Drugs in Shetland

[abraxas]

Whereas the production, supply and/or use of Heroin is merely a jolly wheeze and should be legalised the sooner the better, dontcha think?

[Medziotojas]

The question we need to ask is, "Do we want our children to grow up in a society where drugs are legal?"

 

I know this may sway some people in the other direction, but the key has to be in education. Drugs are here to stay and the choice will always be there.

 

I would hope - but nobody knows what will be - that my children will make responsible decisions when given the facts about drugs.

 

If they do choose to partake then I would rather it was done responsibly and they weren't getting high off some horse tranquilizers supplied by Magnie McMuggins down the road.

 

I do not use (illegal) drugs personally, but I once was a teenager growing up in the isles, and I have partaken. I was in some predicaments (through bad chemicals) as a result, and I don't want to see my children going through the same thing.

 

As I say, the illegal or legal nature of drugs has nothing to do with the choices that surround you when you are young, vulnerable and believe that you are invincible.

[Medziotojas]

...or we could just bury our heads in the sand and become a Police State. Prohibition was a resounding success! All the surviving heads could make a buck or two!

[Ghostrider]

@abraxas,

 

Not sure where you pulled your "6000" from, and "large" is a purely relative term. All we've got is an official announcement that an amount claimed to have a street value of £xxxx has been seized. Who's valuation that figure is based on, we can only assume, and on what information that assumed person based their valuation, we don't know. If you feel confident enough to start quoting exact figures for the number of hits that lot would have yielded, or indeed relative terms, from such scant information, good luck to you, but don't be surprised if there's a strong reluctance by some to simply take your word for it.

 

I am "dismissive", because, as I have already said, I fail to see what real difference has been made. If there was enough here already to cover the market until a replacement lot arrives, no one at street level will notice a thing. And even if there's a temporary shortage, how long will that last, days, a week or so? I doubt it will be longer before some enterprising (or desperate) individual fills the gap.

 

Okay, *if* there is a temporary shortage, "maybe" one or two folk are discouraged from trying it, maybe someone doesn't die because a bad batch got taken out. Of course those, if they are the case, are positives, and to be welcomed, but in the big picture they're very minor ones. They're also purely hypotheticals, and like any hypothetical any other possible future outcome has equal odds of happening. Maybe no-one would have been tempted to try for the first time, maybe there was nothing wrong with it, and no-one would have OD'd. Maybe the batch that got hauled in by express as a replacement the buyer took a chance, and less care in sourcing than usual, in their rush to capture as much of the market and higher price as they could, and ends up getting a bad batch that messes with many. The list could go on almost indefinitely, but you get where I'm going....the probability of something worse happening as a direct result of a seizure is equal to any other outcome.

 

Comparing drunk driving with taking drugs is not comparing like with like. There is ample evidence, and only minimal dissention, that the use of any mind altering substance, by it drugs, alcohol, so called prescription "medcine", etc, impairs an individual's ability to competently handle machinery. Simply taking a prohibited drug does not necessarily prevent an individual from functioning within acceptable boundaries elsewhere, there are numerous references to such on this thread, and the fact that at any one given time a very significant percentage of the population are not being detained somewhere as "incapable" simply through smoking a joint or popping a pill tends to back that belief up.

[Medziotojas]

Aha, prescription drugs! ...or the odd joint! Can you see the line? _________

 

Now, how do you police that?

 

No.. I mean really?

[KOYAANISQATSI]

use of Heroin is merely a jolly wheeze and should be legalised the sooner the better

 

Well done abraxas, looks like you've finaly made a statement that can be backed up by somebody sensible.

Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom told the BBC Wales' political talk show Dragon's Eye on February 5 that current drug laws "do more harm than good" and he was prepared to see heroin sold openly.

"Heroin is a very, very addictive substance, extremely addictive, far more so than nicotine, but it's not very, very dangerous. It's perfectly possible to lead a normal life for a full life span and hold down a job while being addicted to heroin," Brunstrom told the BBC. "I don't advocate anybody abusing their body with drugs but clearly some want to. What would be wrong with making heroin available on the state for people who wanted to abuse their bodies? What is wrong with that?"

Legalizing drugs would destroy a multi-million dollar criminal trade, said Brunstrom, adding that he has received "massive" public support for his views. "The question is actually not 'am I prepared to see the government selling heroin on the street corner or through the pharmacy?', but 'why would we not want to do that? What is wrong with that?'" he said. "It's a very challenging question. I don't know what society's answer is, but my answer is that is what we should be doing because our current policy is causing more harm than good."

As for public support for change, he said: "I've had overwhelming support at the very least for a no-holds barred, all-options considered, total review of the drugs laws. There is an enormous number of people of all age groups and all sections of our society who are ready to see a root and branch change to our drugs laws."

