@Shaner Mac: the tide in Europe is turning. Malta are due to legalise sales in 2024, they’ve already voted on it, Germany is due to legalise also. All it takes is a big player like Germany to do it and it’s a domino effect from there

@Shaner Mac: Do you know how it came to be illegal in the first place ? It’s surprisingly recent (early twentieth century) and the reasons behind the original bans are primarily greed and racism. In California it was banned because it was smoked by Mexican immigrants – the slogan was “All Mexicans are crazy and this is what makes them crazy”, the term loco weed was introduced. In New York it was banned on foot of “Marijuana makes the black man think he’s as good as the white man”
The final straw was H. J. Anslinger who inherited the department of the FBI tasked with prohibition just as it ended – he demonised marijuana and succeeded in getting it banned so that he could run the department to police it.
When the ban landed many Americans were surprised to discover that they could no longer obtain tincture of cannabis and similar popular products from the local pharmacy – they hadn’t realised that cannabis and marijuana were the same thing.

@Barry Donnelly: doubt it.. He would be clever enough then to get some one else to drive it…

@Steve O’Hara-Smith: Hardly the reason it’s banned here.

@Shaner Mac: Indirectly it is, the US leaned hard on other countries to support their campaign against cannabis, everyone else banned it because the US told them to.
The whole cannabis is a dangerous drug thing started with the American Reefer Madness campaign which was so absurd it seems laughable but it worked!

@Ollie Fitzpatrick: Nothing stops underage access to anything, drink, drugs, violent films, porn, sex – there will always be kids doing all of these things early. I recall nicking tots from my dad’s bottle of whisky long before I was eighteen, but at least I wasn’t trying to distill my own or buy moonshine from someone who was.
If kids are going to get their hands on drugs (and they are) would you rather it was from the school dealer who gets it ‘on tick’ from a career criminal and gets plain nasty about being paid or pinched from dad’s stash which was bought from a licensed retailer ?

@Ollie Fitzpatrick: agreed, they haven’t stopped it. But they have reduced it, isn’t that what we all want? As little as possible consumption of all substances for under 18′s?

@Steve O’Hara-Smith: you are talking Sence mate

@Fiona Fitzgerald: We don’t build anything since the luas.

@Dan Dare: The scourge you describe has nothing to do with drugs and everything to do with leaving the supply of a commodity that people want to buy in the hands of organised crime.
The lesson from history is of course the American experiment with banning alcohol. Instead of resulting in a population of permanently sober people and a complete absence of alcohol related social and medical problems it resulted in the rise of “the mob” as organised crime was handed a huge market and of course organised crime had no need of quality control and paid no taxes.
The same thing is happening here with cannabis – the cannabis market in this country is worth around a billion Euro a year and it is entirely in the hands of organised crime who must use violence to protect their illegal profits and care nothing for quality control or the health of their customers.
The drugs are not going away any though of a drug free country is simply fantasy.
The criminals who exploit the current law can easily be severely weakened by taking their massive profit stream and turning it into a legitimate business that pays taxes and operates under licensed and regulated control.
If you want to end the violence and the attempts to hook children on addictive drugs then legalisation and licensing is the only proven solution everything else that has been tried is now a well proven failure.

@Dan Dare: Billions of dollars are wasted on the stupid ‘war on drugs ‘. Why not invest that money in health care, education, and affordable housing.

@Alan Wallace: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/the-us-has-spent-over-a-trillion-dollars-fighting-war-on-drugs.html

@Dan Dare: Dan your thinking like a dictator. Nature always wins.

@Dan Dare: Thailand has the death penalty for drug dealing but I know from personal experience, people still buy and sell drugs in that country. Cannabis is now legal there. America spent numerous billions trying to eliminate cocaine but failed, the shooting of Pablo Escobar didn’t stop it.

@Dan Dare: Can you name ONE community in Ireland that has been destroyed by cannabis and in what way, I’d like to google it.

