Unbreakable
Bluelighter
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DPMC Moderators: tryptakid
Ex-minister in call to decriminalise all drugs
- Thread starter Unbreakable
- Start date
edgarshade
Bluelighter
There is a related Have Your Say, "Should heroin and cocaine be legalised?", here...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/haveyoursay/2010/12/should_heroin_and_cocaine_be_l.html
As usual, about 80% of the comments are in favour
Also the same article is appearing in other publications, the reader comments in the Tory publications are always good for a laugh
Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8204123/Legalise-all-drugs-says-former-Labour-Home-Office-minister.html
Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/all-drugs-should-be-legalised-to-beat-dealers-says-former-minister-2161635.html
No Daily Mail article at time of posting
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/haveyoursay/2010/12/should_heroin_and_cocaine_be_l.html
As usual, about 80% of the comments are in favour
Also the same article is appearing in other publications, the reader comments in the Tory publications are always good for a laugh
Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8204123/Legalise-all-drugs-says-former-Labour-Home-Office-minister.html
Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/all-drugs-should-be-legalised-to-beat-dealers-says-former-minister-2161635.html
No Daily Mail article at time of posting
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edgarshade
Bluelighter
The vitriol-fest begins...
Legal drugs call 'irresponsible'
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5jNH4ojc9pRH1dxR6BG7gqWJ8Dx1g?docId=N0167631292427168696A
There are also some other articles related to this story with Reader Comments that show the comment from Ed Milliband's spokeswoman to be the tosh we know it is, "Bob's views do not reflect Ed's views, the party's view or indeed the view of the vast majority of the public."
Gaurdian
Should drugs be decriminalised?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/poll/2010/dec/16/bob-ainsworth-drugs
Telegraph
Don't legalise cannabis
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100068546/dont-legalize-cannabis/
Sun
Labour MP wants all drugs legal
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3280236/Labour-MP-wants-ALL-drugs-legal.html
Legal drugs call 'irresponsible'
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5jNH4ojc9pRH1dxR6BG7gqWJ8Dx1g?docId=N0167631292427168696A
There are also some other articles related to this story with Reader Comments that show the comment from Ed Milliband's spokeswoman to be the tosh we know it is, "Bob's views do not reflect Ed's views, the party's view or indeed the view of the vast majority of the public."
Gaurdian
Should drugs be decriminalised?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/poll/2010/dec/16/bob-ainsworth-drugs
Telegraph
Don't legalise cannabis
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100068546/dont-legalize-cannabis/
Sun
Labour MP wants all drugs legal
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3280236/Labour-MP-wants-ALL-drugs-legal.html
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SnrG
Bluelighter
Ainsworths just an opportunistic cunt, who wanted to lift his profile before xmas. He had the chance when he was in charge of drugs policy, for fucks sake, but did nothing.
bore bore bore.....................................
bore bore bore.....................................
Herbal~Jah
Ex-Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2010
- Messages
- 776
I think of all the "hard drugs" out there that opiates in general should be the first to be legalized. Because a responsible opiate user that uses opiates everyday acts NO DIFFERENT then someone who is sober... In fact you would never be able to tell if someone RESPONSIBLE was on opiates if you were around him/her.
Sometimes i wonder how the world would look though if drugs were legalized... I can guarantee you that drug testing would be at an all time ridiculously high level. They would probably pop a drug test on you when you walked into a damn gas station.... just think about it.. Your insurance would probably go up... in fact if drugs were legalized there would probably be no way to hide that your using because the only place to buy your drugs would be from the government that would probably track every single person that purchases drugs and what drug they purchased. and then they would pass that information on to your health insurance provider and anyone else that would be able to use your "drug use" against you to take more of your money and more of your freedoms......hmmm now that i think about it, maybe they are better left illegal? lol idk
Did anyone else read "How the government may profit from legalized drugs" ? its insane how evil the worlds governments have BECOME!!!!
Sometimes i wonder how the world would look though if drugs were legalized... I can guarantee you that drug testing would be at an all time ridiculously high level. They would probably pop a drug test on you when you walked into a damn gas station.... just think about it.. Your insurance would probably go up... in fact if drugs were legalized there would probably be no way to hide that your using because the only place to buy your drugs would be from the government that would probably track every single person that purchases drugs and what drug they purchased. and then they would pass that information on to your health insurance provider and anyone else that would be able to use your "drug use" against you to take more of your money and more of your freedoms......hmmm now that i think about it, maybe they are better left illegal? lol idk
Did anyone else read "How the government may profit from legalized drugs" ? its insane how evil the worlds governments have BECOME!!!!
