UK - The Home Office's humiliation over qat exposes free market double standards

[edgarshade]

Guardian

Hugh Muir
theguardian.com, Friday 29 November 2013 11.08 GMT

With reader comments

Regulation, not criminalisation, may be the right way to deal with a plant that has yet to be proved harmful. So much for free trade

Listen carefully. A gentle warbling, a bit of clucking rising to an irritating screech. That's the sound of chickens coming home to roost. Today it will be so loud at the Home Office that one wonders how Theresa May and co will be able to do any work.

Another Friday, another humiliation by select committee. The home affairs select committee, having run the rule over the government's decision to outlaw the stimulant qat, says the ban was not based on any evidence of medical or social harm. Much better, says the cross-party committee, to license importers of the plant to regulate quantity of supply.

A second point concerns ideology. Isn't this government for the market and for sweeping away restrictions on trade? It says the ban "will prevent Britain becoming a single, regional hub for criminals trying to make a profit as countries across Europe have implemented the same ban". But so too, the committee points out, would regulation. That seems the light touch option. Surely this is a government which abhors unnecessary interference with legal market activity and pledges death to red tape.

More...
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/29/home-office-qat-free-market-regulation

 

[edgarshade]

Interesting the way the reader comments are skewed in favour of prohibition. This is quite surprising for a paper like the Guardian. I suspect some advocacy group has organised a little get-together there.

The comments at the end of this article, and how they are voted up, is more what I would expect as typical of public opinion in the UK.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/11/28/khat-should-be-legal_n_4355964.html