Uk General Election 8Th June 2017

Labour has just polled its highest percentage in this electoral campaign putting them at 32 to Tories 45. Corbyn makes a good move in playing to win this election. It's highly unlikely that he will but there could be some useful damage limitation if Labour can convince people of the moral bankruptcy of May's administration.

 

I'm hoping for a hung parliament and a progressive alliance.

All the other parties except UKIP are against the tories, so it's time this country had proportional representation.

The tories won in 2015 with only 24% of the electorate vote! That's 18% of the whole population.

That's not democracy.

 

A progressive alliance would be good. We'll see.

 

If Labour, lib dems, greens, Paid Cymru and the SNP formed a coalition now we'd lock the tories out forever.

 

Yeah I agree, I'm not the biggest fan of a lot cannabis advocates, but I think the Lib Dems deserve a round of applause for bringing a substance control issue into the debate around general election time. It's relevant in as much as having it be debated in a public forum (especially In GE TV debates) is a HUGE step towards legalisation.

And yeah, shaft the cunts.

 

The Greens have been calling for such an alliance for months. Also for proportional representation. And votes for 16 year olds - after all, it's their future May & Co want to piss down the drain.

To me it seems like insanity for progressive parties to stand against each other. And FPTP means I really have to vote for my second choice, Labour, because a vote for the Greens would simply be wasted without PR.

 

They're talking about legalising cannabis, not smack.

The cannabis debate isn't about substance abuse.

 

Aye, that's the main problem I have with it.

Still, it's potentially a step in the right direction. Even if it is just weed, debating a substance control issue in a general election is a good start.

 

Just for clarity's sake, do you mean that a wider de-criminalization of drugs should be on the agenda?

 

Ah sorry, to clarify FUCK YES

While I support the full legalization of cannabis, Some of the arguments used by the pro-cannabis lobby are actually detrimental to the eventual decriminalization of so-called "hard" drugs.

So while I welcome a public debate on cannabis decriminalization from one of the major parties as a potential first step towards (what I feel is much, much more important) legislation decriminalizing things like heroin and coke, I'm wary that the manner of the debates, if conducted in the way that some of them have been up to now, may actually make that all-important future legislation harder to pass.

I've noticed that there has been a slight modification of the rhetoric around substance control from those in favor of decriminalization, which I think means that they are starting to think long-term. Which is great.

 

I agree with hard drugs being legalised as well, and controlled to reduce substance abuse and the harms from poor quality.

 

Right you are, think we may have got our wires crossed back there.

 

Sadly it's not likely to happen though. I could have done with a bag of smack to help with my pain when I fucked my back a couple of weeks ago, or just some nice medical cannabis and some opium. Because, you know, that's what it's for.

Instead, I couldn't get to a doctor because I live in the sticks, there were no doctors at the A&E dept in my nearest town where I took the bus to. All I could get was over the counter paramol, paracetomol and a tiny little bit of dihydrocodeine to help with the excrutiating pain I suffered for 2 weeks when I was sitting down or lying down, so I didn't get addicted.

Why the fuck can't we just buy our own natural painkillers in these circumstance? I couldn't get the pain relief I needed, because of the stupid drugs laws. I can't imagine what some people must go through who need pain relief all the time and can't get it because of the tory bastards and their idiotic laws.

 

I'd be in general agreement there. We need to look at all drugs, and the different issues surrounding them in a rational way. Prohibition has failed miserably.

Maybe the legalization of cannabis though would be a good first step. Perhaps there are issues that I'm not aware of or not taking into account. Could you give an example of some pro cannabis rhetoric that's detrimental for future drug reform? I'm not saying it's not there - just that I can't quite see what you mean. Is it that cannabis is 'good' other drugs 'bad' in some arguments? Or something else?

 

The thing to bear in mind about Drug reform is that the evidence is very much in: prohibition doesn't work, a programme of legalisation and decriminilasation does. The key battle that needs to be won is in the court of public opinion, so rehtoric really is important. Cannabis legalisation is a step in the right direction but it doesn't make further legislation inevitable (or even necessarily more likely), which a lot of drug reformists tend to imply. Cannabis legalisation is not a gateway drug (pun very much intended) to wide-ranging drug reform. There are plenty of places with legal weed that still pursue hard drug prohibition, in fact this is fairly common.

Examples of "Bad" rhetoric from the cannabis reform advocates largely falls into two camps:

Firstly, there's rhetoric that just helps no-one: the naturalistic argument ("It grows out of the ground therefore It's good, now excuse me while I munch on this Deadly Nightshade") and the obsession with finding and promoting "cannabis is a miracle cure for everything" studies, which then turn out to have been conducted in some hippie's basement. These talking points used to feature heavily and now don't at all, which is great.

What concerns me is the second kind of rhetioric which falls under the banners of minimal risk and personal liberty. The arguments being in a nutshell "It doesn't do any harm" and "It should be my choice what I put in my body", the first is reasonable and a good way of pointing out governmental hypocrisy in substance control (by comparing weed to alchohol and tobacco, for example), and the second, while a sound argument, isn't particularly helpful because that's not the criteria by which we judge all other potentially harmful substances, I agree with it (I suspect many do) but It's not going to fly. It is, however, a compelling argument to get people on side, so it serves it's purpose with the public.

