"Dick" by name, dick by nature...

From The Evening Standard:

Britain's most senior police officer has described the legalisation of cannabis in Canada and parts of the US as "interesting experiments" that should be watched... She said the debate around the subject was "complex"...

No it's not, it's perfectly simple.

... and believed if the UK was to legalise drugs immediately, it could lead to a variety of health problems.

Nonsense. We know from places where they legalised it that usage does not change massively (up or down), so there is little or no net effect. I, and I assume most people, don't like the stuff and wouldn't be interested even if it were legal.

However, speaking to radio show host Eddie Nestor on Monday, Dame Cressida said: "I think it is worth looking at what is happening in Canada and parts of the United States, albeit we have to recognise culturally that is very different."

Very little is 'happening', that is the beauty of it. As to 'culturally very different', she really is scraping the barrel. A sane person would consider Canada, the USA, Portugal, Netherlands as 'culturally very similar' to the UK.

"My concern is, I’m not a health professional, but you see what is happening with skunk and some of the damage done to people with mental health issues, is absolutely huge."

No you aren't, and no it isn't.

"The organised crime groups, in my view, would come in and cause problems in different markets and start selling different things to people. Let's see though what happens."

Wait, what? "The organised crime gangs would come in"??? They're already in! If you make something illegal, you end up with criminal gangs (Prohibition in the USA). If you legalise something (repeal Prohibition), the opposite happens.

And nobody said we should make the really strong varieties legal, that's no argument against legalising (and of course regulating and taxing) the normal strength stuff. You might as well say that because it's (quite rightly) illegal to drive a car that's not roadworthy, that you should simply ban all cars.

Exquisitely fucked up logic for keeping cannabis illegal

From this morning's Metro:

Legalisation of cannabis will not eliminate illegal dealing. There will still be a criminal element ready to supply it for a price undercutting the legitimate market.

HG, Kent.

That is just wrong on so many levels that it is impossible to know where to start.

The same old tired template

A retired politican, who toed the party line and dutifully trotted out the "illegal drugs cause harm so must remain illegal" mantra while in office/in power, now comes out and admits it's all stupid and that some things - like cannabis - should simply be legalised, regulated and - presumably - taxed.

Those still in office/in power, toe the party line and come out with the usual crap:

Prime Minister Theresa May remains firmly opposed to legalisation or decriminalisation of the drug because of the harm she says it does to individual users and communities.

See also, George Schultz (Secretary of State under Reagan);
Bob Ainsworth (former Home Office minister);
Paul Whitehouse (former chief constable, Sussex);
Tom Lloyd (former chief constable, Cambridgeshire);
Francis Wilkinson (former chief constable, Gwent);
Brian Paddick, (former Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police);
and so on ad infinitum.

Give it five or ten years, and former PM Lady May will no doubt admit that the whole thing is for shit and maybe we should legalise it.

Rinse and repeat.

Outbreak of Common Sense

A new report by the TaxPayers’ Alliance details the enormous savings to British taxpayers by legalising cannabis. The UK could save at least £891.72 million a year in reduced spending by police, prisons, courts and the NHS through pain relief treatments.

Yes, this is all old hat and sane people have been saying it for years, I'm just pleasantly surprised that the TPA, the staidest and most small 'c' conservative of all pressure groups would even broach the topic.

(A list of their recent donors might give a clue as to why the sudden change of emphasis...)

Cannabis powered rent-seeking

Emailed in by Mombers, from the NY Times:

QUINCY, Mass. — At the edge of an industrial park in this suburb south of Boston, past a used-car auction lot and a defunct cheese factory, is an unmarked warehouse bristling with security cameras and bustling with activity. Until recently, the cinder-block structure was home to a wholesale florist, a granite cutter and a screen printer. Today, it is home to just one tenant: a medical marijuana operation called Ermont...

And because the marijuana business comes with added baggage, landlords and property owners are charging a premium for new tenants working in the cannabis business. In Quincy, Ermont is paying above market rate for the previously dilapidated 36,000-square-foot building...

