A degerate society.

There is little worse socially than when in the company of unpredictable drug addicts talking shite . If this ever comes to the UK ? God knows but it wont be pretty

I hope so.

I'd legalise the lot. Legalise it, control it, tax it and put the drug gangs out of business.

Prohibition does not work.

I'm in complete agreement

But then my degree and practical experience in the years immediately following means it would be barely more than a formality to acquire a licence to manufacture pharmaceutical grade materials and wholesale them under that licence.

My only concern would be the puritanical nature of the tax regime in a world fixated on exterminating smoking would render it pointless.

Yes, government involvement is the one possible downside.

Ok there is of course a serious side to Dogburger's post

Some years before the Chinese pox did away with the place, I sat in the bar of the Con Club (where 'con' stood for 'constitutional' not 'conservative', and spoke of its foundation as a place to drink on 'dry' sundays) in a Welsh valley town

This place was strange indeed and as a friend who had nominated my membership of the place remarked "if I sat here long enough i'd see in here someone who could have been cast in the drug film 'Layer Cake'"

One such chap was sitting twitching nervously at a bar stool and as I went to buy a round insisted I aid his escape from the FBI man keeping watching on him

I started to turn to see who the hell he meant which greatly agitated him

In the reflection of a mirror behind the bar I did catch a glance at who he meant

At least forty years previously, two brothers had set up mobile shops, one had a Morris 1000 van in the back of which he installed an ice shelf and plied his trade as a mobile fishmonger, buying his wares daily from Cardiff's fish market at about 7am and taking them to the valley town to sell. He made a point of calling at my grandmother's house in Cardiff once a week, she was a regular customer in her younger days when her parents lived in this town, and he would stop off at her Cardiff home on Thursday morning to make his first sale of the day...

Yes it was a long bygone era.

His somewhat younger brother followed him in the same line but operated a much larger mobile shop in a van the size of a modern day UPS delivery thing. It was the 'younger' brother now in his 80's who was sitting near toothlessky sipping a Guinness and watching I think a darts match on the big screen who this methh-head was trying to tell me was the FBI guy....

Oh dear god, methamphetamine paranoia ....

I drew myself to my full height, whispered in the ear of this nutcase that he seemed a fairly thin bloke to me, so if I drew myself to my full height and turned to provide the full cover my beer gut to block this 'G' man's view, he should be able if we pick the right moment to sneak out the back door

I stood and drank my beer, urging the crack head to drink up quickly, and as the darts player finished the last but fifth game with a stunning double 18 to loud cheers, suggested the fugitive make his escape NOW while the 'G man' was looking away

The said smackhead slapped me on the back for being such a mate... And snuck off not through the back door to the left, but into the gent's bogs on the right

I drank the dregs of the beer I'd walked to the bar with, paid for the two I'd ordered and wandered back to my table

For all I know the nutter is still cringing in fear in a cubicle

Indeed, I agree with you entirely

I have spent my entire adult life in a world where shall we say dodgy pharmaceuticals and botanicals have been completely illegal yet certain sectors of society - at both ends, I think - seem to have little problem acquiring such things, albeit of highly dubious quality

And the consumers of such have funded their consumption through a pyramid of crime

And the producers of course build an entire empire on it

Now, to answer any critic, I rather imagine that were it legal to grow your own, or indeed buy it off the shelf, at pharmaceutical grade purity, I WOULD long ago have gone out and bought something I could vape, out of sheer bloody curiosity, for it was exactly that curiosity that led me in Autumn 1973 at 16 to legally (for it was legal then) buy a pack of cigars ... of which I tried one, wasn't massively impressed, and probably took years to finish the pack......

But I personally think it better to have that option than not

It is the law, in the UK, that a child of five may drink alcohol in the home. Go on, go look it up

Some may recall the elder son of the RT Hon Anthony Charles Lynton Blair being brought home by Special Branch after being found paralytic and semi conscious in Piccadilly Circus having gone out to celebrate his GCSE results at 16

I never encouraged or prevented my two kids from drinking. A range of stuff from beer, lager, cider, wine, spirits, mixers and shots sits in my booze cupboard and from an age I decided as their parents my only demand was I be asked first because as I told both if I ever went to that cupboard and found what I wanted gone by their hand but not replaced by mine I would be bloody pissed off

In the occasion of her GCSE results about a month after her 16th Sarah's friends asked if she wanted to come out and get arsed to celebrate

She replied not really I can do that at home on dad's booze anytime I want

They apparently quite shocked said 'your dad lets you drink at home ??'

She replied 'yes if course, doesn't yours'

And I think that rather speaks volumes

Thus speaks someone who has clearly never had to work on life-threateningly dangerous equipment alongside a pothead.
I have, and it is genuinely terror inducing.
You effectively have to think both for yourself, and the wasted asshole alongside you.


The "war on drugs" has not so far worked, because in reality we have not even been fighting it.

Three Strikes & You Are Out (life imprisonment) for supplying illegal drugs, with all assets seized and ringfenced to Drug Awareness and Rehabilitation schemes.
Make parents criminally responsible for the the drug taking of minor children.
First time someone is caught using illegal drugs mandatory 30 day residential rehabilitation scheme (that they have to pay for), including having to witness at least one live autopsy of a victim of drug use (either someone who OD'd or someone killed by a selfish asshole out of their heads).

Of course your argument on "Legalise it, control it, tax it and put the drug gangs out of business." is prima facie false, because if it worked there would not be gangs smuggling cheap tobacco and alcohol into the country alongside the drugs, would there?

All The Best