These arguments may work for weed but they don't work for other "hard" drugs. By framing the conversation around the issue of "harm" we have effectively excluded these substances (where harm is real and very apparent) from the conversation. But more to the point cannabis reform advocates have lost the iniative for the wider reform movement by adopting a defensive stance, justifying the actions of individual users, when the only way to achieve meaningful change is to go on the offensive, challenging lawmakers and confronting them with the realities of their disastrous policies. The argument that wins us decriminalisation for heroin is never going to be "It doesn't do any harm" it's going to be "It does harm, but that harm is either magnified a thousand fold or created wholesale by your policies."

as I said above, I have more recently seen changes in the drug reform rhetoric that are very encouraging.

For one thing, we've moved away from "weed doesn't do as much harm as these other substances" and towards "Weed does harm because of super-skunk strains that have become prevalent because of prohibition" (This is probably the most important shift, not defending users, attacking the law.)

We've also seen a big rise in people talking about the human cost of weed prohibition in terms of people going to prison for laughable offences, waste of police time and resources, waste of public money without public support- all these arguments are great because they work as well for weed as they will (hopefully) later down the line for other substances.

What we're seeing here is the groundwork for meaningful drug reform policies of the future, the key is to not let the advocates bottle it now that they have a better platform and more attention by falling back on tried and tested arguments that centre around issues of harm, which could win us the cannabis reform battle, but lose us the war.

 

Interesting points there - I mean the entire post not just the bit I quoted.

To me it seems that the issues around different drugs are different. I am generally in favour of wholesale decriminalization, but probably for reasons that differ from drug to drug. However, I have a horse in the race. I smoked cannabis for a long time and really don't think it did any harm. I have also used psychedelics in the past, which although they got me into trouble with the law, I feel did me a great deal of good.

You may find it unhelpful in the wider movement towards a comprehensive de-criminalization, but I see an issue of cognitive liberty in that particular case - which would apply to cannabis as well. I suppose at a stretch it could be applied to everything.

Never really got into heroin or coke - but I've known people who did, and in the case of heroin users seen the depths to which their habit will drive them mainly because of the cost of illegal smack. It's the prohibition that leads to much of the problem we see around opiates. Remove the prohibition and a lot of the problems would not occur.

The argument that cannabis is a plant and therefore must be OK is obviously bullshit. The idea that it'a a kind of universal panacea too. But there do seem to be people who get relief of symptoms using it, and some of the research that's happening is very interesting.

Anyway I get your overall point that if we focus only on cannabis legalization, we risk missing the boat in introducing much wider reforms and finally ending for good the pointless war on drugs. On the other hand, I do think cannabis should be legalized forthwith - I'd much rather that was part of a total package of reform.

 

What I'm after is a system in which what are usually termed "soft" drugs such as cannabis, shrooms (I'd probably even class ecstasy in this category, as long as very serious education about the risks of seratonin depletion was implemented) are legalised, regulated, taxed and sold. "Hard" drugs with addictive qualities and deleterious effects on health should be decriminalised, and provided only on a prescription basis by psychiatrists, provided in safe injecting rooms with clean needles and monitored by nursing staff. Basically, the Portuguese system.

I have tried most drugs that would be classed as soft, as well as cocaine (no heroin). I have experienced negative effects from some (including weed. In fact, mainly weed and mephedrone.) but I still favour legalisation. The evidence is overwhelming. We only need to look to 1982 on the Wirral to see the staggering effects that heroin decriminalization of this kind can have: https://health.spectator.co.uk/the-case-for-prescription-heroin/ Stop the people dying first, then we have to get into the nitty gritty of educating and challenging people's ideas on the nature and psychological mechanisms of addiction. Long road.

Anyhoo, yeah it's a really important time for drug reform in this country, and I want to see them seize the initiative.

 

I'm pretty much in agreement. I see issues that would have to be looked at carefully around the legalization of psychedelics for different reasons than with MDMA, but I certainly think legalization is the goal. Medicalization is probably the best approach with 'hard' drugs.

Anyway, there are a lot of issues here but maybe we've talked long enough about it all on this particular thread. I'd like to continue the conversation though, so maybe we should have a thread dedicated to drug policy reform.

 

The Tories lead has been cut from 44 to Labour's 35 in a recent poll, as potential voters balk at May's proposed changes to social care. In another poll 47 percent of people expressed dislike of these changes, which would see many old people having to sell their houses to fund care. Another shocking fact is that under Tory policy to scrap free school meals, around 900 thousand children from the poorest of families would lose out.

Do us a favour.Vote Labour.

 

It's almost like the tories want to lose.

Maybe they can't handle Brexit and think if they lose to Labour they might halt the process and then they can blame Labour for going against the will of the people and get reelected in a non-Brexit universe in 5 years.

Theresa May can't handle the job. The economy is in serious crisis and the only way to turn things around is to emply radical left wing Labour policies, which the tories can't do as it's against their principles of stealing from the poor while giving the rich massive tax breaks via Philip May's offshore tax havens.