Commercial real estate developers say they have never seen a change so swift in so many places at once. From Monterey, Calif., to Portland, Me., the new industry is reshaping once-blighted neighborhoods and sending property values soaring.

In some Denver neighborhoods, the average asking lease price for warehouse space jumped by more than 50 percent from 2010 to 2015, according to an industry report. In the city over all, there are five times as many retail pot stores as stand-alone Starbucks shops.

Thus neatly proving two points at once; a) legalising cannabis makes an area more attractive on the whole (so is a good thing) and b) a large chunk of the extra value generated by any business accrues to landowners.

Seeing as part of the reason for legalising is to save wasting taxpayers' money on enforcement and collect taxes from the product instead (win-win), if the government can also tap into those higher rental values via higher property tax receipts (as most US states do), it's a win-win-win.

"Why are drugs illegal?"

David Nutt on top form in The Guardian:

... the short answer to the question “why are (some) drugs illegal?” is simple. It’s because the editors of powerful newspapers want it that way. They see getting drugs banned as a tangible measure of success, a badge of honour.

He then ruins an otherwise excellent article by finishing off with this:

And behind them, the alcohol industry continues secretly to express its opposition to anything that might challenge its monopoly of recreational drug sales. But that’s another story.

Outbreak of commonsense...

... in Jamaica.

From The Daily Mail:

As the birth place of reggae music and the Rastafarian religious cult Jamaica has long been associated with cannabis.

Now high ranking officials of the Caribbean state want to legalise the widely used but illegal drug – in a bid to spark a tourism boom.

They believe promoting the controlled sale of the narcotic will bring tens of thousands of extra tourists to the island which has suffered from a faltering economy and high unemployment.

Supporters hope to follow the example of the US state of Colorado which has raked in a fortune after the sale of cannabis was decriminalised – and taxed – on January 1 this year.

Outbreak of common sense...

... in Durham:

Class A drugs should be decriminalised and drug addicts "treated and cared for not criminalised", according to a senior UK police officer.

Writing in the Observer, Chief Constable Mike Barton of Durham Police said prohibition had put billions of pounds into the hands of criminals.

He called for an open debate on the problems caused by drugs.

The Home Office reiterated its stance and said drugs were illegal because they were dangerous.

Two-and-a-half cheers for Uruguay

From the BBC:


If the Senate approves..., as is expected, Uruguay would become the first country in the world to regulate cannabis production, guarantee its quality, set its price and tax the revenues. It would also allow people to grow up to six plants of cannabis in their homes*.

The government says the aim is to stop people going to buy cannabis from drug traffickers and to put an end to a recent wave of violent crime associated with illegal drugs. In a BBC interview last year, President Jose Mujica said: "We are not so much worried about the drugs. What really worries us is drug trafficking."

... According to recent opinion polls, Uruguayans have shown to be more open to decriminalising abortion and legalising same-sex marriage than they are towards this new cannabis bill. At least two-thirds of the population are against the legalisation of marijuana, the latest poll suggests.

* That seems a bit stingy and what is not mentioned in that otherwise cheering article is that people will be restricted to buying 40 grams per month from official government shops, which a) doesn't sound like very much to me, and b) how are they going to police it anyway? The mind boggles.

My first thought is that people who want to smoke more than that without resorting to non-government sources will just ask non-smoking friends and neighbours to buy some for them, which gets us straight back to illegal dealing.

But I suppose they have to take into account that two-thirds of their voters oppose the idea, so they can't go too far too fast.

Perhaps not being able to get their hands on some nice weed is making them cross?

From the BBC:

The possession and use of all illegal drugs should be decriminalised, a very cross party group of peers has said.

The least harmful should be regulated and sold in licensed shops, with labels detailing risks, the group concluded. The All-Party Parliamentary Visibly Irritated Group on Drug Policy Reform (APPVIG) said criminal sanctions did not combat drug addiction, and only marginalised users.

A recent call by MPs for a royal commission on drug decriminalisation was rejected by the prime minister, who said he didn't have any problems getting hold of what he needed.

