MPs and Illegal Drugs

[johnb]

[Deleted - stupid of me to get involved in this thread]

[Lateralthinking1]

Do you want me to answer that - Number 46 as was?

Keep Class A, B and C categories as they are now.
Concentrate resources on tackling drugs in areas that are not conventional cannabis use.
A concerted effort to tackle cocaine use that is bigger, and more public, than the one against nicotine.
Aim efforts at suppliers far more than users with larger punishments for suppliers.
The country to apply unusually harsh but fair early rehabilitation programmes to celebrities, eg Pete Doherty.
Far greater emphasis on rehabilitation programmes in deprived areas.
More information about current drugs use among MPs - similar to the expenses investigation.
Similar about those in charge of the courts, the police and the economy.

(Lest we forget, Gil Scott-Heron is another one. They should never have stuck him in jail - it was outrageous to do it to a genius - but he should have been assisted far more, however tough, and publicly, particularly given his credibility among the hip-hop crowd).

[Flosshilde]

Flosshilde - I take your first point to an extent. However, and this links into the second point, does this not depend on whether illegality does drive something underground?

For example, it doesn't seem to me that the illegality of cocaine supply and use has driven it underground. It is rife including where there is management of our social and economic systems.

What I see, particularly in contrast to the huge efforts to change tobacco use, is an unwillingness in the authorities to apply firepower to it, rather than inability. Many know exactly where it is. Arguably all of the drug-based murders among black youth in South London are more to do with this phenomenon than the illegality itself.

On cannabis, I don't advocate it or consume it. I do though think that the speed in modern life is a dangerous madness. I am also supposed to be a liberal with a small "l" by inclination, although I have always been a leftish and rather complicated one, with some old style small "c" conservative leanings.

Basically, I just wanted to give a little with that comment to the other side of the debate. I didn't want people to think that I would go raving mad if they took cannabis when I was there. I wouldn't - and it really doesn't bother me - Lat.

I really have no idea what this means; if I was being uncharitable I would think that the writer was 'on something'. For example, this doesn't even make gramatical sense, let alone any other -
" it doesn't seem to me that the illegality of cocaine supply and use has driven it underground. It is rife including where there is management of our social and economic systems. "

And this - "What I see, particularly in contrast to the huge efforts to change tobacco use, is an unwillingness in the authorities to apply firepower to it, rather than inability." - ignores again the problems of controlling something that is illegal. Experience has shown that it is impossible to stamp out the use of cocaine, for example; better to regulate it in the way that tobacco & alcohol is regulated.

[Lateralthinking1]

I am on something. I am on the prescription drug citalopram. It could have been written more clearly. Still, I thought it would be understandable.

The "It" in the second sentence, as in "It is rife", refers mainly to the supply and use. All the police need to do under instructions from the Home Secretary is raid the buildings of the major financial institutions in London, the newspaper offices, the fashion houses, the broadcasting establishments, the clubs. Then they could have a look at the streets in Camden and next turn their attentions to the only slightly less obvious.

All the above are a part of what I would call "our social and economic systems". Perhaps like the MP as described by Nigel Kennedy, they are all "scary" and can't be "messed" with. Course Murdoch was once seen like that too.

I cannot see how an illegal substance that is used so openly can in any sense be underground and more difficult to manage than it would be if it were to be deregulated.

Cocaine use in the 1950s was tiny. In this decade, it is widespread. There are many changes during that period which could account for the difference. However, the legal position has remained much the same.

[Sydney Grew]

Christopher Marlowe is said to have said "All they that love not Tobacco and Boys are fools" - or words to that effect.

We do not smoke but we spent half our life in smokey pubs and it never did us any harm. In China every one smokes. The British introduced the custom and encouraged them.

[Lateralthinking1]

Sydney - is that your photo or someone else? I've been meaning to ask.

[Lateralthinking1]

.....No answer. Anyhow, you are right, or Marlowe was, on tobacco. Fewer people have failed to become octogenerians than ever before. Plus there has probably never been a death certificate that says "Cause - Secondary Smoking". Not even the one of dear Roy Castle. And even with a 20 fold or more increase in the number of road vehicles.

[Flosshilde]

The "It" in the second sentence, as in "It is rife", refers mainly to the supply and use. All the police need to do under instructions from the Home Secretary is raid the buildings of the major financial institutions in London, the newspaper offices, the fashion houses, the broadcasting establishments, the clubs. Then they could have a look at the streets in Camden and next turn their attentions to the only slightly less obvious.

"All the police need to do"? !!!!! Just how many additional police men & women do you think it would require? & that would be for just one drug!

Lateral, there is extensive literature on the growth of the use of cocaine & its derivatives, the role in supply & consumption in crime, & even probably on the different attitudes to consumption among the different classes. I suggest you do a little research.

I cannot see how an illegal substance that is used so openly can in any sense be underground and more difficult to manage than it would be if it were to be deregulated.

I've already given one historical example of the difficulty of controlling a substance when it is illegal compared with when it is legal.


In relation to nicotine, you seem reluctant to accept controls on its use - perhaps you are a smoker, & believe that the addictive & damaging drug you choose to use is OK, but the drug(s) others use aren't?

[spasuit]

Everybody knows smoking is bad for you. Do what the sensible Dutch do and bake your cannibis resin or leaves in a delicious cake or brownie.. The effect is marvellous, longer lasting and better controlled..

[Lateralthinking1]

Actually, I said that I was a cigarette smoker. How many members of the forum are happy cocaine users? I predict none. Whatever our differences of opinion, may I commend the sheer strength of feeling expressed by contributors purely on a point of principle. I really didn't think that good old Britain still had what it takes.

