T
theinediblebulk
Guest
If nothing else, the piloting authorities would be soaking up a lot of users heading their way from non piloting areas! But yup, worth a try, why not. On reflection, I suppose if people genuinely wanting to come off it or at least regulate their use benefitted from it, the others who just live a life of taking heroin then rock, heroin and crack and have no interest in changing because they love it, might become a minority who could be targeted by the justice system, locked up and put on programmes.
It's utterly pointless criminalising cannabis users in this country because there's so many people use it. No police force is pursuing people who smoke it and the only cultivation aspect they're interested in is that which uses potentially trafficked Vietnamese to farm it or organised crime groups involved. Legalise it and those two issues go away. If there was a referendum on legalising cannabis I suspect it would be an overwhelming yes and at some point, a government has to recognise that they have to go with what people want.
I agree but I'd go further and say no drug users should be prosecuted. A lot of them already have enough problems and don't need any more. Dealers fair enough. And I say that as someone who has sold drugs. And totally agree with the Vietnamese issue you raise; that is proper horrible. Poor people spend grands to get here and then get locked in a gaff with a generally unsafe bridged electric supply to grow loads of weed for cash cropping. poor fuckers. And yes, that problem does indeed go away if you get legislation.
As an aside, one of the reasons why there's been such an increase in people trafficking is due to sentencing. You get a lot more jail for shipping in kilo's of smack than you do a truck load of people from wherever, and the money returns will be just as good, if not better.
Exactly. They didn't just relax police policy towards prosecutions against cannabis users, they made it into a cottage industry that got out of control and that is an admission of the failure of creating a mass market.
County Durham police have in effect negated that by openly stating that they aren't coming after people who have a little grow tent in the back bedroom so that they can get on with the more serious crimes including serious drug crime. So what's the difference? Get growing in the DH area and no one will stop you...as long as you don't take the piss. They just aren't creating an industry, that's all.
Behave. Their weed policy has never really been a problem for them, never mind it being out of control. There's been issues regarding the clarification of it's legal status but that's different from having an issue with the drug itself. As for mass market, one of the most surprising things I discovered when I moved there was less young people smoked it than did in the UK. A tourist market associated with Amsterdam, most definitely, but not mass market. There's more bars selling alcohol than coffee shops selling weed in Holland so it's easy to work out which drug is mass market out of the two. If you really want to look at a drug issue that's out of control it's heroin in the UK.
I know Durham Police don't prosecute growers, I've collected a caution from them for growing. I was growing back in the 90's, first bust was 1999 by West Midlands police. I had a mother plant and 32 cuttings and the drug squad left the house dismayed, gutted at what was there. Because what was there was fuck all. I knew it, the cops knew it, the CPS knew it, the magistrate's knew it. In fact, pretty much everyone involved in the law side of things, cop or grower, knows the law doesn't work and it never will.
As for creating an industry, it's already here. Type hydroponic grow shop into google and see just how many places up and down the UK sell nothing but equipment for growing weed. What do you think all the people who visit those shops every day are doing with the stuff they buy, storing it in the garage until the government says it's legal to grow? Nah, they're growing. And there's that many people growing it, a few forces are going down the caution route for personal growing as they have no other option. Fudging the weed issue to try to deal with bigger problems. Hmmm, where have I encountered that before.