Legalising Marijuana and Prostitution - OT

Are you for or against one or both of these?

Marijuana -

You can't overdose on it. It doesn't really cause violence like Alcohol does. Smoking is addictive and does far greater damage to you, yet it's legal because of the money that's made from it. Marijuana can help people with pain and suffering.

It can be addictive, but there have been no deaths linked to Marijuana, and It's not as if being addicted to weed does as much damage to you as being addicted to Smoking and Alcohol. And if we're going to let people exercise personal discipline over Alcohol, despite knowing that some people will become alcoholics, then I don't see how you can use potential addiction to weed as an argument against it.

It's a double standard as it's ok for Alcohol and tabs to be a legal source of addiction, but not Weed, even though it's less damaging to the human body.

I don't think it should be legal to sell it in back alley ways, or on street corners. It should only be legal for it to be sold in registered shops and places. This way you'd make sure that the weed wasn't contaminated or messed around with, and that's what could potentially happen if you bought it from a random stranger in a dark corner.

Prostitution -

I don't agree with curb calling. I don't think it should be legal for Prostitutes to be on public street corners half naked trying to seduce some horny ****er.

However we should have red light districts in each town, like in Amsterdam. Not in the eyes of the general public, some place out of the way, but surveillanced.

All making Prostitution illegal does is makes people into criminals for doing what Human beings have been doing for thousands of years.

Rape rates tend to be lower in places where prostitution is legal.

IMO it's better for some horny ****er to pay a hooker cash to fulfill his sexual needs, then lose it and go out and rape someone.

If it were made legal it would be a lot safer, we could protect those involved. When it's illegal, that's when you've got people getting abused and exploited.

Anyone else agree/disagree?

 

Funny the Dutch are closing their coffee houses were you can buy drugs openly.
I'm a drinker, never done drugs.

I do agree about a red light district as you say it would stop ladies getting raped and young girls being abused by their pimps.
Never paid for it myself.

 

Neither have I, and I don't really plan to. But if two people want to have sex, who cares if a 20 pound note exchanges hands?

 

What are these things Marijuana and Prostitution that you're talking about, I'm a good boi and don't know of such things.

 

Prices come down have they or is that bargain prices in your neck of the woods?

 

lol it was a figure of speech buddy

 

Not a problem for me. Some people have to do it to survive and others forced into it. It's not want they really want, they dont go out to be a prostitute they might do it to put food on the table for their kids, which is a ****ing shame.

 

Agreed. But it could be great if someone could seek a safe form of prostitution as a means to earn money to feed their families. I don't like seeing people abused and beaten my pimps and forced to do horrible things to survive.

But this way we could make prostitution into a safe way for some people to make money, and a safe way for someone who's got natural urges to bust a nut and not hurt anyone.

 

A nice round figure, talking of which, how's Girlzilla doing these days?

 

Decriminalised & regulated (and taxed) = definitely in support of that.

Prostitution, in lisenced brothels, would definitely help protect a lot of vulnerable women.

A change in the stance on cannibis would also be wise. taking it out of the hands of the dealers removes the "gateway drug" tag it has gotten (generally unfairly). It definitely has medical application, but you cannot forget it can cause psychological damage to some / heavy users (again, why regulating it would make dealing with any arising issues better - plenty of legal pharmacueticals that are more dangerous)

 

The amount of ssailors coming into the redeveloped Blyth harbour and knocking boots with the local whores, the VAT could be used to subsidise the market stalls and bring back the traders.

I am for this.

 

I agree with you Tash. Marriage is very rarely equal in terms of money being brought in by each partner, so surely the one who brings in the least is technically a prostitute... Just because human's have adapted their ability for language to lie about their "feelings", it just makes relationships more complicated but it's still all about sex. Every product that's ever been invented with the explicit attention to make capital gain, well that's needed to get/get better sex.

The problems with legalizing prostitution are obvious, however. Atheism, somehow given the scientific revolution, is only a minority viewpoint in this country and indeed the world. This means if you legalize prostitution, most of the population will be up in arms according to some fictional ethic-code written thousands of years ago (when hilariously they were shagging til they dropped). Morally it contravenes religious teaching, but there would always be the question asked of supporters of legalizing it... "Would you let your daughters become prostitutes?". Now the obvious retort is "at least it wouldn't be illegal and they would be regulated to prevent abuse". Legalizing prostitution makes it an attractive career option for more than the desperate, and in times of recession and rising unemployment it would be even further promoted. Of course, in times of rising unemployment and recession whoring yourself will become more attractive whether legal or not, but you'd never be able to quote a morally superior agent figures of this almost statistically invisible trade, so you'd have no argument. In addition, if you tried to respond by saying "I'd make sure my daughter does not become a whore", then you're actually deepening the stigma mindset and reducing your case for legalization.

