Play Nice Society, Religion & Politics Thread

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Corpuscles said:
Hi Bruce

Luvz you mate . ( no sexural constipations)

But you are being a tad hypocritical. You are lecturing !

Dale Lewis was absolutely correct! (But stupid to say so for his own glorification - he was one of the worst offenders)
...but s**t that mark in the goal square PF was worth it, not to mention FINALLY putting his body on the line.

There is no way to stop it (social abuse). But club controlled PED injections are possibly and should be contained.

btw: No1 Bruce street Balnarring is up for sale. Beautiful! (check the pics) are you moving or perhaps considering the go home factor?

Cheers
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1 is not for sale but 34 and 37 are.

May be time for a homecoming. Will be the second time I’ve been there if I do.
 
bedford said:
It's a bit of a worry Bruce that people want to legalise drugs.
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I don’t have a view on the moral case for legalisation of some drugs. Others (meth) the manufacturers and dealers can rot with pedophiles and serial killers as far as I’m concerned.

I must say though I struggle with the argument that says “The people getting murdered en masse in other countries are the responsibility of the lawmakers who don’t make drugs legal, not on those illegally obtaining these drugs”.
 
sataris said:
I don't want to get into this as this isn't the thread for it.

But i'll address this in 2 parts.

Part 1. The crime and violence

Part 2. All drugs are bad, except for the ones I personally use.

Part 1.

The violence stems entirely from the fact that it's illegal.

I'm going to use alcohol as my example. because it's a nice case study of a drug that went.

Legal -> Illegal -> Legal

(Some people will jump at this point and say there's nothing wrong with a beer, but these people are morons).

So when alcohol was illegal in the US during prohibition the following happened.

* Organised crime got involved with lovely characters and organisations like
** Bugsy Segel
** Alfonso Capone
** Murder Inc
** National Crime Syndicate

The following actually increased
* Gambling
* Prostitution.

From Wiki: (s**t source I know)

"A growing number of Americans came to blame Prohibition for this widespread moral decay and disorder–despite the fact that the legislation had intended to do the opposite–and to condemn it as a dangerous infringement on the freedom of the individual."

Once prohibition was repealed. The need for bootleggers and thugs disappeared as legitimate businesses could take over the supply and there was no longer a need to have smugglers and all the strong-arming, bribing, murder all disappeared. Why? It became unnecessary to turn a profit.

Part 2

"I like alcohol. Therefore alcohol is not a drug, but some other magical substance that exists outside the realm of science and should be treated differently to everything else. If people get hurt by drink drivers, if wives and children get beaten by their drunkard husbands and fathers, well that's a fair enough" - Everyone.


I've never taken drugs and done something illegal.
I've never gotten drunk and done something illegal.

At some point, you have to take responsibility for your own actions.
Some people shouldn't drink, and likewise some people shouldn't take drugs.



If people were serious about saving lives, communities and families (they're not) .

They'd be aiming squarely at the single largest cause of all these issues in Australia.

Alcohol

But they don't because.

"I like alcohol. Therefore alcohol is not a drug, but some other magical substance that exists outside the realm of science and should be treated differently to everything else. If people get hurt by drink drivers, if wives and children get beaten by their drunkard husbands and fathers, well that's a fair enough "


Fun Fact: Just last week someone was hit and killed a by drink driver just down the road from me. I'll bet their family is relieved it was just someone with too many beers and not something dangerous to society like 'drugs'.
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Imagine drugs were decriminalised and people could go get their fix at their local McDrugs outlet?
If you think that would not end with a drug addict plague of bubonic proportions then you are giving people far more credit than they deserve.

Legality of drugs as the problem is a ridiculously stupid argument on a number of fronts.
 

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BruceFromBalnarring said:
I am a hypocrite. I drink alcohol and I even smoke darts. I don’t have to but the law allows me to and I enjoy it.

The law, for whatever reason and I’m not across the science of all of it, doesn’t allow the use of illicit drugs.

If the law should be changed I’m perfectly happy for those who think so to advocate that change and they may win.

By as it stands, illicit drugs are illegal. Players and celebrities who can afford to use them. Hundreds of thousands of people get murdered in the industry of supply of those drugs. And it’s treated as a health issue.

And that’s crap.
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The comparison between alcohol and crystal meth is simply a false equivalence. Its like saying sugar is harmful (whicjh it is) and so is cyanide so both should be banned. Its a question of degree of harm. Alcohol in excess is very harmful but there is no degree of harm in meth, heroin and cocaine.
 