The APPVIG - comprising two Bad Tempered, two Really Miffed, one Livid peer and four very cross benchers - took evidence from 31 experts and organisations, including the Association of Chief Pissed Off-icers and the Advisory Can't Get Hold of Drugs.

Fun Online Polls: Over at The Sun

I was going to cut and paste the following Prohibitionist diatribe from today's Sun, by Tory MP Philip Davies...

I DON’T want any relaxation of the laws.

So much crime is fuelled by people getting addicted to drugs, so the idea that you’ll solve that by legalising everything is for the birds. Reputable retailers are not going to start selling hard drugs, so this would have the effect of legitimising some very unpleasant people.

Drugs cause so much misery, not so much to the people taking them, but to their families and the victims of crime. It’s naive to think that by liberalising the market you will solve the problem.

(For some reason, proper libertarian Dick Puddlecote still seems to hold Mr P Davies in high regard, f- knows why on the basis of outpourings like this.)

... when their Fun Online Poll caught my eye: so far, over 20,000 votes have been cast and 85% are in favour of legalising cannabis, despite the Sun newspaper being, on the face of it at least, very anti-legalisation (but the way they manipulate public opinion is so subtle and so clever, that they might be deliberately putting the case for Prohibition so badly as to drive people the other way, who knows?).

Which I thought was not only chucklesome but also rather heartening.

Knee Jerk Response Of The Day

From The Metro:

A six-year study by the UK Drug Policy Commission showed most of the billions Britain spends annually tackling illegal drugs is not justified. For cannabis, the commission suggested that amending the law relating to the growing of it, at least for personal use, might go some way to ‘undermining the commercialisation of production’.

And so on and so forth.

The Home Office insisted its approach to tackling drugs is the right one. "Drug usage is at it lowest level since records began," a spokeswoman said.

That's one way of trying to measure the success or otherwise of a drugs policy, even though actual usage figures are largely guesswork. Problem is of course, that countries which legalised e.g. cannabis all saw a slight fall in consumption (to the extent it can be measured etc).

And no doubt Dame Ruth Runciman, chairwoman of this Commission will get Nutted in due course.

Outbreak of common sense in Uruguay

From The Daily Mail:

Uruguay could become the first country in the world to sell marijuana to its citizens as it attempts to fight a growing crime problem.

Under the plan, only the government would be allowed to sell marijuana to adults who have registered on a government database - letting officials keep track of their purchases over time.

Minister of Defense Eleuterio Fernandez Huidobro said the measure aims to weaken crime in the country by removing profits from drug dealers and diverting users from harder drugs.

I don't like the bit about the database, and by and large, cannabis is the sort of thing which can be best grown or imported and sold privately, but it's a huge leap in the right direction.

Having set a benchmark price (something below current street prices), the government would then ideally re-privatise the whole thing and levy taxes on producers to mop up the super-profits; the main thing is that the tax is not so high as to make illicit/unlicensed supply worthwhile on a large scale.

Law of Unintended Consequences

From The Daily Mail:

A national crackdown on prescription drug abuse has led to new wave of heroin users in America.

It used to be easier to forge a prescription than meet with a dealer on a street corner. But since stricter rules on prescription drugs were imposed youngsters are choosing heroin as a drug of choice.

The deadly drug is now being found in areas where previously, it hadn't presented a problem. New York, Pennsylvania, North and South Carolina, Illinois and Missouri have all been affected by the surge in abuse according to 2011 Justice Department statistics.

And so on. Worth reading in full.

I was pleasantly surprised to see this in The Sun

Here's their blurb

THE war on drugs has failed and the world must now consider legalisation, a former MI6 chief declares today. Nigel Inkster, a respected former No2 in the Secret Intelligence Service, is the most senior figure yet to call for a review of the world’s narcotics laws...

Other figures backing a rethink include ex-MI5 boss Eliza Manningham-Buller, Sir Richard Branson, ex-Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth and UK Bar Council Chairman Nicholas Green QC.

- A ROYAL Navy war ship has seized 400lbs of heroin worth £14million from a ship in the Indian Ocean. Its sale would have funded international terrorists.