@Alan Wallace: Really so we should let people’s live be destroyed first and then treat them so they can continue to have messed up lives. Or we can deal with the problem at the bud.

@Tomaldo: Sure. Students are a good one. They think they are expanding their minds. Tell me that marijuana use helps them or even has no effect.

@Tomaldo: I don’t think you are advocating for not shooting people like Escobar or equivocating cocaine with cannabis. Surely not. What is the benefit of cannabis? Nothing. It is only harmful. For you, it’s just not that bad but for all the people abused along the supply chain it is potentially fatal. The whole business is corrupt and legalising it will not fix that.

@ΛПĐY: “Nature always wins” – the pseudo intellectualism that you can find in a fog of smoke.

@Steve O’Hara-Smith: Manipulating people with fear and unproven links to events a hundred years ago is not an argument for the legalisation of drugs. Drugs are substances ingested into your body and as such will always be regulated. If they cause harm then they don’t get approved. Cannabis for pain relief but not sell it in shops on the street. Go to Tesco for drugs. The crime and the gangs will always be there as you may have noticed that the mobs did not go away, dealing drugs to vulnerable children and adults, regardless of whatever vague idea you have about the government taking on responsibility for them. Do you think for a moment that the dealers will stop targetting 10/11/12 year olds? Why do you think that if we legalise drugs then Tesco will magically fix the drug scourge?

@Dan Dare: Dan, go out and get some sun and fresh air today, it will benefit you, stop trying to run other peoples lives. You will be happier.

@Dan Dare: It didn’t do too much harm to Steve Jobs, Richard Branson and Paul McCartney. I take it you don’t know any community in Ireland that has been destroyed by it, ‘cos u didn’t name one.

@Dan Dare: How do know legalising it won’t improve or fix it, do you have a crystal ball. The benefit of cannabis is enjoyment and others say it has medicinal qualities. Escobar was pure evil but who do you think replaced him, the boy scouts.

@Tomaldo: Wealthy people live long lives even when addicted to much harder drugs. Why? Because they are wealthy. The rest of us don’t have a chance in hell. Who do you think will spend their hard earned money on drugs rather than investing in their own and their childrens’ futures.

@JustBEERbarry: Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.

@Tomaldo: Easy. Even if just cannabis is made legal insofar as you could buy it in the shop or online, the people who deal drugs will still deal drugs and nothing will improve or be fixed for the communities suffering under this criminal regime. If you think being able to buy weed in this way is a fix well I need to question what is your idea of a fix anyway. I think you only want to have easy access to it yourself, that is your idea of a fix, and you don’t really care where it comes from and who has suffered to put that drug on your table. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the good of all of us. By the way the medicinal effects are not proven and there may be safer means. Escobar was evil, and his replacements will deserve to die as well.

@Dan Dare: Wealthy people only have ONE body same as everybody else, being wealthy doesn’t make you immortal and the people I named became wealthier AFTER after they took it.

@Dan Dare:

@Dan Dare: A quick google search will tell you how many millions are raised where cannabis is legal. That means less than 100% of the market is controlled by criminals. Surely that’s an improvement. Replica sportswear, designer clothes and high-end watches are made and sold illegally. Is the solution to that crime, to ban the genuine products.

@Tomaldo: Can clothes ruin your life? Maybe they can. False equivalence. Do you think the cannabis coming into Ireland is made legally somewhere? Please don’t say yes. How is this an improvement? I come from a place where I see the results of drugs including marijuana in all its forms and I hate drugs for what it has done to my city. It all seems great initially but the end is ignominous. Your problem is that you are naeve.

@Tomaldo: Seriously…

@Dan Dare: Ha, you still haven’t named a community that was destroyed by cannabis. I didn’t say clothes are bad for your health, I was challenging your assertion that criminals will still sell drugs, if they were made legal. Yes, some of the cannabis coming into Ireland is legal, it’s posted from places where it is, USA, Canada etc.