There’s no need to get into arguments about the supposed beneficial effects of drug liberalisation in reducing addiction. By itself, it will never do that. You have to remove the causes of misery that make people want to take drugs. The issue is really simple: prohibition causes unnecessary misery, profits gangsters and violent scumbags, makes addiction far riskier to health than it needs to be, puts people in jail who don’t need to be in jail, and gives the state a mandate over what individuals ingest. It’s quite simple: no state, no government, no policeman has any right to tell me or you or anyone else what they ingest into their own bodies. There are too many laws governing sumptuary propensities. It’s a form of social control, and it has to stop.

Of course, Labour is never going to take a lead on this issue, and of course Bob Ainsworth would agree with that portion of your argument – indeed, he explicitly does so. But there’s no reason for people who aren’t seeking election to be so servile.

Indeed, there appear to have increases in drug use. So you’d be unlikely to see an end to drug supply, or a reduction in drug cultivation.

Are you deliberately missing the point?

(1) Who cares? No doubt there was an increase in alcohol use and distilling after the end of prohibition. Would you have opposed that?

(2) What is likely to happen to *related* crime if you can buy cheaply in Superdrug?

You can understand why Lab (and Tories no doubt) will oppose this out of cowardice.
You can even argue that it is the price you are prepared to pay for a Lab return.

But your case for why the idle itself is, well, just a little weak.

Though I can understand that the sight of SWP charmers such as @1 arguing the case on the grounds of “liberty” might be a little hard to stomach!

@ 2

Agree with CJCJC. You seem to be arguing on the assumption that, as we are told time and time again with zero justification, Drugs Are Bad.

As far as I’m concerned, I’m allowed to drink, smoke and eat fatty foods (and indeed I do all these things in abundance), so who am I to tell someone that they’re not allowed to smoke a joint or take ecstasy? Talk about framing the narrative: you’ve skipped right over most of the drugs debate and are acting as if one rather illogical viewpoint is the only one anybody holds.

On point 3, I don’t think the efforts to decriminalise are even aimed toward reducing the number of drug users. Instead it is more an admission that people take drugs regardless, so there’s very little point in criminalising those people for bugger-all gain, and much loss and damage to society.

@4 Spot on.

Quite simply, the only reason to oppose legalisation and regulation is cowardice and political opportunism by trying to court the daily mail. Labour did it, the tories did it and even the Lib Dems sometimes did it. The party which first breaks this habit of cringing sycophancy towards the right wing press will go up very highly in my estimation and I imagine in a lot of other people’s as well.

I am not sure how accurate your assertion is that the public ‘ massively disagree ‘. It depends how the question is framed. I was pleasantly surprised how much push back a Tory MP with a drearily predictable response to Mr Ainsworth got on the ConHome site. The tide of public opinion is turning and it is the elected politicians who are out of touch. People want rid of the gangsters who are ruining communities, they of course are the inevitable results of the current drug policies and stand as shining lights of the failure of the aforementioned policies. Anyway, if politicians are only there to channel public opinion well that kind of makes them pointless. In the modern era we would be as well having national electronic voting by all the population. There must be a role for politicians to help shape public opinion and take account of competing points of view.

It’s quite simple: no state, no government, no policeman has any right to tell me or you or anyone else what they ingest into their own bodies. There are too many laws governing sumptuary propensities. It’s a form of social control, and it has to stop.

er….Richard? You do realise that as a socialist you’re supposed to be the statist authoritarian, and the liberals are supposed to be the champions of personal freedom? Could you refer to the script immediately please, and get back in character? People will get confused

Uff….one of the hardest topics around, and fair play to Ainsworth for bringing it up in a sensible manner. The problem is there are good arguments on both sides, but politically it’s a depth charge – not least because you’d be one of the first countries making the step.

On one side, drugs *are* highly addictive and very bad for you, but also bad for the people around you. Being on the libertarian side, I’d be on the side of doing what you want to yourself, but not at the cost of society around you. Unfortunately drug use is the source of a lot of crime, both serious and violent and petty to feed drug habits, and social breakdown and disorder.

At the same time, if you legalise you take a lot of the power, control and profit from organised crime, whose most profitable business is the drugs trade. Let alone allowing more drugs users to get help without the same stigma attached.

Personally I’m in the middle somewhere, but without having the discussion we can’t even approach the best solution.

So, basically, the OP could be summarised thus: “Can I have Bob Ainsworth’s parliamentary seat, please?”

[4] I’m allowed to drink, smoke and eat fatty foods – indeed you are, with increasing cost and restriction, even though from the public health perspective you ought not to be. No one supposes that the distinction between what’s legal and what isn’t is in any way logically defensible – that’s really what Hopi Sen means when he says that political parties have to take account of what the public thinks. My question to you is: do you think that the parliamentary candidates of the party of your choice should be allowed to drink, smoke and eat fatty foods, and if so, why?

[2] Aren’t there two different kinds of “drug-related” crime, cjcjc? Legalisation might or might not make drugs so cheap that users would always be able to afford to buy from legal outlets, but there remains the question of what the professional criminals who constitute the supply chain would do. No one thinks they’d go straight and there must be a worry that they would turn to even more obnoxious activity such as kidnapping for ransom.

What 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6 said.

What right does anyone have to tell me what I can do with my own body?

I should be free to do anything I please so long as I do no non-consensual harm to others, paying for any externalities (NHS use etc).

Why should Joe Bloggs down the road prevent me from doing so?

… the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

‘First, what Bob has said is not, and will not be, the policy of the Labour party.’

So your FIRST reason for Labour being ‘right to reject Bob’s proposal’ is that it ‘it is not, and will not be, the the policy of the Labour party’. You reject it because you reject it. Brilliant.

‘Second, the public massively disagree with Bob Ainsworth on this’

They reject it because you lie about it, just as you lied about so much while in power.

‘Third, although there is some evidence of good outcomes from Drug decriminalisation, the experience in Portugal (where posession of more than 0.2g of cocaine or 2.5g of marijuana is still subject to criminal charge. People get the wrong idea about that) certainly doesn’t show any major reduction of drug use.

‘Indeed, there appear to have increases in drug use. So you’d be unlikely to see an end to drug supply, or a reduction in drug cultivation.’

Its shouldn’t be about reducing drug use – it should be about reducing the *harm* drugs cause. A policy which prioritises *reduction* over the health and well-being of often vulnerable people has no place in 21st Century politics. Criminalising users doesn’t just put their health at risk, it turns some areas into war zones. A criminal conviction for possession is also a passport to a lifetime of unemployment.

