Least worst solution (Should cannabis be legalised?)

Member Name: Pinotage

Product:	Should cannabis be legalised?
Date:	11/02/01 (22 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: By products of war against drugs is worse than the drugs

Disadvantages: Could gives impression cannabis is recommended

Perhaps someone can explain to me how the benefits of keeping recreational drugs illegal outweigh the manifest disadvantages?

The mere fact these drugs are illegal doesn't seem to hinder their popularity. It appears easier to get them now than at any time since they were made illegal.

I want the government to provide me with a safe environment to enjoy life and to bring up my family. I do not want my children to take recreational drugs. I do not want them to become addicts. I don't want their life blighted by being sent to prison for smoking cannabis. But the government has manifestly failed to keep drugs out of society. I am at risk of robbery and muggings by people desperate to maintain their drug habit. My taxes are squandered in an ineffectual 'war' against drugs. Instead of chasing real villains, police time is frittered away on pursuing the easy target of prosecuting youths taking drugs. Some 90,000 people prosecuted for possession of drugs last year. And not a single one was any risk to me.

My photo at the top of this article will show I am middle aged. When I was at school I knew nothing of drugs, except in tales where opium was smoked in 'dens' in China. My children couldn't say the same. Drugs are in the mainstream of society. There is never a day when there are not newspaper stories about their effect on society.

Police routinely patrol Nottingham streets with guns as a result of turf wars between drug gangs. I can no longer open a building society account without showing proof of identity in an attempt to halt drug money laundering. Our entire society is being changed in the light of this futile war against drugs.

It is true drug takers sometime die. I believe the number of deaths from heroin each year is in single figures. But how many people are dying in drug gang fights that would not happen if drugs could be bought legally?

Don't get me wrong. I am not in favour of
recreational drugs. I don't want to take them, legal or not. And I pray my children never do. But if an inquisitive child tries cannabis or ecstasy at university they risk being slammed up in prison, thus damaging their prospects of a career. They risk taking impure drugs and they have to buy them from criminals who have a strong motive to get them hooked on seriously addictive drugs. I want the government to protect them, but it cannot. If it cannot protect them from drugs then it should protect them from illegal drugs and gangsters.

The first priority is to get rid of the drug gangs. Liberalising drug laws could do this. If users can buy reasonably priced consistent quality drugs from licensed shops, then the need to smuggle drugs into Britain goes. The raison d'être for drug gangs and pushers go. Cannabis users do not have to meet gangsters to get their supplies and be tempted by more addictive drugs


It should be legal to sell cannabis, ecstasy and other such drugs. Manufacturers and sellers should be licensed, the product should be taxed with warning notices. Just like we do with that major addictive killer, tobacco. Heroin addicts should be able to register and get supplies on prescription.



The second stage should be to reduce demand. The campaign against smoking tobacco has been wonderfully successful. It shows what can be done. Society should also be able to offer some vision of hope to those for whom drugs are a way out of misery. Jobs are an obvious way.


Some argue that legalising drugs will encourage more people to take them. Maybe, but the current system doesn't work in discouraging them. More than 90% of all offences are for possession, of which 75% involve cannabis. The police have made over a million stop and search operations in the past four years and prosecuted 90,000 people last year for possession. If that is the amount found by police, what is the true usage figure? It is obvi
ous that anyone who wants to try recreational drugs has no difficulty getting them.

Let's free up the police, courts and prisons for serious crimes.

If people, of their own free will, choose to take dangerous drugs for recreational reasons that is regrettable. But we cannot stop them. We have tried and it has proved impossible. So let's not allow the drug gangs to mess up our society any more.

It's the least worse solution.

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