England has the same equally stupid approach to controlling drug use - prohibition. Now one of the leading police officers in England has proposed that this policy be abandoned. In his view, England's war on drugs has resulted in drugs being more available, the number of users increasing and drug-related crime is now a plague.
Our benighted policy is responsible for half of the people being in our prisons and huge but unknown costs of prohibition.
2 comments:
Yes the drug business has corrupted cops, businessmen and banks. Keeping an organization larger than the automobile industry concealed involves a LOT of influential people who want to keep it illegal. Of course only the little people get arrested to make it appear that an effort is underway. Here in the midwest, the cops concentrate on crystal meth because it is homemade and not a product of their organization. I am not defending drug use - not even the meth they give to ADHD kids - but this insane thing they call the drug war is a sad joke.
The "drug war" has been on and off in Britain since Labour came to power back in the nineties. Prior to that, under the Tories, it was permanently 'on', of course.
A couple of years ago they declassified cannabis, then almost immediately began talking about re-classifying it again. The police are generally in favor of decriminalization, but the moralists - particularly the churches and the Tory parliamentary opposition - are dead set against it. Chief Constables often speak out in favor, but it never achieves much.
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