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Another shooting in Murica

I did say all drugs, then I assumed you were talking about Heroin in your previous post, so I responded talking about heroin.

I don't disagree with you that people in the grip of heroin addiction are not right thinking people. But how does making drugs illegal help them in any way at all? How does it help anybody? The drugs being illegal does nothing to stop them taking it. Having to pay for the drugs means, if they are poor, they have to commit crime to fund their drug habit.

You say that administering a program of freely available heroin would not be able to be done without great expense. I agree, it would likely cost money. But how much does it cost to police the illegal drug trade at every level? The court cases, the prisons, all the crimes committed by addicts to get money to feed their habit? It might be that it's more cost effective, with fewer victims of crime and safer product for addicts who are gonna take the sh1t come what may, to give it to them free, legally.

I'd also say that smoking is legally available, yet because of government health campaigns against it, less people smoke now than they did 30 years ago. I know it has become more expensive, but I don't think it's a cost thing, cheap baccy is always available -- I think less people smoke because more people are aware of the damaging effects on health and less people start smoking as a result.

With something like Heroin, the negative effects are widely known already. I do not see a rush of people all going off and doing heroin just because it's there legally. As I've said before, if you really want some heroin, you'll go and get some anyway.
I did say all drugs, then I assumed you were talking about Heroin in your previous post, so I responded talking about heroin.

I don't disagree with you that people in the grip of heroin addiction are not right thinking people. But how does making drugs illegal help them in any way at all? How does it help anybody? The drugs being illegal does nothing to stop them taking it. Having to pay for the drugs means, if they are poor, they have to commit crime to fund their drug habit.

You say that administering a program of freely available heroin would not be able to be done without great expense. I agree, it would likely cost money. But how much does it cost to police the illegal drug trade at every level? The court cases, the prisons, all the crimes committed by addicts to get money to feed their habit? It might be that it's more cost effective, with fewer victims of crime and safer product for addicts who are gonna take the sh1t come what may, to give it to them free, legally.

I'd also say that smoking is legally available, yet because of government health campaigns against it, less people smoke now than they did 30 years ago. I know it has become more expensive, but I don't think it's a cost thing, cheap baccy is always available -- I think less people smoke because more people are aware of the damaging effects on health and less people start smoking as a result.

With something like Heroin, the negative effects are widely known already. I do not see a rush of people all going off and doing heroin just because it's there legally. As I've said before, if you really want some heroin, you'll go and get some anyway.

I agree making it illegal doesn't help anyone, but I don't see that making it legal will help anyone either.
A lot of your reply actually seems to contradict your argument. Crime caused by drug use isn't going to go away because it's legal. There is plenty of crime that stems from alcohol and tobacco and they are both legal. Look at the black market in fake cigarettes, do you really think the drug barons are going to throw their hand in and walk away?
But if it's legal more people are likely to try it and I think that's when we would have big problems.
Also in today's culture of litigation how long would it be before a class action would be brought against the government for the damage done to people who have become addicted and had their lives ruined.
And plenty of people have become addicted to proscribed morphine.
 
I agree making it illegal doesn't help anyone, but I don't see that making it legal will help anyone either.
A lot of your reply actually seems to contradict your argument. Crime caused by drug use isn't going to go away because it's legal. There is plenty of crime that stems from alcohol and tobacco and they are both legal. Look at the black market in fake cigarettes, do you really think the drug barons are going to throw their hand in and walk away?
But if it's legal more people are likely to try it and I think that's when we would have big problems.
Also in today's culture of litigation how long would it be before a class action would be brought against the government for the damage done to people who have become addicted and had their lives ruined.
And plenty of people have become addicted to proscribed morphine.

There would probably be some unintended consequences that'd have to be addressed as and when they came up. I don't think my arguments regarding crime reduction are contradictory. For example, yes, there are crimes associated with alcohol use, which is a legal substance. However, when (and where) alcohol was illegal, we still had those crimes (people doing bad things whilst drunk) yet we also had gangsters killing people to be able to sell alcohol. We don't have that now.