Then there is to consider the place of these red light zones... What respectable business is going to want that nearby? Nowhere really. I know a chap who owns a store who's livid they have a dirty video shop next door, nevermind half-naked hookers waggling their arse up against the glass. Forgive the pun, but it's not really an attractive option to have that in close proximity. Furthering this, there is problems setting up the infrastructure regarding the system on which it would work, and there is something called "police targets". The latter is, in my opinion, a major problem. Statistical policing is useless, because in order to reassure a community year on year, you provide statistics of arrests and show "crime is dropping". Nonsense, for the simple reason whoring and drunken behaviour etc allow for copious arrests to keep their figures up to the "target", and that's why you see Night Cops positively goading drunkards into arrests on TV. If prostitution is legal, and drug taking too, their figures are worthless, there's less "crime" and thus less need to put money into the police force. It's all politics.

The drugs issue itself has problems, morally (although I'm sure a lot of people get stoned in the Bible ...) and legally, which are mostly parallel to what I've said vis a vis prostitution.

Overall, ideologically though I absolutely agree that these measures are a theoretical necessity for our society to progress, practically it's incredibly hard for a political party to come in and wave away the thoughts of their voters! There is this thing called an election...

 

The only objection I have with prostitution is that prossies tend not to declare their income in their tax returns.

Apart from that, so long as they're not as pushy as the charity canvassers on Northumbria Street I see no real problem. Actually, if prostitutes were made to donate 10% of their income to charity, I can see it quickly becoming socially accepted.

"For every hand shandy, we will donate £1 to Children in Need."

I'm sending Lenny Henry an email!

 

I'm all for it. The government can control it so the ladies will be safer and old school pimps are out of a job.
It should also raise valuable tax revenues which should ease the burden on the rest of us.
There's nothing wrong will a well run brothel.....

 

I'm currently rolling a joint....Needless to say, I'm all for the legalization of cannabis as well as the lowering in classification for drugs like MDMA, Ecstasy and Mephedrone!

Professor James Nutt was employed by the Ministry of Health to conduct research into the harmful effects of the above drugs and found that they were all potentially less damaging in both the long and short term than alcohol and tobacco...This research didn't tie in with the government's drug policy and was therefore discarded - Nutt obviously thought this was bullshit, not only 'cause the Government were pedalling lies, but because it cost them millions in tax payers money, so he went public with it...

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html

This is an interesting read on the drug reform in Portugal (not many people know about it, but it pretty much does everything you said it would Tash!)

Also, just for future reference, cannabis has no addictive substances in it, so unlike nicotine, its no physically addictive. People become mentally reliant on it, but not physically addicted!

 

erm...MDMA & Ecstasy are the same thing, unless of course you're getting crap ecstasy and ending up with MDA, MDE, or some other crap.

The major problem with ecstasy though is that you don't know what you're getting, whats in it or how strong the dose is etc. so dealing with that would solve a lot of those issues.

Mephedrone has not been around long enough to be studied for long term health risks etc. And since it's mainly used as an alternative to MDMA/Ecstasy, again, that issue could be dealt with by legalising/decriminalising MDMA

 

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JWAG I read that article, and as a liberal fella who agrees with your views, I have to say it has some glaring problems.

1.
"Pop quiz: Which European country has the most liberal drug laws? (Hint: It's not the Netherlands.)
Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze–filled "coffee shops," Holland has never actually legalized cannabis — the Dutch simply don't enforce their laws against the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.
At the recommendation of a national commission charged with addressing Portugal's drug problem, jail time was replaced with the offer of therapy. The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is more expensive than treatment — so why not give drug addicts health services instead? Under Portugal's new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail."

Is it just me, or does this passage provide a bit of a confusing picture? Portugal have abolished criminal charges, yet are seemingly searching people and finding them "guilty" of possession? The only difference is no jail time, but these statements highlight an oxymoronic procedure of actually still thinking of them as criminals, but just not calling them that.


2. "Yet America has the highest rates of cocaine and marijuana use in the world, and while most of the E.U. (including Holland) has more liberal drug laws than the U.S., it also has less drug use."

The article doesn't really explain what it means by "rates", which seems an important crux of the debate. You can't just erroneously charge someone of having the worse drug record and say it's because of drug policy, and leave it without proving that point. The USA is much much larger than any European country bar Russia (who is not mentioned), and their population is much larger too. So of course they have more drug use. Even if they had the policy of Portugal's government, a reduction of miniscule percentages would still mean they had a larger collective drug use.

And this brings me to the last point. No government will ever provide evidence of their policies failing, so it's difficult to take this poorly written report as anything but useless.

Again, I agree with the sentiments, but this doesn't constitute proof that we should legalize drug use.

 

Aye, MDMA is the drug in ecstasy just packaged and injested in a different way...I have no idea how it would be sold should it be legalised (pill form would be safer and easier i think) though so that's why I wrote both.

 

Cannabis, having seen first hand the effects this can have on a loved one, I can say long term use can be devastating.
Much stronger forms of cannabis are available now, that in it's self may give good reason to legalise and regulate it, but then there's always the argument that it often leads to other drugs.

With regards legalising prostitution, it seems to me many people are referring to to it as though it is something that only women resort to, plenty desperate young men have become 'Rent Boys', perhaps their reasons for that should be given some consideration.