BLU
Active topics
  1. Originally posted by markp91:Okay, I promised Juraj and Ale to tell why I want that Drugs are legalized. I must say; it might be just a Dutch problem, so a lot of you might not give a shit, but anyway:

    5 reasons why drugs should be legal

    1. It costs governements millions of dollars/euros/other money to fight the drugsdealers. WIth the legislation of drugs these costs would dissapear. At some point, somewhere in history, the American gouvernement decided to help Columbia fight the drugsdealers by giving Columbia 7 milliard dollar (!). A reaction of the American professor in economics Robert J. Barro: 'Legalize drugs and they are out of business overnight'. In other words: if drugs would be legalized the worth of the drugs would become very low and the drugsdealers would leave the drugssector. This means less violation and crimes.

    2. It would make people healthier. I can hear you guys think: 'Has he lost his mind?'
    But honestly, if drugs are legalized the governement would be able to check the drugs and only sell the good, quality drugs. The governement would also be able to check how much every person buys and IF a person buys to much, there could be a company who checks if he isn't addicted. It would make using drugs safier.

    3. As some of you might know there are a lot of foreign people coming to Holland to use drugs without being caught and prisoned. They think. If you import drugs into Holland you will be prisoned and that means that our prisons are filling up with (IMO innocent) people. Half of the dutch prisons all filled with drugs-related crimes. As the boss of the court of Maastricht, Mr. Peter Paul Lampe, says: 'I think we should admit that drugs, just like Alcohol, isn't fightable with the law. The fight against drugs annoys the entire court. We don't have time for other cases. There are some really big cases among those.' Our courts have to spend to much time, energie and money in the fight against drugs. Legalizing would mean they have time for murder, violation and other cases again.

    4. The ammount of addicted people in Holland probably wouldn't raise. Even tough you don't get punished here if you use drugs we still have the European average of addicted people. 1,6 people per 1000 in Holland is addicted. In the USA it's a lot higher. That's because our governement gives good information on the subject drugs. We have magazines, internetsites and even lessons on school where they teach us the danger of drugs. In the USA they just say it's forbidden, but nothing more. Drugs get a 'secret status', people don't know what they do. In Holland everyone knows which drugs are dangerous and which not.

    5. And last but not least. Alcohol and Sigarettes are legal, so why not Drugs? Too much alcohol is just as dangerous, maybe even more dangerous, than a bit of drugs. I think everyone must have a choice themselves and I think that a lot of people will learn, by trying, that drugs aren't that fun.

    It might sound like a weird idea, and I know that a lot of you won't agree, but especially for us here in Holland it would be THE solution to empty our prisons and to fight the drugsdealers.

    I hope you liked reading it


    I give a shit Cos drug using is something that affects my country very much
    I kinda agree with the first argument, it could work.
    The second point makes sense, but people would still addicted and destroying their health, with 'good' or 'bad' drugs.
    Our jails are filled up too, but with drugdealers, murderers, thiefs, and a big part of the crimes here are related to drugdealing.
    I'm not sure about the 4th point...IMO, the the amount of addicted would raise, if that happens, the production would raise too, so the drugdealing (legal or ilegal) and that wouldn't solve the ilegal dealing problem.
    I think education would be an efficient solution to this problem. Teach teenagers that all drugs are dangereous, they all do harm to your health, and hope that this education will keep them away from drugs, and then, it'll be like a dominoes effect: less cunsumers mean less production and less dealing, that's obvious. I mean this in a global scale, not just to Holland, ok
  2. This is Nicolas Sarkozy speaking.

  3. Two days, just two days....

    Obama, Obama... Obama, Obama... Obama, Obama...

    I wonder which song will he play when he makes his first speech as the Nov'08 winner... Will he go for Bruce Springsteen's The Rising, or will he make us all very happy going along with City Of Blinding Lights? That would be amazing


  4. amen. there are no good or bad drugs, quality or rotten.....they're all the same....they're bad!


  5. you see, rotten drugs may kill you whitin some days, 'quality' drugs may kill you whitin some weeks, but what's the difference?
  6. Originally posted by Ale91:[..]

    you see, rotten drugs may kill you whitin some days, 'quality' drugs may kill you whitin some weeks, but what's the difference?


