The bali 9 - is a death sentence appropriate?

[Gingermick]

Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone. (As much as I hate religion, its a good line)
The very idea that the possession of a plant (nature) can be illegal, ( and cost your life) is surely the most absurd law (Death penalty or not). (One can understand trying to save flora for heritage value by limiting access to it etc.) Because drugs fetch such a high price people see easy money.
If people forfeited their life for greed the board of NAB would have to be shot. After announcing record profit they sack 2000 staff.
Why are illegal drugs illegal? Perhaps is H were available and cheap, pharmaceutical companies would lose market share of effective pain killing meds and heaps of $
Are they to protect us? Apart from doing a peese poor job, that comes from the same rabid christian paternalism that says I can't kill myself if I want to.
As humans are innately greedy creatures people will continue to profit from the black market, as long as it exists.
(War on drugs is as absurd as war on terrorism (read hate))

[beejay1]

OOHH! I just knew from the offset that this post would bring an awful lot out.
What a great mix of soapbox opinion has been proffered up over what is a view basically on the death penalty and those for and against.
This is debate that will be with us for ever and a day and my own view is that if a crime is committed and the offender is caught and found guilty of that crime then he/she pays the penalty for that crime according to the laws of that country. Not something i necessarily agree with and something which often turns my stomach particularly in countries where the fabric of the law is often woven from some ancient religeous beliefs or customs which I am not endeavouring to introduce into this thread. However like it or not a country's laws are there for a reason and laws must be enforced. Some countries accept the need to ammend laws and tailor them to suit the changing societies they protect and pursue, others dont and often their refusal or reluctance to do so can be justifiably explained.
The Bali lot will probably get life and no doubt at a politically appropriate moment they will be pardoned or released into Australian custody to serve out their sentence. If they are executed, would I think it wrong, to be honest I really dont know although as i write this I would be more in favour of a life sentence and any proceeds from press interviews or books no matter when being passed to drug rehab programmes.

Have to agree with Maglites comments and liked the no frills delivery
beejay1

http://community.webshots.com/user/eunos9

[Grunt]

We should be spending more not less on them, may be from savings made by executing criminals rather than keeping them in jail. May not be a deterrent but a hell of a lot cheaper than keeping criminals alive when they, by their own actions, have forfeited that right.

In the US is costs more to execute someone than it does to keep them in jail for life. The argument that capital punishment saves the tax payer is flawed.

[DanP]

In the US is costs more to execute someone than it does to keep them in jail for life. The argument that capital punishment saves the tax payer is flawed.

I'm not disputing but I can't see how that is possible. Unless you take into account the countless years it takes to get them to the chair for all the appeals and stays of execution etc, in which case I still can't see how it cost more than keeping someone in gaol. Martin Bryant costs us about $75,000 a year to keep in gaol, when your average Joe will never see that amount of money in a year in his/her life.

Dan

[DanP]

The very idea that the possession of a plant (nature) can be illegal, ( and cost your life) is surely the most absurd law

Mick,

The law is there because of the effect of the drug, not because it is a particular type of plant or whatever. If you want to see why, visit a mental institution and ask one of the nurses what they think of the effects of cannabis. There aren't too many long term users who don't have some 'issues'.

Dan

[Grunt]

Unless you take into account the countless years it takes to get them to the chair for all the appeals and stays of execution etc,

This is exactly the reason for the cost. Lawyers are damned exepensive. There isn't any figures for this in Australia but in the US this is the case. $3 or $4 million dollars an execution and by shear economies of scale an inmate costs arounf $40k per year.

The law is there because of the effect of the drug, not because it is a particular type of plant or whatever. If you want to see why, visit a mental institution and ask one of the nurses what they think of the effects of cannabis. There aren't too many long term users who don't have some 'issues'.

Cannabis, heroin, tobacco and alchohol (in excess) are all bad for you. Why do we allow people to smoke tobacco and not cannabis? Why isn't being an alcoholic illegal? Any argument that says that heroin or cannabis should be illegal can be applied to tobacco and alchohol. Smoking kills thousands of Australians each year. Domestic violence is almost entirely attributable to alcohol.

Why do we treat users of illicit drugs as criminals when it's really a health problem. Sure people who take up heroin or cannibis are stupid but so are the millions of Australians who smoke and the millions of Australians who get wasted on grog each week.

If took the approach that you could only get heroin on perscription then it would put the drug dealers out of business. It would take the money out of heroin. The quality and quantity could be maintained there by reducing the ODs to those who want to top themselves. Syringes could be supplied with every hit that have auto retracting needles to reduce the risk of blood borne diseases being transmitted from user to user and the the general public.

The above will have problems for sure but we'd have fewer deaths and less drug associated crime. We've been fighting drugs like a war for my entire life and it hasn't been very successful. I think it's time we tried something else.

[adrian]

Mick,

The law is there because of the effect of the drug, not because it is a particular type of plant or whatever. If you want to see why, visit a mental institution and ask one of the nurses what they think of the effects of cannabis. There aren't too many long term users who don't have some 'issues'.

Dan

The connection between mental conditions and cannabis is a tentative one. It's a question of which came first , the chicken or the egg. I have known literally hundreds of cannabis users in my 52 years and I can confidently say that all who abused it to the point where it became an essential part of their life had a prior history of some form of psychological problem. In the three most striking cases it was sexual abuse as children.
For antidrug campaigners to link cannabis to the onset of mental disorders is flat out wrong. If they dug a little deeper than their lazy statistical analysis they would find a predisposition for all forms of chemical abuse among people with even the mildest of psychological problems.
We have a rather imperfect world and we just don't know how to deal with harmful drugs.
Take the case of a young pregnant woman who smokes. If you were to get a cocktail of all the carcinogens contained in cigarette smoke and use a hypodermic to inject a baby on a daily basis with the same doses you would be gaoled for quite a while. Yet it's perfectly legal to inject those drugs through the placenta. At least she knows that when the baby is born she can keep it quiet with nicotine patches rather than a dummy.
Heroine should be made freely available to registered addicts. Many people express horror at that suggestion claiming that many new addicts will be created. How moronic is it to suggest that people are going to become heroine addicts so they can get free heroine. It just doesn't add up.
Anyone with any knowledge of heroine knows that if distribution and quality was controlled by government, addicts would be able to lead close to a normal life and we wouldn't all have to put bars on our windows to keep them away from our TV and video players.

[RETIRED]

This thread is digressing again.

Everyone has their own opinion and I think if the thread remains open it is going to go from debate to argument.