are affected immediately, other after a time, some only after the pressure from the drug culture has become very great, while many manage to resist throughout their whole lives, despite prolonged and intensive exposure. Thus, susceptibility varies between different individuals, but also in the same individual with age and a number of other factors.

We can now express the connection between exposure to drug culture (E), the susceptibility of the individual (S) and the risk that the individual will commence to use the drug, that is the psychosocial contagion (C):

C = S x E

The susceptibility of the individual (S) is the result of a large number of individual factors such as sex, age, social situation, previous experience, etc. Since exposure at one point also effects future susceptibility (fS) we can in general write the formula:

C = fS x fE

Of all norm breaking forms of drug abuse, intravenous administration is the one which is most suitable for scientific study, since the breach of norms here is distinct and important, and in addition injections leave clear, objective and characteristic diagnostic signs which cannot be confused with the medical injections (Bejerot 1975).

The Swedish Epidemic of Intravenous Drug Abuse

The Swedish epidemic started through a few coincidental events. Intravenous drug abuse had been reported in the USA since 1926, but as far as I know, this did not initiate any drug epidemics in Europe until a young, adventurous Swede in 1946 learnt the injection technique in USA, and introduced it into a little bohemian coterie in Stockholm. In this group a few persons had become amphetaminists through medical treatment for alcoholism, and in this limited group an epidemic of intravenous abuse was established.

Up to 1949 there was a dozen cases within this bohemian coterie in Stockholm, but not a single case outside this group. In 1949 the epidemic spread out of this circle via a couple of artists models who were also prostitutes, and the epidemic thus gained a foothold in social problem groups. In the summer 1954 I diagnosed the first medically documented case of this type in Sweden.

In 1956 the epidemic of intravenous abuse spread to Gothenburg, when an addict of this category moved there, and for the rest of his life was a central figure in addict circles in the second largest city in Sweden. The Swedish amphetamine epidemic spread to Finland in 1965, to Denmark in 1966, to Norway in 1967 and to Germany in 1972. In the study of intravenous abuse, I assumed that a breach of norms such as introducing a needle into a vein and injecting illicit drugs was so extreme that it would be expected to coexist with other severe breaches of norms such as traditional criminal conduct. I therefore initiated a study in 1965 where nurses inspected the veins of the arms of persons brought to the central arrest premises in Stockholm. From the study of representativity it is apparent that practically all active intravenous abusers are brought to the arrest premises sooner or later for one reason or another, and are included in the study.

The study was commenced in 1965 because of an ultra-liberal policy introduced in Sweden that year, which permitted a number of physicians to prescribe amphetamine to addicts for self-administration. This resulted in an increase in the percentage of intravenous abusers in the arrest clientele from 20 to 40 percent during a period of three years! During an extra restrictive policy 1969-1970, a direct result of the catastrophic consequences of the prescribing policy, the epidemic was checked for the first time. The epidemic culminated in 1972, when some large drug syndicates were broken up. The system of distribution was reorganised quickly, however, since the demand was intact, and when heroin was introduced it gave rise to a new branch of the drug epidemic. It finally culminated in 1976 when 60 percent of all arrestees were intravenous abusers. Since then, a number of minor increases in the severity of drug legislation has reduced the percentage to about 40 percent in Stockholm, where the level has remained relatively constant. During the seventies the epidemic spread over the whole of Sweden, and cases of intravenous drug abuse now occur in rural areas.

By means of enquiries as to the year of debut for intravenous abuse, we have reconstructed the incidence for Stockholm. Here the fatal effect of liberalization and prescribing of drugs 1965-1967 appears very clearly. Mortality among drug abusers has proved to have an excess of 7 to 15 times that of the normal population, and answers for a considerable depletion in the population of active drug addicts. In addition, various complications and the increasing difficulty in financing an expensive drug abuse about a third to discontinue their drug abuse spontaneously after an average of ten years. This means that all estimates of prevalence must be uncertain, unless a central register is drawn up over active intravenous abusers, and in the absence of new reports of abuse, they are removed after, for instance, five years.

Control

When we have understood how individual and social factors interact to give rise to drug epidemics, we can begin to discuss how we should attack the problem.

Many studies have shown that the individual susceptibility factor is, unfortunately, not easily influenced, composed as it is of everything which has affected the individual up to the present. On the other hand, the exposure factor, pressure from the addiction milieu and the drug market, have proved to be highly modifiable by means of certain strategies.