    The difference is that, as you mentioned, adultered drugs are much more harmful than mere drugs.
    Adultered heroin for example can kill you immediately, also, the addicted will need much more adultered drugs to get on his level as he would with "clean" stuff, so he'll need more money to get more, which would likely raise his personal crime rate. Also, shared dirty injection needles will spread diseases.
    All this would be minimised with a governmental controlled drug distribution.
    To get back on your point, 'quality' drugs will kill you after a certain time, right. But if you only took these, chances are much bigger that you can live a healthy life after a successful rehab.
  7. I'm just happy to stay off drugs altogether lol.

    Alcohol is about as far as I stretch (because, let's face it, it IS a drug - or more precisely, a poison - just legalised) and I don't really do much in the way of excessive drinking, even as a student.

    I'm pretty anti-illegal drugs etc., hell I can't stand smoking to be perfectly honest, but I'm not entirely sure where I stand for the moment with regard to the legalisation of stuff like heroin and crack etc. I can see the merits of it, but on the same note I'm a hopeless idealist and just wish people would not take them lol...but we don't live in a perfect world, and it's not my place to dictate to other people how to live their lives.
  8. Originally posted by Ale91:[..]
    I give a shit Cos drug using is something that affects my country very much
    I kinda agree with the first argument, it could work.
    The second point makes sense, but people would still addicted and destroying their health, with 'good' or 'bad' drugs.
    Our jails are filled up too, but with drugdealers, murderers, thiefs, and a big part of the crimes here are related to drugdealing.
    I'm not sure about the 4th point...IMO, the the amount of addicted would raise, if that happens, the production would raise too, so the drugdealing (legal or ilegal) and that wouldn't solve the ilegal dealing problem.
    I think education would be an efficient solution to this problem. Teach teenagers that all drugs are dangereous, they all do harm to your health, and hope that this education will keep them away from drugs, and then, it'll be like a dominoes effect: less cunsumers mean less production and less dealing, that's obvious. I mean this in a global scale, not just to Holland, ok




    Originally posted by Ale91:[..] you see, rotten drugs may kill you whitin some days, 'quality' drugs may kill you whitin some weeks, but what's the difference?


    I think you are forgetting here that there's a difference between soft drugs and hard drugs. Legalising hard drugs, like heroin or cocain would of course be ridiculous. The only people you might want to give it to is those who are already addicted, to prevent them from committing crimes in order to get it, to prevent them from seeing their dealer, and to have control over them so you can make them cut back on the amount of the particular drug they take, which will make them kick it. Then you also know who was a former addictive, and then you can help them better if they get addicted again.

    But anyway, I'm sure that Mark doesn't mean he wants to legalise all drugs, but just soft drugs: particularly weed and hashish, made out of cannabis. In Holland they are already sort of legal: it's legal for any person over 18 years old to buy it, and it's legal for a coffeeshop (that's how we call a place where you can buy cannabis) to sell 5 grams to a person on one day. The only thing that isn't legal is to cultivate drugs and sell them to coffeshops. This makes for a very double standard: our policy now is that you can buy drugs, coffeshops can sell them, but they can't legally get them. So the drugs should just magically appear every morning in the coffeeshops. This makes no sense of course. Because of this policy, the coffeeshops don't know very well who they are getting their drugs from or what the quality of the drugs is, because they can't buy it openly. This sometimes makes the drugs of a bad quality, which IS worse for people. You need to use weed or hashish a couple of times a week to get addicted to it. It can still happen of course, but most people who use cannabis, don't use it that much. But weed or hash with all kinds of stuff in it that doesn't belong their, which cultivators just put in it to make more money, is generally bad for your health. Before the police actively fought against cultivators, coffeeshops all had their own permanent supplier which they knew and trusted, which made the quality of the cannabis way better; there was almost no drugs which had all that bad stuff in it. But of course the police can't just let the cultivators do what they want, because most of them are criminals and they go really far to eliminate their competitors. This situation leaves for only two options:

    1. Outlaw all soft drugs: no one can buy drugs, all coffeeshops will get closed, and the police can fight the cultivators even harder. This seems like a good option, but it really isn't. The legality of cannabis has been around for almost forty years in Holland, it has genuinely gotten a part of our culture. If people suddenly couldn't buy them any more, they wouldn't put up with it. A lot of people would buy them illegally, because they know they're still here. This would only make the problems worse. And, just like Mark said, in other countries the addiction rate is higher because soft drugs are illegal. If soft drugs are legal the step from getting them to getting hard drugs is a very big one. If you just want to try soft drugs, want to know for yourself what it's all about, you just buy it in a coffeeshop. You just use it a couple of times, and when you're older you're wise enough to quit. You may get addicted, but only if you use it really often. It's less addictive than alcohol. Anyway, you don't just suddenly use hard drugs, because you'd have to get in touch with a dealer for that. There are really few people who do that, because you know that you're doing illegal things, and most people want to stay out of that. So mostly the usage of soft drugs remains innocent. But if soft drugs are illegal, people also want to try them. But in order to get them, they'd have to get in touch with a dealer. When they've bought soft drugs a couple of times, that very same dealer is probably going to offer them hard drugs. The step from getting soft drugs to getting hard drugs is then a very small one, which causes for much more addicts of hard drugs. So if you just want to try cannabis, it most likely stays with that if it's legal, while if it's illegal, the temptation of much more dangerous and addictive hard drugs is bigger.