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I think that all drugs should be legalised, but drugs that are really dangerous (Heroin, Crack etc. because of its high danger to you, plus is high addiction rate making you continue using, a lot)(you could say Alcohol is just as dangerous, but its not quite as addictive) should be prescription only, and decriminalised.
If it was to happen I'm just dreading the idiots that get fucked on E and Charlie, doing something stupid and falling off a train. Oh the tabloids will be loving it...
I think it would get a lot worse for drug related deaths for a while, it's like getting a new toy and overplaying it, til your bored... When its the norm everything will be rainbows n daisys with sensible drug users
If it was to happen I'm just dreading the idiots that get fucked on E and Charlie, doing something stupid and falling off a train. Oh the tabloids will be loving it...
I think it would get a lot worse for drug related deaths for a while, it's like getting a new toy and overplaying it, til your bored... When its the norm everything will be rainbows n daisys with sensible drug users
edgarshade
Bluelighter
UK Telegraph - Politicians should say what they really think about drugs
By Andrew M Brown 6:24PM GMT 16 Dec 2010
Real debate about drugs and addiction is considered taboo by the political class, says Andrew M Brown.
With reader comments
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/8207584/Politicians-should-say-what-they-really-think-about-drugs.html
'As a rule, politicians only feel able to say what they really think about drugs once they’re safely out of office. Yesterday, Bob Ainsworth, the minister responsible for narcotics policy between 2001 and 2003, called for an end to the “war on drugs”, arguing that addiction is a medical problem and that millions of pounds are being spent without preventing the wide availability of addictive chemicals. Peter Lilley, the former Conservative cabinet minister, agreed with him. “The current approach to drugs has been an expensive failure,” he said. “For the sake of everyone, and the young in particular, it is time for all politicians to stop using the issue as a political football.”
Do they have a point? After all, the purpose of banning drugs, when prohibition took off in the early 20th century, was to reduce the harm they do. On that measure, our laws have been a dismal failure. Addiction costs the British economy billions every year, while channelling billions more to criminal networks.
Simply enforcing the law more stringently, as some propose, is not much of an answer, since few people want to see teenagers filling up prisons for possessing small amounts of cannabis. So what would actually happen if the prohibition on the sale of drugs were lifted?
That’s the trouble: no one knows. The last time all drugs were legally available was the mid-19th century, and that was a more ordered era: then, you could buy laudanum – an alcoholic tincture of opium – for medicinal purposes, in your local corner shop. Some ordinary folk gulped it daily, a bit like Valium 100 years later. In East Anglia, they grew opium poppies in the fields, and used them to fortify the beer. Even fractious babies were dosed with the stuff, which caused some unfortunate accidents. Cocaine, meanwhile, was a key ingredient in a variety of invigorating tonics.
Despite such widespread availability of narcotics, society didn’t fall apart – but then, the Victorians had social pressures which acted as restraints on behaviour. These days, more people than ever before seem to struggle with their appetites, whether for food, sex, booze or drugs. It’s possible that liberalising the law would lead to a catastrophic increase in the number of addicts.'
'Mind you, there is one European country where the government has tried a liberal approach: Portugal. In 2001, the Portuguese enacted a law that decriminalised all drugs. The evidence so far shows no explosion of addiction, nor has Lisbon turned into a cesspit awash with drug traffickers, as some predicted. “Judged by virtually every available metric,” says Glenn Greenwald of the Cato Institute, a libertarian US think tank, “the Portuguese decriminalisation framework has been a resounding success.” In the first five years of the new policy, illegal drug use among teenagers declined, as did deaths caused by drug use. Portugal now has among the lowest rates of drug use in the EU.
Amid this week’s fuss, we should remember that Bob Ainsworth is an ex-trade union leader from Coventry, not some hippy libertarian proposing hedonism for all. He simply thinks that the current system is causing more harm than good, and we should try something different. He is acknowledging that the debate is changing and that a new approach is needed.
The nature of the problem is changing, too – even the nature of the drugs themselves. The medicine cabinets of Middle England are increasingly stocked with painkillers – prescribed by doctors – that are every bit as potent as anything than can be bought from a street-corner dealer. These are drugs, too, but they’re perfectly legal ones. So Mr Ainsworth’s remarks are to be welcomed. At the moment, we live in a strange world in which politicians are frightened to talk about the realities of drugs in the way the rest of us do. It’s about time we allowed them to say what they really think.'
