The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

Link: ‘\’Legalise drugs\’urges top officer’.

I cordially detest Richard Brunstrom. He has done more to destroy the quality of life in North Wales than anyone outside the Labour Party. However, he is right about this.

The substances that a person chooses to ingest should be entirely a matter for him. In practice, it already is. Almost every British banknote bears traces of cocaine and millions use Ecstasy every weekend. I don’t do drugs myself and have never done so, but I appear to be almost alone in never even having tried them. Most of my user or former user friends and colleagues function perfectly well.

To the extent they have been harmed by drug use, that is entirely a matter for them Many of them ski too, and almost every skier I know has suffered physical injury as a result. I don’t see the need to make skiing illegal and force skiers into lives of crime to fund their suddenly-much-more-expensive addiction. I am content simply to choose not to ski.

Most social harms attributed to drug use are more properly ascribed to drugs being illegal. If your heroin were supplied by Boots the Chemist, the company would be concerned (to avoid litigation and/or damage to its good name) to ensure that you did not suffer injury because of defects in the product. The friendly local criminal from whom you currently buy your drugs, has no product liability concerns. Many lives (and a faltering old English company) would be saved by Boots entering the market.

Drugs would be cheap if they were legal. The crimes committed to support drug use would be completely unnecessary. All of the police time wasted on pursuing druggies could be devoted to more serious issues, like playfriends calling each other "gay," or even detecting murders, rapes, robberies, batteries and burglaries.

We would no longer have to pay Afghan farmers not to grow poppy. They could deal freely in a legal trade which no amount of military force seems able to suppress. They would be take out of poverty, because they would no longer need rapacious criminals to handle their distribution.

There is no reason to suppose that there would be a substantial increase in drug use as a result of legalisation.  Pretty much everyone in Britain who wants drugs, already gets them. Even in prison, they circulate freely. I suspect drug deaths would be reduced because they would be less impure and the necessary apparatus could be supplied by companies with product liability concerns and stored hygienically between uses, rather than hidden. I could not even begin to estimate the benefits to non-users of no longer having to fortify their homes against criminals funding an expensive habit.

The State should get out of this issue and take the criminal gangs (and the police) with it.