The rate of opiate addiction in USA was reduced by about 90 percent between the years 1923-1939 (Harney & Cross 1961), and this without any treatment to speak of, or research. The instrument was a strict drug policy which reduced the exposure factors dramatically.

In the same way an extensive cocaine epidemic in Germany was stopped in the late twenties, and also a widespread amphetamine epidemic in Japan after the Second World War.

Japan

The Japanese epidemic deserves special attention. It arose when the Japanese military store of amphetamine went astray after capitulation. Abuse began among people who worked at night: jazz musicians, artists, bohemians and prostitutes, but it quickly spread broad strata of the population.

The Japanese authorities introduced a number of countermeasures, but they did this too late and on too small scale, and with too little energy. It was like operating on a growing cancer which could not be checked since the measures taken were not sufficiently radical.

The Japanese epidemic culminated in 1954, when it was estimated that two million of Japan’s population of one hundred millions was abusing amphetamine tablets, and over half a million were taking intravenous injections. It was only then that a dramatic increase in the stringency of policy was introduced, with prison sentences of 3-6 months for possession, 1-3 years for drug pushing and five years for illicit manufacture of drugs. There was close surveillance when they were released from prison, and there was an immediate reaction on relapse.

During the first year of the campaign, 1954, 55 600 persons were arrested in Japan, for amphetamine offences, but in 1958 the number was only 271, and the whole epidemic was over. Altogether measures had been taken against 15 percent of the estimated number of intravenous abusers. The others stopped from pure fright when the restrictive policy was carried into effect. It should be pointed out that the campaign was drawn up on the basis of broad political unity, and was carried out with the aid of massive public support.

Experience from China

The Japanese had learnt from the Chinese technique of combatting drug epidemics. Between the years 1951-1953 China had stopped the 300 year old opium smoking with about 20 million active opium smokers, and this without needing to sentence more than ten percent of the addicts to a year or two in a labour camp, while ninety percent stopped without either medical treatment or psychotherapy.

Posted by Felim on September 16, 2009, 01:24 AM | #

The rest of the above article.

History as Teacher

“We learn from history that we never learn from history” said George Bernard Shaw. This applies very much to drug epidemics and control over them.

I have been unable to find any example of widespread drug abuse in any country, which has been overcome without a general restrictive program directed to the drug market and exposure from the addiction milieu, and this regardless of the level of development of the social system. Nor have I been able to find any example of a voluntary drug-free treatment program which has had more than a marginal effect on the extent of the problem.

Basic Experience

The period 1850-1950 was the age of prevention, when the mechanism of most of the known infectious diseases were revealed and the great epidemics overcome, not so much by individual treatment as by preventive measures. Even alcohol and drug-policy during this period were, in many countries, directed towards prevention. The advances made were often considerable, in Sweden they were epoch-making.

The period after 1950 is the age of therapy. Now the preventive strategies and their social necessity have been forgotten, and we have instead an avalanche of different therapeutic schools and programs for the treatment of those already addicted. Most of these programs, unfortunately, have not given better results than no treatment at all.

Not a Disease

Why is this so? Firstly because drug dependence is not a disease, and therefore, by definition, cannot be cured. Caffeine and nicotine dependence, alcoholism and heroinism are not diseases, even if all these dependence-producing substances may make the individual very ill. The physical dependence, or tolerance, and the very distressing abstinence symptoms following withdrawal of many drugs, are only incidental complications, while true dependence is a learned behaviour where craving for the drug has taken on the character and force of a natural drive. Theoretically, drug dependence is related to such conditions as gambling, pyromania, and kleptomania. The drug acts as a reinforcer.

Drug dependence is, thus, not a symptom of the factors which originally led to contact with the drug, consumption and dependence. Heavy nicotine dependence at forty is not a late symptom of curiosity in the early teens, but an independent condition which is very difficult to handle.

A common factor in all types of drug dependence is an ambivalence of the addict towards his drug: He is anxious to obtain help for all the complications to his drug consumption, but he is not prepared to sacrifice the drug experience itself.

To combat drug epidemics by means of individual treatment is like attacking malaria by hunting mosquitos. It can occupy an enormous number of people, but the effect is negligible. What is required is drainage of the marshes.

The Large and The Small Drug Markets

Draining the drug marshes means breaking up drug traffic and reducing general exposure to illicit drugs in society. Enormous efforts have been made by the customs, police and undercover agents all over the world. Despite this, the situation deteriorates very quickly and many countries are on the brink of giving up the fight.