[amateur51]

As others have said, this is an age-old argument and there is masses of literature written on all side of the argument. Anyone wanting to catchup I would recommend contacting the 'official' independent drugs policy body Drugscope (http://www.drugscope.org.uk/) and the rather more creative 'unofficial' Release (http://www.release.org.uk/). The splendid Wellcome Collection had a wonderful exhibition until recently about 'drugs in UK down the ages' entitled High Society and there is an excellent book to accompany the series which contains many useful references http://www.wellcomecollection.org/wh...h-society.aspx

http://www.amazon.co.uk/High-Society-Mind-Altering-History-Culture/dp/050025172X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312126620&sr=1-2

A vital part of the debate has been missed hitherto, it seems to me. What do you do with someone who is a regular addicted drug user when they want to come off? Some people of course do not become addicted - they are very fortunate & extremely rare. Experience has shown that society needs to act promptly once that point is reached in a person's life. It is no use inviting the user to get on a waiting liost of 6 weeks, let alone 6 months. You're pushing it if you make someone wait six days, because people who use drugs are part of a subculture with its own ebb & flow, its own peer pressure, and what seemed like a good idea today ('I think I'm fed up with living like this') becomes a bit passé tomorrow ('6 weeks? - you must be mad - have you got any X?')

The type of support and treatment needed will depend on the drug in question, and of course many people are what the trade calls 'poly-substance abusers' i.e., there is a range of substances involved. Some people will be holding down good jobs with relationships and a good income; others will be more 'chaotic', perrhaps living on the streets or in hostels and squats. However what is common is the need to catch them at that moment of wanting to come off and to provide them with a bed, some support and a plan for coming off.

To run a drugs rehab project, like running a B&B hotel or a 3*Michelin restaurant, you need a steady flow of punters through the door. An empty bed is a gap in the cash flow. You need staff on hand to run the rehab, and administrators to keep it all going. You also need gifted staff to negotiate with local authorities and other referral agencies on the price of beds, access criteria, monitoring & evaluation etc.

And here's the rub: there are simply not enough rehab bed in the right areas for most people who cannot afford to book into The Priory. We have yet to develop a funding model to keep the 'business' of running a rehab centre stable, while not paying a project for apparent failure. There will always be surges of demand. As Dorothy Parker said [I think]: 'I can get drunk on just one martini - but I can never remember if it's the thirteenth or the fourteenth' - supply is not an exact science.

There will always be the tension between service-providers and service-purchasers about 'value-for-money' and what they have jointly agreed is 'success'. And even if those two parties are agreed on a defintion of 'success', the awkward punters, bless 'em, will still exhibit relapse to some proprtion. How long do you keep trying?

And once someone is stable and detoxified and hopefully has some skills to help them to avoid starting up on a life with drugs again, where are they to go? Back to their original home, where the same friends and dealers will be waiting to offer sometimes irresistible temptation? Or will we provide supportive housing in a different area? And will this housing be preferentially provided? (COUNCIL BACKS JUNKIES WHILE NEEDY BRITISH FAMILIES LANGUISH IN HOTELS). And how will it be paid for?

Having posed all these additional practical rather than philosophical problems, it behoves me to come up with some answers. If we decriminalise or even legalise recreational drug use, then the State or manufacturers licenced by the State could provide a range of drugs of known strength and known purity at a price which would include an assured profit for the manufacturers & distributors, plus an elemernt of taxation for the Treasury which can be ploughed into those much-needed treatment centres and follow-on housing.

The case I've made is full of holes, I know but it seemed to me that we were in danger of becoming a little high-flown in our considerations and I wanted to bring the discussion back down to earth. We live in a society where recreational and problematic drug-taking are an acknowledged fact, yielding huge revenues to criminals at high health cost to the users and high financial costs to society. We have a choice. What shall we do?

[teamsaint]

do as I say, not as I do(or did).

I would ban anyone who wants to be an MP from being one..after all, what good has it done?

[Lateralthinking1]

amateur51 - Thank you for these considered comments. Very thoughtful and right.

I can't see why we couldn't continue with the current classifications but with an exemption for self-confessed addicts who wish to address their addiction. In other words, maybe there could be a "prescription" status for such people who would visit specially qualified medics at required times, stay for as long as is necessary and be given increasingly smaller measures as the medic thought appropriate. I don't see why this should all fall to the private sector. The money the state alleges is being saved from changes in nicotine use could in fact be allocated for this purpose.

I do agree on the peer pressure point too. However, I think the starting point of any peer group perspective generally emerges from outside such groups the length and breadth of the land. It is in the culture of sales - fashion essentially - which has for a very long time created difficulties. I'm not sure that huge amounts can be done about that liberally.

But I started this thread by referring to MPs and then broadened it out to include a wider range of movers and shakers in conventional rather than creative arenas. I do think that an increasingly airy response from many of them is a double whammy. People who are very serious about dealing with their addictions need to feel that there is a serious steer. That is unlikely to be believable from powerful nannies who used to enjoy getting down to A Guy Called Gerald in a field near Clacket Lane.

[StephenO]

Do we know whether or not Ms Mensch inhaled?

Isn't it odd that, as cannabis, cocaine, alcohol and tobacco are all potentially addictive and potentially harmful, the first two are illegal while the second two aren't? I write as a nicotine addict and chocoholic who enjoys the occasional glass of wine (but nothing stronger) and is currently drugged up to the eyeballs on prescription pain killers, having injured my back last week.

[Lateralthinking1]

Yes, odd. The phone rang so I need to clarify a point. I'm not against Voodoo Ray. I probably danced to it before the occasional paid for concert. I would though have been on real ale or as real as you can get in those places. The important point is that my arms would not have been in the skies.