    2. Legalise the cultivation of cannabis, BUT only to certain small companies, owned or strictly regulated by the government, so they can control the quality, the amount and the price of the drugs. If problems develop, they can always raise the prices or decrease the amount, and offer people help, while the quality of the drugs always remains good. At the same time the police can actively fight the illegal and criminal cultivators, but that probably wouldn't even be necessary, because it will no longer be a good business to illegally sell cannabis. So therefore I think the best solution is to legalise cannabis.
  9. @ Ale: I partly agree with you. First of all: I know that Latin America is also a drugs heaven, but since I don't know a lot of your system, laws etc. I just kept to Holland
    Second: I wasn't really sure about the 4th either...the only way to see what happens is testing it of course
    But I'm not sure if it's true that ALL drugs are harmful. There are a lot of people who use drugs as medicine. People who get a letter by the doctor that they should get some drug at the pharmacy. So not all drugs are poisoning, etc. Softdrugs are quite safe and getting poisoned by those is really hard lol...I'm not saying that it's good, but they are not that bad. If governements explain the difference between soft- and harddrugs THEN it would be safe(r). Or else you get American situations:
    Teacher: 'Drugs are bad, just don't take them!'
    Student is badass, likes being naughty, takes a dangerous harddrug OR too much at once and gets poisoned/goes death.
    With good info that could be history...
  10. Originally posted by RDB92 Interesting, well-spoken story


    Couldn't said it better,
    Sorry if I wasn't clear about the only softdrugs legalizing

    BTW If anyone likes to know: I probably wouldn't take the drugs if I could lol...

  11. Originally posted by markp91:@ Ale: I partly agree with you. First of all: I know that Latin America is also a drugs heaven, but since I don't know a lot of your system, laws etc. I just kept to Holland
    Second: I wasn't really sure about the 4th either...the only way to see what happens is testing it of course
    But I'm not sure if it's true that ALL drugs are harmful. There are a lot of people who use drugs as medicine. People who get a letter by the doctor that they should get some drug at the pharmacy. So not all drugs are poisoning, etc. Softdrugs are quite safe and getting poisoned by those is really hard lol...I'm not saying that it's good, but they are not that bad. If governements explain the difference between soft- and harddrugs THEN it would be safe(r). Or else you get American situations:
    Teacher: 'Drugs are bad, just don't take them!'
    Student is badass, likes being naughty, takes a dangerous harddrug OR too much at once and gets poisoned/goes death.
    With good info that could be history...


    I wouldn't call it heaven lol
    Well, what your doctor say you should get is probably what you need, instead of drugs (even the soft ones) that you can perfectly live without.
    But, you know what: RDB92 got great arguments and he's almost changing my mind about this

  12. Originally posted by Ale91:[..]

    I wouldn't call it heaven lol
    Well, what your doctor say you should get is probably what you need, instead of drugs (even the soft ones) that you can perfectly live without.
    But, you know what: RDB92 got great arguments and he's almost changing my mind about this




    Thanks
    I do believe that soft drugs should be legalised in Holland, because it's our only real option and it's been legal to buy here for such a long time that people are really used to it. I also think that it will work in other western countries. But if in a country like Brazil soft drugs became legal from one day to another, a lot of poor people with problems could easily use them to forget their misery a bit. And that is of course absolutely not what anybody wants: a whole generation addicted to drugs. I think that in order to make legalisation work, you should first try to tackle all the poverty and crime problems before you make such a step, otherwise it could seriously backfire.
Make sure to not miss out on any U2 news and updates: follow us on Twitter, Instagram and like us on Facebook.
Make sure to not miss out on any U2 news and updates: follow us on Twitter, Instagram and like us on Facebook.
Make sure to not miss out on any U2 news and updates: follow us on Twitter, Instagram and like us on Facebook.
Make sure to not miss out on any U2 news and updates: follow us on Twitter, Instagram and like us on Facebook.