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/324/brunstrom.shtml

 

International drugs policy is governed by the United Nations, but its agenda has been very largely that of an American-led global war on drugs, with proscription and punishment as the mainstays. A worthless evangelical policy, based on the fundamentalist creed that drugs are somehow intrinsically ‘evil’, and that all drug users are damned as criminals, morally and legally. This whole edifice fails to recognise reality on the ground; and it’s eerily reminiscent of later developments in other subjects, isn’t it?

http://www.north-wales.police.uk/en/blogs/viewblog.asp?UID=1&CID=43

[Njugle]

To keep this thread distinct from the "Should drugs be legalised?" thread,(though perhaps impossible)is it that the point being made here is that the capture of this heroin entering shetland is a bad thing and that in a shetland context you are saying that heroin does no harm, or is it not a problem, or something else?

 

Just trying to keep this thread in context y'understand.

 

I've heard an awful lot about heroin in recent times and it's effects on 'kent' folk around here. There also seems to be a belief that the intravenous heroin demographic extends downward to 16 yr-olds up here nowadays, a relatively recent advance, if that's the right word to use. Without cross-threading, is it not perhaps a good thing to limit supply and give especially the younger, or more recent, users a chance to think 'WTF?'

 

Going back a bit, it seemed that the drug of choice/availability, for teens particularly, was indeed marijuana, etc and little or no harm came of it. Is this shift to heroin usage just a figment of popular imagination, or is it something to address in any way possible?

NB, i'm not saying that one drug led to another, i'm saying that availabilty has widened the demographic for the latter.

 

(As i say;Just trying to keep this thread in context)

[KOYAANISQATSI]

is it that the point being made here is that the capture of this heroin entering shetland is a bad thing

 

It will do no harm getting one batch of sharn off the street (well, except to those caught, who knew the risk they ran) but the user denied will have to get a script, buy a script, swap a script, steal a script, etc, till a source is found maybe at a greater price, poorer quality, maybe five very dodgey dealers to fill the gap left by one better source.

whatever the results of a few busts, it will continue but it will not get any safer or user friendly using current methods of control.

 

irregular supply and varing strengths means users tolerances is up and down making it hard to track where their OD limit is.

[MuckleJoannie]

Going back a bit, it seemed that the drug of choice/availability, for teens particularly, was indeed marijuana, etc and little or no harm came of it. Is this shift to heroin usage just a figment of popular imagination, or is it something to address in any way possible?

 

 

I seem to mind it being said in the Shetland Times, and also there is anecdotal evidence, that marijuana is harder to get in Shetland. This is partly due to the drugs dog, as it is easy to identify. Heroin appears to be harder to detect and is being touted as the best way to get out of it. An example of unintended consequences perhaps.

[Njugle]

Shetland Today[/url]"]Heroin addict help group is swamped following recent busts

[sheepshagger]

what a good idea when the supply of smack dries up lets give them meths to tide them over and prevent withdrawal. in Shetland supplies of this turd will always be iregular anyone that has smoked pot in Shetland in the last 20 odd years can tell you that. Maybe if those that wish to indulge in smack had to go through withdrawal every time the supply ran low they might think twice about hitting up and getting themselves in the same state again.

da poor peerie lambs

[Fifi]

I seem to mind it being said in the Shetland Times, and also there is anecdotal evidence, that marijuana is harder to get in Shetland. This is partly due to the drugs dog, as it is easy to identify. Heroin appears to be harder to detect and is being touted as the best way to get out of it. An example of unintended consequences perhaps.

Serious question - is that actually correct? That the drugs dogs find it harder to detect heroine? I've seen this idea mentioned on here various times. The dogs' sense of smell is highly developed and I thought they were trained to detect various drugs, heroine being one of them. There seems to be lots of evidence on the internet of dogs sniffing out heroine?

[Fjool]

I don't think that it has much to do with the dogs not being able to sniff it. I think it's more that, they make smuggling drugs more risky.

 

If someone is going to take the risk, they will risk smuggling something that repays that risk more readily. Ergo, heroin becomes more popular with smugglers.

 

Any squeeze that Dogs Against Drugs puts on the supply is, of consequence, at the 'soft' end. The market in harder drugs picks up as a result; hence increasingly large busts of the harder stuff.

[Fifi]

With all due respect Fjool, that's nothing to do with the question I asked.

[Fjool]

Well, to be fair it was as much in reply to MJ's comment as your question

 

I said I don't think there's a question of the dogs not being able to sniff it but that the lack of cannabis that MuckleJoannie described is down to the reasons I gave.

 

If you read in between, what I'm saying is that I believe that they can sniff it.