Why were the advances so great in the anti-drug campaign in Germany in the twenties, in USA. In the thirties, and in China and Japan in the fifties? And why have there been no decisive advances in the Western World during the last two decades? I consider that this is largely because we have forgotten what is primary and secondary importance on the drug market. The primary factor is not that Nature produces plants such as the opium poppy or coca bush or that international crime syndicates take over the distribution of the drugs. The primary factor is that millions of people are prepared to break norms and laws in order to use these natural inebriates and also hundreds of synthetic preparations.

Breach of Norms

It is thus the personal breach of norms which is the normal basis, and the personal possession of drugs the legal basis of the drug market, and not the international syndicates. These, in fact, are a late consequence of the emergence of a drug market.

Naturally the drug syndicates should be combatted just as actively as now, but we must open a new front if we are to win the war. If we were to destroy all the cultivations of narcotics drugs in the world, there would, none the less, still exist substances which are up to 40 000 times as strong as morphine and which can be produced synthetically.

We have to accept the painful fact that we cannot win decisive advances unless drug abuse, the abuser and personal possession are placed in the centre of our strategy.

“The junk merchant does not sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product” said William S. Burroughs. I will quote another very astute remark from the foreword to his “Naked Lunch” from 1959;

“If you wish to alter or annihilate a pyramid of numbers in a serial relation, you alter or remove the bottom number. If we wish to annihilate the junk pyramid, we must start with the bottom of the pyramid: The addict in the street, and stop tilting quixotically for the “higher ups” so called, all of whom are immediately replaceable. The addict in the street who must have junk to live is the one irreplaceable factor in the junk equation. When there are no more addicts to buy junk there will be no junk traffic, as long as junk need exists, someone will service it.”

This is a brilliant summary of a difficult problem.

Strategy and Tactics

I consider that democratic, welfare states of western types ultimately stand and fall with the result of the fight against drug epidemics. To win that fight we must have realistic strategies and tactics. We must realize, and dare to affirm, that it is the drug addict who is the motor in the system. But the addict, who is extremely manipulative, and acts as the full time defence lawyer for his dependence, has succeeded in duping so many honest and responsible but naive politicians and journalists, that during the last twenty years he has himself been practically scheduled as a protected monument. This I consider is the most important factor behind our failure.

They Must Be Prosecuted

This does not mean that I propose a return to the harsh American sentences of the thirties for drug offences. They were unrealistic and undermined their own purpose. We must, however, make it very uncomfortable to abuse illicit drugs if we are to reverse developments. The addict must learn to take the consequences of his behaviour. In regard to Sweden, I have suggested a month clearing the forests for the first offence of possession of illicit drugs, two months for the second etc.

Society must clearly show that drug abuse is not accepted. We cannot blame the behaviour of our youth on the mountain indians in Colombia or the peasants in the Golden Triangle. We must, in the first place, put the blame on our own youth, and this may be difficult and painful. In the second place we should put the blame on ourselves for being duped into an inconsquent, permissive, attitude with continual excuses and forgiveness.

Popular Support

No government in a democratic country can manage widespread drug epidemics without strong popular support. This must be achieved through broad political agreement and massive information which leads to something like a popular uprising against drug epidemics.

The near future will be decisive as to whether the Western World will manage to overcome drug epidemics with a one-sided supply-orientated strategy we will fight a war which we are doomed to lose. Only by opening a new front with a strategy orientated towards demand can development be reversed, and the fight against drugs be won. Otherwise developments will progress towards capitulation and a social chaos.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. You hold history in your hands!

By Professor Nils Bejerot, M.D.

The Swedish Carnegie Institute, Stockholm
Speech held 1988 in France, the Soviet Union and USA.

http://www.rns.se/swedish-addiction.asp

Posted by none on September 16, 2009, 04:15 AM | #

Prohibition is a ridiculous system which has caused worldwide carnage and devastation. The sooner it ends the better.

There are thousands of drugs in existence - medical, herbal, alcohol, tobacco and so on, and all are *legal and regulated* in some way, except for about 5 ‘evil’ drugs (heroin, cocaine etc) which are fully prohibited, and this has caused huge problems.

Posted by fellist on September 16, 2009, 12:25 PM | #

I consider Catherine Austin Fitts a credible source, she says that after WWII narcotics trafficking and related financial fraud created a huge government black budget fund that financed the development of valuable technologies within private corporations. So, now that the drug culture has done its job and financed the rise of the multinational corporation and the concentration of the world’s most powerful technologies into private hands, I guess it might as well also become a source of income for those corporations if drugs are legalised. Legalisation would also pull the ladder up after them—removing from potential rivals a source of easy money.

