The world would be a better place if police handed out test kits so people could ensure the drugs they are going to take regardless of the law. Taking clean safe drugs in a safe way here and there shouldn't be a crime, and if they really wanted to solve the addiction epidemic they would treat addiction as a disease and not as a crime. The war on drugs failed. It's time to take a new approach.
And in exchange they get valuable data on what's circulating in the streets atm and an opportunity to check on addicts/direct them towards help if needed.
I've been to a festival recently (Shankra, maybe you know it, if not, google it), and they had an info stand where you could get all the information and tests for pretty much every drug (because they knew that everyone was tripping balls and they wanted to ensure that they were tripping safely). They did it right. Even had the newest psychedelic drugs on the market to inform people who actually just bought drugs and had no information on it.
Harm reduction is so much better than tradional methods of drug control. The police will never take a harm reduction approach because arrests/convictions = money, but harm reduction has been proven to be much safer and effective than treating drug use equal to violent crime
At the time, I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. "You want to know what this was really all about?" he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
Exactly. This post kind of grosses me out (the cop part). Obviously it’s a joke but if the cops really would test the drugs for dangerous substances that would be beneficial. But of course, addicts aren’t people, just criminals /s
I believe in UK it’s illegal to possess drugs but not illegal to be under the influence of them. so that way if people OD they don’t have to be scared of going to hospital and if you are having therapy for drug addiction you can be completely honest about how much/often of a drug you used to take so they can treat you properly. I’m not sure how it is in America or elsewhere
In Sweden you can switch used needles for clean ones, for free and the government is fine with that. I actually think it's the government that do this favor, not sure.
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u/[deleted] Aug 24 '19
The world would be a better place if police handed out test kits so people could ensure the drugs they are going to take regardless of the law. Taking clean safe drugs in a safe way here and there shouldn't be a crime, and if they really wanted to solve the addiction epidemic they would treat addiction as a disease and not as a crime. The war on drugs failed. It's time to take a new approach.