Labour’s policy – and that of most other parties – is about criminalising ‘sin’. Its an irrational fear of moral contamination.

Simple this one. Labour would be right to reject anything this man says. Everything about him is overstated, over promoted and over priced. Just have a look at his background.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Ainsworth

Though I can understand that the sight of SWP charmers such as @1 arguing the case on the grounds of “liberty” might be a little hard to stomach!

Churlish. I thought he was a libertarian!!!!

Maybe he is.

The tide of public opinion is turning and it is the elected politicians who are out of touch.

Actually, I really believe this is the case. And I suspect Cameron is more likely to do something on this than Milliband would be.

Mike Killingworth,

[2] Aren’t there two different kinds of “drug-related” crime, cjcjc? Legalisation might or might not make drugs so cheap that users would always be able to afford to buy from legal outlets, but there remains the question of what the professional criminals who constitute the supply chain would do. No one thinks they’d go straight and there must be a worry that they would turn to even more obnoxious activity such as kidnapping for ransom.

Bit of an assumption there Mike, since if kidnapping for ransom was really that lucrative, more criminals would be doing it. You do realise that the police are very good at dealing with that sort of crime, because it does not have widespread social support, whereas drug dealers are protected by society as a useful service?

Anyway, it is not the professional criminals that this will deal with – it is the hangers on, the runners, the children dragged in, who are necessary to the drugs industry as presently composed. If professional kidnapping becomes the new vogue then these large groups are of no use. The problem with prohibition is not, as Hopi and Tyler both seem to imply, simply that it channels money to criminals, but more that it normalises crime, creates alternative and democratically illegitimate social hierarchies (which will cause violence when they clash with legitimate or quasi-legitimate hierarchies) and even alternaive societies. In terms of harm, the potential harm caused by allowing the development of an entire industry outside of government and law is huge.

Hopi, you don’t address the question of effectiveness: currently, we are spending 1.5 billion quid a year on the “war on drugs”. As a result, a whopping 1% of currently illegal drugs gets taken off the streets.

That doesn’t include court and prison costs. Meanwhile, we leave the trade in these drugs in the hands of organised criminality, which makes the substances vastly more dangerous. See under “bad alcohol during Prohibition” for examples.

The actions taken in Portugal, while they are a first step, do not remove organised criminality from the equation. Therefore it is misleading to use that country as an example when discussing decriminalisation.

Nor do you address the disproportionate influence wielded by a small number of editors, most significantly the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre:

http://bit.ly/h76HRz refers.

Ted,

Simple this one. Labour would be right to reject anything this man says. Everything about him is overstated, over promoted and over priced. Just have a look at his background.

Of course it is easy to conduct politics by considering the man, rather than the issue. Indeed, up to yesterday I would rather share your views on Mr Ainsworth, whose moustache was I thought his most outstanding feature. But he has said something brave that needs thinking about.

On your logic, if Bob Ainsworth stood up and said we needed to implement all policies suggested by Ted straight away, you’d have to oppose that on the grounds he is Bob Ainsworth and apparently wrong.

‘ No one thinks they’d go straight and there must be a worry that they would turn to even more obnoxious activity such as kidnapping for ransom.’

They’d far more likely go for pirate DVDs: this isn’t Latin America or post-Labour Iraq.

@ David

Dear me. You appear to be confusing socialism with Stalinism, or something like it. Stop pretending that a belief in redistribution has to go hand in had with social authoritarianism, because it patently doesn’t.

1. I was under the impression that drug use in Portugal had *fallen* slightly since decriminalisation (which, note, is not legalisation). Hopi, do you have a source for that claim? (N.b. I agree regardless with those above that point out that whether drug use has gone up is not in itself a bad thing; there’s no inherent reason why adults taking drugs of their own free choice is regretable).

2. Can people please stop making blanket statements about “drugs” being “addictive”. I presume what most of you are talking about is heroin and crack. Most other illegal drugs are not addictive (or at least, not to the same extent). Some people smoke a lot of pot because they are lazy, apathetic and unambitious. Some people smoke a lot of pot and still manage to do very well in life. Other people take ecstasy every weekend and get on with life just fine. Yet more may drop a tab of acid, or do some Ket at parties, every now and then. These drugs are all very different. Far more different, even, than the difference between (say) scotch and weak beer. Part of the problem with the whole “DRUGS ARE BAD MAAAAN” discourse is that “drugs” is an unhelpful term so-used because it disguises the complexity and difference of alternative kinds of drug use.

@ 11

“No one supposes that the distinction between what’s legal and what isn’t is in any way logically defensible – that’s really what Hopi Sen means when he says that political parties have to take account of what the public thinks.”

Sure. I’m not appealing to law, I’m pointing out the incredible hypocrisy of the current situation. If you’re gonna support banning drugs, better also campaign for alcohol prohibition and people only being allowed to eat salad.

“My question to you is: do you think that the parliamentary candidates of the party of your choice should be allowed to drink, smoke and eat fatty foods, and if so, why?

What has that got to do with it? Well, in answer to your question, of course I do, because there is no justified reason for preventing them from doing so if that is their wish.

[16] Are “Watchman” and “cjcjc” two names for the same person? If not, why does the one answer for the other?

As far as kidnapping is concerned, we have at present a virtuous circle. There hardly is any, so the police are able to come down hard on the few who do it, thereby signalling to criminals to do something else. Take away the something else (drug supply) and it is an assumption that the police would be able to hold the line.

“No one thinks they’d go straight and there must be a worry that they would turn to even more obnoxious activity such as kidnapping for ransom.”

Interesting point. Though that is a *much* riskier activity for them!

@8 if we were forced to live under the kind of regime Seymour (and you too – I don’t know?) favours we would certainly need all the drugs we could get!

@ 18. Watchman. A fair point but nothing of any real value has ever resulted from this fellow’s efforts and his undeserved appointments, why should it start now ? Anyway, if he or the Labour Party believed any of this, he or they would have said it whilst in Ministerial Office. He’s just another ex minister creep seeking undue media recognition.

@ 21

Yep. I’ve seen people react to cannabis users as if they had a crack pipe in their mouth, precisely because of the hysteria and lazy misinformation that causes people to think the two things are closely connected but neither of them are in any way related to beer.

“Some people say alcohol is a drug. It’s not a drug, it’s a drink!”

@ Shatterface

Its an irrational fear of moral contamination.

Well put. But it’s more than that.

Those that are in favour of drug prohibition are the same people who complain about binge drinking, early age sex and the proliferation of social networking websites.

