no, certainly not a gunning down on the street but evidence based and via a judgement of ones peers. if you are caught dealing drugs you are removed from society forever at no further financial burden to the rest of society never mind not destroying peoples lives. Equally murderers and other heinous criminals that society will not miss nor do we want to pay billions to keep them in a certain standard of living only for them to be put back into society at some point so they can repeat such.
yup soft on crime always works out!

Really that''s your answwer for someone who say has been caught knocking out £50 of weed to a friend, or even something more serious like an ounce of coke or whatever, is to remove them from society forever, wow I've I got the wrong end of the stick here because I've never heard that even from the harshest critcs of drugs.

If it's a known fact that more people in work means fewer drugs,how do you explain say Scotland who hit a 26 year low of 3.8% unemployment rate, but yet has massive drug problems (biggest users of Coke in the world per Capita apparently) and had 160 drug related deaths per 1million, by far the most. Similarly England & Wales have relatively low unemployment rates of around 4.5%, but are known as one of the biggest users of drugs around Europe (highest amount of heroin users in Europe) & have 66 drug related deaths per million. But one of the highest unemployment rates going in Europe at 21% is Greece and although their issues with drugs has increased, it is still incredibly low compared to just about every European Country. I'd say things such as social & economic issues play the biggest role in drug use. You only have to look at Countries such as the US, UK and even Aus to see it's not that straight forward.

From my point of view what still beggars belief is that a professional sports star is taking a banned stimulant, probably within hours of a major game given the likely metabolism rate, and we are still talking about having him let off because it was recreational. According to WADA that would have been a legitimate response of it was not within the timeframe considered as in competition.

Go on the other Cas forum and read the posts of a poster called "Mysterio".

Please don't think we all share such views. I'm not in the camp for stringing him up totally but he deserves a ban and I'm content if Cas terminated his contract. People saying bans shouldn't be imposed for recreational drugs leave my looking to the high heavens. Zak is a marvellous player but he's tarnished Cas with his actions. He needs to take responsibility and grow up if he is to ever play super league again.

Your statement has no facts that mean anything. You are comparing ONE year, that's utterly meaningless. How about some stats for the preceding years?
A big problem doesn't go away instantaneously and you've not presented any before or after facts have you? I clearly didn't say employment rates are the be all and all, ffs bother to read it in entirety, there are other interventions that have a greater affect but employment levels do have an impact, this is information that is seen over not just a couple of years and a country or two but many countries and decades of statistics, where are yours?
Outliers and areas with deep rooted issues, ones that are so massive as per your number for Scotland are not going to change overnight, to believe so is patently stupid and ignorant.
Scotland is properly f'ckd, their government can't control its finances, they are worse than Westminster, it has no money to spend on treating druggies and running health programmes like the one in Portugal when it can't even manage its own money on the very basics that society needs. They want independence but they are in no position to be able to run the country themselves, one years employment results is not going to have much impact on a country in such a f'cked up state.

I don't I actually find most Cas fans have accepted the situation for what is. I just find the suggestion that all 18-26 year olds want to do on a weekend is sniff coke hilarious.

The point is that for the purpose of WADA this is not a recreational drugs but a performance enhancing one. If a player refuses to accept that then perhaps we should understand that all regulations are merely suggestions and that the result of any game should be decided by an anarchist collective.

I worked at a firm that had a policy that if you had drink or drug problems they would get you help and work with you etc,,and it was top class professional help too..
But if you failed a test you were dismissed..
One lad always bragging about knowing all the local dealers and how much he gets his coke for etc was sacked for testing positive,,,he then went down the depression route,,openly admitting to his mates it was the only way they might reconsider his sacking...
Help is always out there before you get caught..

I don't think anyone is saying that on here - it seems to me that there's a consensus; Cocaine is on the WADA list, Hardaker knowingly used it anyway, so he deserves whatever punishment comes his way.

The wider discussion is about our approach to drugs as a society - which is clearly ambiguous, and isn't working in terms of either prevention, or public health.

The problem is, drugs are rife in society. I was at york races on saturday and the queue for the toilet cubicles was at any one time, full of about 50 lads with those crappy chavvy sleeve tattoos. Or maybe they really did just want a poo?

Regards

King James