By Andrew M Brown 6:24PM GMT 16 Dec 2010
Real debate about drugs and addiction is considered taboo by the political class, says Andrew M Brown.
With reader comments
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/8207584/Politicians-should-say-what-they-really-think-about-drugs.html
'As a rule, politicians only feel able to say what they really think about drugs once they’re safely out of office. Yesterday, Bob Ainsworth, the minister responsible for narcotics policy between 2001 and 2003, called for an end to the “war on drugs”, arguing that addiction is a medical problem and that millions of pounds are being spent without preventing the wide availability of addictive chemicals. Peter Lilley, the former Conservative cabinet minister, agreed with him. “The current approach to drugs has been an expensive failure,” he said. “For the sake of everyone, and the young in particular, it is time for all politicians to stop using the issue as a political football.”
Do they have a point? After all, the purpose of banning drugs, when prohibition took off in the early 20th century, was to reduce the harm they do. On that measure, our laws have been a dismal failure. Addiction costs the British economy billions every year, while channelling billions more to criminal networks.
Simply enforcing the law more stringently, as some propose, is not much of an answer, since few people want to see teenagers filling up prisons for possessing small amounts of cannabis. So what would actually happen if the prohibition on the sale of drugs were lifted?
That’s the trouble: no one knows. The last time all drugs were legally available was the mid-19th century, and that was a more ordered era: then, you could buy laudanum – an alcoholic tincture of opium – for medicinal purposes, in your local corner shop. Some ordinary folk gulped it daily, a bit like Valium 100 years later. In East Anglia, they grew opium poppies in the fields, and used them to fortify the beer. Even fractious babies were dosed with the stuff, which caused some unfortunate accidents. Cocaine, meanwhile, was a key ingredient in a variety of invigorating tonics.
Despite such widespread availability of narcotics, society didn’t fall apart – but then, the Victorians had social pressures which acted as restraints on behaviour. These days, more people than ever before seem to struggle with their appetites, whether for food, sex, booze or drugs. It’s possible that liberalising the law would lead to a catastrophic increase in the number of addicts.'
'Mind you, there is one European country where the government has tried a liberal approach: Portugal. In 2001, the Portuguese enacted a law that decriminalised all drugs. The evidence so far shows no explosion of addiction, nor has Lisbon turned into a cesspit awash with drug traffickers, as some predicted. “Judged by virtually every available metric,” says Glenn Greenwald of the Cato Institute, a libertarian US think tank, “the Portuguese decriminalisation framework has been a resounding success.” In the first five years of the new policy, illegal drug use among teenagers declined, as did deaths caused by drug use. Portugal now has among the lowest rates of drug use in the EU.
Amid this week’s fuss, we should remember that Bob Ainsworth is an ex-trade union leader from Coventry, not some hippy libertarian proposing hedonism for all. He simply thinks that the current system is causing more harm than good, and we should try something different. He is acknowledging that the debate is changing and that a new approach is needed.
The nature of the problem is changing, too – even the nature of the drugs themselves. The medicine cabinets of Middle England are increasingly stocked with painkillers – prescribed by doctors – that are every bit as potent as anything than can be bought from a street-corner dealer. These are drugs, too, but they’re perfectly legal ones. So Mr Ainsworth’s remarks are to be welcomed. At the moment, we live in a strange world in which politicians are frightened to talk about the realities of drugs in the way the rest of us do. It’s about time we allowed them to say what they really think.'
edgarshade
Bluelighter
Mods: I thought this should be a new thread since it is asking a general question provoked by Bob Ainsworth's comments. Please feel free to merge with earlier thread if more appropriate.
'Prime Minister still believes in full drugs debate'
'Prime Minister still believes in full drugs debate' - Bob Ainsworth
Published Date: 17 December 2010
By Emily Ashton
David Cameron privately believes there should be a "full debate" on the decriminalisation of hard drugs, former Labour cabinet minister Bob Ainsworth has claimed.
Mr Ainsworth said it was a "tragedy" that Mr Cameron had once advocated the "common sense" debate as a member of the Commons home affairs select committee, but changed his mind once he became Conservative leader.
Opening a debate on drugs policy in Westminster Hall yesterday, Mr Ainsworth said: "When he was being commendably brave as an ambitious young MP, he believed in it.
"I have to say that I believe he still does, but he just knows it's so enormously difficult for him to take this position. He wouldn't hold the right wing of his party in place - heaven knows he's got enough trouble with the right wing of his party - and that is the reason why he will not support what he knows to be common sense.