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Number37 said:
Imagine drugs were decriminalised and people could go get their fix at their local McDrugs outlet?
If you think that would not end with a drug addict plague of bubonic proportions then you are giving people far more credit than they deserve.

Legality of drugs as the problem is a ridiculously stupid argument on a number of fronts.
Click to expand...

Have a read about what happened in Portugal when then decriminalised drugs:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/20...licy-is-working-why-hasnt-the-world-copied-it

I don't drink, haven't for years. I have never smoked a single cigarette. I have never taken any drug that wasn't prescribed to me be a doctor for a medical condition. I have no interest in drugs for a bunch of reasons, but them being illegal or not has no bearing on that - I don't use the legal ones either.

And yet I think they should be decriminalised when it comes to persinal possession and use because the evidence is that to do so minimises a great deal of the harm they cause, to individuals and societies.

The current policy isn't working. There is evidence that another policy does better. It should be a no brainer to shift to the more effective policy. Ideology trumps evidence on just about every issue these days, though, so we will continue to ignore the scientists about climate change, the doctors about drugs, because the evidence of the experts doesn't fit with our prexisting worldview and we would rather be consistent to those prexisting beliefs and be wrong than to acknowledge a different way is right.
 
connolly said:
The comparison between alcohol and crystal meth is simply a false equivalence. Its like saying sugar is harmful (whicjh it is) and so is cyanide so both should be banned. Its a question of degree of harm. Alcohol in excessvery harmful but there is no degree of harm in meth, heroin and cocaine.
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Look I agree, but I have no expertise to agree with any real conviction. Except on meth. I’ve seen what that s**t does first hand. And it’s horrible.

But no one seems to want to cast their eyes to what happens in the production and delivery of cocaine for instance. And I think that’s a bit gutless.
 
RobbieK said:
Have a read about what happened in Portugal when then decriminalised drugs:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/20...licy-is-working-why-hasnt-the-world-copied-it

I don't drink, haven't for years. I have never smoked a single cigarette. I have never taken any drug that wasn't prescribed to me be a doctor for a medical condition. I have no interest in drugs for a bunch of reasons, but them being illegal or not has no bearing on that - I don't use the legal ones either.

And yet I think they should be decriminalised when it comes to persinal possession and use because the evidence is that to do so minimises a great deal of the harm they cause, to individuals and societies.

The current policy isn't working. There is evidence that another policy does better. It should be a no brainer to shift to the more effective policy. Ideology trumps evidence on just about every issue these days, though, so we will continue to ignore the scientists about climate change, the doctors about drugs, because the evidence of the experts doesn't fit with our prexisting worldview and we would rather be consistent to those prexisting beliefs and be wrong than to acknowledge a different way is right.
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No worries. Call your local member.

But in the meantime, illicit drugs are illegal. And using them is giving the producers and sellers, who are a bunch of murderous campaigners, a market.

Clap......clap!!
 
RobbieK said:
Have a read about what happened in Portugal when then decriminalised drugs:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/20...licy-is-working-why-hasnt-the-world-copied-it

I don't drink, haven't for years. I have never smoked a single cigarette. I have never taken any drug that wasn't prescribed to me be a doctor for a medical condition. I have no interest in drugs for a bunch of reasons, but them being illegal or not has no bearing on that - I don't use the legal ones either.

And yet I think they should be decriminalised when it comes to persinal possession and use because the evidence is that to do so minimises a great deal of the harm they cause, to individuals and societies.

The current policy isn't working. There is evidence that another policy does better. It should be a no brainer to shift to the more effective policy. Ideology trumps evidence on just about every issue these days, though, so we will continue to ignore the scientists about climate change, the doctors about drugs, because the evidence of the experts doesn't fit with our prexisting worldview and we would rather be consistent to those prexisting beliefs and be wrong than to acknowledge a different way is right.
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Agree marijuana should be decriminalised but not meth. In the Philippines shebu i destroying the country. No way could it be decriminalised. Something like 4 per cent of the adult population is addicted.
 
Number37 said:
Imagine drugs were decriminalised and people could go get their fix at their local McDrugs outlet?
If you think that would not end with a drug addict plague of bubonic proportions then you are giving people far more credit than they deserve.

