Party Vibe

@judgefooky 395079 wrote:

When will the nanny state learn people who want to take drugs inevitably will just leave us be!!! NO VICTIM NO CRIME

What annoys me there is the chances are when the changed that law they were championing themselves for stopping a major threat to our society or some bollocks….. if the majority of people were sitting on their pcs discussing the drugs wheres the bloody problem… excuse me im just off to the rant room!!!!

I remember those times well (some of the people nicked were acquaintances of mine!) the reality wasn’t quite as rosy as it was made out to be.

Whilst conservative journalists talk up the problems caused by recreational drugs, progressive journalists “bury the bad news”. its still bending the truth either way.

Firstly, the law was more intended to try and stop the MDMA culture as that was leading to casualties – not the deaths the media talked up, but long term mental health problems amongst binge users, including a lot of otherwise healthy young people going on long term sickness benefits. loads of my acquaintances of the 90s fucked up a fair chunk on their lives on pills. most didn’t die but a large amount got into chaotic lives, broken relationships and families and a lot still have various mental health conditions to this day.

I like the Guardian but it often has too many remnants of Blair-era false optimism and idealism sometimes. the man has cherry picked a selection of the most intelligent and sensible drug users (perhaps his own friends/acquaintances?) his article is accurate when it mentions what the authorities did, but it is untrue the drugs did not become club/party drugs or street drugs. They most certainly did!

There was loads of 2-C type stuff around in the mid 2000s when I was most active on the SE England party scene. Eventually they got into the hands of folk (mostly young men) who simply ignored all that “computer nerd stuff” found on line (i.e harm reduction advice/trip reports) and took much larger doses than they should have done. Some of these people were only in their mid teens.

As is mentioned on this forum several times, some doses of 2-C* type chemicals have very long lasting effects.

what is be great fun at a party on Saturday might not be so much fun when the same person is desperately trying to get to sleep for work/college on Monday!

Ironically even amongst the quiet, intelligent young lads, they often sounded alarm bells in the heads of parents/lecturers as they started behaving “strange” (being irritable/moody) and skipping college/work due to recovering from the sleep deprivation caused by the weekends partying.

its too easy for weekend drug use to impact on midweek responsibilities, especially for younger men as we do not develop emotionally with regard to limiting impulsive behaviour until our mid 20s or even 30s! in wider society drug and alcohol use is not a wholly victimless crime – not the crime of the century, but does have a varying impact on others (especially when people get older and have long term relationships, more responsible careers or start families).

excessive drug control is pointless – but a complete laissez-faire approach of non-enforcement (such as when the law gets caught out by new chemicals) is equally destructive.

in society we are used to social norms and legal sanctions for transport systems (highway code, pedestrian crossings, driving licenses, making sure a bicycle has lights and brakes) – and so vehicles are tolerated despite serious risks – why could similar things not happen for drug use?

@Iacchus 395096 wrote:

yes drug use has consequences but the drugs war has even greater consequences.. all the experts in the field know this and are making a lot of noise about a workable system of harm minimisation, but the government refuses to listen to due to stubborn moral preconceptions

there’s also the binge culture prevalent in British society…

There has been a lot of “harm minimisation” initiatives with alcohol recently – everything from relatively honest discussions in all media about the risks and rewards of drinking, “sticks” such as reinforcement of existing age restrictions and laws against drink driving, but also “carrots” such as the more flexible licensing hours and allowing the free market to drop prices that have been permitted in the last 5-10 years, which were supposed to have encouraged a “European style drinking culture”.

Instead its just increased the severity of drink related problems and particularly night time violence.

putting aside international problems with defying the UN resolutions, any government which decriminalised drugs in the UK with todays binge culture would have to be courageous enough to make the population accept the initial spike in overdoses and crime amongst many who would see it as a free for all.

