PM rejects Royal Comission on drug policy

[Grandma Death]

[Sparse1]

We do live in a democracy so political concerns are actually quite important, what with being the will of the people and all that. To be fair to Cameron he has managed to get most of the Tories on board for gay marriage so he hasn't got a prayer of pushing them into something else un-Toryish so soon.

As for the Commons Home Affairs Committee, they've been misrepresented. They didn't suggest legalisation at all, they just suggested a slightly more flexible approach to who is prosecuted and who isn't - the government are already moving towards treatment ahead of punishment anyway so it isn't much of a switch.

My bigger concern is that they felt the need to actually visit Portugal at the expense of the taxpayer rather than just read a report on their system.

[Grandma Death]

[Boris Johnson]

They'll only stop, when both the tory and labour base stop voting based on misinformed bullshit they read in tabloids which pretty much is universally anti-intellectual and hostile to any reform of drug policy.

I'm not kidding in most seats, being pro-drug reform is downright electoral suicide.


I'm pretty angry about this as well, but there's no point pretending that MP's are opposing reform on any basis of principle. Their opposing it because whilst they know its broken and shitty, they know sizable portions of the electorate and unfortunately the only ones who can reliably be expected to turn out, believe some pretty retarded shit. Here drugs r bad for the kiddies, is a biggun. 9/10 policy focus groups, polls etc will reliably report this. Yes even weed. Problem is, tends to be associated in peoples minds with street gangs and the occupy lot.

In short the problem really is that elections are decide by a tiny minority of people in this country, who simply get their views from the daily mail or mirror. Which thinks its readers hate drugs (and/or the 'journalists' are f**k in the head like Peter Hitchens) and prints crusades against drugs ,conflated into a single issue of course.

Welcome to the British political system, delightfully frustrating isunt it.


This is in part a generational thing (nearly everyone in parliament has done at least smoked pot for a bit in university, nearly my entire generation now coming up into IRL has too), but its also a consequence of the system of government we inherited from the last labour administration. Which is in part, policy is the thing you compose based on what the news cycle is obsessed with and what focus groups report the zietguiest is on it. Not just digging at labor here, conservatives and ... annoyingly to an extent Lib dems have adopted it. Why? It tends to produce stuff that people like. If it rubs the 300,000 or so guardian and independent readers up the wrong way, so what. They arn't the political force people think they are. Likewise do the busy intellectual professional types who watch BBC news a lot and are 'enlightened' bother to go and vote before or after work on polling days.... not as much as we'd like. The literally Millions of tabloid readers. Enough of them bother.

The great f**k of the whole thing, is it is actually quite democratic. People either are misinformed and thing prohibition and interdiction is achieving some social good. Or they just don't give a f**k enough to express their opinion.

Its fun to blame politicians, but in a system where 1000's of votes at most, get most MP's into power, and the system by and large is fairly immediate and democratic (yeah, I know its flaws, my point is, though most of them don't turn up to most. we have things like surgeries and such, we have big donors but the system kowtows to to public perception and the tabloids more than it does them)

In reality, you should be blaming most of the people you know for our various retarded lawls.


At the same time, the police. Being guided on the principle of policing by consent. Have no real obligation to enforce most of the drug law. Ignore what Home Secretaries say 90% of the time. Most police districts do as they see they need to do. Likewise most QC's and the CPS as a whole, tend not to be retarded. But actually quite smart and fairly liberal lot.

One of many reasons, I think British police get a MASSIVELY unfair reputation, our legal system also has its moments.



So again, to recap. The problem is
1) the 'press', especially the dying mediums that now live off bullshit moralistic campaigns as opposed to reporting news.
2) the fact that joe public is most of the time willfully bigoted on most issues.

[Grandma Death]

Yes but as I've already said the politicians can make the arguments if they wish. Even current politicians in power in columbia a country ravaged by drug wars are saying this war is unwinnable and we need to change the law. The argument is an easy one to make. Quite simply current laws aren't working and its costing you the taxpayer far too much money-let's see how we can generate money for the economy and save you money instead. In these times of austerity there's an audience for this.

[Boris Johnson]

[Bill_in_Bethlehem]

i know almost nothing about politics in the UK

is it as interesting as american politics and therefore worth following? not that they really have much impact on the way we do things over here, but just in terms of entertainment value.

[Grandma Death]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UtNF-L ... ata_player

Watch this Boris. It's oobvious to those supporting reforms but worth a watch for some shocking statistics

[Boris Johnson]

[Sparse1]