Posted on 04/07/2013 12:11:59 AM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
[UK] Labour's liberalisation of the cannabis laws was a disaster that pushed up drug use and crime and doubled the number of drug victims in hospital beds, two major research studies said yesterday.
They found that after police were told to go easy on cannabis smokers, there were increases in assaults, theft and car theft, burglaries, vandalism and anti-social behaviour.
The chance that a young person who had never smoked cannabis would try the drug went up by a quarter after it became unlikely they would get more than a warning if caught by police, one project found.
The likelihood that they would smoke it on a regular basis went up by 8 per cent.
According to a second study, an experiment in relaxing cannabis laws on the streets of South London led to a rise of 40 to 100 per cent in the numbers of men admitted to hospital due to their use of harder drugs.
That report, by researchers from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said: ‘We find the depenalisation of cannabis had significant longer-term impacts on hospital admissions related to the use of hard drugs.’
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
The class libertarian argument. Laws don’t work. People are going to do stuff anyway. So let’s get rid of the laws and get high.
But laws, while imperfect, do work. People might still do bad stuff, but they do much less of it. They fear the physical penalties (jail). Or more importantly, they fear the moral sanctions — the disapproval of law-abiding friends, parents, media and church.
Suppose we do what we do to prevent drug use and apply that to divorce. From herein,if anybody divorces, they will be sentenced to five years imprisonment. If there are too many divorces still, then we will keep amping up the punishment, until we achieve a national goal of zero divorces, including up until the death penalty.
Do you believe that we will achieve our goal of zero divorces, or do you think people will simply,become much more clever about murder?
Interesting read but I find it questionable considering the Netherlands has lower rates of drug use than the US and cannabis is legal there. I personally believe that the government does not need to protect people from themselves. As long as someone is using a drug responsibly in their own home, on their own time, that is their business.
I would like to remind everyone that cannabis has only been illegal since the early 1900s. The drug laws in the US are backward and perverse. The DEA classifies drugs according to their harm and potential for abuse. Schedule I is reserved for drugs with no medical use, high potential for addiction and can be very harmful to the individuals who take them. Cannabis is listed as schedule I despite the evidence from the medical community that supports its use in treating varying conditions. It also has no withdraw symptoms unlike other controlled substances. Its also interesting to note that the DEA doesn’t have tobacco listed as a scheduled drug considering it has horrible consequences to your health, no medical benefit and is extremely addictive.
Plenty of people today get doped up in their own way legally. Some people set up an appointment with Dr. Feelgood and give him/her a sob story about how they have anxiety problems and they get a prescription for Alprazolam (Xanax) and it is almost always covered under their insurance (often medicaid). Those who have a different taste go down to their local bar to get their favorite drug ethanol (Yum!). Need i mention caffeine?
Aside from your ridiculous zero percent/jail for divorce scenario, it sounds pretty good to me. You’re heading in the right direction. Congratulations.
Society (particularly children) was a lot better off when we had both tougher laws and more social disapproval of divorce. We can’t just give up all laws on divorce (and drugs) and expect things to get better. As libertarians say about the stock market or other businesses, people do react to incentives or disincentives. But they forget that people react to incentives other than purely financial.
All the historical references are irrelevant unless measured against the pill, tampons, and electricity.
Electricity and various machines to do housework made life easier and staying home all the time less attractive. The pill and other contraception ended the fear of the ages. The tampon and other such eliminated the monthly problems.
We live in a liberated age and have lost control of the controls that previously regulated society. In fact, we are in an age where a majority of people in cities insist on no sexual regulation at all.
It will take another 50 years to reverse the cycle and reintroduce different but effective regulation. Religion has been repudiated over much if not most of the world. The Islamic zealots are waging war to reclaim what has been repudiated by Islamic evolution. Europe is wallowing in Christian repudiation and is dying. America is soon to burn as repudiation fails to equalize that which can never be equal.
