Drugs drugs everywhere, and not a cop to blink...

a reply to: sapien82
No pay rise for 10 years?!
You public sector then? A decade on the same pay when everything has become more expensive, that's harsh.
Wonder if we're gonna end up with mass strikes again, certainly less cops around to deal with that these days.

a reply to: CornishCeltGuy

Aye mate ten years, no pay rise in line with inflation, they gave us a 1% pay rise each year, but PCS reject it each time, and the government give us it despite us declining!

I think there are really tough times ahead
althought PCS just won a landslide legal case against UK government and won 3 million in damages!
So we can use that for other legal cases.

The legislation for Unions was changed so we need the 50% majority turn out and then the vote for the strike before we can actually take industrial action!

Tories hate unions !

a reply to: sapien82
That's harsh as man, think how much gas and electric has gone up since then!
Worse for you guys as you get it cold, rare to see frost here, still haven't put my heating on yet and it's nearly the end of October...winter is coming though.
I can't imagine how someone say living on £73 a week ESA can afford food and heating, that's even if they get all their rent and council tax covered by the local authority. A tenner a day for food, toiletries, gas and electric. At least working folk only need the heating on in the morning and evening, think sick/injured folk shivering at home all day.
No wonder homeless folk spend a fiver on Spice to just escape and go zombie from it all, it's tragic.

a reply to: CornishCeltGuy

Wonder if we're gonna end up with mass strikes again, certainly less cops around to deal with that these days.

And then we'll see the subtle but gradual introduction of private police forces.
And the usual suspects will all have vested interests in these private police forces.

Public sector work is becoming increasingly unattractive for anyone wanting a career, which is a disgrace as many of them are highly qualified and well intentioned.

We are careering headlong towards UKplc, a modern day Victorianesque society....the sad thing is that the alternatives are equally frightening.

Brexit should have been the ideal opportunity for us to start the reform process that we so urgently need....instead I'm afraid it may prove quite the opposite.

a reply to: Freeborn
It's already happening through the backdoor organically anyway Private security patrolling streets I'm surprised my rich neighbours haven't called for it in the residents association. I won't pay a penny to it, and I won't be explaining myself to an SIA badge if I'm about my business in the street.
It is the slippery slope with the savage cuts in Police, PCSO's, and Street Wardens, but I have massive issues with private SIA badges patrolling the public highway.

The illegality of drugs makes it bad. It creates a culture of sneakiness, where people get a thrill from getting around the law and proving to themselves that they're dangerous cool rebels. At least in their own minds.

But when it's legal and regulated like alcohol and nicotine, it loses its cache. It's just becomes something normal ordinary people do and it doesn't make them cooler or more dangerous. It just relaxes them. People forget that in the old days, coc aine used to be the drug of choice for little old ladies who wanted a pick-me-up.

The police shouldn't be involved with enforcing some arcane law that tells you what you can or can't do with your own body. As long as they don't hurt anyone else, people should be allowed to poison themselves as much as they want.

a reply to: Blue Shift
It would mean 'clean' doses if it was bought through licensed pharmacy stores, would also be a good way for the NHS to fund the lack of rehab and addiction services, demand would be huge for middle classes with coc aine, so the people who hold down well paid jobs would in effect be paying for those non functioning addicts.
Nobody has to deal with criminals and there would be less deaths from dirty batches.

I'm all for the government to do it, or be like Portugal, don't prosecute users, assist them if their addiction has become problematic. The 'war' on drugs doesn't work which is probably why cops in my area have given up on it, certainly when it comes to personal possession.
It really is almost de facto legal here, just because our cops are struggling enough with real crime, like violence etc.

originally posted by: CornishCeltGuy
a reply to: Blue Shift
It really is almost de facto legal here, just because our cops are struggling enough with real crime, like violence etc.

That's the real motivation to legalize it. It's too expensive to fight, when there are other real crimes that need attention. The ironic part of the whole scenario is that legalizing the drugs and making them clean and affordable would make a lot of the other crime go away, too. If you can get your dose without having to break into some old lady's house and steal her silverware, everybody wins.

Yes, help the people who can't control themselves with it. And if they want to kill themselves, put them in an old army base and let them do it with a little dignity where they won't hurt anyone else. My ex-wife had a great idea of putting the hardcore addicts in a facility where they get all their favorite drugs for free, along with a safe, clean place to sleep and get hot meals and minimal medical care. You can stay as long as you like, or until you die, and if you want to leave, all you have to do is pass a drug test clean three times in a row. If you can stay clean in a place where your drugs are free, you'll probably safe to enter society.

Anyway, as much as people will say that drug addiction is a real thing, it's actually extremely rare that somebody's body will get in a state where it has to have the drugs to be "well." The real problem is drug culture, where a user's friends and life are all centered around doing this thing.

One of the most enlightening social studies ever done on drugs dealt with how American soldiers fared when they went home after being in Vietnam and shooting heroin and doing the hardest drugs on earth. Turns out that most of them did okay. They just stopped doing it and never did it again. This indicates that the social structure and situation is much more powerful than the drug itself, and stopping the drug abuse is really more a matter of changing the social structure than the physical distribution and consumption of the drug itself.

originally posted by: Blue Shift
One of the most enlightening social studies ever done on drugs dealt with how American soldiers fared when they went home after being in Vietnam and shooting heroin and doing the hardest drugs on earth. Turns out that most of them did okay. They just stopped doing it and never did it again. This indicates that the social structure and situation is much more powerful than the drug itself, and stopping the drug abuse is really more a matter of changing the social structure than the physical distribution and consumption of the drug itself.