Posted by Dan Dare on September 16, 2009, 02:57 PM | #

Lee John Barnes weighs in with some (mostly) cogent commentary …

Shooting Galleries and the Global Jihad

For may years I have advocated that the UK government must ;

1) Buy the opium crop in Afghanistan direct from the Afghani farmers

2) Process that crop in the UK

3) Prescribe that crop to heroin addicts in the UK

This is so that the Global Jihad, which is funded by Saudi Arabian Wahhabist oil money and Afghan heroin, is starved of money to buy bullets, bombs and guns.

At the same time though as we impose this new regime of issuing heroin we must also ;

A) Execute all heroin importers who smuggle the drugs into the UK

B) Execute all heroin dealers in the UK who have more than three convictions for peddling the drug

C) Put all registered heroin addicts on a register that is then available to social services, the police etc

…

Etc.

Alternatively, a different approach would be just to let the Taliban take over in Afghanistan. When they banned poppy growing in 2001, opium production fell by 90%, but since the inception of the War on Turr it has now risen back to twice the pre—Taliban level, based on the number of hectares under cultivation..

Posted by Dan Dare on September 16, 2009, 02:59 PM | #

Sorry, the link to the rest of Lee’s article got garbled, this should work:

Etc.

Posted by jamesUK on September 17, 2009, 10:02 AM | #

@Retew

He right since Rothschild British empire controlled Opium trade which was run by an Iraqi Jew Britain and the US control the drugs trade the Afghan heroin that comes into Europe is controlled through there satellite state Kosovo and distributed throughout there network into Europe.

http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/rcmn070209.htm

@Dan Dare

Al Fakea and the so called War on Terror is a western aligned policy developed during the mid 70’s to capture Eurasian oil and gas for future EU empire dependency which means bringing in Turkey into the EU as they are the main transit point for oil and gas bypassing Russia. Policy in EU pushed primeraly by the Czech Rep and the other new EU states who want a pro-US policy regarding the EU.

Great article outlining FBI whistleblowers Sidel Edmonds statement confirming this with facts and links.
 
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/15/551916/-Sibel-Edmonds-Case:-The-Central-Asia-Islamization-Cocktail:-Mosques,-Madrassas,-HeroinTerrorism

Obama: Turkey needs to be able to join EU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnLrZYL1wQc

Obamas boss

Posted by Gorboduc on September 19, 2009, 07:54 PM | #

Late as usual: and it’s quotation time again.

  “In the place of the present taverns houses would be found devoted to the service of consumers of ether, chloral, naphtha, and hashish. The number of persons suffering from aberrations of taste and smell has become so considerable that it is a lucrative trade to open shops for them where they can swallow in rich vessels all sorts of dirt, and breathe amidst surroundings which do not offend their sense of beauty nor their habits of comfort the odour of decay and filth. A number of new professions ane being formed — that of injectors of morphia and cocaine: of commissioners who, posted at the corners of the streets, offer their arms to persons attacked by agoraphobia, in order to enable them to cross the roads and squares Late as usual: and it’s quotation time again.”

This is from that early Zionist, Max Nordau, and the book I culled this from is his pessimistic analysis. ‘Degeneration’ (Eng. trans, 1895). Here he’s looking forward to the 20th. century.  Homosexualists can look forward to same-sex marriages; they are facilitated by thee election of “a number of deputies having the same tendency”. (I once met a well-off and high-class rent-boy whose clientele was mainly from our MPs and Lords)

It is to Nordau’s credit that he appears to reprobate the situation he describes: however, some may be reminded of another (Shhh!) prophecy that apparently surfaced at about the same time as MN’s, but with a higher degree of gloating.

Posted by fellist on October 11, 2009, 07:06 AM | #

Continuing with the Fitts thesis and my conjecture about the benefits to tptb of legalisation:

The amount of surplus opium still stashed in Afghanistan is staggering, officials said. The U.N. report said the world’s annual demand for opium derivates such as heroin is not more than 5,000 tons, but the drug stockpiles in Afghanistan may be double that. And these stockpiles are durable, Lemahieu said, able to last in good condition for 10 to 15 years. In some areas along the border with Pakistan, opium is used as currency, he said.