"And that is the tragedy of drug policy in this country."
Full article: http://www.scotsman.com/news/39Prime-Minister-still-believes-in.6663496.jp
'Prime Minister still believes in full drugs debate' - Bob Ainsworth
Published Date: 17 December 2010
By Emily Ashton
David Cameron privately believes there should be a "full debate" on the decriminalisation of hard drugs, former Labour cabinet minister Bob Ainsworth has claimed.
Mr Ainsworth said it was a "tragedy" that Mr Cameron had once advocated the "common sense" debate as a member of the Commons home affairs select committee, but changed his mind once he became Conservative leader.
Opening a debate on drugs policy in Westminster Hall yesterday, Mr Ainsworth said: "When he was being commendably brave as an ambitious young MP, he believed in it.
"I have to say that I believe he still does, but he just knows it's so enormously difficult for him to take this position. He wouldn't hold the right wing of his party in place - heaven knows he's got enough trouble with the right wing of his party - and that is the reason why he will not support what he knows to be common sense.
"And that is the tragedy of drug policy in this country."
Full article: http://www.scotsman.com/news/39Prime-Minister-still-believes-in.6663496.jp
As I have mentioned before, I also believe that David Cameron has a liberal view on drugs. I have also mentioned about the right of his party being outraged if he went down a more liberal route. He has already annoyed the right with his almost pro-European actions plus he has supported a radical and progressive shake-up of the prison system.
So now I wonder if he is deliberately pissing them off in an attempt to cauterise them, move his party towards the centre and pick up the right-of-centre part of the Liberal Democrats (Who are in danger of fracturing straight down the political centre!)
So now I wonder if he is deliberately pissing them off in an attempt to cauterise them, move his party towards the centre and pick up the right-of-centre part of the Liberal Democrats (Who are in danger of fracturing straight down the political centre!)
edgarshade
Bluelighter
Knowing what we know about Cameron's past views I have to say the government has been behaving strangely. The sound bites they come out about drugs with are just brain-dead (and flogging-a-dead-horse repetitive) and they have amended the 1971 misuse of drugs act to consider how "harmful" a drug is rather than the harm caused to society by it (as pointed out by the Drug Equality Alliance in the recent Independent article).
If he really is secretly wanting to end prohibition then I wonder if he is manoeuvring the albatross of current policy into a more convenient position, as an easier target, to be eventually shot down.
We all know the laws have nothing to do with reducing harm to society and everything to do with victimising various minorities of the day who were associated with a particular substance. So why not remove all the pretences out of the written law so it says so?
I'm sure Teresa May is as anti-drug as it is possible to be but then Home Secretaries in the UK have quite a short average life-time and often crash and burn in some kind of scandal.
If he really is secretly wanting to end prohibition then I wonder if he is manoeuvring the albatross of current policy into a more convenient position, as an easier target, to be eventually shot down.
We all know the laws have nothing to do with reducing harm to society and everything to do with victimising various minorities of the day who were associated with a particular substance. So why not remove all the pretences out of the written law so it says so?
I'm sure Teresa May is as anti-drug as it is possible to be but then Home Secretaries in the UK have quite a short average life-time and often crash and burn in some kind of scandal.
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Interesting points there Edgarshade - the Government is indeed acting a bit weird with regards to drug policy which tells my optimist side that something is afoot.
They banned NRG-1 with even less consultation than they did mephedrone and are planning on introducing temporary bans on substances on the say-so of the home secretary. The interesting thing about the temporary ban is that it will only last for a year and, during that time, the substance in question will be evaluated by an independent body. Does this mean a disbanding of the now impotent ACMD? Will it be a chance for Prof Nutt's new organisation to have input on future drug policy? Could it mean that some substances might actually be declassified after those 12 months?
Regarding Teresa May, as we saw with the argument over control orders, Cameron and the more liberal side wanted to get rid of them, but May, being guided (manipulated?) by the security services wanted to keep them. The previous Labour home secretaries (Johnson, Clarke, Smith, Reid, Blunkett and Straw) were also all equally authoritarian - many of them in more ways than one. Having said that, May has overseen the scrapping of the ID cards, so maybe she's not all bad!
They banned NRG-1 with even less consultation than they did mephedrone and are planning on introducing temporary bans on substances on the say-so of the home secretary. The interesting thing about the temporary ban is that it will only last for a year and, during that time, the substance in question will be evaluated by an independent body. Does this mean a disbanding of the now impotent ACMD? Will it be a chance for Prof Nutt's new organisation to have input on future drug policy? Could it mean that some substances might actually be declassified after those 12 months?