Regarding litigation, that's an interesting point. I'm not a legal expert (I'm not an expert on anything!) so I'm not sure what would happen there. I guess I'd say that big producers of alcohol aren't getting sued by alcoholics for the ruination of their lives, so I don't see why drugs would be different. But as I say, I don't know.

As for people being more likely to try it if it's legal, I just don't buy that argument. In my own life, I have taken cocaine, mdma -- both class A drugs iirc. I was never a big drug user, but these drugs have always been easy to get and it would also have been easy to get heroin if I wanted to try it, but I never did. I think many, many people have tried cocaine or mdma compared to heroin, yet legally they are all Class A drugs. That tells me that legality doesn't come into it much, it's more that people don't see heroin as much of a recreational drug.

It'd be interesting if they trialled drug legalisation and see what happened to the usage. That'd be the only way we'd know.
 
Didn't mean to be insulting by calling your response a gut reaction, we all have plenty of gut reactions to a lot of issues. It just seemed to me that you were not particularly familiar with what is being done in terms of research and trial projects with "prescribed heroin" or the reasoning that goes with it. Your reaction was pretty much a stereotypical "I just learned about this, this seems crazy" reaction. My bad if I misinterpreted that, but you really gave no indication that you already knew about this stuff.

And when you state that someone's opinion on this is one of the dumbest things you've ever read and say that a serious trial project to manage drug addiction "seems crazy" you kinda have to expect a response. You were much more dismissive towards dza's opinion in the first place.

No problem. It's difficult to strike the right note in a forum and it wasn't my intention to call out either yourself or dza. Life is way to short to get into those arguments.
You're right, I don't have any idea on the studies and the like that you have linked.
But I do have plenty of experience of drugs in everyday life.
I have several acquaintances who are heavy weed users who think it should be legalised and I have no problem with that. Problem is they think they have a better chance of achieving it by pushing for full drug legalisation and then compromising on just weed. Dumb imo, but hey ho not my fight. Don't know where they got such an idea or even how wide spread it is but hard drug use is so reviled that it would be political suicide for any party to pick it up.
Just to be clear here by the way, I am not and never have been a user, and I'm not judging anyone who is or was.
 
No problem. It's difficult to strike the right note in a forum and it wasn't my intention to call out either yourself or dza. Life is way to short to get into those arguments.
You're right, I don't have any idea on the studies and the like that you have linked.
But I do have plenty of experience of drugs in everyday life.
I have several acquaintances who are heavy weed users who think it should be legalised and I have no problem with that. Problem is they think they have a better chance of achieving it by pushing for full drug legalisation and then compromising on just weed. Dumb imo, but hey ho not my fight. Don't know where they got such an idea or even how wide spread it is but hard drug use is so reviled that it would be political suicide for any party to pick it up.
Just to be clear here by the way, I am not and never have been a user, and I'm not judging anyone who is or was.

No problems this end either glasgowspur, it's an interesting discussion and your points of view seem fair enough, even if I don't agree with them. And I don't know anything at the end of the day, just spouting off what makes sense in my tiny mind :) (pretty much what I do all over the forum haha).
 
There would probably be some unintended consequences that'd have to be addressed as and when they came up. I don't think my arguments regarding crime reduction are contradictory. For example, yes, there are crimes associated with alcohol use, which is a legal substance. However, when (and where) alcohol was illegal, we still had those crimes (people doing bad things whilst drunk) yet we also had gangsters killing people to be able to sell alcohol. We don't have that now.

Regarding litigation, that's an interesting point. I'm not a legal expert (I'm not an expert on anything!) so I'm not sure what would happen there. I guess I'd say that big producers of alcohol aren't getting sued by alcoholics for the ruination of their lives, so I don't see why drugs would be different. But as I say, I don't know.