You're dreaming. Non-users will get the drugs and sell them to users.
Dream on.
Is that a quote from obama?
They didn’t regulate and tax the supply change. It’s still produced and delivered under prohibition methods.
They should start NASCAR.....
I agree with the guy from a week ago. Let’s follow the Chinese model for dealing with illegal drugs. We just execute all the users. Then, the dealers starve to death. Can you imagine how much better this country would be with all the cowardly illegal drug users gone?
Prior to mid 60s most sexually desirable gals married as virgins
Sorry but amongst respectable folk in Christian nation ....like we were till recently
The exact percentages of who’s doing what are impossible to verify, and again vary considerably among income, class, religion, immigrant status, area of country, etc.
Even in the 18th & 19th Century cohabitation was prevalent in this country (especially the South), people paired off and the marriage made it official, but waiting until after marriage for sex was not a huge cultural requirement. Often a marriage occurred to legitimize the child that was already on the way. That was the most important issue, not when the sex occurred. The importance of marrying a virgin was to ensure that the girl was not pregnant with another man’s child, although I doubt very seriously that most girls were virgins at the time of marriage unless they were expected to marry straight out of high school as in the 1950’s.
Popular attitudes toward premarital sex have always been more permissive than church or legal officials would have liked.
Thus, not simply a result of the 1960s.
...married or not.
&&&
The big change has come there. During my lifetime, an enormous change has occurred. In the 1950s and through most of the 1960s, the vast majority of women were expected to be virgins until marriage.
There were exceptions, of course, even among respectable people. But these were in the minority. Sleeping around was definitely looked down upon, as was shacking up. Now, these behaviors are commonplace.
&&&
Well said!
I had not seen your answer to this youngster when I posted my reply at 54.
Apparently, these young people have been told the lie that all women have always been loose. Leads to the notion that women are not special, ergo mothers are not special, ergo marriage is not special, etc. And we all know the ultimate goal is to destroy our moral underpinnings in order to usher in the Brave New World.
So liberals are dopes, what else is new.
Unlike many here u was around then and experienced it
Anyone thinks premarital sex was common prior to the pill is obviously young and poorly informed or purposely daft
The mere fact I have to explain this is more proof how well media and academia have done at corrupting the historical imprint
The pill is likely the primary culprit but there were many
You know I reread your post and am astounded how brainwashed you are
“Most girls who married were not virgins in the 1950s”
Hell yea they were ...even poor blacks and whites too......how old are you
The rest of your post reads like social anthropology agit prop taught to you by a pinhead likely subsidized by a taxpayer
Either that or you read too much Playboy Adviser
And back before Prohibition, opioids were a frequent ingredient in “patent” medicine, and especially used by women. Mother’s little helper in those days. Freud spoke in favor of the pain killing effect of cocaine.
The fact is, many people are in pain, both physical and emotional. There is no such thing as a non addictive pain killer. The trick is to help people reduce and eliminate their physical and emotional pain. Nicotine addiction is very hard to overcome as many know. I went through a training program with Dr. Daniel Casriel (founder and clinical director of the Daytop Village, NY, program for addicts and alcoholics) who used many of the same approaches publicized by Arthur Janov in The Primal Scream. In the waiting area where new patients congregated the cigarette smoke was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Later in an advanced training group of professionals and paraprofessionals who had processed many of their own issues with Casriel, I noticed there was not a single smoker.
People were so busy farming, gardening, cooking, laundering, sewing their own clothes, etc. that the time and and energy for sex was severely limited. We don’t know if pre-marital sex was uncommon. Fifty years ago, a South American friend told me that women frequently engage in anal sex so that they will be virgins on their wedding day, or to avoid pregnancy. On the whole the men didn’t seem to mind. Could this have been a factor in earlier centuries. Also before men codified and monopolized the medical scene, women healers and herbalists knew ways to prevent pregnancy and no doubt were frequently consulted by women.
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