They are generally from an older generation and they are motivated by jealousy. Their fear is not just of contamination but they are worried that others may be enjoying life more than they are.

The OP conflates two separate issues on drug decriminalisation;
*the personal opinion of HS, and,
*what Labour should do about it.

He/she is wrong on both counts – not least because no antidote is offered to the abysmal failings of the ‘war on drugs’, an approach that has killed more people than the Iraq war once we factor in the international dimensions of this ludicrous policy.

It seems our fear of the USA and the Daily Mail (in that order) transcends the sum of human misery caused by drug prohibition.

It is not surprising the public are against decriminalisation given the constant barrage of misinformation and propaganda that is fed to them – and of course adopting an evidence based approach results in this sort of debacle;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8334774.stm

Hopi Sen: “Second, the public massively disagree with Bob Ainsworth on this. Political parties have to take account of what the public thinks.”

True, but at the same time you have to take account of *why* the public thinks that – and it’s primarily because pro-criminalisation campaigners have been massively more successful at getting their arguments promoted than anti-criminalisation campaigners. Yes, this is partly due to funding and the sympathy of many of the owners of the press – but it’s also a matter of campaigning and making the argument, rather than immediately capitulating and joining the chorus of screeching moral outrage at cannabis takers in hopes of getting brownie points.

If a political movement treats public opinion as some sort of natural force that cannot be altered, and must be conformed to, it is doomed in the long term to lose all arguments. Opposing movements will be out there telling anyone who will listen what their opinion should be (if they want to be considered decent and patriotic) – and experience suggests that if their shouting is intense enough and goes on for long enough, very many people will start agreeing just out of an instinct for social conformity.

Mike,

I’m not cjcjc (unless that explains the blank moments each day and the (for me) highly odd situations I wake up in ), but I felt your comment needed answering anyway.

As far as kidnapping is concerned, we have at present a virtuous circle. There hardly is any, so the police are able to come down hard on the few who do it, thereby signalling to criminals to do something else. Take away the something else (drug supply) and it is an assumption that the police would be able to hold the line.

Well, since we would have the police who are now dealing with drugs + the police who already deal with kidnapping dealing with those who already kidnap for ransom + those involved with drugs who decide to move into this industry – the support of their community, I’m quite confident this is low risk. To be effective as an argument you need to show that kidnapping is an industry that actually works for criminals, which would first have to explain why it is no longer common in Italy, where it was indeed a criminal industry for a while. Kidnapping works best in corrupt and broken societies, which however much we might pretend when it suits us, is not the United Kingdom.

And the coming down hard on those that do it thing is more to do with the fact that the police can because they are much more easily identified (they have to come into contact with the victim, not a customer, and with the money – two areas of risk not necessary for drug dealers). And if I know the man across the road sells marajuana I am not really concerned (for all I like the rule of law), but if he is a kidnapper I may be inclined to mention this to the police.

Anyway, you’ve nowhere explained why the actions of the drug pushers etc would be to switch to another form of crime, which apart from anything else would involve a huge escalation in violence and risk?

“Some people say alcohol is a drug. It’s not a drug, it’s a drink!”

Its also the only drug that causes such dependancy that if an alcoholic goes cold turkey there is a very real threat of death, which doesnt happen with other drugs, even heroin.

my guess is that full legalization would lead to a large increase in usage.

It’s true that people use drugs without much apparent harm, but the same can be said for alcohol and that doesn’t stop widespread alcohol use causing big problems. My second hand experience is that regular use of drugs like ecstasy and cocaine does affect people’s capacities to operate effectively both in their personal/emotional life (i.e. you can become a fuck up quite quickly) and professionally. So I’d be worried about a large increase in usage.

It’s all very well saying “nobody has a right to tell me what to ingest” etc. (i.e. a ‘rights’ based argument, but I think pragmatism dominates in situations like this. You have to imagine how people are going to think about legalization say 10 years in. If usage increases dramatically and the quantity of people with drug problems rises dramatically too, it’s going to look like a bad move. If not, not. I don’t think any of us can do much more than guess. Portugal is a long way short of full legalization. That said, the existing state of affairs is woeful, so it might be worth an experiment.

Personally, in fantasy world, I favour a state monopoly on the production and supply of extremely high quality drugs of all varieties, generating staggering revenues for the public purse, married with an ID system that rations the quantity an individual can buy and can withdraw ability to buy upon request (if the user wants help stopping) and with lots of support services and monitoring.

Here’s a thought for all. Given that this idea has come from one of the least talented individuals in the Labour Party – consider this:

If alcohol and tobacco were invented today, they would be banned tomorrow. Why integrate and embed other drugs in our culture ? Haven’t the former two done enough damage and ……they’re legal !

[29] The clue is in your final few words: it is the adrenalin rush as much as the easy money that motivates criminals.

Ted,

@ 18. Watchman. A fair point but nothing of any real value has ever resulted from this fellow’s efforts and his undeserved appointments, why should it start now ? Anyway, if he or the Labour Party believed any of this, he or they would have said it whilst in Ministerial Office. He’s just another ex minister creep seeking undue media recognition.

Let’s be fair here – there is collective responsibility on ministers, so Mr Ainsworth could have held these views and expressed them privately (and no-one has denied that he did), but as a minister he had to publically support the official position, which was seemingly set by Paul Dacre rather than any principles or the like. Now he is free of collective responsibility, he has made his statement, in a well-timed way that attracted media interest (it was second story on the BBC website when I saw it, and is in all the papers). That alone suggests there may be something more to the man than his record suggested.

Mike,

Is it? Then why do they not all do high-risk bank robberies etc?

I am not convinced that criminals are all in it for the risk – some may be, true, but most are not.

Ted,

If alchohol and tobacco were invented now, they’d be classed as new drugs. As Paul says above, it is a bit of a meaningless classification, but it works as a catch all for technically unrelated substances like these.

Incidentally, if alchohol was newly created (shortly after the invention of the apple I presume…) there’d be a black market in it, media scares and lots of people consuming. There would also be no regulation of what is potentially a lethal substance that people clearly would still want (perhaps they’re the same people as Mike’s risk-taking kidnappers? ) and which, being relatively easy to produce, would be supplied by criminals.

@ 36 “Incidentally, if alchohol was newly created (shortly after the invention of the apple I presume…)”

Just assumptions – nothing more.

“no state, no government, no policeman has any right to tell me or you or anyone else what they ingest into their own bodies.”

Blimey, Lenin chanelling John Stuart Mill.

Wonders will never cease.