Legality of drugs as the problem is a ridiculously stupid argument on a number of fronts.
Click to expand...
Yeah, nah


People who are going to try drugs will try it regardless of its legal position.

And also. See Portugal.

Or amsterdam


Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
 
BruceFromBalnarring said:
No worries. Call your local member.

But in the meantime, illicit drugs are illegal. And using them is giving the producers and sellers, who are a bunch of murderous campaigners, a market.

Clap......clap!!
Click to expand...

That some drugs are illegal and some are not is a pretty arbitrary situation. The health costs and the social and economic costs of smoking and drinking alcohol, the legal drugs, far outstrips the costs of all other drugs combined. The big tobacco and alcohol companies profit on the misery of others just as the big drug cartels do, its just that we have removed the need for those companies to engage in illegal acts or violence because we have created laws that protect them rather than combat them.

If you had a read of the story I just posted you would have learned about how making the possession and usage of drugs legal greatly increases the ability of health professionals to treat patients who are addicted and leads to less people doing drugs and less social costs of drug use.

When Pereira first opened the CAT in Olhão, he faced vociferous opposition from residents; they worried that with more drogados would come more crime. But the opposite happened. Months later, one neighbour came to ask Pereira’s forgiveness. She hadn’t realised it at the time, but there had been three drug dealers on her street; when their local clientele stopped buying, they packed up and left.
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I understand that this may seem counter-intuitive to people, but the evidence is there to show that this legalisation/health focused approach has far better results than the current "war on drugs" approach.

In the first 15 years of this approach Portugal saw the number of HIV cases due to IV drugs drop down to 40 from 1482. There has been a reduction in deaths due to drugs (from 80 to 16 over that period). There has been a reduction in the overall usage of drugs, particularly in the younger age groups (15-24) which is where you really want to see a reduction so that you can stop drug problems from starting in the first place. It isn't some sort of silver bullet that solves all the problems, but it is better than our current approach which shows no signs of reducing anything.

The key here is that the decriminalisation is focused on the victims of drugs - those addicted - so that we can better treat them. To treat the issues at the source requires a bunch of other approaches - you would need to fund development in the countries where the drugs are being made to enable people to make a living without being dependent on the drug trade and combat the mafia-like social control that the drug cartels have in those places. A place like Australia and a place like Colombia face different sides of the costs of the drug industry - one the consumption, the other the production. It makes sense to address those different problems with different measures, so saying that we shouldn't engage in the best means of treating the problems related to drug consumption in Australia because it doesn't do enough to combat the problems of drug production in Colombia really doesn't float.

But, in saying that, the evidence is that the best approach, decriminalisation, does reduce numbers of users which ultimately does reduce the power of the cartels because it shrinks their market and makes their operations less profitable. I don't think we can expect harm-minimisation programs in Australia to really do a whole lot to solve problems in the source countries, but all that says is that while we engage in harm-minimisation programs in Australia we should do more to support the source countries too.
 
RobbieK said:
That some drugs are illegal and some are not is a pretty arbitrary situation. The health costs and the social and economic costs of smoking and drinking alcohol, the legal drugs, far outstrips the costs of all other drugs combined. The big tobacco and alcohol companies profit on the misery of others just as the big drug cartels do, its just that we have removed the need for those companies to engage in illegal acts or violence because we have created laws that protect them rather than combat them.

If you had a read of the story I just posted you would have learned about how making the possession and usage of drugs legal greatly increases the ability of health professionals to treat patients who are addicted and leads to less people doing drugs and less social costs of drug use.



I understand that this may seem counter-intuitive to people, but the evidence is there to show that this legalisation/health focused approach has far better results than the current "war on drugs" approach.

In the first 15 years of this approach Portugal saw the number of HIV cases due to IV drugs drop down to 40 from 1482. There has been a reduction in deaths due to drugs (from 80 to 16 over that period). There has been a reduction in the overall usage of drugs, particularly in the younger age groups (15-24) which is where you really want to see a reduction so that you can stop drug problems from starting in the first place. It isn't some sort of silver bullet that solves all the problems, but it is better than our current approach which shows no signs of reducing anything.

The key here is that the decriminalisation is focused on the victims of drugs - those addicted - so that we can better treat them. To treat the issues at the source requires a bunch of other approaches - you would need to fund development in the countries where the drugs are being made to enable people to make a living without being dependent on the drug trade and combat the mafia-like social control that the drug cartels have in those places. A place like Australia and a place like Colombia face different sides of the costs of the drug industry - one the consumption, the other the production. It makes sense to address those different problems with different measures, so saying that we shouldn't engage in the best means of treating the problems related to drug consumption in Australia because it doesn't do enough to combat the problems of drug production in Colombia really doesn't float.