As for people being more likely to try it if it's legal, I just don't buy that argument. In my own life, I have taken cocaine, mdma -- both class A drugs iirc. I was never a big drug user, but these drugs have always been easy to get and it would also have been easy to get heroin if I wanted to try it, but I never did. I think many, many people have tried cocaine or mdma compared to heroin, yet legally they are all Class A drugs. That tells me that legality doesn't come into it much, it's more that people don't see heroin as much of a recreational drug.

It'd be interesting if they trialled drug legalisation and see what happened to the usage. That'd be the only way we'd know.
Unfortunately we're always going to have bad people do bads things, drink, drugs, race, religion or whatever are just their excuse.
The drink industry hasn't had litigation but the tobacco companies have.
 
Unfortunately we're always going to have bad people do bads things, drink, drugs, race, religion or whatever are just their excuse.
The drink industry hasn't had litigation but the tobacco companies have.

That's true. What actually happened there, or is it ongoing? Was that to do with them denying nicotine is addictive? I can't remember. As you said earlier, people do get addicted to prescription painkillers, but I don't think they can sue the pharmaceutical companies if the manufacturers have made it clear that it's possible to become addicted to their medicine.
 
As for people being more likely to try it if it's legal, I just don't buy that argument. In my own life, I have taken cocaine, mdma -- both class A drugs iirc. I was never a big drug user, but these drugs have always been easy to get and it would also have been easy to get heroin if I wanted to try it, but I never did. I think many, many people have tried cocaine or mdma compared to heroin, yet legally they are all Class A drugs. That tells me that legality doesn't come into it much, it's more that people don't see heroin as much of a recreational drug.
Same here, although there are parts of my past where I may have been considered at least a 'moderate' recreational user.

I didn't stop all of that because it's illegal or because illegality makes it more difficult to get hold of. I stopped because it no longer suited my lifestyle. Nothing more, nothing less.

Had I been caught as a kid and prosecuted for possession, I wouldn't be in the job I am now. I probably wouldn't be giving nearly as much of my money to the tax man and I probably wouldn't be doing my bit to keep around 100 others in this country employed. Yet I don't believe my recreational use has ever done anything more harmful than tinkle off a few ex girlfriends and burn the ears of whichever poor sod was stood next to me when I was on coke.
 
That's true. What actually happened there, or is it ongoing? Was that to do with them denying nicotine is addictive? I can't remember. As you said earlier, people do get addicted to prescription painkillers, but I don't think they can sue the pharmaceutical companies if the manufacturers have made it clear that it's possible to become addicted to their medicine.
There's research that shows that nicotine in itself is not addictive.

http://discovermagazine.com/2014/march/13-nicotine-fix (last paragraph)

http://www.medicaldaily.com/study-says-smokers-are-not-addicted-nicotine-231158
 
http://newatlas.com/body-cameras/45689/

Complaints against police plummet in presence of body cams, says new study

Michael FrancoMichael FrancoSeptember 29th, 2016

A recent spate of violence between police officers and citizens in the United States has raised many questions about what happens when an organization meant to protect its populace harms it instead. As with so many quandaries these days, technology is often at the center of the debate – namely, regarding the use of body-mounted cameras and the public release of the footage they capture. While body cams can often prove police misconduct, they can also exonerate officers who act appropriately given difficult situations. The simple tech can also, apparently, reduce complaints against cops, as shown in a recent University of Cambridge study.

The research project, which Cambridge calls one of the largest randomized-controlled experiments in the history of criminal justice research, found that when police officers wore body cameras, complaints against them went down by an astounding 93 percent. The study, called "Contagious Responsibility" has been published in the journal Criminal Justice and Behavior.

The study followed officers in five police stations across the UK (Northern Ireland, the West Midlands, West Yorkshire and Cambridgeshire), and two in the US (Rialto and Ventura, California). That encompassed 1,429,868 officer hours across 4,264 shifts covering a total population of about 2,000,000 citizens. The results showed a drop in complaints from 1,539 in the year preceding the trial – an average of 1.2 complaints per officer – to 113 complaints during the study, which averages out at .08 complaints per officer.

