"How Portugal treats drug addicts"

There's a mildly interesting post on Mark Easton's blog, in which he concludes "what Portugal's controversial experiment has demonstrated is that, if you take the crime out of drug use, the sky doesn't fall in."

I'm with Milton Friedman, the Adam Smith Institute & The Economist, as well as the more liberal wing of the Labour, Lib Dem and Green parties (and maybe a few Tories, who keep very quiet about it) on this, i.e. what we need is legalisation, regulation (over 18s only, for example), taxation, education and, where necessary, treatment. Provided the tax receipts cover the costs of education and treatment, what's the problem?

Then you can bung in the notional savings, i.e. reduced cost of crime (tens of billions a year) and the fact that we could source a lot of the stuff from Afghanistan (trade is better than aid, and certainly a lot better that occupation). All we'd have to do is wriggle our way out of an oppressive treaty or two ...