Now extend that to economic interactions and you’ll be a proper little liberal.

But of course, stopped clocks and all that. He’s right.

The State has no more right to stop me popping E before I go to a dance club than it has to stop me popping Viagra before I go to a sex club or a bacon butty before I go to the gym*.

My body, I decide what goes into it and the politicians can bugger off.

(*Only one of these three is is a regular occurence in the Worstall household).

@ 31

Ecstasy? Seriously?

I am not watchman though I will take any confusion as a compliment!

(he might not…?!)

‘Personally, in fantasy world, I favour a state monopoly on the production and supply of extremely high quality drugs of all varieties, generating staggering revenues for the public purse, married with an ID system that rations the quantity an individual can buy and can withdraw ability to buy upon request (if the user wants help stopping) and with lots of support services and monitoring.’

Now that IS Stalinist. I see fuck all reason why the State should have a monopoly on plants cheeper and easier to grow than tomatoes, and allying that to further surveillance of a population already more closely monitored than North Korea would be the worst possible outcome.

I’d rather buy from Tony Montana.

“My body, I decide what goes into it and the politicians can bugger off.”

Actually, we could probably just use this statement as a rebuttal to the entire article.

Sigh… how do moral puritans get the ok to write for a liberal website?

[31] “I think pragmatism dominates in situations like this” – OK, even if we accept this line of thinking (pragmatism trumping rights) then surely pragmatists should be able to demonstrate how benefits are accruing from the prohibition model?

In my opinion the current policy is a disaster so how can the pragmatism argument be maintained in the face of all the evidence to the contrary?

38

err … yeah. Most of my peer group knocked that sort of thing on the head years ago, but I remember after a weekend on it other people talking about feeling out of it until tuesday/wednesday, being unable to concentrate, getting moody, jittery, paranoid etc. And those were the mentally stable ones – this was back in mid-nineties, maybe things have changed – I remember a handful of acquaintances really losing their minds. I remember one lad sat at a table plunging a kitchen knife into the thigh of the person next to him without knowing what he was doing (he soon sobered up, once everybody started screaming).

A&E @42 has saved me from replying along the same lines. Well said.

a&e didn’t you read til the end of that paragraph?

ukliberty, a&e

just because things are bad doesn’t mean they can’t get worse. all I am saying is that (my guess is) there’s a non-negligible risk that full legalization could end up being judged worse than the current state of affairs. Of course I recognize the scope for considerable improvement too. I think it’s worth giving it a try to find out.

@ 43

They must have been taking pretty huge doses, then. Ecstasy fucks you up the next day (this is kind of a plus in terms of your long-term health), but generally not for days on end. Also, it’s not addictive, and you can’t take it constantly in the way some people do with weed, because you’ll literally run out of happy chemicals. It’s one of the safest drugs out there, including booze.

And I’ve NEVER heard of someone doing something like stabbing someone on autopilot when on ecstasy. I reckon your mate either mixed it with something more psychedelic or got a bad dose (a problem which would obviously go away under legalisation).

The paternalist guardian argument would have a modicum of legitimacy if we were starting from scratch and there were no class A drugs in society. However, what planet are the paternalists on when they imagine that drugs are not widely available to anyone who currently wants to buy them. I don’t know if they count as respectable society but there is more coke goes through some London finance houses than goes through Miami airport.

47 – in this case I think the fellow had a screw loose to begin with. He also started secretly tape recording his housemates and was convinced he was under police surveillance. But yes I think the prospect of dependable quality, no taking something nasty by mistake, is a big plus for legalization.

I’m middle aged and middle class and I’ve seen about half a dozen friends and acquaintances really badly screw themselves and their lives up through drugs, and I haven’t exactly hung out in crack dens or anything like that so Lord knows how frequent the fuck-up rate is in less privileged / straight-laced circles. This is why I am very wary of drugs, no matter that most people I know have taken them without doing much harm. I’m surprised other people haven’t got similar experiences.

cjcjc,

I am not watchman though I will take any confusion as a compliment!

(he might not…?!)

I certainly take that as a compliment…

Anyway, to sum up so far – the best arguments against legislation are that it may increase consumption (of a legal, and not necessarily harmful, range of substances), that it may lead to more kidnapping (?) and that there is a strong possibility that it may do more harm than good (although I like Luis’ attitude on this one – let’s try it and see: we need more of this in politics!).

Oh, and then there’s the one about it not being popular enough to be electable. Because the same sort of information about popular opinion also tells us that the majority of voters (and the Daily Mail) want to get out of the EU, and that therefore means that no party that supports continued membership can form a government? This also used to be true for the death penalty, which is why we now have that, am I right? Voters can be convinced, and politicians can exercise principles (whether I agree they are right or not) so this is actually a bit of a straw man argument.

There is an article in the latest Vanity Fair ( http://bit.ly/fzTLMn ) about the unregulated overseas drug testing being carried out by pharmaceutical companies in order to get around the FDA. It finishes by saying that more people die every year from taking prescription drugs than they do from “illegal” drugs. I’ll just add here that almost no one dies from the effects of homeopathic and herbal remedies and yet these are under threat of ban from EU regulations.

In more that 99% of cases, unadulterated consciousness-altering drugs will have very little long-term physical effects on their takers, especially if used properly and in moderation. I’m not talking about heroin or crack-cocaine, which are highly processed and physically adictive drugs. The reason government doesn’t want people taking drugs is because the users will start seeing through the veil of lies that are spouted by our so-called democratically elected representatives. They would much prefer to keep the masses stupified with those destructive cash cows that are alcohol and tobacco.

My only concern is that if drugs are legalised they will fall into the hands of the mega corporations and pharmaceutical companies who are no better, if not worse, than the “criminals” already selling them. I cite the case of Pablo Escobar in Colombia, who did more for the poor people in his country, with the money he made from supplying the US with cocaine, than the government did. He also kept down gang violence and rampant organised crime. He was so popular with the people he was actually voted into government until the US had him removed, hunted down and killed, thereby restoring chaos and their control over the area. Of course, Escobar was an exception.

Oh well look on the bright side, decriminalise drugs and share prices in the pharmaceuticals industry will go through the roof.

The reason government doesn’t want people taking drugs is because the users will start seeing through the veil of lies that are spouted by our so-called democratically elected representatives.

that made my day.

In the distant past I used to think my drug induced insights were rather splendid. So I started writing them down to see what they looked like in the cold light of day. The results were not encouraging.

Political parties have to take account of what the public thinks.

