[Football] Police call for cocaine users to be banned from football after Euros mayhem

[Weststander]

Some of the worst posts I've moderated have been put up in the regular morning hours or, at least, day time. A recent one about Marcus Rashford "piping his kids into (girls) mouths", the aggressive trolling from Beach Seagull and his many aliases, symyjym's Trump meltdown and ones from our old friend Bushy that could have been construed as physical threats.

What do you put those down to?

I’m talking about late at night, often weekends, “I suggest we meet up further to discuss this, PAL” type posts or someone coming online all guns blazing about midnight (I can remember one such poster, it was unlike him) picking fights with everyone in incoherent language.

Not your ‘day to day’ racist/anti semitic shit. They’re racists drunk, stoned or sober.

 

[Not Andy Naylor]

Will a certain Chelsea-supporting government minister be banned from Stamford Bridge in that case?

 

[Guinness Boy]

I’m talking about late at night, often weekends, “I suggest we meet up further to discuss this, PAL” type posts or someone coming online all guns blazing about midnight (I can remember one such poster, it was unlike him) picking fights with everyone in incoherent language.

Not your ‘day to day’ racist/anti semitic shit. They’re racists drunk, stoned or sober.

Fair enough. The "PM me to meet up" line couldn't be more obvious if it tried and is usually the last refuge of someone who's losing the written argument.

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

Two different points:

1) They are not treated equally in other parts of the law. That's my main point. Coke is prohibited, alcohol is pushed at you on every street corner. And, yes, I'd at least de-criminalise drugs but preferably legalise and licence them because the current policy is an utter shambles and no prohibition has ever really been successful (even in Saudi there are "Liptons Ice Tea" parties and a queue of cars to Bahrain every Thursday). It's likely the discrepancy in the banning order is because coke is already banned under another law. I am arguing for equal treatment. And then you could potentially be a bit more honest in your assessment of someone presenting at a football turnstile.

2) That doesn't excuse the Wembley police operation which was an unmitigated disaster.

2) we can agree on straightaway. The police are way too over sensitive about public opinion. They have had a load of criticism about Covid policing and the Sarah Everard vigil and as is often the case they react by prioritizing their public image over doing their job at Wembley.
1) is more difficult. It is much more straightforward to legislate to bring treatment of drugs at football into line with treatment of alcohol than it is to find democratic consensus on a complete overhaul of the drug laws. You would like the latter to happen whereas I wouldn’t and that split exists throughout society. There is also precedent for gradually bringing drugs into line as with drug driving laws that created similar equality with drink.

 

[Weststander]

Fair enough. The "PM me to meet up" line couldn't be more obvious if it tried and is usually the last refuge of someone who's losing the written argument.

HWT is often the recipient.

 

[Guinness Boy]

2) we can agree on straightaway. The police are way too over sensitive about public opinion. They have had a load of criticism about Covid policing and the Sarah Everard vigil and as is often the case they react by prioritizing their public image over doing their job at Wembley.
1) is more difficult. It is much more straightforward to legislate to bring treatment of drugs at football into line with treatment of alcohol than it is to find democratic consensus on a complete overhaul of the drug laws. You would like the latter to happen whereas I wouldn’t and that split exists throughout society. There is also precedent for gradually bringing drugs into line as with drug driving laws that created similar equality with drink.

I don’t actually think the laws will change, just that they should. It’s probably as polarising as capital punishment and the country really doesn’t need another 50/50 referendum.

Drug driving is a good example of what I’m on about though. They had to make an explicit law because the implicit one wasn’t working.


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[Seasidesage]

I am amazed that anyone would argue for the status quo with our drug laws. There is no argument to be had, the war on drugs is utterly lost. Drugs whether people like it or not are everywhere and prohibition is doing no more than making bad people rich. If we carry on doing what we are now where do people think we will be in 20 years? This is not going to go away, neither are the Police going to be able to even effect the street price of drugs much less prevent availability. Even the police I know think its a waste of time. Some form of legality is necessary and if we are going to go down that road then surely legalisation, regulation and taxation are the best way forward?
We need treatment centres, new sources of funding for hard pressed public services and especially healthcare, he is a golden opportunity to create a tax worth potentially billions?

When something like Cocaine is half the price it was 35 years ago and everywhere you turn I don't think anyone can pretend that illegality is having any positive effect at all? Time to cut the hypocrisy, accept the inevitable and at least try and take some of the criminality out of it.

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

I am amazed that anyone would argue for the status quo with our drug laws. There is no argument to be had, the war on drugs is utterly lost. Drugs whether people like it or not are everywhere and prohibition is doing no more than making bad people rich. If we carry on doing what we are now where do people think we will be in 20 years? This is not going to go away, neither are the Police going to be able to even effect the street price of drugs much less prevent availability. Even the police I know think its a waste of time. Some form of legality is necessary and if we are going to go down that road then surely legalisation, regulation and taxation are the best way forward?
We need treatment centres, new sources of funding for hard pressed public services and especially healthcare, he is a golden opportunity to create a tax worth potentially billions?

