While I acknowledge that the arguments against prohibition are quite strong, the only thing I cannot reconcile is the addictive nature of drugs. Addiction doesn’t exactly make for fully informed decisions.

Marijuana how ever, which I’m strongly against myself, despite the massive damage it does to teens aged less than about 16 (and I have seen myself happen to people close to me) probably should be legalised. It has serious effects on the frontal cortex, so legalisation but very strong provision to prevent under 16s having access to it.

I’m not at all surprised they are claiming we are terrible for victims rights when we are best in the world, kinda fits the pattern eh. Drowning in red tape? 2nd most business friendly country in the world. My main concern, especially given the rights easy run with the right biased media, is that should national win, in a year or so’s time we get, hey look, NZ is great!! Look at all these things, best in the world for victims rights, 2nd best for business friendliness.

Labour should have done more, but the reality is, with more gang members than police officers in NZ – the cops are a tad hog tied.

Compound that with the fact your bank teller earns more in a year than a police officer (and only has to deal with the occasional armed robbery) it’s no wonder that the police force is in such dire straits. I wouldn’t want to deal with the scum of NZ on a starting salary of 38K a year (ASB Bank Tellers start on 42K)

Banning the importation of methamphetamine products won’t acheive much. There’s already plenty of drug smuggling boats heading out to sea to meet the boats from China, do their swaps and continue back to Westhaven Marina. Again, it’s a lack of resources and support for the necessary agencies.

HNZ in Napier is sending a good strong message to those involved in manufacturing, who live in a HNZ Home. Only problem – HNZ don’t do anywhere near enough inspections to curb this issue from happening.

“You mean like booze?”

Yep, just like booze.

Imagine it was prohibited. Try and sell me the argument that legalisation will be an improvement, based upon the effect of booze on kids (not to mention adults and society).

DHMO? How much more likely are you to commit a crime after, for a laugh, 1 hour of consuming 500ml as opposed to 3 hours after consuming 500ml? Correlation? Causation?

Are you drunk and thought the DHMO arument would be a real crack-up? Otherwise I can’t see why you’d be making such terrible arguments.

You mean like booze?

Or gasp DHMO – which has a 100% correlation with violent crime!

With the exception of pot (which I don’t care about – should be legal for anyone wanting to be a fool – and taxed accordingly), we have viable border defences to most ‘natural’ drugs. The effect of prohibition on those is to raise prices. That reduces demand.

The current problem we have is with drugs that can be manufactured internally. The only viable defence for those is to also defend at the border. Stop some of the critical elements and you stop the problem by raising prices. If that means that some substances are taken off the market that have other uses, then it’d be pretty easy to look at the cost/benefits to society.

What annoys me is this partial prohibition – it is ineffective and allows the drugs to get entrenched. No amount of policing is going to reduce it as long as the drugs are relatively cheap.

[lprent: Well one thing I could do is ban you as an ignorant troll. I suggest you read the About and Policy at the top of the page before commenting further. ]

MikeE, I don’t think you can dismiss people who recognise that legalisatoin of a substance might increase the availibility to that substance to children. I’d say it is a fact that this will happen.So are people’s rights to use something greater than the morality of enacting a law that will knowingly harm such parties?

“Please give a rational reason why someone should be deprived of their liberty simply for what they choose to put in their body, providing they harm noone else.”

We’ve done this before, MikeE, but use of such a substance probably makes someone, oh I don’t know, 12% more likely to harm someone else. Is that not reason enough to prohibit it?

heh cap ‘bitterly fidelity’. Doing it tough huh?

The cops were told about it repeatedly, but as they didn’t have the resources to deal with it back in 2000, the manufacture, availability and desirability of P became far too entrenched.

I believe that National was informed about the growing “ice” epidemic overseas in 1997? but chose not to do anything about it, in the view that NZ would be untouched.
As it was never tabled, stored or documented anywhere, it was left to lie fallow.

Much the same argument could be used in the debate with Clinton vs Bin Laden, but in this case, if the Police had been given the right powers as far back as 98, then P may not be such a big issue today.