Posted by Chris Roberts
on November 4, 2009, 1:27 pm, in reply to ""Dope's illegal?""
There is a fundamental incongruity right at the heart of drugs policy: the government wants to accrue the cachet of scientific expertise for decisions which are purely political and pragmatic. So the populace is supposed to believe that the government is legalising or criminalising their actions on the basis of presumptions about harm, while knowing full well that they are barely based on that at all. Drugs policy seems to be largely based around the trends of most media outlets that basically perpetuate the "fears" about drugs without ever dealing with the wider social context. On last week's Question Time a perfect distillation of this was present. All the panellists were feigning disagreement but all ended up saying similar things, namely that "drugs kill" Almost all the experts agree that it is the illegality of drugs that contribute most to this "killing" because the quality is inconsistent - drugs mixed with brick dust and powdered soap etc - and the fact that in order to obtain the 'products' one has to enter an underground and potentially dangerous world.
In the end nothing will change precisely because the needs of politicians will always take precedence over and above the needs of those addicted to drugs.
--Previous Message--
: I thought that drug policy was a sham for a
: no-policy policy. There's a few laws and a
: few headlines conforming to Liarbour's
: Universal Policy and that's that. The heads
: skin up and watch The Big Lebowski dvd with
: an air of indifference. "Dope's
: illegal?"
:
Responses: