XPost: uk.legal, uk.politics.drugs   
   From: bliss@sfo.com   
      
   Cynic wrote:   
   > On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:38:58 +0100, "Aidy"    
   > wrote:   
   >   
   >>> Because "legal" does *not* mean "unregulated".   
   >   
   >> Recreational drugs would never make it through the regulation process.   
   >   
   > Right.  So the fact that both alcohol and tobacco have done just that   
   > is a figment of my imagination, is it?   
   >   
      
   	Actually if alcohol and tobacco had been subjected to a   
   review neither would be legal except perhaps alcohol in ale and   
   unfortified wine.   
   	Certainly the monarchies of the past floundered trying   
   to prohibit tobacco, coffee and I am not sure if they ever tried   
   with distilled alcohol aside from customs duty. See "Gin Lane"   
   by Hogarth which shows how badly the wave of alcoholism that   
   came with distillation affected the people of the time.   
   	The church tried to prohibit chocolate use by the laity   
   in Spain.   
   	Coffee was frowned upon because the Coffee Houses were   
   hotbeds of anti-monarchial, anti-clerial, anti-whoever was in   
   charge, full-blown revolutionary sentiment.  Makes you think   
   of the 1960s when the revolutionary sentiments and the drugs   
   they were fond of were suppressed?   
      
   	But these are the embedded drugs of the ruling classes   
   (White Anglo-Saxons at the time) and the  attempt to prohibit   
   alcohol led to violence, widespread disregard for the law and   
   enriched those who catered to the crowd's demands.  It was   
   abandoned as socially deleterious after less than 20 years.   
   Of course the market crash in 1929 may have cut the funds   
   available for futile efforts.   
      
   	later   
   	bliss   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)