Sassenach wrote:

Generally, yes. But there will be some substances that we don't want to be publicly available, and will end up being illegal - however desirable they may be to obtain. It is a question of balance, and we appear to have the balance largely wrong at the moment.

Well yes, of course. I certainly wouldn't advocate legalising heroin or crack cocaine for example. I don't actually know what PCP is or what it does to you so I can't really comment on that, but from what I've heard it's pretty nasty stuff.

PCP alters one's thinking (hallucinations) and also makes one impervious to pain. So, one frequently sees things that are not there or perceives things wrongly. A person on PCP can be shot, beaten, etc., and all of that will have little effect. It can take 4 or 5 officers to come close to matching the strength of a person on PCP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phencyclidine

These three drugs are far and away the most popular substances around, if there were a sensibly regulated legal market for them I tend to think it would crowd out the other, riskier substances.

I'd put money on that. Some people just want to "try" things. Why does anyone still experiment with LSD? Heroin?

For anyone who thinks Marijuana should be legal, I get it. However, if you've ever seen anyone try to drive while stoned . . . not pretty. The more legal drugs there are, the more high drivers we will have.

I fully agree that driving when stoned is extremely dangerous. In fact I've done it myself back in the days when I was young and very irresponsible. It scared me quite a bit and I've never done it since.

That said though, your theory that we'd get a lot more stoned drivers is predicated on an assumption that the number of people getting getting stoned would suddenly jump upwards if it were legalised, and I'm not so sure that's likely to be the case. Getting hold of marijuana is trivially simple already. If I wanted to buy some this evening I could probably sort it within an hour or so, and I haven't been a stoner for years. I'm sceptical about the theory that there are millions of people out there who would suddenly take up smoking dope if the law were to change. If you're inclined to do it then you're probably already doing it.

You should also bear in mind that we currently don't see any great social stigma attached to driving when stoned. It's not exactly seen as a good thing of course, but it tends not to be discussed at all. Drink driving is now the subject of immense social pressure which has been hugely effective in suppressing it. Were dope to become legal the same would start to happen there as well, and this would certainly offset the potential hazards.

Sassenach wrote:That said though, your theory that we'd get a lot more stoned drivers is predicated on an assumption that the number of people getting getting stoned would suddenly jump upwards if it were legalised, and I'm not so sure that's likely to be the case. Getting hold of marijuana is trivially simple already. If I wanted to buy some this evening I could probably sort it within an hour or so, and I haven't been a stoner for years. I'm sceptical about the theory that there are millions of people out there who would suddenly take up smoking dope if the law were to change. If you're inclined to do it then you're probably already doing it.

Not exactly what I said. I didn't say "millions." I think it is inarguable that if you remove all penalties, more people will engage in a given activity. If it is legal, people are more likely to smoke. If they are more likely to smoke, they are more likely to smoke stoned.

One stoned driver more is too many.

Doctor Fate wrote:For anyone who thinks Marijuana should be legal, I get it. However, if you've ever seen anyone try to drive while stoned . . . not pretty. The more legal drugs there are, the more high drivers we will have.

We already have this issue with alcohol. That's why we have drink driving laws (and already DUI covers other intoxicants), and breath- / sobriety- / blood-tests with legal limits.

The issue a lot of the time with drink driving has been that it has been seen as socially acceptable and poorly enforced by traffic police and courts (especially in more remote areas). Over time in the UK, and more slowly in the US as far as I can see, that has changed for the better.

This is what I mean by legalisation and regulation - legalise marijuana on a par with tobacco and alchol, and regulate it as appropriate (so you can't smoke it where you can't smoke tobacco, and stoned-driving is dealt with in a similar way to drunk-driving). Improving the policing and enforcement of drink-drive laws, and adding to the social stigma of driving while drunk would be a decent aim in itself.

sass

If you're inclined to do it then you're probably already doing it.

The experience in Portugal bears this out... well actualy indcates that abuse is cut in half.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/20 ... -portugal/

“Health experts in Portugal said Friday that Portugal’s decision 10 years ago to decriminalise drug use and treat addicts rather than punishing them is an experiment that has worked.

“There is no doubt that the phenomenon of addiction is in decline in Portugal,” said Joao Goulao, President of the Institute of Drugs and Drugs Addiction, a press conference to mark the 10th anniversary of the law.

The number of addicts considered “problematic” — those who repeatedly use “hard” drugs and intravenous users — had fallen by half since the early 1990s, when the figure was estimated at around 100,000 people, Goulao said.

Other factors had also played their part however, Goulao, a medical doctor added.

“This development can not only be attributed to decriminalisation but to a confluence of treatment and risk reduction policies.”

If we want to be strictly fair here it should be pointed out that drug use has also fallen in other European countries recently, so it may in part simply be reflective of a wider social trend. Certainly the decline in Portugal has been much greater though.