Scrambled Laws

This article in yesterday's Independent gives a graphic example of the mess that is created by the government's kneejerk rush to legislation on whatever happens to be the hot law and order topic of the moment.

More on drugs (2)

There is apparently an acute shortage of morphine for use in pain management, particularly in the hospice care of the dying. Rather than trying to drive farmers out of business in the Golden Triangle, we would be better advised to pay them a commercial rate for their crops which could then be processed into morphine for therapeutic use. This has the twin advantages of developing the economies of the producer countries and of driving up the price to the heroin producer, which has either to be passed on to the end user, reducing the attraction to those not yet addicted, or the illegal markets margins are hit hard. This doesn't involve legalising heroin, though to do so and to encourage licensed sale at below street drug prices, would further squeeeze out the dealers. Finally, legalising, licensing and applying duty to such sales would fund the long overdue provision of detox and rehab services to those who wish to quit.

It may not square with what we want to be true, but it would probably be much more effective.

A Failed Policy?

This article in today's Independent makes interesting reading, I have a great deal of sympathy with this point of view. I write as a user myself. My drug of choice is alcohol, taken as wine, gin or beer, depending on my mood. I buy it from retail outlets licensed by the local authority, and I have felt no need to get involved in criminality in order to fund my habit. What I would have done had I been around in the 1920s in the USA when they attempted to wipe out alcohol with about as much success as we're having here with Class A, B, C I'm not sure.