The UK Drug Policy Commission, a charity whose committee members are self-appointed but nonetheless distinguished experts, has spent six years coming to the conclusion that drug taking is simply another 'moderately selfish' or 'risky' behaviour, similar to gambling or eating junk food.
This analogy by the Commission may unwittingly underestimate the tragic effects of compulsive gambling and the influence of sugar and refined carbohydrates on eating disorders. On that basis, they should be very concerned indeed over drug use.
They recommend that people should take drugs 'responsibly'. If addicts could do that, they would have done so.
People with a possibly genetically inherited tendency to addiction need to be distinguished from casual users. For example, it would be as misguided to assume that alcoholics can learn to drink sensibly as it would be to say that all drinkers are alcoholics. The same principle applies to drug users or gamblers or eating disorder sufferers.
The Commission suggests that it should not be a criminal offence to grow cannabis for personal use.
They are correct in observing that banning drugs has not reduced their availability and that taking drugs does not always cause problems.
They are on shakier ground when they say that their proposed legalisation would undermine the illegal market. They seem not to know that illegal production of mood-altering substances often continues alongside legal use. If drug use is legalised, the producers will inflate the amount said to be for personal use and the government, inevitably, will want to tax it. The illegal market in nicotine is now very significant.
I am a libertarian politically but there is no liberty in addiction. Therefore we have to find ways of ensuring that we can distinguish casual users from the 10 -15% of the population who have addictive tendencies. These are the people who occupy 20% of all hospital beds and comprise 50% of all people seen in A + E departments in the evenings and at weekends. The medical and social, as well as financial, costs of addiction are vast.
