The cost of drugs….what is the answer?

We as a country are never going to stop the drugs coming in.
There is only one way and know it’s a contentious view but it’s got to be legalised. Plus the drugs would be safer.
People don’t know what they are buying now. They are laced with everything. The legal way would stop that.
Then there’s the cost of Methadone to the NHS which doesn’t help the majority of addicts.

Prevention is of course the key - but that requires long term thinking and planning, which is not how our political system works - quick fixes get the the votes, so that is where potential governments target their policies.

We have to start right at the bottom with parents and babies. Sure Start did this and hopefully is now returning under the new name Better Start - but it will be decades before this filters through to more confident and better parented young people, who are able to make use of the education system to improve their own lives. It is an investment for the future that the populace should be supporting.

And then of course there are the b*****d drug dealers peddling this stuff to young people at the school gates, latching on to the most vulnerable and profiting from their misery and downfall.

I have a young relative in exactly this situation. He spent 5 years in prison where drugs were freely available and where his addiction was well and truly consolidated - there is no way out for him now - it is his life.

There has to be some way of keeping drugs out of prisons - it is beyond all reason that someone is in prison fully supervised and yet gets addicted ther. How can this be? Where are the staff? - or are they in cahoots with the drug barons, who sit out their sentences directing operations from there and stacking up a nice little nest egg ready for their release?

All contacts with the prisons he was in simply acknowledged drugs in prison as a fact of life and shrugged their soldiers.

Oh for a government that would grab this problem by the balls and have a proper policy for dealing with it.

And the drug imports? - far more of a problem than the immigrants which grab the headlines. There need to be robust policies around all this.

It all makes me very sad. These drug barons suck in the vulnerable and turn them into addicts so that they can become their pushers under threat of losing their supply. Pure evil.

Shoulders - not soldiers ...

A bag of ket costs a tenner where I am....enough for a few people to get off their faces for a night....even young kids can easily afford it

I agree with Petra. By legalising some drugs the govt would have more control over them and could possibly even raise some tax from them. That would reduce harms and wipe out a swathe of dealers and criminality at the same time.

I agree this is a farm more urgent and important issue than immigration- but hey ho!

The simple truth is there is money to be made by wicked people in all this.

A recent Channel 4 documentary covered an undercover operation and managed to uncover a massive world wide series of drug cartels. The Netherlands, Dubai and the UK were all involved in this operation and were thankfully busted.

Interestingly, the main perpetrators were white, fat middle aged men living on new build estates, just like the police officer in charge of the whole thing, as he commented at the end of the series.

Now I can't see two such men sitting on a park bench or sitting outside a local pub without thinking, 'I wonder what they're up to?' They live among us...

LOUISA1523

A bag of ket costs a tenner where I am....enough for a few people to get off their faces for a night....even young kids can easily afford it

I watched a podcast, about a young bloke that was addicted to ket, now in nappies.
So I suppose you can add that to the NHS bill, probably will get them free of charge.
Don’t think the young ones know that ket damages the kidneys & bladder.

@Mt61 there's lots of keyamine awareness going on in Merseyside now where I work .....especially with the youth population...... there's many youngsters having their bladders removed .....its a real worry ....its so cheap and accessible tho

I agree with legalisation, nicotine and alcohol are legal drugs, taxed accordingly, admittedly there is a small black market in nicotine, nothing like that of unlicensed drugs.

Jaxjacky

I agree with legalisation, nicotine and alcohol are legal drugs, taxed accordingly, admittedly there is a small black market in nicotine, nothing like that of unlicensed drugs.

Do you mean legalise weed....like Amsterdam, New york etc?.....where you go buy it in a cannabis shop....or do you mean all drugs?