When something like Cocaine is half the price it was 35 years ago and everywhere you turn I don't think anyone can pretend that illegality is having any positive effect at all? Time to cut the hypocrisy, accept the inevitable and at least try and take some of the criminality out of it.

I don’t really want to get into the whole ethical debate because it’s been done to death and neither of us will change our minds. All I can do is explain that whether or not the ‘war on drugs’ is won or lost is entirely irrelevant to me. My views are only formed from the statement that our laws send out about the harmful effects of drugs. Wembley was in some ways quite illustrative of the free for all that can happen when society does not enforce drug laws. I also know that it is easier for parents to steer kids away from it when they are backed by the law. My kids were teenagers in Singapore where the penalty for drug use is death. There was no drug problem in Singapore. When we returned to the UK my daughter told me she thought all English kids were junkies. Perhaps that is because there are no particular penalties for drug use here. People talk about laws against drugs but they aren’t enforced anyway so they might as well not exist.

 

[Knocky's Nose]

My ex Father in Law squandered £250,000 in about 5 years on Cocaine and other drugs. A man in his mid to late 60's, befriended by a dealer who knew he'd just split up with his Mrs (my Mum) and got a chunk of money from it to spend... The dealer was his 'best friend' until he ran out of money, then disappeared.

From being a successful businessman his whole life, wearing designer clothes, going on holiday to glorious places and driving brand new BMW's to now living in sheltered accommodation for recovering addicts with not a penny to his name. He's developed facial ticks, his teeth have rotted and fallen out, and he's lost all pride in himself.

I've been around people taking Coke and I've never seen it do anything other than turn someone into a loud, gobby tosspot with fake confidence. After drugs have done with you, you then bear the consequences.

Until taking that crap becomes socially unacceptable it will always be in the mainstream.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

I don’t really want to get into the whole ethical debate because it’s been done to death and neither of us will change our minds. All I can do is explain that whether or not the ‘war on drugs’ is won or lost is entirely irrelevant to me. My views are only formed from the statement that our laws send out about the harmful effects of drugs. Wembley was in some ways quite illustrative of the free for all that can happen when society does not enforce drug laws. I also know that it is easier for parents to steer kids away from it when they are backed by the law. My kids were teenagers in Singapore where the penalty for drug use is death. There was no drug problem in Singapore. When we returned to the UK my daughter told me she thought all English kids were junkies. Perhaps that is because there are no particular penalties for drug use here. People talk about laws against drugs but they aren’t enforced anyway so they might as well not exist.

But there is a drug problem in Singapore? A quick google will come up with many articles about it.

 

[Neville's Breakfast]

But there is a drug problem in Singapore? A quick google will come up with many articles about it.

It’s nothing like the scale of the UK. Bear in mind as well that the few thousand arrests come from major enforcement operations. They take it seriously, unlike our police. There is also minimal drug use amongst kids in expensive schools because their parents will lose their jobs and the lifestyle will be gone. Quite a contrast to rich kids in this country.

 

[Chicken Run]

My ex Father in Law squandered £250,000 in about 5 years on Cocaine and other drugs. A man in his mid to late 60's, befriended by a dealer who knew he'd just split up with his Mrs (my Mum) and got a chunk of money from it to spend... The dealer was his 'best friend' until he ran out of money, then disappeared.

From being a successful businessman his whole life, wearing designer clothes, going on holiday to glorious places and driving brand new BMW's to now living in sheltered accommodation for recovering addicts with not a penny to his name. He's developed facial ticks, his teeth have rotted and fallen out, and he's lost all pride in himself.

I've been around people taking Coke and I've never seen it do anything other than turn someone into a loud, gobby tosspot with fake confidence. After drugs have done with you, you then bear the consequences.

Until taking that crap becomes socially unacceptable it will always be in the mainstream.

That is a grim story [emoji29]


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[Weststander]

My ex Father in Law squandered £250,000 in about 5 years on Cocaine and other drugs. A man in his mid to late 60's, befriended by a dealer who knew he'd just split up with his Mrs (my Mum) and got a chunk of money from it to spend... The dealer was his 'best friend' until he ran out of money, then disappeared.

From being a successful businessman his whole life, wearing designer clothes, going on holiday to glorious places and driving brand new BMW's to now living in sheltered accommodation for recovering addicts with not a penny to his name. He's developed facial ticks, his teeth have rotted and fallen out, and he's lost all pride in himself.

I've been around people taking Coke and I've never seen it do anything other than turn someone into a loud, gobby tosspot with fake confidence. After drugs have done with you, you then bear the consequences.

Until taking that crap becomes socially unacceptable it will always be in the mainstream.

My 41 year old brother-in-law has had a very longstanding love of cocaine, not when he’s at work as a chippy, but in non-work mode.

