Canada considering decriminalizing all drugs

Have a listen:

http://www.pointofinquiry.org/johann_hari_the_falsehoods_of_addiction_and_the_war_on_drugs/

Billions of dollars are funneled into federal drug programs to keep our children away from drugs and our cities safe from crime and economic turmoil. Our guest this week, journalist and author Johann Hari, has spent the last several years traveling and researching the war on drugs for his new book Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, to find out if federal programs are as effective and righteous as we are often led to believe.

Hari talks to host Josh Zepps about how he discovered the troubling beginnings of drug war riddled with corruption and ulterior motives, and argues that everything we thought we understood about drug addiction appears to be wrong.

TommySalami said:

Alcohol kills more than all illicit drugs combined.

All the crime from illicit drugs come before the drug is taken, generally, for the funds to obtain the drug. All the crime with alcohol comes after the drug is taken. Alcohol as a substance is far worse.

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Well said.

oldjones said:

Well said.

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Thank you. (For the record, i only rarely say thanks, you deserve a thank you)

TommySalami said:

Alcohol kills more than all illicit drugs combined.

All the crime from illicit drugs come before the drug is taken, generally, for the funds to obtain the drug. All the crime with alcohol comes after the drug is taken. Alcohol as a substance is far worse.

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+1 Alcohol is a huge problem, thousands are quietly dying in their home from cirrhosis. Believe it or not food is a huge problem also, thousands are getting cirrhosis from a fatty live.

Conil said:

+1 Alcohol is a huge problem, thousands are quietly dying in their home from cirrhosis. Believe it or not food is a huge problem also, thousands are getting cirrhosis from a fatty live.

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Yes, I agree. No one takes heroin or crack cocaine and beats their wife and kids then gets in a car and drives down the highway putting all of our lives at risk.

Heroin puts users to sleep. Crack is a sixty second high. Alcohol destroys the mind, the body and the family involved where as illicit drugs target one specific area, generally.

Alcohol is toxic, food is not. Physiologically alcohol ingested
has to be detoxified in your liver. Ethanol in your beer once
assimilated has to be dehydrogenated. Even the product
of this detoxification step--Acetaldehyde, is
poisonous. Try ingest a little bit of it and you will realize
how daring you have to be to drink wine and beer regularly.

The notion that food could be as bad as alcohol because
fat is a cause of cirrhosis has no merit. If you drink a large
excess of water each and every day you will get kidney
problem eventually. The difference is that you will be
dead if your food has 0% of fat in it.

Exactly. Heroin is a pain killer. Alcohol is a poison. People just swallow what theyve been fed over the years. They think illicit drugs are harmful. Theres no way in hell that they will be more harmfull than alcohol.

oil&gas said:

Alcohol is toxic, food is not. Physiologically alcohol ingested
has to be detoxified in your liver. Ethanol in your beer once
assimilated has to be dehydrogenated. Even the product
of this detoxification step--Acetaldehyde, is
poisonous. Try ingest a little bit of it and you will realize
how daring you have to be to drink wine and beer regularly.

The notion that food could be as bad as alcohol because
fat is a cause of cirrhosis has no merit. If you drink a large
excess of water each and every day you will get kidney
problem eventually. The difference is that you will be
dead if your food has 0% of fat in it.

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Everything goes through the liver, people that can't stop eating also die from cirrhosis and other ailments. Of course alcohol is much worst.

oldjones said:

While compulsory rehab might be less physically dangerous and socially toxic than jail-time for offenders, it would be worse than useless for getting people off drugs. All it would accomplish would be to make more cunning users.

You have to want that rehabilitation for yourself.

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I agree they have to want it. The hope would be you get a few more every time.

But you won't get any in jail.

Butler1000 said:

I agree they have to want it. The hope would be you get a few more every time.

But you won't get any in jail.

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Actually there have been serious and reasonably successful 12 step and other rehab programs behind bars for a long time. But those inmates made the choice themselves. Compulsory treatment doesn't work. The Ledain Commission said as much forty some years ago, and people haven't changed much since. Nor has anyone invented a magic that makes people who don't want to quit into quitters.

And if you're going to release them into the same society where they learned to be addicts, it's as good as saying, 'there's no hope for you but drugs'.

It won't happen unless the USA ends it's War on Drugs.

Mexico is bleeding keeping up with American demand. Mexico is in a state of perpetual covert Civil War, the Cartels have taken on Khmer Rouge methods. The body count is horrific with no end in sight.

Mexican officially don't have the slightest clue of how many killing fields there actually are.