Archive for the ‘drugs’ tag
A crusade for revenge, regardless of the cost
After a 21 year old died from a reaction to the stimulant GBL, her mother is leading a holy war to get it banned.
Excuse me? Mrs. Stewart? Making it illegal will make party-goers want it all the more, haven’t you seen how common and popular heroin, cocaine, ecstacy, cannabis, amphetamines and other controlled drugs are? Are you perhaps thinking that if your daughter died, you’re wanting more to join her out of some perverse lust for revenge? Maybe trying to shift the blame? The coroner’s toxicology report even states that her alcohol level was excessive. This wasn’t some young woman out for a good time, it was an irresponsible kid with a death wish.
Britain has the most oppressive drug laws in Europe and, spookily enough the highest rate of adult drug consumption. The Netherlands has the loosest drug laws in Europe and it has the lowest rate of consumption. If we go through Europe plotting how tight drug laws are and how high consumption is, it’s a direct relationship: Tighter laws correlate very closely with higher consumption.
Is it too far a stretch to speculate that the tighter laws are causing the problem in the first place, perhaps? Nobody goes for legal drugs (like GBL, it’s very rare on the street) because they’re legal. They’re not the good stuff. If they were the good stuff, they’d be illegal by now.
Yet again we see knee-jerk headless chicken reactions which will only make the problem worse. We should expect it by now.
Update: Alright, it is The Sun and normally as reliable as a ten year old Apple Mac, but it does reference a genuine UN report. Britain is Europe’s drugs capital for cocaine, heroin and amphetamines. Obviously the very harsh laws we have need to be tightened further, right? When something doesn’t work, the obvious thing is to keep doing it all the more. If you’re in government, that is.