Except, of course, when it come to trivial matters like war… Then we get a load of bullshit about how representative democracy means that we get our say once every five years in the ballot box and whoever wins has a “mandate” to do whatever the fuck they like… Sorry, still not over it.

And why, oh why is it that so many can’t tell the difference between decriminalisation and legalisation? Decriminalisation = “it’s still illegal and the trade is still controlled by gangsters, but we’ll look the other way”, legalisation = “we’ll regulate and tax it like any other business”. This is not a trivial distinction, and if you can’t get it right, you shouldn’t be writing about the subject.

I’m middle aged and middle class and I’ve seen about half a dozen friends and acquaintances really badly screw themselves and their lives up through drugs … I’m surprised other people haven’t got similar experiences.

Sure, I’ve seen all sorts. But what I have also seen is that a spell in jail doesn’t exactly help matters in most cases… Criminalisation makes harm reduction more difficult, and causes a staggering array of additional harms in its own right.

There’s also the fact that people regularly manage to screw their lives up in all sorts of other ways too, which we don’t criminalise. I’ve seen people try to kill themselves after a romantic break-up, but we don’t try to ban love.

“I’m surprised other people haven’t got similar experiences.”

Yeah I’ve seen a few people get fucked up through regular and frequent use of E. Just as I have with booze.

On the other hand I don’t think legalization would make a massive difference to numbers using (unless we were really dull and allowed advertising and PR companies to fund “research” that denied health problems resulted) . Lets face it, if you want to take drugs, you will already – legal or not. I suspect the number of people in the UK who know somebody who takes drugs is extremely large – over 90% for those under 50 I’d say. Availability isn’t the issue. It isn’t as if people who don’t take drugs consider the legality of it as the sole reason why not. I suspect its more to do with not wanting to destroy your health. I don’t take coke for the same reason I don’t smoke.

Also its worth pointing out stoners are generally quite boring people…….

Dunc

I quite agree. So the question is how legalization would change things on net – how would it add to the already-existing quantity of fuckedupedness in the world. Or would legalization reduce it (by such means as you suggest, not criminalizing and jailing users etc.). I am merely arguing that it go either way.

@53 – I did the opposite and wrote my insights made in the cold light of day down. When I read them back in a drug induced state the results were also not encouraging

@55 – True, but I dont think they are smoking for the amusement of others

Planeshift

Lets face it, if you want to take drugs, you will already

Not sure. At the margin (sorry, can’t help myself) there will be some people put off by the inconvenience and risk of buying drugs illegally and who would increase consumption if legalized. You might think this number is small. My guess would be for quite a large increase, but who knows.

@56:

I am merely arguing that it go either way.

Agreed. I’ve very much of the opinion that once you take everything into account, you’d need a truly enormous increase in problematic use to offset the benefits, but it’s not exactly a trivial matter… How does one weigh (eg) the profitability of organised crime against the mental health of a subset of the population? I know there are economic approaches to this sort of problem, but I’ve never been entirely convinced of their validity…

Now, I tend to suspect that there won’t be a huge increase in problematic use, as I think the portion of the population most likely to experience problematic use is largely the same portion of the population most likely to use regardless of legality, but that’s only really a hunch based on my own prejudices. As you said up-thread, the only real way to find out would be to try it and see what happens. (Cross-country and cross-cultural comparisons are fraught with their own difficulties, and AFAIK there is no comparable country which has ever gone down the route of actual legalisation.)

(Cross-country and cross-cultural comparisons are fraught with their own difficulties, and AFAIK there is no comparable country which has ever gone down the route of actual legalisation.)

Erm, actually, there is.

Absolutely all of them pre-1900.

Ah, cack, blockquote fail… You know what this site needs? A “preview” button…

@61:

Erm, actually, there is.

Absolutely all of them pre-1900.

No, for at least two reasons:

Firstly, we can’t really compare current society to pre-1900 society – lots of things have changed [i]very[/i] dramatically. This would actually be a very poor choice of cross-cultural comparison, comparing two societies which are completely different in almost every way except geographical boundaries.

Secondly, the pre-1900 situation in which drugs had never been illegal, in which there was not anything like the current level of problematic drug use, and where the drug trade was not controlled by organised crime is not actually the same as moving from criminalisation to legalisation within the current social context. You must have encountered the concept of hysteresis at some point, surely?

Millibands reaction, and this article too, confirms absolutely that I was right to leave the Labour party and why I won’t be coming back any time soon.

I live in South London and I see the enormous damage prohibition has caused to my community every single day. And I’d argue that the press, and the OP is out of step with the public on this issue – people are ready for an adult debate on legalisation.

Bovine, inane and Daily Mail-pleasing policies WILL NOT win back my support. Grow a pair, Milliband.

Just to give you some context – I’m not sure how aware people are of the plummeting quality of drugs on the streets these days, how this is directly related to prohibition, and how much of a danger this is to addicts (of which there are many, and none of whom are going to be stopping ANY time soon, despite decades of law enforcement).

Quite simply, ALL of the main political parties have abdicated responsibility for this tragic public health issue, and I’m not willing to be lectured by anyone on the left who doesn’t take harm reduction into account. Wake up and look around you.

Luis,

just because things are bad doesn’t mean they can’t get worse. all I am saying is that (my guess is) there’s a non-negligible risk that full legalization could end up being judged worse than the current state of affairs. Of course I recognize the scope for considerable improvement too. I think it’s worth giving it a try to find out.

We are on the same page, I think.

Dunc,

We move forward then.

http://drugs.uta.edu/opium5.html

5 out of 6 working class Victorian families (by one estimate) used opium.

Now, whether we’ve got a problem in moving from our current situation to that one is very different from the (to me) much more interesting question of whether that static state is a good or bad one.

Me, I’d say that it’s a better one than what we have now. How we get from here to there is a subsidiary question, not a deal blocker.

Chaise

“we are told time and time again with zero justification, Drugs Are Bad.”

Huh? *Zero* justification? There’s absolutely no reason why anyone should think that any drug is in any way “bad”? I thought the thoroughly well-justified belief that many drugs are “bad” (= harmful) in various ways was one of the main premises of pro-liberalisation arguments, which to a large degree are concerned with the ways in which harm done by drugs can best be reduced.

ukliberty -

“What right does anyone have to tell me what I can do with my own body?

I should be free to do anything I please so long as I do no non-consensual harm to others, paying for any externalities (NHS use etc).”

