The declaration is a call for a review.
From the site: The Vienna Declaration is a statement seeking to improve community health and safety by calling for the incorporation of scientific evidence into illicit drug policies.
If it was down to me, I'd decriminalise everything, and treat all drug use from nicotine to heroin and back to alcohol as a public health issue.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 20 Jul 2010, 12:50,
Reply)
i dont know enough about the science to form a valid opinion,
but nicotine is legal and there are still hundreds of thousands of addicts - despite the money that is spent on anti-smoking campaigns etc.
(, Tue 20 Jul 2010, 13:25, Reply)
I think the point is meant to be about removing some of the added issues such as passing disease through used needles.
The kind of stuff which could be monitored (may be entirely wrong, still reading it through).
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Christian's Bolt and Ski, Tue 20 Jul 2010, 13:27,
Reply)
^This^
The health problems of smoking are much easier to counter if it's legal.
But the argument here isn't just about health. It's wider. Decriminalised drugs would be cheaper for the user, which'd reduce the wider crime rate. It'd also be easier to get treatment to come off them, and treatment for related health problems.
It'd also mean that growers could take control of their crops by going legit, and charge a higher price (since they wouldn't be under the monopsonistic control of their local cartel). That'd massively improve welfare in places like Afghanistan and Colombia, and improve security as well, since the Taleban and cartels would be deprived of a major source of income and protection money.
The general consensus among medics is that addiction is an illness - partly physiological, partly psychological, but an illness all the same. It's an illness that, left untreated, is socially and politically devastating. And it's an illness that the current state of the law does nothing to help.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 20 Jul 2010, 13:46,
Reply)