And they published his actual article next to the editorial. It's a fairly bog standard explanation of why trying to ban drugs is completely pointless and just makes things worse but good stuff nonetheless.

"Why is it only 'formers' who want to talk about drugs?"

Mark Easton provides the obvious answer to the question.

What's interesting is the list of 'formers' and 'exes', to which we could add Bob Ainsworth. And I suppose Professor Nutt, who became a 'former' as a direct consequence of not waiting until he was a 'former' before he said what he said.

That whole 'legalising drugs' thing

Mummylonglegs stepped up to the oche, and I left a comment as follows (repeated here for posterity):

Completely agreed. And with drugs, there is a sliding scale, and I would suggest legalisation as follows:

1. Magic mushrooms - available from any greengrocer who can tell a poisonous mushroom from an edible one.

2. Mild cannabis - available from normal tobacconist/off-licence, over-18s only.

3. Ecstasy - available only at chemists, max. two tablets per customer Fridays and Saturdays only, over-18s only.

4. Cocaine - same as ecstasy - max. 1 gram per customer.

5. LSD - same as ecstasy, two tabs per customer but with six monthly renewable certificate from psychiatrist to say you are not nuts.

5. Heroin for injection - available with monthly repeat prescription from doctor at pharmacists.

6. Crack, still illegal, obviously.

And so on, I'm sure I've missed a few, but you just slot them in. All of these to be taxed like booze or fags, to be handed out with tedious leaflets with helpful advice for safe use and an admonishing glare.

Home Office Fun

Two stories from today's Metro remind us that the country is run by idiots.

Page 1: Making meow meow, BZP and spice illegal will not stop people from trying them but will put them at risk from dealers who mix them with dangerous cutting agents, according to a report from the UK Drug Policy Commission.

In 2008 and 2009, when the now-banned meow meow was growing in popularity, cocaine-related deaths dropped by 28 per cent. The relaxation and subsequent re-introduction of controls on cannabis use also had no impact on the general decline in the drug’s use, the report claims...

However, the Home Office said it had no plans to change drug law. "We believe the Misuse of Drugs Act works and continues to protect the public from the serious harms caused by illicit drug use," it added.

Page 2: The article is a nice bit of shroud waving by The Police Federation. Yes of course the police force could be put to better use or cut costs a bit, that's not the point; the relevant bit is right at the end:

A Home Office spokesman said: "As a service spending £14 billion a year of public money, the police can and must make their fair share of the savings."

Yup, that £14 billion is about one per cent of GDP, or about two per cent of total UK government spending (prisons is another £4 billion or so on top of that). Seeing as maintaining law and order is the corest of the core functions of state and only makes up two per cent of total spending anyway, I don't think this is the right place to start if you're trying to save money.

Would it not make more sense to look at the £14 billion we send to the EU each year, or the £10 billion which the Department of (for?) Work & Pensions spends on administration costs each year?

"Ex-minister in call to decriminalise all drugs"

From the BBC:

A former minister with responsibility for drugs policy has called for the decriminalisation of all drugs. Bob Ainsworth, who oversaw the issue at the Home Office in Tony Blair's government, said the approach of successive administrations had failed.

The Labour MP for Coventry North East, also a former defence secretary, said the current policy left the drugs trade in the hands of criminal gangs. Ministers have insisted they remain opposed to decriminalisation.

Mr Ainsworth is the most senior politician so far to publicly call for all drugs, including heroin and cocaine, to be decriminalised. He said he realised while he was a minister in the Home Office in charge of drugs policy that the so-called war on drugs could not be won. Mr Ainsworth has called for a strict system of legal regulation under which different drugs would either be prescribed by doctors or sold under licence.

It's a bit late now, but it's all good, I suppose.

"End addiction, new government drugs strategy urges"

You've got to hand it to the Lib-Cons when it comes to trying new stuff: their cunning wheeze to end drug dependency is to just ask addicts to stop taking them.

I wonder if there's any point asking the government to legalise them instead?