Prohibition does not work - that's a fact. The "War on drugs" is grounded in ignorance, racism, and political grandstanding.
While I certainly don't want to advocate for easy access to "hard" drugs, I do
believe that a society that has legal access to alcohol and tobacco and yet criminalizes cannabis users is grossly hypocritical. We have decided that turning 18 years old makes one an adult with respect to alcohol, tobacco, voting and armed service, and you can get a license to drive a lethal weapon even younger than this. To me it seems enormously sensible to add recreational use of drugs to this list - particularly ones that, going by the vast evidence, are less detrimental to health than tobacco, and less detrimental socially than alcohol.Instead of pouring insane amounts of money into enforcing irrational laws our governments could focus on education, harm minimization, health services, addictions counseling and research.
If your loved one (son, daughter, partner) was suffering negative consequences due to their drug use would you want them dealt with by the justice system with the possibility of a criminal record, gaol time, stigma and job loss, or dealt with by health professionals and educators that could help them get back on track?
We need some credible people, including politicians, law enforcers and health professionals, to push against our prohibition laws. I say "credible" because I think that we particularly need people who do not have a vested interest due to personal use to take up the cause. Of course I am not saying that recreational drug users are any less "credible" because of their use, but unfortunately anyone with any position or power who takes up this cause will be heavily scrutinized by our vulture-like main stream media.
Fortunately there does seem to be an increasing voice against prohibition in main stream media. The radio program I listened to this morning referenced a recent article in the The Economist. The subtitle of the article is: "Prohibition has failed; legalisation is the least bad solution". Hopefully we will see more reporting like this.
It seems to me that the one of the main obstructions to law reform is that the people who have a responsibility to govern our country are more concerned about risking political suicide than advocating for what may be best for our society. But, considering that climate change finally made into onto the political agenda (perhaps 30 years too late!), perhaps prohibition law reform will eventually become politically attractive too.
Fortunately there does seem to be an increasing voice against prohibition in main stream media. The radio program I listened to this morning referenced a recent article in the The Economist. The subtitle of the article is: "Prohibition has failed; legalisation is the least bad solution". Hopefully we will see more reporting like this.
It seems to me that the one of the main obstructions to law reform is that the people who have a responsibility to govern our country are more concerned about risking political suicide than advocating for what may be best for our society. But, considering that climate change finally made into onto the political agenda (perhaps 30 years too late!), perhaps prohibition law reform will eventually become politically attractive too.
4 comments:
well you probably know how I feel on the issue.
ultimately for a lot of people it comes down to the question of - "will legalisation increase the use" because it's obvious prohibition doesn't work at it's goal - preventing drug use - but they still do have a leg to stand on depending on how much usage would increase due to legalisation
we can try to look at the evidence, but it's few and far between and I think society plays a bigger role.
but overall I think prohibition doesn't prevent the harm of the drugs, it simply adds to them.
jim anderton said at the debate I went to about cannabis reform and he said "cannabis has a $$ figure cost to society" and as far as he was concerned he wouldn't do anything that would allow that $$ figure to increase. although he's not open minded to considering that legalisation might reverse the trend of drug use being a net cost to society
one thing that was interesting, was the size of the cost. I can't remember it but it averaged out to >$1000 per cannabis smoker on society. you can question the study I guess, it was from an independent researcher, but generally I get the impression that cannabis use isn't as benign as we'd like to think it is, not that that changes my mind
I'd personally like to see mushrooms legalised ;)
-andrew
Anything that grow in nature already is legal, its only that certain governments don't realize this yet.
Andrew - I am very sure that the "war on drugs" costs a lot more than per "user" than the costs would be if prohibition was removed. That is exactly the point The Economist was making.
As for cannabis being benign: I am not saying that I think that cannabis is a totally benign drug. However I do think that it is less damaging (physically, economically, socially) than our legal drugs i.e. tobacco and alcohol.
I agree mandy!
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