But, in saying that, the evidence is that the best approach, decriminalisation, does reduce numbers of users which ultimately does reduce the power of the cartels because it shrinks their market and makes their operations less profitable. I don't think we can expect harm-minimisation programs in Australia to really do a whole lot to solve problems in the source countries, but all that says is that while we engage in harm-minimisation programs in Australia we should do more to support the source countries too.
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I think there is confusion between a health based rehabilitation investment strategy and decriminalisation. Portugal's situation improved mainly because of its investment in health rehabilitation not decriminalisation. In the Philippines cananyone seriously suggest a decriminalisation of shebu? Duterte implemented a health rehabilitation orienation as well as police confrontation with the narco gang networks. In Portugal there are still fines and community service penalties for drug "offenses. It has not be a complete de-criminalisation. The rhetoric changed.
 

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connolly said:
Agree marijuana should be decriminalised but not meth. In the Philippines shebu i destroying the country. No way could it be decriminalised. Something like 4 per cent of the adult population is addicted.
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I don't think you get it. The reason why we should decriminalise drugs is not because we think drugs are great or they don't cause harm. Its not about saying marijuana doesn't cause problems so that should be legal while heroin or meth are bad so they should be illegal.

The point is that when you decriminalise the possession and usage of drugs you greatly enable users to seek help and doctors to provide that help.

The crises of addiction are not being solved by our current approach. They are getting worse. In many ways the current legal approach to drugs is part of the cause of these addiction crises - it forces drug use underground, it punishes the victims of addiction, it stops them from being prepared to seek help for fear of legal consequence, in many cases it stops health care professionals from being able to give people they help they need.

It seems counter-intuitive, I know, but the current opioid and meth problems mean that there is more reason for us to approach these drugs with a harm-minimisation and decriminalisation approach than there is for us to legalise weed which is relatively not such a problem.

There will be people who don't like decriminalisation because they feel that enacting that policy is to to condone something that is immoral or evil, to say that drugs are ok and people should just do them. That's not what it is about. It is all about giving victims and health professionals the best chance of being able to treat their issues. The moral judgment of drug addicts, and the enshrining of that judgment in law, is part of the problem, not part of the solution, because it only makes it harder for this treatment to occur.
 
connolly said:
I think there is confusion between a health based rehabilitation investment strategy and decriminalisation. Portugal's situation improved mainly because of its investment in health rehabilitation not decriminalisation. In the Philippines cananyone seriously suggest a decriminalisation of shebu? Duterte implemented a health rehabilitation orienation as well as police confrontation with the narco gang networks. In Portugal there are still fines and community service penalties for drug "offenses. It has not be a complete de-criminalisation. The rhetoric changed.
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The two policies work together. If you are to enable health based policies to reach the people who need them you need to remove the legal barriers that are stopping the victims from being able to access the treatment and the health professionals to be able to treat.

Duterte's approach has been to allow the state-sanctioned extra-judicial murder of drug addicts, thousands have been killed. I'm going to put it out there that pretty much any other approach is going to be better than that. Has the drug problem gone away? Nope.
 
sataris said:
Yeah, nah


People who are going to try drugs will try it regardless of its legal position.

And also. See Portugal.

Or amsterdam


Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
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It should be remembered that both morhine and heroin we initially quite legal drugs sold by pharmaceutical companies. In fact heroin was marketed as a "cure" for morphine addiction. By the 1920's the harmful effects of opiate addiction were so obvious heroin and cocaine were made illegal. Queen Victori for instance was an opium addict. Legalisation has been tried and failed disasterously. Heroin was a commercial product intially and marketed as a "wonder" drug.
 
Legalisation is a separate argument. Legalise all you want.

Right now they are illegal. The AFL players I’m referencing aren’t engaging in some Gandhi type civil disobedience for political purposes. They’re getting high because they want to and * the repercussions. Well there should be some genuine repercussions.
 
BruceFromBalnarring said:
Legalisation is a separate argument. Legalise all you want.

Right now they are illegal. The AFL players I’m referencing aren’t engaging in some Gandhi type civil disobedience for political purposes. They’re getting high because they want to and **** the repercussions. Well there should be some genuine repercussions.
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A bunch of AFL players caught engaging in drug use have faced hefty suspensions or lost their jobs. Is that not a genuine repercussion?

