Party Vibe

was a good report when I read it in the mid noughties but progress if any has been painfully slow and the recent election results haven’t helped..

I’m in favour of “removing” all penalties for small posession and low level dealing unless someone commits criminal / anti-social behaviour (including serious/dangerous traffic offences) whilst under the influence or recoveing from a comedown, in which case they get busted both for the crime itself and the penalty for the illegal drug use. and in Court, problematic drug use should be treated as an aggravating rather than a mitigating factor (i.e people should no longer be permitted to use drugs as an excuse for commiting crime)…

it would technically be possible to do this without totally breaching the UN laws until they can be reformed, and would allow freedom whilst setting acceptable standards of behaviour and passing the burden of regulation back to the individual rather than the state. if this is a success then further legalisation options could be investigated.

@Iacchus 395250 wrote:

definately it always amazed me people can get out of crimes by saying they were drunk or on drugs.. its no excuse really

admittedly i only see the ‘nice’ side of drug use as I hang aroudn with a bunch of people who arent a load of fuck ups, dont take anything to excess, and have decent careers etc and dont commit antisocial behaviour, so agree problematic drug use should get targetted not general drug use.

since moving to EA in 2006 I’ve not seen complete carnage, but sadly I have seen a fair few people repeat the exact mistakes of the 1990s, despite having access to independent advice/harm reduction…

all my friends from 2007 have drifted apart because of this – to be fair most haven’t suffered lasting damage but the ravers start young, burn out and then turn their backs on the scene (some even supporting prohibition) because of their youthful excesses..]

actually although ketamine does cause a lot of damage, many people I know were quitting it as they didn’t enjoy pain and mephedrone did at least provide more of a “fun” buzz rather than being totally sketched out…

@Iacchus 395262 wrote:

but I still feel if people want to fuck up that’s their choice as long as they don’t cause others suffering. Thats hard to avoid though currently because ultimately income tax has to foot the bill for health problems caused by illegal drug use.

Taxation of legal drugs (like with alcohol/tobacco) would (and does) offset the costs of treatment but there’s also the issue of people rendering themselves unfit/unwilling to do productive work through drug use (including the legal drugs). my experience of recent times is that this wasn’t as much of an issue say 10 years ago during economic boom times but with the economic depression comes much more to the forefront… people not pulling their weight does cause others suffering…

it was one of the things what split a lot of my friends, some were working really long hours and others just took beneifts and bumbled along in a haze of everything… peopel initially tolerated this but then it turned out the slackers were just as slack at getting a party together and simply weren’t prepared to to “harder” work like keep events in licensed venues safe…

the ketamine culture was a major reason for me leaving Reading/SE England behind, including a large number of friends, and never venturing back there since 2007.

@Iacchus 395271 wrote:

I must say ive never met anyone who’s gone from being a contributing member of society to being a slacker just through drug use, however I’ve found people who dont have a purpose in life career wise or whatever are more likely to thrash the drugs.

what I’ve noticed isn’t the media stereotypes of sudden decline. That happens very rarely (same with class A / opiate addiction as a whole these days, most young addicts being the children of older addicts).

I have seen however a lot of middle class young people with “boring but worthy” jobs (such as construction industry, first line IT support, office admin) lunch these out as they get further into party drug use – starts with pulling sickies on Mondays, then erattic performance due to midweek comedowns, some eventually just walk out of jobs or get fired due to poor performance and/or even making expensive mistakes which impact on customer service…

And the newer generation don’t lose their wives/husbands as much – because they don’t get married in the first place! there’s a lot of broken relationships from the mid 20s onwards, whether or not there are childen. usually because the one parent feels that the couple continuing their lifestyle is a bad example to the children, but people remain stubborn and it ends up with couples splitting.

Most people by their mid 20s/30 do seem to have “grown out of it” with regard to regular party drugs use, but those who may by now have children still “don’t want their kids making their mistakes”

The irony is there isn’t quite enough social damage from recreational drug use to make society to something positive about it (as a contrast, road traffic incidents have led to a lot of increases in road safety measures), but nor is tolerating drug use perceived to add much value to society – unlike cars and bikes which help people get around to places and keep society running. Also drug related behaviour is masked to an large extent by people being increasingly impulsive and selfish anyway whether or not they use drugs – but there’s unfortunately enough to keep support for prohibition, as drugs are seen as a contributory factor to selfish/impulsive behaviour…