The drug industry is so prevalent in places such as Helmand that coalition commanders there say it is often difficult to distinguish between Taliban members, drug traffickers and criminal gangs, all of which take part in the business.

Col. George Amland, deputy commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which operates in Helmand, said that “all those people will coexist very happily as a partnership, while there is a level of chaos,” but that his troops are attempting to interrupt and split the networks.

The U.N. report praised Afghan and NATO troops for destroying tons of chemicals, seeds, drugs and 27 labs this year, as well as for moving away from eradication as a policy.

“You’ve seen some pretty sizable operations down south in Helmand,” said Col. Wayne Shanks, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul. “Our presence there and our activities in the area may have contributed to some of those figures” of declining opium cultivation.

U.N. officials estimate that the Taliban collects at least $125 million a year from opium production, including by taxing farmers and levying “protection” fees for cargo trucks transiting its territory. There are also signs that the group is increasingly involved in the high-end value aspects of the business, including converting opium to heroin and trading in precursor chemicals, such as acetic anhydride. Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UNODC, wrote in the report that there is “growing evidence” that “some anti-government elements in Afghanistan are turning into narco-cartels.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/01/AR2009090103223.html?nav=emailpage

Posted by Sid Viscious on December 01, 2010, 07:30 PM | #

The PROs for following the Swiss in giving out free heroin to addicts far outnumber the cons.

PROS

1. The vast amounts of money made illegally in the trade will drastically reduce the funds available to pay for weapons and terorism which we in turn have to combat (thus saving us money here)
2. The poppy farmers would be able to grow poppies legally without worrying about their crops being destroyed or themselves being arrested and would probably even get a fairer price for their hard work!
3. Poppy cultivation could even be grown in the UK producing thousands of jobs in the pharmaceutical industry!
4. Billions of pounds would be saved from having to not carry on with the so called “war on drugs” (which so obviously doesnt work!!) Billions are spent on drug raids, surveillance work and many other areas in this anti drug war we are fighting a losing battle with!
5. Imagine the cost to the taxpayer for each person in jail on drug charges? Even more money would be saved by not throwing millions of drug addicts into jail just because they made a wrong decision once in trying heroin! They have suffered every day ever since (it is NO EASY LIFE being a junkie!! Every day is a struggle to find the money for your fix, it takes over your whole life! That is a life sentence in itself!) If every prisoner serving a sentence for a heroin related “crime” was released then the prisons would not have the overcrowding problems they have today! In fact, they may even be able to close some prisons due to no longer needing so many!
6.The trial in Switzerland has proved that crime rate among drug addicts has been reduced by at LEAST 60% (possibly more)......this saves money again in police time, court time, prison sentences and so on. Not only does this save money, it stops addicts being a criminal just because of a MEDICAL problem! It also means many innocent people are spared the trauma of being the victim of a crime.
7. Having a clean, safe environment for addicts to go to, means they are less likely to either develop a nasty disease such as HIV, or worse take an accidental overdose! They may also be able to work on other problems with doctors at the clinics which they may never have bothered seeing anyone about before!
8. Getting your supply legally in this way also means you know EXACTLY what you are getting. Street gear can be cut with all sorts of nasty stuff….NOT good!
9. One of the most important “pros” on my list is the fact an addict will be able to live a practically NORMAL life. Instead of spending every day chasing around trying to get money together and trying to score, one visit to the clinic and the rest of the day is yours to do normal things…...wether it be going to work regularily, doing college or university, being a good mother to your children. You can have good relationships with all your family members, take up hobbies and even have a social life again. All of which is really tough when all your time is taken trying to score!
10. All your money will no longer be spent on heroin! You will be able to keep up with the bills and even treat yourself to some nice possessions (which wont get sold at the first opportunity!!)

These are just ten “pros” I believe are a good thing FOR doing what Switzerland has done. I could list more but this list is getting too long….you get the picture!

the “cons” against making this happen?? I cant actually think of any!!! So why oh why do we still keep throwing money at “the war on drugs” ??? ITS A WASTE OF OUR TAXPAYERS MONEY!........oh hang on a minute, there is one obvious reason against this legislation being made legal….
IT WOULD NOT WIN VOTES!!

doesnt that just make you sick?!!! Winning votes is more important than saving lives and vast amounts of money and stopping drug addicts becaoming “criminals” just because of a medical problem!

Posted by kerria haskell on April 14, 2011, 09:22 PM | #

i think that this is a good thing to have thers open because it is getting them of the streets