He’s earned great money for 15 years, but blows a large chunk of it on coke. Socially his mates think he’s a great laugh, the sole of the party.

He rents a flat, has no money left and has been increasingly bitter about most people around him who have money/equity in a home.

In my teens and twenties (and sporadically for another 10 years) I loved social boozing in clubbing, in the early years I dabbled rarely in another Class A.

But I know where I’d rather be in my life by 40, settled.

Not enriching dealers for a must-have to make an evening ‘exciting’.

 

[Seasidesage]

I don’t really want to get into the whole ethical debate because it’s been done to death and neither of us will change our minds. All I can do is explain that whether or not the ‘war on drugs’ is won or lost is entirely irrelevant to me. My views are only formed from the statement that our laws send out about the harmful effects of drugs. Wembley was in some ways quite illustrative of the free for all that can happen when society does not enforce drug laws. I also know that it is easier for parents to steer kids away from it when they are backed by the law. My kids were teenagers in Singapore where the penalty for drug use is death. There was no drug problem in Singapore. When we returned to the UK my daughter told me she thought all English kids were junkies. Perhaps that is because there are no particular penalties for drug use here. People talk about laws against drugs but they aren’t enforced anyway so they might as well not exist.

The Death penalty would undoubtedly work for the majority but its not really a practical solution in this country. Given the reduction in young people of alcohol consumption while drug consumption increases it may suggest that legalisation might remove some of the attraction from drugs to our youth and certainly decouple it from the associated violence. There is a serious problem in this country with the perception of the effectiveness of law and order and indeed its fairness. Laws that are routinely flouted eventually lead to contempt for all law and I think that is what we are seeing within society. It's a much wider ranging and more complicated problem than just that obviously but I do think drug laws are part of that erosion of respect for law in general.

Wembley was not a one off event where the rule of law was temporarily suspended, that is our city centres, our estates, our quiet locals, our villages and pretty much any public area you can think of. That is the reality of where we are and unless it is radically rethought the crime and the violence around it will just get worse and worse.

 

[BN9 BHA]

My ex Father in Law squandered £250,000 in about 5 years on Cocaine and other drugs. A man in his mid to late 60's, befriended by a dealer who knew he'd just split up with his Mrs (my Mum) and got a chunk of money from it to spend... The dealer was his 'best friend' until he ran out of money, then disappeared.

From being a successful businessman his whole life, wearing designer clothes, going on holiday to glorious places and driving brand new BMW's to now living in sheltered accommodation for recovering addicts with not a penny to his name. He's developed facial ticks, his teeth have rotted and fallen out, and he's lost all pride in himself.

I've been around people taking Coke and I've never seen it do anything other than turn someone into a loud, gobby tosspot with fake confidence. After drugs have done with you, you then bear the consequences.

Until taking that crap becomes socially unacceptable it will always be in the mainstream.

Sad story.

 

[faoileán]

You are of course correct, though the ridiculous "war on drugs" is the real problem here. Prohibition hasn't worked for anyone. A strictly controlled legalisation seems more sensible to me to be honest... ensure the quality and tax it.

It's not just the war on drugs, it's war between rival drug cartels and murders up and down the supply chain. And deaths and murders caused by crime on the streets to pay for the habit.

 

[Bakero]

It's not just the war on drugs, it's war between rival drug cartels and murders up and down the supply chain. And deaths and murders caused by crime on the streets to pay for the habit.

So why not take the trade out of the hands of criminal networks?

 

[faoileán]

It isn't 'just' a fact. It's always more complicated than that. It's possible to synthetically make without coca leaves but arguably due to It's illegality there is little motivation to develop this.

The cocaine "industry" generates bloodshed at every stage from jungle labs being wiped out by the military all the way down to a dealer on the street getting stabbed in south London. Synthetically produced drugs may remove some of the up-stream death but downstream there remains gang warfare and user related crime. Fact.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Laws that are routinely flouted eventually lead to contempt for all law and I think that is what we are seeing within society.

It doesn’t help when you have a government who are quite happy to brazenly break international laws and even their own domestic laws.

 

[faoileán]

I went through my ecstasy years and very rarely drank with MDMA. They are not good combinations and unnecessary anyway. I hung around with folk who did the same and don't regret it. A club full of folk on MDMA was a good place to be.

Cocaine ? I just don't get. I tried it once and found myself feeling a bit cocky and full of myself. I hated it. Others who I knew took it were the same in character. There was a disconcerting nature about them, as if they could go ape at any moment. Cocaine and a football crowd ? Some will argue to the contrary, but I can't see why folk do it. I just can't.

I gave up on a bunch of friends who got heavily into cocaine because they stopped being funny and interesting company and became self-obsessed and boring. One of them was a lovely and talented young woman whose personality completely changed through heavy cocaine use. Eventually she had a breakdown and spent months in a clinic. On recovery she went to Australia, joined a cult to fill the void that addiction had left and then tragically drowned.