Regarding Teresa May, as we saw with the argument over control orders, Cameron and the more liberal side wanted to get rid of them, but May, being guided (manipulated?) by the security services wanted to keep them. The previous Labour home secretaries (Johnson, Clarke, Smith, Reid, Blunkett and Straw) were also all equally authoritarian - many of them in more ways than one. Having said that, May has overseen the scrapping of the ID cards, so maybe she's not all bad!
spini4
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Nov 18, 2003
- Messages
- 795
At least Bob Ainsworth dares to speak about drugs
We live in a country where the prime minister refuses to say whether he has ever taken drugs. As Mr Cameron once ticked a multitude of boxes on the drug squad's offender profile – rich, single, young man working in target-rich environment of a London TV company's PR department – I can guess the cause of his embarrassment. The leader of the opposition, meanwhile, has appointed as his spin doctor Tom Baldwin of the Times, who has never responded to uncorroborated allegations in a book by the Conservative peer Lord Ashcroft that he could well have had a fondness for cocaine when he was a hell-raising reporter about town.
What they and many others at the top of politics may or may not have swallowed, snorted or injected would be no concern of yours or mine, if they allowed an intelligent argument about drugs policy.
Indeed, if they had swallowed, snorted or injected without noticeable ill-effect, that argument ought to be easier. But honest argument is not possible in Britain as the contemptuous and contemptible treatment of Bob Ainsworth showed. Perhaps inspired by Ed Miliband's cry that he led a "new generation that understands the call of change", Ainsworth called for a change to the drugs trade. He wanted to take it out of the hands of criminals, who do not care how dangerous their wares are as long as they get their money, and hand it to accountable public servants. If Britain regulated production and supply, he argued, chemists and doctors could prescribe hard drugs.
Drug takers would escape the death and sickness adulterated drugs bring. The public would find some escape from junkies stealing to fund their addiction, and from crime syndicates, whose wealth makes them ever more able to corrupt the criminal justice system.
Ainsworth was a Labour Home Office minister, responsible for drugs policy, and for that reason alone his views were worth listening to. He had also served in the Ministry of Defence and seen the impossibility of fighting both a war on terror and war on drugs in Afghanistan. His realisation that conventional wisdom was creating the monsters he was in politics to oppose concentrated his thinking.
He told me how ashamed he became as a minister when he saw Britain, acting at the behest of America, condemning Portugal for liberalising drugs laws, a policy that has seen striking falls in HIV infection in the slums of Lisbon. He pointed me to the disaster current orthodoxy has brought to Mexico, which is in a kind of civil war between the cartels and the government, and Jamaica, where drug-funded corruption is creating a failed state.
He had learned lessons from the political failures he had witnessed, which is more than I can say for his opponents. When David Cameron stood for the Tory leader he favoured decriminalisation and allowing doctors to prescribe heroin.
His forward-thinking did not survive contact with office. At his behest, a succession of Conservative MPs denounced Ainsworth for advocating the "devastation of communities", condemnations they might more justly have directed against themselves considering the gangsterism and misery their policies have created. I will say this for the Tories, however: at least they stood up in public view. Labour showed that under Ed Miliband it was reverting to the sneak attacks of Charlie Whelan and Damian McBride.
A Labour spinner – I don't know if it was Baldwin or one of his underlings – could not confine himself/herself to saying that Miliband disagreed with Ainsworth. Instead, the unelected and cowardly "Labour source" went for an elected and brave Labour politician anonymously. He/she told the lobby journalists who maintain the poison-pen culture of the aptly named "Westminster village" that Ainsworth was an "extremely irresponsible" man. "I don't know what he was thinking."
In that moment, the "source" crystallised a doubt about Miliband's "new generation" that had been nagging at the back of my mind. Your ideas and principles matter in politics, not your age. The "new generation" on both the Labour and the Tory side is not bringing new thinking but repeating the worst failings of the old. When confronted with a difficult social problem, they retreat into know-nothing denial.
They display their bad faith by damning two distinct reforms and treating them as one. Liberalisation usually means following different policies for different illegal drugs, not punishing users for possession and decriminalising cannabis use. In theory, you can disapprove of liberalisation and want to keep illegal drugs illegal, while still believing that it is better to cut off the flow of money to crime syndicates by allowing doctors to prescribe hard drugs to addicts. This was the policy known throughout the world as "the British system". From the 1920s, doctors provided an alternative source of drugs to addicts, who could not break with their dealers. With the collaboration of the medical profession, I am sorry to say, the Home Office ended the system in the 1960s and the result is the crisis we see around us.