This should certainly be the starting point for a liberal drug policy. The problem is that we know some drug users *do*, as a result of their drug use, do non-consensual harm to others (e.g they neglect their children, beat their wives, cause car accidents, attack strangers in pubs, burgle houses). Now, of course we could simply hold people responsible for the harm they do while under the influence and treat them accordingly, but that does nothing at all to prevent the harm being done in the first place – or, to put the point in more explicitly liberal terms, to protect the rights and freedoms of the individuals harmed. So (surely!) it’s at least plausible that there are liberal reasons to place some restrictions on the rights of some individuals to take some drugs some of the time – just as there are good, liberal reasons to restrict the rights of some individuals to own guns, drive cars, practice medicine, store or transport chemicals, etc.

(Note – I don’t deny that the appropriate restrictions might fall far short of those that are in place at the minute. Maybe some presently-illegal drugs should be made available on the alcohol model, others on prescription, others in licensed “coffee shops”; maybe the possession of small amounts of some drugs should be decriminalised rather than made legal. But I really don’t see that it’s as obvious as most people seem to think that they should be legalised en masse (on something like the alcohol/tobacco model).

Actually I suspect the apparent consensus on LC is partly illusory. Probably people have very different things in mind when they talk about liberalising drug policy, ranging from a hardline libertarian legalise-everything approach to a Portugese-type decriminalisation/prescription approach.)

G.O.

I think the analogy you miss is drinking alchohol, which is odd considering your choice of examples (pubs, ‘under the influence) seems quite alchohol dominated.

So presumably we treat someone under the influence of drugs in exactly the same way as someone under the influence of alchohol. Neither drugs nor alchohol turn you into a different person remember – so you still are responsible for your actions having taken them, as that was your choice and the agent behind the actions was still you.

I agree about the consensus being diverese, but remember that it is a consensus against the status quo, and that it will only split once the status quo moves towards it.

@ 68 G.O.

“Huh? *Zero* justification? There’s absolutely no reason why anyone should think that any drug is in any way “bad”?”

Melodramatic phrasing on my part. What I meant was that attempts to justify the position are often inaccurate, clumsy or missing entirely, especially when some show, advert or school lesson is trying to send an anti-drug message. The soap opera Hollyoaks, which seems to think it provides a public service, had two ridiculous anti-cannabis storylines: in the first someone started smoking dope and immediately turned into a violent, anti-social defiler of graves; in the second, a couple of kids tried it and appeared to get addicted to smack within about a week.

So yeah, there are reasons to say specific drugs are bad, but all too often the impression is given that all drugs share the same negative side effects, or “drugs are bad” is presented almost as a moral position that should be accepted without question. It’s certainly rare to get a balanced view outside of documentaries and the more thoughful newspapers.

It’s Checkov’s Rifle: if someone is seen to start taking drugs, they will get addicted.

The point of decriminalising/legalising drugs is not to stop drug production or trade. Imagine how big pharma would react if we tried to stop the production and trade in drugs!

The point is stop the harm. The arbitrary (and yes, science proves it is arbitrary) criminalisation of some citizens because the drug they choose to take is arbitraily deemed to be illegal. To make sure that people who get into trouble from taking too many drugs receive medical help that returns them to being contributing members of society.

Let’s stop kidding ourselves: we all take drugs every day. Some of us get into trouble regularly taking drugs that are legal, while others quietly go about their lives taking illegal drugs every day while still holding down good jobs and contributing to society in a productive manner.

It’s PATHETIC that no party has the balls to say that drug policy should be based on science.

5 out of 6 working class Victorian families (by one estimate) used opium.

Well, it was the cheapest OTC painkiller available at the time. This is part of the reason why we can’t compare the pre-1900 situation to the current one…

I’m not clear as to what specific point you’re trying to make with this observation – could you clarify?

“I’m not clear as to what specific point you’re trying to make with this observation – could you clarify?”

That having large portions of the population taking pharmaceutically pure, legal, drugs isn’t really a problem.

Certainly much less of a problem than having a smaller portion of the population taking illegal adulterated with who knows what crap drugs in a market run by the most vicious criminals our society can offer up.

G.O.

Now, of course we could simply hold people responsible for the harm they do while under the influence and treat them accordingly, but that does nothing at all to prevent the harm being done in the first place – or, to put the point in more explicitly liberal terms, to protect the rights and freedoms of the individuals harmed. So (surely!) it’s at least plausible that there are liberal reasons to place some restrictions on the rights of some individuals to take some drugs some of the time – just as there are good, liberal reasons to restrict the rights of some individuals to own guns, drive cars, practice medicine, store or transport chemicals, etc.

But we don’t ban those things outright. There is a risk to others of incompetently driving a car (for example) so you have to pass a test, which you can take when you’re an adult, before you can legally drive a car, in order to mitigate the risk associated with incompetent driving. Driving a car without a licence or driving it dangerously or under the influence is risky to others so we’ve created criminal offences to attempt to persuade people not do such things and punish those who do. We haven’t said driving a car is risky to others so you can’t do it at all. We haven’t banned all cars.

(we also make people pay the externalities associated with the use of cars by taxing fuel etc.)

The devil is in the detail, of course (I recall you saying this before) and it wouldn’t surprise me if different approaches ought to be taken with particular drugs. To continue the car analogy you need a heavy goods licence to legally drive a heavy goods vehicle – we haven’t banned everyone from driving heavy goods vehicles.

Cracking good argument, that first point.

the theory of rational addiction:

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7873033/

Luis @76, thank you

@73:

That having large portions of the population taking pharmaceutically pure, legal, drugs isn’t really a problem.

Certainly much less of a problem than having a smaller portion of the population taking illegal adulterated with who knows what crap drugs in a market run by the most vicious criminals our society can offer up.

Right, I see what you’re saying now. I do agree, but I’m not entirely convinced that reference to the (generally appalling) conditions of the 19th-C working class is the best way to make the argument. It’s a bit too much like citing Hogarth in defence of gin…

OK, how about Sherlock Holmes and his injections of cocaine then?

Fictional character of course, but written by a doctor .

I’ve heard it claimed that something like 1% of surgeons are injecting diamorphine addicts, but I’ve never found a good source. And then of course there’s dear old (with the emphasis on old) William Burroughs…

[81] Dear old William Burroughs? He’s been dead years. That’s what happens to people who take drugs in industrial quantities.

“That’s what happens to people who take drugs in industrial quantities.”

Happens to a lot of 83 year olds too…..

[snark]@82: Yes, obviously, if he hadn’t taken all those drugs he certainly would have lived well past eighty fucking three, wouldn’t he? I mean, that’s an absurdly young age for a man born in 1914 to die at, isn’t it?[/snark]

I am not claiming that taking heroin makes you immortal and I’m perfectly well aware that he’s dead, you idiot. The point was that he had a remarkably good innings for his cohort.

