| dix points |
Feb. 1st, 2012|06:35 am |
LEGALISE ALL DRUGS!
In essence, prohibition is not a policy but a wish. Declaring drugs illegal will not make them go away any more than making unicorns legal will make them appear. Prohibition has failed; drugs are everywhere. In most urban areas of Britain it is easier to find illegal drugs than it is to find Kendal Mint Cake. The problem is that users like drugs, and that makes out lawing them very difficult indeed.
TEN REASONS TO LEGALISE DRUGS:
1. People take drugs. Why turn them into criminals? Save money on prison and spend it on treatment.
2. Spot the flaw in the logic that says: we shall teach drug users a lesson by putting them in prison… where there are no drugs at all.
3. Illegal drugs are often impure. Ecstasy has been found mixed with heroin, making it a gateway drug to addiction, and cocaine is cut with baby milk powder, making life very difficult for liberals boycotting Nestlé products. Ending prohibition should improve drug quality; from a consumer angle this is a huge step forward.
4. Legal heroin can be sold in supermarket pharmacies, so users can get cheap, high-quality drugs and collect Nectar points.
5. Prohibition fuels gangsters, so legalisation means gangsters will lose a major source of money and power. Of course they will seek new illegal markets, but they will struggle to achieve the money and status that coke, crack and smack brought them when reduced to smuggling exotic pets. There is no rebellious cachet in wandering around festival camp sites hawking wares with the plaintive cry of “Macaws and parakeets, macaws and parakeets.”
6. For Daily Express readers: if Class A drugs are cheap then users will have to commit less crime to pay for them, and reduced crime levels will bring down the cost of your household insurance.
7. Drug profits are so enormous that the government can produce drugs cheaper than gangsters and still put a whacking tax on them, putting an additionally high ‘wanker tax’ on cocaine.
8. We would need to find a new moral panic to fill the vacuum left by drugs. I suggest beards.
9. The problem with the legalisation of drugs is the free market would then step in, so we could end up with L’Oréal crystal meth at one end of the market and Asda own-brand cocaine at the other. Somewhere in between will be Fair trade cocaine, with middle class liberals snorting lines to support collective farmers in Peru. So instead we should nationalise the drug industry. It is sensible and profitable – and nothing is guaranteed to deglamorise drugs quite like a staterun industry.
10. We could buy opium off the farmers in Afghanistan, thus giving them decent money, lessening the grip of the Taliban and enabling troops to come home quicker. |
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