Decriminalising Drugs

Decriminalising a drug?  Is it a good thing?

We have a problem with drugs, the war on drugs is happening yet have we the need to surrender.

I have been studying the drug problem, from all angles.  I have been listening to not just the drugs issue from a user’s perspective on the streets in Kings Cross.  From the dealers I have interviewed for the books, these dealers I have met over the period of 18 months within Kings Cross have all threatened me in one way or another.

You notice that many of the drug dealers carry three types of drugs.  To legalise the drugs across the board doesn’t help society.  The problems will be devastaging.  An example for people in the western countries I will have to say it’s Kings Cross during the 2011-2012 where the drug known on the streets is Ice or GHB have taken a hold in massive proportions.

When  we look at the problems from the streets that are created.  We must also look at the otherside why the Poppies are grown.  The affect on the country, the affect for the income of the farmers and the economy in those some third world countries where poppies are grown.

From working beside the heroin addict, the shots seem to be limited.  They don’t over indulge in the drug as the result is normally death.  Therefore it is a drug that could be looked at in the form of injecting or smoking.

The heroin, is available within our community.  Yet the drug busts we have seen in Sydney 2012 have been primarily relating to the drug known on the streets as Ice.

Ice can be made anywhere by what is happening around Australia.  The other drugs are from other countries affecting economies around the world.  Even the countries relating to Government aid needs to be looked at.

I propose that heroin, is not used as a over dosing drug on a large scale we need to look at the history for this drug.

Poppy power

Opium poppies were among the first crops to be cultivated. No one can say when the first human learned to use their unripe seedpods’ milky sap to alleviate pain or fever or to soothe and pacify a teething baby. We can only speculate when the first baker sprinkled the seeds on a loaf of bread. Poppy seeds have been discovered in caves occupied by prehistoric peoples (and probably stuck between the teeth in the skulls of prehistoric bagel eaters). The species is thought to have originated in Asia Minor or the Mediterranean region, but it has been cultivated so long that it has become naturalized from Spain to India.

Poppies to ease peoples cares and put them to sleep. People do awake refreshed and relaxed. 

The poppy plant that could relieve pain and hunger, ease anxiety, and allow people to work longer and harder proved invaluable, but habitual use of the drug prepared from the sap of its unripe pods proved addictive and even fatal. Tests on some Egyptian mummies have revealed high levels of the drug, which we know in our society today as opium.  Opium contains more than twenty-five alkaloids, including morphine, narcotine, codeine, and papaverine.

The ancient Greeks were well aware of the healing properties of the opium poppy. The Romans spread the plant throughout Europe and into England. The spread of Islam took the poppy to India, and Portuguese traders introduced the practice of smoking opium to China in the seventeenth century. Millions of Chinese became addicted to it, and the emperor banned its importation. Smuggling of the banned substance from India into China nevertheless became big business for En­glish shipping companies. Attempts of the Chinese viceroy in Canton to halt the drug’s importation led to the infamous Opium Wars of 1839–1842 and 1856–1860, with capitalist England finally prevailing. Everyone except the Chinese made ­oodles of money with opium.

Opium was a chief ingredient of both British and U.S. patent medicines during that period.  Opium has played an important legitimate role in medicine. Morphine, one of its derivatives, is still a primary weapon against intractable pain. Opium poppies have long been grown commercially in many countries for use in treating diabetes, bronchial disorders, malaria, dysentery, rheumatism, even elephantiasis, and as a preoperative painkiller. In addition, they continue to be grown on a large scale for the fine seed, particularly for use in baked goods.

The seeds of the poppy have no narcotic value. There is no effect of poppy seeds on cakes, breads, cream cheese there is no effects of euphoria from eating them. However, the seeds do contain some compound that has produced positive readings in drug tests.  Yet we do eat poppy seeds, yes they are legal in fact some would label poppy seeds as a spice.

People go to hospital, are given pethadene  after a while they have a habit.  Yet this is a legal drug in our country Australia and many other countries around the world.

To legalise just one drug, heroin would be the most effective to the world’s economy.  Deregulating drugs to allow personal use on the end user of the drug, well if this was just on one drug that over the years has affected the world economies.  By the growing of the Poppy’s

 210 million people, or 4.8 per cent of the population aged 15-64 years, use illicit substances each year. Drug abuse overall, including problem drug abuse, has remained stable at 0.6 per cent of the population aged 15-64 years. However, demand has soared for substances not under international control, such as piperazine and cathinone, and synthetic cannabinoids that mimic the effects of cannabis, such as Spice products.

How about if the Global Drug Commission looks at only decriminalising one drug out of many.

Yes, the decriminalising at the end user for a small personal quantity.  However by allowing Heroin/Poppy to be grown for a selective quantity legally moving between countries will help countries that are third world.

There should be restrictions that the country can not buy arms with the money, or be fighting with other countries or states of countries to sell the product.  The product should be heavily scrutinized.  To regulate it like Alcohol and tobacco is all over the world.