‘I’m middle aged and middle class and I’ve seen about half a dozen friends and acquaintances really badly screw themselves and their lives up through drugs … I’m surprised other people haven’t got similar experiences.’

My experience is more with ex-offenders who have had little or no health problems as a result of drug *use* but find their lives blighted by convictions for merely doing something that should have been nobody’s business but their own.

Those convictions break families and make mainly young people unemployable. Even if you’ve no sympathy for the users themselves do you really think its worth spending millions on prisons and benefits?

You are so wrong – factually, morally, economically, politically. In fact I can’t think of anything about this article that is worthwhile apart from the fact that you write well.

Politically, if ending prohibition will never be Labour policy then you’re missing a trick. I hold the Labour party in the deepest contempt but the possibility of redemption exists if it started to adopt progressive and intelligent policies.

The public do not disagree with Bob’s proposals. This is a fallacy. Even the Daily Mail’s poll is running at 72% in favour and the Guardian’ s is running at 93% for decriminalisation. Earlier this year the LibDems commisssioned a more scientific survey which found over 70% in favour of liberalising the cannabis laws.

Look at all the forums and blogs today and yesterday about this. You rarely see so many comments and the vast majority favouring an end to prohibition.

You’re wrong about the evidence for the benefits of decriminalisation too. I’m not going to quote you references here because there is an overwhelming quantity of it available very easily via Google. Really, it’s overwhelming. Just go and look.

I have failed to give you credit for one thing though. Your generous words about Bob Ainsworth are both elegant and admirable.

The response to his initiative from politicians has been disgraceful but also seriously negligent. See here:

http://peterreynolds.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/politicians-negligent-response-to-the-drugs-debate/

Watchman =

“presumably we treat someone under the influence of drugs in exactly the same way as someone under the influence of alchohol. Neither drugs nor alchohol turn you into a different person remember – so you still are responsible for your actions having taken them, as that was your choice and the agent behind the actions was still you.”

Agreed. The point I was making was that this doesn’t really address the question of how we prevent harm being done to third parties – i.e. how we protect the rights of people at risk of harm caused by others’ alcohol consumption – in the first place (as opposed to how we react after it’s happened).

And in general, I’m only too aware of the analogy with alcohol. Whatever the merits of our present approach here – it eliminates the need for a criminal market or home-brewed moonshine, etc – it seems to do a pretty poor job of preventing harm to third parties, since the levels of such harm are very, very high relative to comparable harm caused by other drugs. (Obviously more violence, child neglect, etc. is associated with alcohol use than with the use of any other drug.)

ukliberty -

“But we don’t ban those things outright. There is a risk to others of incompetently driving a car (for example) so you have to pass a test, which you can take when you’re an adult, before you can legally drive a car, in order to mitigate the risk associated with incompetent driving. Driving a car without a licence or driving it dangerously or under the influence is risky to others so we’ve created criminal offences to attempt to persuade people not do such things and punish those who do. We haven’t said driving a car is risky to others so you can’t do it at all. We haven’t banned all cars.

(we also make people pay the externalities associated with the use of cars by taxing fuel etc.)

The devil is in the detail, of course (I recall you saying this before) and it wouldn’t surprise me if different approaches ought to be taken with particular drugs. To continue the car analogy you need a heavy goods licence to legally drive a heavy goods vehicle – we haven’t banned everyone from driving heavy goods vehicles.”

Agreed again. But what you seem to be acknowledging here is that it might indeed be legitimate to restrict in some way the right of individuals to use certain drugs – i.e. someone *might indeed* have the right to tell you (something about) what you can do with your own body.

First, sorry for my late response. Sunny has standing rights to cross-post anything he likes from my blog, and sent me an email this morning about this post, but I’ve only just seen it, so am coming a little late to the thread.

Paul Sagar -

On Portugese drug trends >
http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/content/50/6/999.full.pdf+html

“Thus, while general population trends in Portugal suggest slight increases in lifetime and recent illicit drug use, studies of young and problematic drug users suggest that use has declined. The similarity in general population and youth trends in Portugal, Italy and Spain adds support for the argument that reported increases in general population use in Portugal reflect regional trends and thus are not solely attributable to the decriminalization.”

It should be noted that the authors are broadly supportive of the Portugese policy, and the quote above is followed by comments on the superior performance of Portugal among sub-groups. the whole paper is well worth a read, especially as it makes the oft quoted cato paper look trivial by comparison.

Various people on the opinions of the British public:

One of the issues with polling on questions like this is that you can easlily “lead” the survey. One poll Ive been quoted get high responses for legalisation, but does so by including the word “strict” in their description of the legalisation model. I strongly suspect people resond to this, but I can’t prove it, obviously!

However, the Guardian 2008 poll, I think didn’t lead too badly one way or the other: It came back with.

Legalisation/Decriminalisation?
Yes 27 No 73

UK drugs laws are….
Too liberal 32 About right 50 Not liberal enough 18

We should make posession legal, but not dealing?:
Yes – 38 No – 62

People should go to prison for Drug possession?
Yes – 63 No – 37

As you can see, at least 1% of people want to make posession legal _and_ send people to prison for it!

It’s easy to be selective about the data you present Hopi but I think the Guardian 2008 poll you report on is self-evidently nonsense. No reasonable person can possibly believe such antipathy towards recreational drug use. Black is still not white as far as I know.

You are right of course that the results of any poll can be distorted. No better example than this surely?

I’m quite prepared (if proven) to acknowledge more substantial support for prohibition than I would prefer but the figures you present are absurd and don’t compare with anything else.

Surely you have looked at Transform’s work. It leads the UK anti-prohibition movement.

G.O.

But what you seem to be acknowledging here is that it might indeed be legitimate to restrict in some way the right of individuals to use certain drugs – i.e. someone *might indeed* have the right to tell you (something about) what you can do with your own body.

… if the risk to others of my drug use or vehicle use or chemical storage or whatever is sufficiently high.

I haven’t reached any firm conclusions on the detail. It’s really the starting point that I’m concerned about: the extent of the right of other people to interfere with my freedom. ‘We’ don’t use that starting point, that bit from On Liberty, which is why I raise it time and again. Too many people appear to think that my freedom should be restricted simply because of their disapproval or “for my own good”.

[90] That is also an argument against statutory prohibition on the possession by individuals of any type of weapon, including weapons of mass destruction.

