Scotland has a shot at legalization.

http://www.mapinc.org/norml/v05/n1656/a08.htm?134
This is an interesting article, Scotland is thinking about wether or not to legalize cannabis in order to cut the nations soaring rates of Herion addiction. If it were legalized, it would be distributed via "brown cafe's" like in Amsterndam. They are also considering "controlled legalization" of hallucinogens like LSD and Psilocybin Mushrooms. I doubt LSD will be legalized but they so have a good cause to legalize cannabis and mushrooms. I'm pretty shure the Scottish government would rather have a few potheads in some cafe's then have junkies wandering around mugging people and stealing to support their Herion addictions.

 

good luck to scotland. haha i just can't imagine everyone going to scotland for their holidays.

 

brown cafes are, to my knowledge, cafes/bars which are very, very old, and they get their name from the colors of the interior, stained dark from MANY MANY MANY years of tobacco smoke. a few may serve marjuana alongside the alcohol, but not many.

there are very few establishments, if there are ANY anymore, in amsterdam that are allowed to sell both alcohol AND cannabis, and no new shop opening would be given a permit to do so.

at any rate, i think this plan sucks. legalization of pot is good in it's own right, and will help solve SOME social problems related to pot, but people dont seem to realize that POT ISNT HEROIN! legalizing pot will NOT cause ANY noticible immediate effect regarding heroin use. just because it's legal doesnt mean that junkies will all of a sudden put down their needles and start smoking pot instead. thats rediculous to think. if anything it will help reduce the number of young people who will later on turn to hard drugs by making "soft drugs" more accessible and hard drugs more inaccessible. but if there is any effect that legalization of pot will have on heroin use, it will take many years to see it. we'd need this generation's junkies to die off or get off dope first.

if they're worried about heroin addiction, a much more reasonable solution would be treatment programs in which morphine or heroin or methadone or something is administered orally to patients in measured amounts for a fee small enough to be more affordable than black market heroin. it would allow them to cheaply and legally get a fix each day, and would give access to behavioral treatment programs as well. it wouldn't necessarily reduce the number of opiate addicts very quickly, but it WOULD reduce the number of deaths from overdose, and the number of instances in which people are robbed or hurt to support an addiction.

 

seems right that scotland are doing it, they dont exactly have a wild economy or capitalist market.

nesta, i think its aknowleged that it will take a few years for teh changes to come in, but the point is to get less people mingling with the hard drug community, to get less people onto heroin in the first place. also some junkies may well revert to weed due to its ease of purchase and legality, etc. but i dont think anyone in the authority assumed junkies would just decide to smoke weed. they wanna change the drug culture, not the druggies that are shootin up atm.

over here we have legal shooting galleries for heroin use, but i dont know how well that is going

 

I wonder if it will even help. With the Afghanistan crops back into a major boom (thanks to the fall of the Taliban), opium (and thus, heroin) has become far cheaper and much more pure. They flooded the market...with that much opium/heroin on the market, they'll probably find a way to sell it.

But still, good for Scotland. I must ask though, will Great Britain allow it? I don't know how that works, is Scotland self governing except in foreign issues?

 

i believe they have a prime minister? i dont know how it works actually. i thought they got independance but are tightly in the commonwealth