Drug use - media and politicians on a different planet?

krish

Surely that would mean known cokehead Johnson's done for too?

weaviemx5

According to reports, he hedged his bets and later suggested that he had sneezed so didn’t actually take any cocaine in so it therefore didn’t count

Redirect Notice

Trollslayer

Great, the candidates can be rated on the Trump scale.

richp007

Yeah that will definitely fly with his supporters.

It's just Boris being Boris remember. Don't mind him!

Trollslayer

Councils are going bust and it seems Boris is on drugs:
Johnson pledges higher rate income tax cut

Bl4ckGryph0n

To put it in context, and I am guilty of using definitions from the Netherlands, hard drugs equal banned substances. Soft drugs include what you mentioned above, eg non banned substances.

SteakAndCake

I don't care what manner of drugs any of this rabble choose to use.  I do care that they and the media are talking about this non issue, and not about actual tangible sensible drug law reform.  The MPs themselves have demonstrably proven that criminalising drugs does not deter usage.  The last 30 years has demonstrably proven that law enforcement cannot stop supply.

So we have a supply and demand that will never end, but caught in the middle of this are thousands of people getting hurt from lack of quality control.  Thousands of people getting hurt and killed in drug turf wars.  Thousands of people getting sick and destroying their lives with addiction.

Let's stop treating drugs as a criminal matter and start treating it as a health issue.

As potential leaders, where's the leadership?  Opening up about drug use should be the opening they use to push drug law reform to improve the lives of everyone involved with drugs.  Instead, they  trivialise a hugely important issues that SHOULD be politicised, and pivot it into a funny anecdote to make them appear human.  It's pathetic really.

Trollslayer

At a minimum this idea needs serious discussion.

Toko Black

That's what most people believe it means in the UK as well.

Legally though it doesn't as soft and hard drugs have a slightly different technical definition - and what is considered legal in juristictions is banned elsewhere and vice versa.

i.e cannabis is is legal as you know in some places, but in the UK not, yet it is not considered to be addictive. Neither for that matter is LSD but that may well be considered a hard drug. Hence why Hard and Soft is probably a bad definition to use.

Toko Black

I agree, it's a sheer hypocrisy of promoting and maintaining the war on drugs while taking drugs themselves albeit historically ... but that is made vast more heinous when there reluctance to change the laws is based outdated moralities and on keeping some voters happy at the cost of the health, welbeing and liberties of significant numbers of people.
When the wealth of evidence, scientific and medical opinion and policing indicates not only that the war on drugs is impossible to win, but also that it is counterproductive in that it puts more lives at risk, more people in prison, wastes tax payers money on policing and the fall out of related crimes ... while making drug gangs vast amounts of money that they are willing to go to war and kill for on our streets - often using young boys as the stooges and cannon fodder.

It's an utter disgrace.