If they banned cigarettes, they would create the biggest black market that ever existed. Gangs would be selling them on the street like they sell dope now. It would be the biggest boon to organized crime in history.
There's an expressway that connects the western suburbs to downtown Chicago; I-290 or the Eisenhower Expressway. It goes through the West Side of Chicago, which is a ghetto almost the whole way from Oak Park to Downtown. It's called the "Heroin Highway" because white urban professionals drive into the city from the western suburbs and exit the expressway into one of the neighborhoods. Right there are organized gang members that sell them heroin literally 200 feet from the expressway. They run a brisk business 24-7-365.
Now if cigarettes were illegal, every single car would be getting off the expressway and the queue would back up onto the expressway all the way back to the suburbs.
There's an expressway that connects the western suburbs to downtown Chicago; I-290 or the Eisenhower Expressway. It goes through the West Side of Chicago, which is a ghetto almost the whole way from Oak Park to Downtown. It's called the "Heroin Highway" because white urban professionals drive into the city from the western suburbs and exit the expressway into one of the neighborhoods. Right there are organized gang members that sell them heroin literally 200 feet from the expressway. They run a brisk business 24-7-365.
Now if cigarettes were illegal, every single car would be getting off the expressway and the queue would back up onto the expressway all the way back to the suburbs.
Have you actual experience with friends who have become addicted - I don't think so. Yes using smack or cocaine/crack cocaine does feel good - for a while but then the only thing that remains is the need for the 'hit'. When I told my friend Mick that one day soon, very soon his weekend would begin bright and early on a Monday morning, he didn't believe it and then he became a dealer. I don't ever want to run into him when I go back home because I know what I would do and the justice system definitely wouldn't approve and I don't fancy ending my days in prison for doing the right thing. When I lived in Rotterdam the pushers would turn up early in the morning at the top of my street, Sint Mariastraat on the West Kruisekade and I would see desperate junkies, score and rush down my street and into the doorway of an old people's home to 'wack-up'. The things that women will do once they are junkies or have been forced into taking smack - it isn't pretty and I've known guys whose sisters and mothers are junkies, I feel for them.
Nicotine addiction is a killer but it's not the same as smack/crack cocaine/amphetamine, especially meth amphetamine. When I use the expression 'hollowed out' that is entirely accurate - there is nothing left but the need to score and unless you come from a wealthy background and can afford to score easily you will do anything and I do mean anything to score. There are a very few who retain some form of morality but that is not he norm. MY wife was a ward sister in a famous children's hospital in Brighton and then a lecturer in paediatric nursing. She well remembers what it is like when a junkie mother gives birth and the child is born screaming with the need for smack.Even if a junkie is on a programme they are still 'hollowed out'. Look at the Oxycotin nightmare in the USA. Where a substance is associated with lots of money, the ones making it have enormous power to derail anything that will affect the gravy train - alcohol,nicotine, prescription drugs, remember the Stones song about 'mother's little helpers' - all legal. The British elite fought Opium wars to establish and keep the drug flowing into China. There were 3 Scottish families that became enormously wealthy through the trade.
If governments everywhere really cared about people it would be very easy to remove nicotine,smack, cocaine, methamphetamine from the world and to control alcohol consumption - they don't.
Our Viking friend deliberately neglects to tell us about the alcohol problem that is endemic to Scandinavia where they sit in their kitchens all winter long getting rat-arsed.
I have to point out that many of these substances can be manufactured at home. We tried prohibition of alcohol and it's what spawned the organized crime we have today.
Anybody can make a still. There's an illegal still on my block. You can grow tobacco. In Russia people make their own heroin from local poppies. You can grow the Mary Jane almost anywhere.
Prohibition makes drug issues way worse. It never has and never will work. I would argue that heroin addicts (and society at large) would be better off if they got their stuff at a clinic, under the care of a doctor, instead of doing desperate things to get the stuff. And contrary to popular belief, there are many, many functional addicts in society; they have a house, a professional job, they're middle class.
Addiction should be treated as a pathology, not a character flaw. I grew up during Uncle Ronnie Reagan's "War on Drugs" which was a very thinly veiled war on working class people. The "war on drugs" meant that any male between the ages of 16-30 was subject to constant scrutiny, harassment, and humiliation by police. Virtually every time I passed a cop I was pulled over, searched, grilled, hands down my pants, for nada. Yet the drug problem is way worse than it was during Uncle Ronnie's reign of terror against the American working people.
Anybody can make a still. There's an illegal still on my block. You can grow tobacco. In Russia people make their own heroin from local poppies. You can grow the Mary Jane almost anywhere.
Prohibition makes drug issues way worse. It never has and never will work. I would argue that heroin addicts (and society at large) would be better off if they got their stuff at a clinic, under the care of a doctor, instead of doing desperate things to get the stuff. And contrary to popular belief, there are many, many functional addicts in society; they have a house, a professional job, they're middle class.
Addiction should be treated as a pathology, not a character flaw. I grew up during Uncle Ronnie Reagan's "War on Drugs" which was a very thinly veiled war on working class people. The "war on drugs" meant that any male between the ages of 16-30 was subject to constant scrutiny, harassment, and humiliation by police. Virtually every time I passed a cop I was pulled over, searched, grilled, hands down my pants, for nada. Yet the drug problem is way worse than it was during Uncle Ronnie's reign of terror against the American working people.