The research project followed on from a study done in 2012 that focused on the Rialto precinct, which showed that use-of-force by officers with body cams fell by 59 percent and complaints dipped by 87 percent versus the prior year.

"We have footage by mobile phone, or partial cameras of people walking by, and they only capture the story from when they turned on the cameras," said Barak Ariel from Cambridge's Institute of Criminology in a video released by the university (see below). "People don't walk around with their cameras on. But the body-worn video introduces a way to show the evidence not just from the officer's perspective, but from the very beginning of the story."

The research project, which the University of Cambridge calls one of the largest randomized-controlled experiments in...
Interestingly, two other studies earlier this year (1, 2) showed that when police officers were in control of switching on and off the cameras themselves, their use-of-force actually climbed, so having continuously running video might be key to the success of the technology.

Doing so comes with its own challenge, however.

"It's very important to distinguish between two elements," said Ariel. "One is the capacity to record, and the other is the capacity to store. It's critically important to distinguish between the two, because that has implications on human rights. In many ways, you can and should record everything. But what you save, what you keep as evidence, is a distinctly different question."

While the investigators stress that more research is needed to tease out the complicated subject of body cameras, the police force in West Yorkshire – which Ariel says is the largest site to experiment with the technology – has seen a clear benefit.

"Anecdotally, in terms of bringing offenders to justice, our Crown Prosecution Service have said to us on numerous occasions, that the video footage has tipped the balance in favor of prosecution, whereas without it, they may not have been able to prosecute," said Jayne Sykes, the West Yorkshire Police Department's head of performance review. "And also, again anecdotally, we're getting more early guilty pleas from suspects which saves the victim the trauma of having to go to court and give evidence."

Another benefit of wearing the cameras is cost, according to Ariel, who says that the initial Rialto study showed that for every dollar spent, you save about US$4 on complaint litigation. As the cost of cameras continues to fall, the cost-to-value ratio should improve even more from there he adds.




It's not clear if complaints fall because officers are more careful as they know they are being filmed... or complaints fall because potential complainants realise the video would out their lies.
Either way, it's a win-win for technology, Police and humanity
 
It's not clear if complaints fall because officers are more careful as they know they are being filmed... or complaints fall because potential complainants realise the video would out their lies.
Either way, it's a win-win for technology, Police and humanity
Lol, great journalism.

Everyone interviewed in that piece suggests it's the latter but I'm a journalist so I'm allowed to let my personal bias affect the conclusion.

Who would have thought that telling the whole story reduces police complaints? Again, you have to ask what kind of person films a policeman arresting someone and what is their most likely agenda if they have?
 
Lol, great journalism.

Everyone interviewed in that piece suggests it's the latter but I'm a journalist so I'm allowed to let my personal bias affect the conclusion.

Who would have thought that telling the whole story reduces police complaints? Again, you have to ask what kind of person films a policeman arresting someone and what is their most likely agenda if they have?


Word.
 
how many german citizens carry guns?

I do wonder exactly how much of a risk people expect the police to take

The stock response to this is "but its their job and the risks are the job, they are paid to take better judgement".

How cloudy is that judgement going to be when black people are shooting at policemen just for being policemen? Double standards there
 
I urge anyone to watch a 13th, a documentary on Netflix. Just finished it. Discusses points raised in this thread.


Sitting on my porcelain throne using Fapatalk
 
they don't call them "flyover states" for nothing, we're really getting to the stage where there'll be two enclaves in the US, the coasts and all the nutcases in between.
 
they don't call them "flyover states" for nothing, we're really getting to the stage where there'll be two enclaves in the US, the coasts and all the nutcases in between.
I can see the storyline to a new Snake Plissken movie in that one little paragraph.
 
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