Fortunately I have the capacity to understand the dangers of addiction and will never let myself become dominated by the drug. Of course many do not have this control so I do not condone the activity.

Legalise everything and provide comprehensive education in schools to teach kids the dangers.

This is great:-

Looks like Labour’s support is sagging even further

There is a difference between the legitimate trade in alcohol and what you get under prohibition. Same goes for betting shop gambling.

Certainly age controls ARE easier to apply. The extent to which a criminal trade continues to flourish depends on how much you tax the legitimate trade. If you are sensible you don’t leave much room for illegal traders. Legitimate traders will do a lot of work for you, denouncing illegal traders .

If you couple this with serious anti-education on the Swedish model and a regime of drug testing in schools, you will do FAR MORE to curtail drug use than anything else.

http://www.archive.org/details/cus_2009-04-23_debate_legalize-heroin

Some figures on two drugs

Alcohol – 22,000 premature deaths per annum , Road Traffic Deaths 1,500 per annum, cost to society £18.5 billion per annum, not to mention the violence experienced in all town centres.

Ecstasy – 10 deaths per annum.

(Source: Nutt, D.J. (2006) ‘A tale of two Es’ pp. 315-317 in Journal of Psychopharmacology No. 20, Vol. 3.)

I suspect the alcohol deaths are understated and the ecstasy deaths overstated (familes don’t like alcohol on the death certificate and those few death certs that mention ecstasy include details of a number of other substances which are far more likely to have been responsible for the deaths).

Given that we have chosen to give organised crime a state sponsored monopoly in the manufacture, distribution and retail of ecstasy it is a remarkably safe substance. Those of us with kids need to be honest with them and give them accurate information which allows them to make informed decisions.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/wtpapers/greenwald_whitepaper.pdf

1. Drugs have been part and parcel of human culture since the dawn of time (other mammals make use of drugs as well).

2. It is perhaps highly debatable if you took drugs out of the arts whether you would have had much out of the last 500 years. Virtually every jazz great was a heroin addict. Ditto many rock stars. Few writers have been immune to the charms of alcohol and tobacco, essential to their craft. Poets seem to have had a fondness for opiates. All the great dancers have been on drugs of various sorts. The only non druggie art form I can think of at the moment is probably classical music, although a lot of them have to go on sedatives like Beta blockers.

3. We need to think seriously about how to legalise the drug trade and squeeze out the worst Mafia elements/counter the worst health effects. We probably need to think in terms of licensed street and home dealers, state processing of drugs, a limited range of “pure” drugs made available for sale with health warnings. State profits from the trade to be used for drug education and addiction treatment.

4. I agree we should be buying up the whole of the Afghan opium crop. It’s a great way as well to drive up the price of heroin.