A bit off the topic on smoking cannabis or tobacco but in line with the discussion on drugs. I guess you folks are not informed about whats happening in Canada, so I will enlighten you. British Columbia with approval from the Fed's are allowing small amounts of hard drugs to be in your possession with out being charged or confiscated. This was done because of the death due to overdose problems they are dealing with. I believe BC asked it be to higher, 5g but the fed's pushed it back to 2.5g. Time will tell how many deaths this will eliminate, its controversial since many deaths are due to the quality of the street drugs to begin with.
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/overdose/decriminalization
Health Canada granted an exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to the Province of B.C. This is effective from January 31, 2023 to January 31, 2026.
Under this exemption, adults (18 years and older) in B.C. are not going to be arrested or charged for possessing small amounts of certain illegal drugs for personal use. The illegal drugs covered by the exemption are:
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/overdose/decriminalization
Health Canada granted an exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to the Province of B.C. This is effective from January 31, 2023 to January 31, 2026.
Under this exemption, adults (18 years and older) in B.C. are not going to be arrested or charged for possessing small amounts of certain illegal drugs for personal use. The illegal drugs covered by the exemption are:
- Opioids (such as heroin, morphine, and fentanyl)
- Crack and powder cocaine
- Methamphetamine (Meth)
- MDMA (Ecstasy)
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Unfortunate that I can't express myself as I see fit, without getting banned or being put in the penalty box.
Nothing more for me to add, over and out on this thread as it weaves its way into the gutter as many do.
When I was growing up, I personally knew cops that stole dope and money from dope dealers, and shook dope dealers down for protection too. Some of the cops were junkies too. Some were dope dealers too. They all knew who was selling the dope and on what street corner; hell everybody from 8 to 80 knew.
It's nothing new. That's life in the big city.
It's nothing new. That's life in the big city.
I grew up on the NW side of Chicago. In the late 70's pumped gas for a few years. Had many cops pass through that station in uniform and sometimes in plain clothes try to sell things from the trunk of their car and even caught a few stealing gas. Never had one try to sell me drugs though. Not that that ever happened but I just didn't pick up on them being cops if they were.
Don't take it that way. It is your life, not a popularity contest.
Somewhere above I posted a link to a forum which can help with such feelings.
Spot on comment. Hash would appear that had obviously been dusted for fingerprints. Most of the Moroccan hash was flown into the UK via a famous WW11 aerdrome - Biggin Hill in Kent. All the Customs that worked there bought expensive villas in southern Spain - no extradition then.
Fast Eddie I never said that alcohol should be banned, it didn't work then and it wouldn't work now. In the 90s' in the UK the big brewers thought - wouldn't it be good to make Alcopops - lemonade with added alcohol, they were looking to help make the next generation of alcohol junkies. There was one brewery in the north of my county, called King & Barnes it had been around for a around 200 years and it made some excellent beers. A young man inherited it and in 6 months he destroyed the work of previous generations making alcopops. It was bought up by a big brewer and closed down. This was the best bitter I have ever drunk, full bodied with a wonderful nutty flavour. They also made an excellent dark winter ale. With a friend of mine coming off the Downs (hills) trailblazing suicidal downhills (mountainbiking) in the early 80s' we would stop for a ploughman's lunch and a pint of K&Bs' winter ale gone for ever.
Fast Eddie it was a war against working people no doubt about that, same in the UK. But who was it that dictated to governments to start this war - the alcohol industries. In the Netherlands in the 1960s' Heineken was going bust. The young people were drinking fruit juices and smoking pot. Ironically Heineken desperately sought to sell their beers abroad and it worked, when my mother spent 2 winters in Miami in 75/6 the beer of choice for the locals was Heineken export.
I have met old ladies who were the 'bright young things' of the 1920s' whose noses were destroyed snorting cocaine. They used to have nice little silver Art Deco pots on a chain that they wore on their waists. The 'upper classes' in the UK and in Europe as a whole took lots of hard drugs from the late 19th century right up to WW11. Plenty of opium addicts came back to the UK with the end of Empire. Workers on rubber plantations in Malaya and Burma were partly payed in opium.
Eddie, the problem with opioid substitutes is that the junkies still prefer the real thing, they will sell the substitutes to buy the real thing. The next big problem is the synthetic drugs of which there are many being sold on the net. Why do so many totally fail to see what happens when you get into hard drugs - they are not happy, not content with their lives aka too many really screwed up societies on this planet and that's really the problem - happy families?
I have met old ladies who were the 'bright young things' of the 1920s' whose noses were destroyed snorting cocaine. They used to have nice little silver Art Deco pots on a chain that they wore on their waists. The 'upper classes' in the UK and in Europe as a whole took lots of hard drugs from the late 19th century right up to WW11. Plenty of opium addicts came back to the UK with the end of Empire. Workers on rubber plantations in Malaya and Burma were partly payed in opium.
Eddie, the problem with opioid substitutes is that the junkies still prefer the real thing, they will sell the substitutes to buy the real thing. The next big problem is the synthetic drugs of which there are many being sold on the net. Why do so many totally fail to see what happens when you get into hard drugs - they are not happy, not content with their lives aka too many really screwed up societies on this planet and that's really the problem - happy families?