DRUGS: Dont ban "P" - Ban "S"

To all those politicians and pharmacists out there demanding the ban of ‘P” - here is another letter of the alphabet you can ban.

Let’s ban “S!”

“S” stands for stupidity, and it should be banned immediately, and without delay!

A ban on pseudoephedrine can be equated to banning the tides by insisting people close their windows at night so they can’t see the moon.

Have the cheerleeders of the War on Drugs learned nothing in the thirty-eight years since that War was declared by Richard Nixon as diversion from other more personal affairs?

If you ban the stuff it doesn’t just go away. Thirty-eight years of “an increasing drug tide” should tell you that. Why do you continue to ignore this fact? It is the elephant in the room.

Have they learned nothing from the results of all the bans? That if you ban particular stuff, it just changes its form.

You make it difficult to import “buddha sticks,” and people bring in heroin instead.

You make it difficult to bring in heroin, and people start making “homebake heroine” made from codeine.

You make it harder to get hold of codeine-based drugs, and people find a way to make the even more virulent ‘P’ out of stuff contained in common cold remedies.

Have they learned nothing from the prevalence of drugs in prisons?

For goodness sake, if you can’t even make them disappear from supposedly the most secure places in the country, then how on earth are you going to make them disappear from people’s more private places?

Milton Friedman (now here’s a guy that should be compulsory reading for all bureaucrats and politicians) proved that prohibition changes the way people use drugs, making many people use stronger, more dangerous variants than they would in a legal market.

During alcohol prohibition, moonshine eclipsed beer; during drug prohibition, crack is eclipsing coke. He called his rule explaining this historical fact “the Iron Law of Prohibition”: the harder the police crack down on a substance, the more concentrated it will become.

What’s next? It’s almost like watching an episode of ‘McGyver.’ Ban all the ingredients you like, but criminals are still going to find a way to make recreational pharmaceuticals using a roll of toilet paper, a lady’s stocking, a tub of shoe polish, and a small bit of blue tack. And the drugs get progressively more virulent each time.

Friedman once told Bush Snr’s drugs tsar Bill Bennett, “You are not mistaken in believing that drugs are a scourge that is devastating our society. Your mistake is failing to recognise that the very measures you favour are a major source of the evils you deplore.” The evils have only got worse since.

Banning pseudoephedrine is just another road down that sorry path. And it will make it damn difficult for all of us presently suffering from cold (and colds) because we haven’t pumped enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to warm us up. ;^)

John Keys says “I understood pseudoephedrine was banned in some American states, and he wanted to know if that would work here.”

Well he doesn’t have to look far to get his information - in Oregon when they banned pseudoephedrine. No surprises. More meth - more meth-related crime.

For Friedman, the solution was stark: take drugs back from criminals and hand them to doctors, pharmacists, and off-licenses. Legalise. Chronic drug use will be a problem whatever we do, but adding a vast layer of criminality, making the drugs more toxic, and squandering $40billion on enforcing prohibition that could be spent on prescription and rehab, only makes the problem worse.

Here is the most important part though!
Drugs are a tragedy for addicts, but criminalising their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike.

Brilliant minds have developed and designed wonderful remedies to make our lives more comfortable in times of discomfort, and mindless morons are insisting they are banned, and we are made to suffer like neanderthals.

Here are some ideas that do not involve banning anything, and do not impact on the lives of innocent people with a cold, who just want the best relief possible for their symptoms.

Chemists get together, and have a duty chemist - criminals will never know where the drugs are going to be the next day.
Security then only needs to be at one venue on any given day.

Make the drugs only available from the Police station, or the Bank, or from dedicated and secure premises

Come on you people use some imagination - mindlessly banning stuff because you are too lazy to give your braincells a workout should be banned.

Ban Stupidity - NOW!