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.
Crowds and Warnings
1 hour ago
11 comments:
Absolutely. Marvellous how brave all these people get when they're happily drawing their taxpayer-funded pensions.
I remember with amusement and pleasure the wonderfully-named Professor Nutt, commenting that taking ecstasy is safer than horse riding; ecstasy kills 30 a year, horse riding 100. Of course, he lost his job as Adviser on drugs policy.
Why do the government care? I don't get it...
FT, the hypocrisy is icing on the cake.
TBH, exactly, why?
Nutt also said that Rugby was more dangerous. FYI horse riding is more dangerous than amateur motor racing, and that does more for your adrenaline than pretty well any narcotic - I should imagine, not ever having indulged in so much as a single puff of a spliff myself...
L, FT, Nutt was harsh but fair. Horse riding seems insane, by any objective standards.
My parents used to possess a booklet published in the early C20th about motorcycling. The stated purpose of the booklet was to persuade young men to take up motorcycling instead of the dangerous sport of riding.
Whenever I hear some bansturbator going on about "if it saves a single life, then it is worth it", I always think, "Why not ban riding, then".
Horse riding seems insane, by any objective standards
Amen to that. I can't for the life of me remember who said it and a very quick Google failed to help, but this is true enough: "I wouldn't trust my life to any animal stupid enough to carry me". Or words to that effect. Has a Twain-ish ring to it.
Wouldn't the best solution to the problem of dangerous recreational drugs be to make them a government monopoly?
The government could use the profits from casual drug users (which could be substantial as the selling price would be set just low enough to dissuade users from using illegal suppliers instead) to fund a controlled-supply programme for addicts (who consume over half the total quantity of drugs, while being less than 10% of the drug users), as well as to fund other local government expenditures (which should help reduce NIMBY opposition to the drug supply centres).
The inefficiency of nationalized industries would actually be a feature rather than a bug in this situation (as we don't actually want people to use dangerous drugs in the first place), plus it would break the link between drug users and the criminal drug trade even more thoroughly than conventional legalization would.
B, I'd love to see that booklet!
FT, makes sense.
GC, sounds like a good plan to me.
Mark, sadly I think it went up with the rest of my dad's stuff when the removal lorry caught fire.
The lesson of prohibition smacks one in the face: it requires major ignorance to ignore it.
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