Ex UK minister in charge of narcotics policy has decided that all drugs should be legalised. Shame he didn't come to this conclusion - or at least act on it - while he was in charge. But from someone in his position and with residual influence on public opinion, his revelation is better late than ever.
"The war on drugs does not work. We need to be bold, we need some fresh thinking," Ainsworth, who was also Defence Secretary in the former Labour government, told BBC radio.
"This has been going on for 50 years now and it isn't getting better. The drugs trade is as big and as powerful as it ever was across the world."
Ainsworth said each drug should be examined on its own terms and there should be different regimes for each one. Heroin should be legally available, but only on prescription, he suggested, while cocaine could be available from legal sources such as doctors.
"I'm not proposing the liberalisation and legalisation of heroin so we can all get zonked out on the street corner," he said.
"What I'm saying is heroin needs to be taken out of the hands of the dealers, put into the hands of the medical profession, done in a mass way to the extent that's necessary."
There was a time when I kept my views about decriminalisation quiet. People think you are mad when you suggest legalisation of all drugs. But over time it becomes clearer and clearer that the madness is in the status quo.
2 comments:
Thank you for joining the ranks of reason Lindsay....
May I suggest for further reading a publication by a practising psychologist and former Sate Director of Mental Health (Illinois), Advisor to the V.A. etc.(his CV alone is 29 pages)
(the foreword is by colleague Eric Sterling, he authored an equally informative "A Businessperson's Guide to the drug Problem)
see http://cannabinomics.com where it describes the book by the same name.
It validates from a clinical and social perspective why we should be addressing first and foremost the neighbouring intoxicant to alcohol, cannabis.
So if drugs are legal when someone kills your family in a car crash you can't whinge about it.It may become illegal to drive stoned but as in the case of alcohol the courts don't care, in fact it will become another exuse for the junkie to get off.Good luck with that....
D.T.
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