Shock £273m toll of East Lancashire alcohol abuse (From Lancashire Telegraph)

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  BuckoTheMoose wrote:
  

  Jack Herer wrote:
  

  BuckoTheMoose wrote: A couple of things missing from the article. If we're going to break it down into a merely financial impact, how much money is taken in alcohol taxes? If we're talking about costs to the NHS, how much is taken in taxes and how much in National Insurance from people who drink? If we're looking at alcohol related crime, why do judges let people off with a slapped wrist and why has being drunk almost become an excuse for crimes? This sounds like another advert on behalf of the temperance lobby.

  Or the legalise cannabis campaign. £43 million for Chorley alone in a year to mop up the mess from booze. Just little Chorley. Amazing. "A spokesman for Lancashire Police said: “Alcohol related incidents can range from minor public order and criminal damage offences through to serious assaults, domestic violence and even sexual assaults." Say cannabis were legalised, how many of those incidents related with alcohol would you see from weed? Minor public order and criminals damage? You don't see many pot heads smashing things up, or even hassling people. You don't see any in fact. Drinkers are on every street doing that, but pot heads never are. Serious assaults, domestic violence and even sexual assaults? You definitely don't get that with weed, the opposite in fact. Cannabis promotes calmness, not recklessness like booze. There was a story last week from South Wales about a former alcoholic who was forever bothering people and ending up in court, but he'd changed to cannabis 10 years ago and since then hasn't bothered a soul. The police persecute him now though, raiding his house every years without fail to steal his stash and give him grief. What do the police want? Alcoholics giving them constant grief and costing us a fortune, or placid pot heads who are otherwise perfect neighbours and citizens? If we legalised weed, then for every costly alcoholic who turned to cannabis, you'd have someone no longer costing society a fortune. If we legalised weed, and the whole of Chorley turned to the drug, then the town would save precisely £43 million every single year. Food for thought eh. Time for alcohol to have some healthy competition surely, if only to save us billions as a country.

  I agree that canabis should be legalised, however that won't see the end of articles like this one.
  Have you not seen the articles that talk about a hideously over inflated cost to society from smoking?
  
  Cost to society, cost to NHS etc, all have to be trumped up to ridiculous proportions in order to keep the temperance industry and the tobacco control industry in well paid, taxpayer funded jobs.
  
  I f we legalise canabis, something no politicians would have the guts or foresight to do, we will soon have new pressure groups to join ASH and Alcohol Concern et al sponging off the taxpayer in a righteous effort to save us from ourselves.

  I'm not sure what you are saying; are we supposed to just ignore the problems caused by alcohol, because looking at them means we are part of some "temperance industry"? Surely we need to quantify those problems so we can face them as a society, even realise how big the problem actually is.
  
  It's no good sweeping this under the carpet, we need to face facts, and if that means realising that our legally sanctioned drugs are actually two of the worst around, that's just tough. The alternative, burying our head in the sand, isn't going to help anyone, certainly not society.
  
  I'd much rather have a pressure group against a legalised cannabis, than the current criminally controlled illegal scenario, which is the worst case for society in every respect. If the pressure groups are actually telling the truth, then they shouldn't be ignored or derided surely, regardless of what they are complaining about."
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