What I don't really get is why you seem more interested in policing the immorality/illegality of drugs than treating it as the health problem that it is. I tend to take a consequentalist view of ethics, and so I'm inclined to ask who is served by this approach? You lock up the drug addicts and all it seems to do is fill up our prisons more and more each year with people who have health problems that don't get treated properly and who end up in a cycle of criminality as a result. The problems don't get solved, they just get exacerbated and it all costs society more money. So why keep doing this? What is the value of the law or of the enforcement of the law when this is the result?
 
RobbieK said:
You lock up the drug addicts and all it seems to do is fill up our prisons more and more each year with people who have health problems that don't get treated properly and who end up in a cycle of criminality as a result.
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In my experience we only lock up drug users who are already committing crime.

In my state if you have possession of a non-trafficable amount meth you attend a drug counselling session. If you don't attend you receive a summons to attend court. I have never heard of a non-attendee winding up in prison.

However, I see lots and lots and lots of people who bash their partners, their friends or complete strangers because they're off their **** on meth. I see plenty of those people end up in prison.... where they belong.
 
RobbieK said:
Have a read about what happened in Portugal when then decriminalised drugs:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/20...licy-is-working-why-hasnt-the-world-copied-it

I don't drink, haven't for years. I have never smoked a single cigarette. I have never taken any drug that wasn't prescribed to me be a doctor for a medical condition. I have no interest in drugs for a bunch of reasons, but them being illegal or not has no bearing on that - I don't use the legal ones either.

And yet I think they should be decriminalised when it comes to persinal possession and use because the evidence is that to do so minimises a great deal of the harm they cause, to individuals and societies.

The current policy isn't working. There is evidence that another policy does better. It should be a no brainer to shift to the more effective policy. Ideology trumps evidence on just about every issue these days, though, so we will continue to ignore the scientists about climate change, the doctors about drugs, because the evidence of the experts doesn't fit with our prexisting worldview and we would rather be consistent to those prexisting beliefs and be wrong than to acknowledge a different way is right.
Click to expand...

I have read all about Portugal and its decriminalisation policy.
The policy is to make possession legal. Dealers still go to jail.

The problem with drugs is NOT, and NEVER WILL be, that they are illegal.
It's like saying if you make speeding legal it will change the nature of high speed car crashes.
High speed car crashes are dangerous because of high speed not because it is illegal to drive at high speed.
Drugs are dangerous because they are drugs, not because they are illegal.
 
Cheval said:
In my experience we only lock up drug users who are already committing crime.

In my state if you have possession of a non-trafficable amount meth you attend a drug counselling session. If you don't attend you receive a summons to attend court. I have never heard of a non-attendee winding up in prison.

However, I see lots and lots and lots of people who bash their partners, their friends or complete strangers because they're off their **** on meth. I see plenty of those people end up in prison.... where they belong.
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On this ^^ I see an issue with parolees.

Standard parole conditions state something along the lines of ... I shalt not consume alcohol or drugs while on parole.

Corrections get them in for pee test after pee test, which they continually fail ... nek minnit back before the court for parole breaches and back inside if they have a string of them.

Edit: I believe those blanket conditions set people up to fail.
 
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BruceFromBalnarring said:
Legalisation is a separate argument. Legalise all you want.

Right now they are illegal. The AFL players I’m referencing aren’t engaging in some Gandhi type civil disobedience for political purposes. They’re getting high because they want to and **** the repercussions. Well there should be some genuine repercussions.
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Yes like breach of contract. Dont know what the contracts specifically specify but they must have some contractual obligation not to harm the public standing of the sport and the club
 
Cheval said:
In my experience we only lock up drug users who are already committing crime.

In my state if you have possession of a non-trafficable amount meth you attend a drug counselling session. If you don't attend you receive a summons to attend court. I have never heard of a non-attendee winding up in prison.

However, I see lots and lots and lots of people who bash their partners, their friends or complete strangers because they're off their **** on meth. I see plenty of those people end up in prison.... where they belong.
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That is the dilemma.
People on meth don't deserve to be in jail.
But.
Meth use leads to all kinds of unacceptable behaviour.

I have yet to see anyone substantiate an argument where legalizing meth would or could result in a reduction in the unacceptable behaviour from meth use.
 
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