1. Chaise Guevara

“My body, I decide what goes into it and the politicians can bugger off.”

absolutely. Nothing in the blog posts addresses the fact that you can have your freedom taken away for personal use which harms no one. Those that oppose decrimialization are frequently dependent, frequently deranged, frequently hysterical. They are off their heads.

Don’t care what the Labour leadership do. Its pretty obvious what politicians do when they get in power by now.

If the Conservatives remove the need to consult scientists and consult tabloid editors instead your little boy wont change anything should he get elected with the help of those same tabloid editors.

Mike Killingworth,

[90] That is also an argument against statutory prohibition on the possession by individuals of any type of weapon, including weapons of mass destruction.

What is?

Peter –

“No reasonable person can possibly believe such antipathy towards recreational drug use”

Eh? Why on earth not? Lots of people believe in the doctrine of transubstantiation, or believed in slavery, or a whole host of other things that mat or may not seem incredible to me or to you.

On the specics, I suspect that if you asked *specifically* about cannabis,. you’d get a somewhat “softer” approach. IIRC, the last time BSAC asked if taking cannabis should be illegal, just under 60% said yes. Compare with attitudes to homosexuality, where just over a third of poeple think same sex relationships are “always or mostly wrong”

It’s importatnt not to read too much into any one poll, because as i say, the questions can make a huge difference. A politicshome poll from last year finds much mre support for drug liberalisation, but I suspect the three options proffered in that polls encourage respondents to select the “moderate” position.

Nor should you conclude that just because someone thinks all drugs should be illegal that the issue has particularly high salience for them. In my, very limited, experience, people who have used or been exposed to drugs regularly are far more passionate about their legalisation -for or against- than those who have never used them but are opposed to legalisation (huge generalisation, anecdotal, there will be exceptions, YMMV, etc etc)

@ 94

As stated before, I disagree strongly with the construction and conclusions of the article, but Hopi makes some good points here. It’s a bit of a No True Scotsman to say that “no reasonable person” would support one view or another as you can define “reasonable” in a way that excludes anyone who supports said view. Many people buy into myths about drugs and consider them not only to be monstrously and inevitably destructive to the user, but also to be the founding stone of societal collapse. They are ignorant and wrong, but they exist in huge numbers.

Hopi is also right about salience. I suspect a lot of people vaguely disapprove of drugs (obviously the vagueness would disappear should they discover pills in their children’s rooms) because they’ve been brought up to feel this way – another example of the knee-jerk Drugs Are Bad response – but really wouldn’t give a damn compared to a politician’s stance on taxation and spending or, for that matter, how nice their smile is. So perhaps good questions to ask in a future poll would be along the lines of “Would you refuse to vote for a politician who supported decriminalisation or legalisation”?

The Harm Principle is not “an argument against statutory prohibition on the possession by individuals of any type of weapon, including weapons of mass destruction”, as anyone ought to realise if they thought about it for more than a second.

It is an argument for assessing the risk to others of someone doing something and deciding what interference with that person is justified in order to reduce the risk to an acceptable level. It seems to me that my possession of a nuclear weapon would fall in the category of “unacceptable risk to others” therefore I should be prohibited from possessing a nuclear weapon. Conversely, I struggle to see what risk is posed to others if I consume an Ecstasy pill, a cigarette, or a pint of lager, therefore it seems to me I should not be prohibited from doing so. Disapproval is not sufficient justification for interference IMV.

ukliberty -

I suspect we’re basically on the same page, but I’m choosing to emphasize the caveats because most people are rushing to the conclusion that *obviously* if you just legalise every drug, everyone will enjoy more freedom and every form of social harm caused by drug use (by which I mean harm other than that done directly to users themselves) will be reduced.

“Conversely, I struggle to see what risk is posed to others if I consume an Ecstasy pill, a cigarette, or a pint of lager, therefore it seems to me I should not be prohibited from doing so.”

You’re tending to put thing in more black-and-white terms though. *Of course* one person’s drinking one pint of lager doesn’t pose a risk to anyone else sufficient to justify *prohibiting* them from doing so. But does allowing fifty thousand people to drink unlimited amounts of lager, over a 24-hour period, in the city where a big cup final is being held that day -say – pose a risk to others sufficient to justify *placing some restrictions* on the rights of each of those individuals to consume lager (or perhaps on the rights of people to sell lager in certain quantities or below a certain price point)? Very plausibly it does. So we need to take a society-wide view and not focus *solely* on the rights of drug users. In the case of some drugs, that might lead us to think legalisation is the way to go (because we judge the risks to others posed by legalisation to be lower than those posed by our present approach). But in the case of others, we might think decriminalisation, availability on precription, use in licensed premises, or maybe even prohibition is the way to go. It all depends on the particular risks (to third parties and society as a whole, not to the user) associated with unrestricted use of a particular drug.

“Third, although there is some evidence of good outcomes from Drug decriminalisation, the experience in Portugal (where posession of more than 0.2g of cocaine or 2.5g of marijuana is still subject to criminal charge. People get the wrong idea about that) certainly doesn’t show any major reduction of drug use.

Indeed, there appear to have increases in drug use. So you’d be unlikely to see an end to drug supply, or a reduction in drug cultivation.”

Outcomes are irrelevant. It’s a matter of principle. Do we think it’s acceptable for the government to tell people what they can and cannot put in their bodies?

Chris,

Or alternatively, can we ask government to allow purity of drugs, legislated, rather than infected drugs. I think that is part of the question that ought to be put to our government. Do they want, or expect, drug addicts to die, beause of fucked up drugs, or do they not?

Perhaps they do…

Yes Douglas, apparently James “Broken Britain” Brokenshire regards the fact that there are high levels of adulterated drugs on the streets as a measure of success.

This is nothing less than monstrous. He appears to be actively seeking to cause harm to drug users.

Perer Reynolds,

What is your point? I stand by the basic idea that pure drugs are less likely to harm than the shit on the street, For obvious reasons.

Do you agree or disagree?

Of course I agree.

My point is that in the debate on Friday, Brokenshire calimed that the level of adulteration in drugs proved the success of his policies.

#89

“As you can see, at least 1% of people want to make posession legal _and_ send people to prison for it!”

Or, people think that people should go to prison for breaking the law, even if they disagree with the particular law.

Second, the public massively disagree with Bob Ainsworth on this. Political parties have to take account of what the public thinks.
This is untrue. The majority of educated British people want a more liberal drugs law. Where on earth do you get your info?

If political parties took into account what the public thinks we wouldn’t being all these protests on the streets. Remember the old saying: “If voting really changed anything, do you think they would let us do it?”