This is what happens already with alcohol, and what happened with mephedrone and the RCs which are the subject of this thread. A fair few people would die. not whole towns worth, probably about the same as the road traffic collision death toll so perhaps “acceptable casualties” but there would be grieving families to deal with who would be calling for the old laws to be brought back, same as how every time a RTC happens the bereaved familes call for more traffic laws.

the only chance would be when the economic depression reaches such a point where people can’t afford to binge on drugs and risk their careers or education or even risk becoming estranged from their families or communities or the people themselves have strong moral values (which is the reality in places like Portgual and the Netherlands and how their decriminalisation actually works)

@Iacchus 395226 wrote:

Actually many people think the number of deaths from drugs would decrease due to correct dosage/purity and proper education, and the amount of crime would significantly decrease as addicts don’t have to steal to feed their addiction. I’m not sure what you are basing your theory on that deaths would increase.

the initial rise in binge use, and even MDMA which is way safer causes occasional fatalities. Not everyone will overdose (stimulants aren’t as toxic as people believe them to be!), but other deaths will occur indirectly through suicides, drug driving and even violence due to the impulsive behaviour stimulant use can cause in some people.

as I said it wouldn’t be a large amount and would stop when people found a safe consensus (in the same way both bicycles and motor cars caused an initial rise in road casualties when they first appeared!) but it will still be a problem what could cause progressive ideas to be reversed. There was indeed much panic and anger against cyclists and motorists and people thought for some years going over 12mph would cause a human to suffocate!

Consider though how cannabis was reclassified to class B after binge users started experiencing mental health issues and it sparked off a further rise in criminality including illegal immigration as people were too lazy to grow it themselves.

now most of these issues such as paranoia are reolatively minor in fact stop when users decrease or stop their use, but some were stubborn and caused other problems such as irrational / even violent behaviour whilst still chasing the buzz.

I’m also going by what I saw personally with both MDMA and mephedrone in SE England and East Anglia.

MDMA was very easy to get despite illegality until as recently as 2008 and was only restricted due to people bingeing on it and the NHS telling the territorial cops and SOCA “more must be done” (had this confirmed by NHS frontline workers I happen to know).

Mephedrone isn’t the “killer” drug but the reversible health problems it causes on long term use scared even liberal parents (proper old skool hippy parents) to the point of calling for prohibition. Neither drug reduced binge alcohol use one bit. Many people took the stimulants so they can drink more, others drunk more on the comedown to try and get some rest.

I’ve reading 112nederland.nl, Vrij Nederland and a few of their other media recently and despite their perceived tolerance they have a lot of issues with binge drinking and vandalism in recent times, they seem no better than East Anglia and alcohol is still much more tolerated than drugs.

Decriminalisation it would pay for the NHS costs, but without extra regulation (which would eat into the tax revenues) people would be angry at seeing former drug dealers (some of them with records of violence) being handed a legit business without punishment. At the very least dealers would have to be licensed and CRB checked.

One backlash against the RC companies was caused by the liberal media unearthing how many were previously convicted drug dealers.. As a former Civil Servant I know how difficult it is to ensure we get good and safe food and legal use of fertilisers/pesticide in a legitimate market where most businessmen have a culture of being at least grudgingly law abiding..

In this country today people do have double standards about party drugs – even if they don’t agree with their use manydon’t think other them as part of a “rite of passage” of youth is a massive crime or even older people using them provided they keep up with work/family responsibilities, but they still don’t want decriminalisation for fear of “opening the floodgates”.

A similar attitude exists towards immigration, albeit tempered by the fact most people have friends and colleagues from other cultures and see good hard working immigrants every day – but a small minority of immigrants who commit crime or (rarely) draw UK state benefits or even become involved in terrorism have caused a lot of damage to multiculturalism in the UK – even though we still live in a tolerant and welcoming country compared to many others.

as for the politics, we did have a free and fair election in May, at which people chose to return a centre-right government. I personally voted for a party which supported full decriminalisation, but in the hard figures more actually voted for extreme right parties in my constituency!

@Iacchus 395231 wrote:

mckenna’s got the right idea, get everyone back on natural psychedelics like shrooms and nobody would want to binge on stimulants and alcohol any more 😀

You’ve never partied with the young East Anglians then. I thought I knew what excess was until I moved here… 😉

Apparently ancient Britains were not averse to introducing psychedelics into some brews of ale either, their removal and greater use of hops only came about due to the Christian church and Germanic tribes getting involved in the brewing process.

Seriously though its more a case of education, community building (if people feel part fo a community or family they wouldn’t want to cause them problems by excessive substance use) and very importantly providing fulfilling lives midweek as well. If people aren’t totally dreading work on Monday or the week they are less inclinded to try and squeeze as much fun from the weekend as possible…