Massively agree, I see the same faces getting caught stealing from stores to fund their heroin, then after a month or so jail they are kicked out with no place to live and fall back into the same squat houses or whatever to do their drug again.
It is a revolving door and without breaking the cycle it will never change.
Free drugs would stop the crime for sure, but it will take a brave government to suggest that.
Right now with UK government cuts I only see things getting worse as they have done over the last decade.

a reply to: CornishCeltGuy

The associated crime that goes with the illegal trade of drugs goes in many ways to justify the illegality of drugs.
Therefore if it wasn't illegal much of the associated crime would go away.

Mankind has used mind altering substances since the moment they climbed out of trees.
Prohibition of something so engrained in society will never, ever work.

a reply to: CornishCeltGuy

Cops used to bother people in NY. There has been a recent declaration by the NYPD that they will no longer arrest people for smoking pot in public.

The judges have been throwing out EVERY pot smoking-related case for a couple years and the police finally folded. It was SUCH A WASTE of money and people's time.

The cops only ever cared so as to check people for warrants, especially since they lost the stop and frisk policy.

Even before that cops had a hard time justifying a weed arrest. The public is just tired of their endless BS.

Crime is WAY DOWN and they keep running social experiments that cost us money and freedom. I guess they see we reached a tipping point.

"If you are going to arrest me, then I will make it worth it"....when jail is a relative punishment to a populace, the government loses big time, non-stop.

originally posted by: Freeborn
Prohibition of something so engrained in society will never, ever work.

And it is massively ingrained in our societies, easier to score opiate painkillers on the blackmarket for me than to get a doctor appointment. Old people sell their excess, 'silver dealers' we call them, Tramadol, Codeine, Prozac, whatever you want.
The NHS is the biggest dealer in town so why not let them make a profit from selling recreational drugs as well. That income could fund rehab and addiction services easily.
If the local health centre pharmacy was selling clean products to working people at a 'for profit' price there would be queues out the door every weekend.

a reply to: tadaman
That's interesting the NYPD has announced smoking in public won't be arrested.
Cops are the same here but for obvious reasons if you are by a school or playpark etc they will either confiscate or arrest you, and rightly so.
US cops seem much more resourced than ours when you include all the federal agents you have as well, including guns on all of them, if they can't win the war on drugs then nobody can...even that crazy south American guy who is killing dealers isn't gonna win, someone always replaces them.

a reply to: CornishCeltGuy

Nicotine vaporisers might look like a small firearm in some countries. Oops.

a reply to: LightSpeedDriver
Yeah, thank # our cops only really have crap extendable batons, the thought of being shot by a jumpy cop seems crazy to me.
...the old truncheons were worse than the new batons, I've had both lol

a reply to: CornishCeltGuy

The police will arrest you if smoking and driving or if you are in a park or near a school. Things like that.

You can still catch a whiff of pot smoke just walking down the street in Manhattan. Brooklyn and Queens, pffft. All day long.

I've noticed more older dealers here too. They are all pretty good and non-violent, which is why they are making it to old age IMO.

The NYPD is about 50 thousand strong. 20 thousand more auxiliary units more or less.

The police want to justify MORE cops while crime is down. The city wants to take that money and grow.

We have TOO MANY LEOS. When they all retire we will face hard times.

They had cake and ate it for a while now.

a reply to: tadaman
wow, I looked at the stat's, you have way more LEO than we have per capita, yet still people use recreational drugs, seems like the law is a money maker in your world, they are just referees in mine and only whistle a penalty if your behaviour affects others...stealing etc.
Our cops could only dream of your numbers, and they only carry lame sticks lol

a reply to: CornishCeltGuy

You ever thought of forming the Justice league of ATS I was laughing about that this morning

originally posted by: Blue Shift
The ironic part of the whole scenario is that legalizing the drugs and making them clean and affordable would make a lot of the other crime go away, too. If you can get your dose without having to break into some old lady's house and steal her silverware, everybody wins.

That happened in Portugal, specially close to areas they called "drug supermarkets", where most of the drug addicts went to buy their doses.

When drug addiction started being considered a health problem and drugs were decriminalized many people followed the recommendations and went to methadone centres to treat their addiction. I had one on my street and I was used to see the drug addicts coming every morning to get their treatment. I also saw them getting better and better, until I stopped seeing them. There were just one or two that took a longer time get cured, and I once heard one conversation in which one guy was saying to the drug addict that he shouldn't drink alcoholic drinks, as they messed up the treatment. After some more months I also stopped seeing that drug addict, and they ended up closing the methadone centre for lack of "customers".

As soon as they started their treatments (and if they were honest to their intentions) they would stop needing the money and most of them stopped with their "alternative" methods of getting money, like petty theft or, for those more law-abiding, "helping" people park their cars. Without that the crime rate went down, as did the spreading of AIDS (Portugal had one of the highest or even the highest rate of new AIDS cases in Europe).

With all that we stopped having a problem that took resources (police, health care, etc.) and got new contributing members of society, that, once they got jobs, started paying to the Social Security like everybody else, so they turned into a source of income.

a reply to: stonerwilliam
Haha no, I'm just some bloke with opinions!
ArMaP's comments below yours make total sense though, why does the rest of the EU not follow their example which so obviously works.
...I just got back from the shop, passed dealers on my way down as usual, but on my way back up two tourists needed directions back to their hotel. The quickest way was in shady back alleys and steps the same way I was going but I couldn't do it, they were old, so I gave them the long distance main street directions lol
They probably would have been safe though, frightening off tourist money is frowned upon here big time.

EDIT again
I also didn't want their idea of our Utopia to be smashed by seeing discarded needles and rubbish in the back alleys and shady steps. Stuff tourists are not supposed to see.