Newsgroups: alt.hemp,alt.drugs,talk.politics.drugs
From: [Stewar t P] at [tuareg.demon.co.uk] (Stewart Parkinson)
Subject: UK Media Coverage
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 1994 14:46:58 +0000

The following article appeared in this Sunday's (12th June 1994) copy of
The Independent.

(Note for overseas readers:

The national press is very important in the UK.  It acts as a barometer of
public opinion, and can often force politicians into action.  The medium is
divided into two main sections; the downmarket tabloids and the medium to
up market broadsheets.  The Independent is a quality newspaper with no
discernable political bias.)

This article formed part of the leader section of the newspaper.

ADDICTED TO A FAILED POLICY

In an ideal world, alcohol would be banned.  Even in quite moderate 
quantities, it can impair work performance, affect driving, make people
quarrelsome, maudlin or boring.  In larger quantities, it can kill.  It can
be addictive and so ruin lives.  Throughout the past century, most violence
in our society -  particularly domestic violence - has been alcohol-related.
Though millions of people get harmless pleasure from drinking, that is
probably not enough, on a strict utilitarian accounting, to outweigh the
enormous social and health costs.  We accept, however, that we do not live
in an ideal world: most of all, we recognise that, even if alcohol were 
prohibited, as it once was in America, people would continue to sell and
buy it, thus drawing vast sections of the population into illegal activity.
We take the same attitude towards many other things that have little
intrinsic merit and can harm physical or mental health - tobacco, pornography
gambling.  Weighing the question of rights, duties and practicalities that
have preoccupied political philosophers down the ages, we elect to control
and regulate them but not to ban them.

Yet we adopt an entirely different approach to drugs.  Politicians use the
word 'drugs' as though to refer to a distinct, single and completely evil
entity.  In reality, drugs (by which they actually mean those drugs that
happen presently to be illegal) vary enormously in their effects and 
addictive qualities: even the same drug can have quite different results
depending upon its quantity and its purity, on how it is administered, on
who takes it in what circumstances.  Yet all but a handful of politicians
refuse to countenance anything other than a blanket ban, backed by severe
penalties for users and suppliers.  "Drugs are harmful," Michael Howard, the
Home Secretary, told a police conference on drugs last week.  "They destroy
people; they destroy families; they destroy the very fabric upon which our
society rests."  This is soundbite politics at its worst.  Senior police 
officers, magistrates, doctors, law lords and drug counselling specialists
are among those who support some change in the law.  Their arguments deserve
a hearing.

To discuss the legalisation of drugs is not a counsel of despair, as Mr Howard
and other politicians have argued.  Still less is it a denial of the pitiful
state to which drugs can reduce people.  The "War against drugs", as it is
rather melodramatically called, can perfectly well accompany their 
legalisation, just as the wars against excessive drinking and cigarette
smoking accompany the legal supply of alcohol and tobacco.  Indeed, it looks
as if those wars are more sucessful than that against illegal drugs.  Tobacco
smoking is in decline - partly because, with nicotine on the right side of 
the law, manufacturers have been allowed to develop and market safe forms 
of administering it.  Use of illegal drugs, by contrast, continues to climb
steeply, particularly among the under-16s.  The largest black market in 
history is estimated to be worth <UKP>5 bn. a year in Britain alone,
providing huge profits for organised criminals, who compete for market share
with gunfire and knives.  The chances of ever preventing supply are almost
nil: the substances are simply too easy to smuggle and hide, too cheap to
grow.  Drugs are most freely available in prisons.  If authority cannot stop
them under its nose, what hope has it on the streets ?

Lord Mancroft, a Tory peer, has proposed state-licensed 'drug shops' where
registered users would be allowed to buy drugs provided they had regular
health checks and counselling.  Two questions need to be asked.  First, would
this help those who are already addicted ?  Most likely it would.  Addicts
would get safer and cheaper supplies.  They would be more willing to seek
treatment if they did not fear prosecution.  They would have less need to 
commit crime to finance their purchases.  Second, would more people try 
drugs?  Possibly they would because many are deterred by illegality.  But
drugs suppliers might disappear from the streets because their potential
profits would no longer outweigh the risks.  And these suppliers have a 
vested interest in maximising use and persuading people to try 'harder'
drugs.

To repeat:  the war against drugs would continue.  Selling drugs outside 
the licensed outlets would remain a criminal offence.  Freed from the need
to fight on all fronts, the Government could devote more resources to
prevention of such sales, as well as to education and treatment.  The total
war against drugs has failed; politicians of all parties should at least
address the arguments for a new strategy, based on more limited aims.


END
-- 
Stewart Parkinson