what went wrong in the UK and how do they fix it

[sexyasianescorts]

Scrap giving people money benefits and opt for food stamps instead or a card that is fingerprint id for food so they cannot sell or swap it

They will soon get off backsides if they have no money to buy sky TV and dogs!!!

Chloe x

[Stavros]

They will soon get off backsides if they have no money to buy sky TV and dogs!!!

Yes, Chloe but what do you do about the people who make more money from the shadow economy such as dealing in drugs, stolen goods, illegal gambling, casual labour (not to mention prostitution...) not everyone who doesn't have a job wants to break the law, and many who can't get a job either cannot read or write or add up, or live in areas of high unemployment. Also, because many of the younger people live at home, with no relatives elsewhere, they have no incentive to move to another part of the country and find work it they can; if it was so easy to get a job, why are 1 in 4 people under the age of 25 unemployed?

The money made from class A and class B drugs is staggering, I just can't work out how the govt hasn't come up with a way of legalising drugs, regulating the distribution and raking in the tax benefits -quite apart from the decrease in petty crime that would follow. Lose the phoney morals about drugs and ok, something else would probably take its place, but not as extensive and rotten as the drugs trade. Nobody thinks outside the box anymore, thats why everyone, stuck inside of it, fights and squabbles. What a waste of resources!

[russtafa]

why not just follow Singapore they don't have a drug problem.that's thinking outside the box

[Stavros]

I understand your point Russtafa, but one of the reasons why it has become such a problem here is because of the users, as well as the suppliers. If enough people stopped shoving white powder up their nose the drug cartels and their wars in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras would be over -and if you look at the sources -Colombia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and supply routes like Turkey -not to mention Russia -these also have problems with users, Singapore, by contrast is a small place which has always made it easier to manage. It has also been known that completely innocent people will have drugs planted on them before the police arrive, so executing users and dealers could be, shall we say, drastic...if you car or your tv doesn't work, do you hit them with a sledgehammer?

[Dino Velvet]

Legalizing and taxing marijuana would bring some nice revenue. The weed store in Brentwood I go to is always busy with happy customers. I spend around $800 month on product with zero tax. Weed stores are everywhere out here. I even saw a billboard on Westwood/Santa Monica Bl yesterday for HashbarTV.

[Stavros]

The legalisation of drugs seems to send pepole into moral panic, in spite of the fact that at the same time they concede alcohol, tea and coffee are drugs, and that millions take medicine every day. It is probably if not certainly more contentious that same-sex unions -its the one issue most politicians run away from. And, like alcohol, I don't know that legalisation and taxing it would necessarily mean it would go out of fashion; some drugs will always be more popular than others.

[Dino Velvet]

The legalisation of drugs seems to send pepole into moral panic, in spite of the fact that at the same time they concede alcohol, tea and coffee are drugs, and that millions take medicine every day. It is probably if not certainly more contentious that same-sex unions -its the one issue most politicians run away from. And, like alcohol, I don't know that legalisation and taxing it would necessarily mean it would go out of fashion; some drugs will always be more popular than others.

I don't know about legalizing things like coke, meth, heroin, hallucinogens, and other hard drugs. Marijuana is an easy decision. Hell, a lot of old people who had huge moral reservations have learned the benefits of the drug. I worked years in night clubs. I never locked up with any potheads but I dragged plenty of drunks and tweekers out.

It's pretty much legal in California. I paid a $49 charge and talked to a doctor via Skype for 10 minutes and got a 1 year prescription for unlimited quantity. We don't have raving packs of insane pothead mass murderers out here. Many drunks this weekend will slap their wives around or worse.

[Stavros]

Dino you touch on a critical issue. I don't think people have much of a problem with marijuana, although there is a strain called skunk which alarms old timers who used to get high via Morocco and, dare I mention it, Afghanistan. Its the mind-altering and intensely addictive drugs that divide opinion. Cocaine and Heroin were of course legal for years and a case has been made for both with regard to their medicinal properties -paying Afghans to grow poppies for medicine while reducing the overall production so that some Afghans can grow food is one option, although the tomato doesn't get such a good reward as the poppy. Nevertheless, the absinthe once drunk in Paris was a brain-rotter but they dealt with that just as most people avoid bootleg booze even though that is also on sale here. Regulation would raise the quality, lower the price, but you could still make it harder to get heroin by getting users to jump through hoops first, and the tax revenue would be welcome. Critics argue that alcohol is a problem, the dilemma is that they tried to ban that once before and it made things worse. Its not an easy subject, but I think its possible to legalise these things without assuming everyone over the age of 18 is going to rush out and try it all. The worst of it for me is that politicians don't even want to debate it. Terrified of being stigmatized as 'liberal' or worse. But its damaging so many lives, every day; if it was a religion it would be news.

[russtafa]

If you legalise drugs i have no problem with it.But what about all the ice users that clog up the mental health system or junkies that demand support from the health system

[Stavros]

At some point, the theory goes, the use of the more extreme drugs will decline, and the social costs with it; whereas the social costs of tobaccosis and alcoholism are considerable - there has been a debate for years about the success rate of the transitioning strategies which aim to get hard users off by giving them the stuff but in increasingly smaller proportions while they get therapy. You have to weight the social costs of crime against the costs of treatment.