In Switzerland, Germany and Canada, doctors are reviving the British system. With a minimum of fuss, Britain is too. Professor John Strang of King's College, London, has run pilot projects, which Ainsworth set up – "very quietly because Downing Street would have gone wild if it knew what I was doing". The worst addicts were given heroin and their behaviour was compared with the behaviour of a control group taking methadone, the medical profession's preferred and often inadequate substitute. Unsurprisingly, methadone users also bought street heroin when they were out of the sight of doctors. Urine tests showed, however, that those given heroin gave up on the criminals' drugs. Several told the professor that taking drugs in a supervised clinic meant that they stopped injecting in the groin. They were building the strength to break free from the circle they shot up with.
Read more at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/19/bob-ainsworth-drugs-policy-legalisation
We live in a country where the prime minister refuses to say whether he has ever taken drugs. As Mr Cameron once ticked a multitude of boxes on the drug squad's offender profile – rich, single, young man working in target-rich environment of a London TV company's PR department – I can guess the cause of his embarrassment. The leader of the opposition, meanwhile, has appointed as his spin doctor Tom Baldwin of the Times, who has never responded to uncorroborated allegations in a book by the Conservative peer Lord Ashcroft that he could well have had a fondness for cocaine when he was a hell-raising reporter about town.
What they and many others at the top of politics may or may not have swallowed, snorted or injected would be no concern of yours or mine, if they allowed an intelligent argument about drugs policy.
Indeed, if they had swallowed, snorted or injected without noticeable ill-effect, that argument ought to be easier. But honest argument is not possible in Britain as the contemptuous and contemptible treatment of Bob Ainsworth showed. Perhaps inspired by Ed Miliband's cry that he led a "new generation that understands the call of change", Ainsworth called for a change to the drugs trade. He wanted to take it out of the hands of criminals, who do not care how dangerous their wares are as long as they get their money, and hand it to accountable public servants. If Britain regulated production and supply, he argued, chemists and doctors could prescribe hard drugs.
Drug takers would escape the death and sickness adulterated drugs bring. The public would find some escape from junkies stealing to fund their addiction, and from crime syndicates, whose wealth makes them ever more able to corrupt the criminal justice system.
Ainsworth was a Labour Home Office minister, responsible for drugs policy, and for that reason alone his views were worth listening to. He had also served in the Ministry of Defence and seen the impossibility of fighting both a war on terror and war on drugs in Afghanistan. His realisation that conventional wisdom was creating the monsters he was in politics to oppose concentrated his thinking.
He told me how ashamed he became as a minister when he saw Britain, acting at the behest of America, condemning Portugal for liberalising drugs laws, a policy that has seen striking falls in HIV infection in the slums of Lisbon. He pointed me to the disaster current orthodoxy has brought to Mexico, which is in a kind of civil war between the cartels and the government, and Jamaica, where drug-funded corruption is creating a failed state.
He had learned lessons from the political failures he had witnessed, which is more than I can say for his opponents. When David Cameron stood for the Tory leader he favoured decriminalisation and allowing doctors to prescribe heroin.
His forward-thinking did not survive contact with office. At his behest, a succession of Conservative MPs denounced Ainsworth for advocating the "devastation of communities", condemnations they might more justly have directed against themselves considering the gangsterism and misery their policies have created. I will say this for the Tories, however: at least they stood up in public view. Labour showed that under Ed Miliband it was reverting to the sneak attacks of Charlie Whelan and Damian McBride.
A Labour spinner – I don't know if it was Baldwin or one of his underlings – could not confine himself/herself to saying that Miliband disagreed with Ainsworth. Instead, the unelected and cowardly "Labour source" went for an elected and brave Labour politician anonymously. He/she told the lobby journalists who maintain the poison-pen culture of the aptly named "Westminster village" that Ainsworth was an "extremely irresponsible" man. "I don't know what he was thinking."
In that moment, the "source" crystallised a doubt about Miliband's "new generation" that had been nagging at the back of my mind. Your ideas and principles matter in politics, not your age. The "new generation" on both the Labour and the Tory side is not bringing new thinking but repeating the worst failings of the old. When confronted with a difficult social problem, they retreat into know-nothing denial.
They display their bad faith by damning two distinct reforms and treating them as one. Liberalisation usually means following different policies for different illegal drugs, not punishing users for possession and decriminalising cannabis use. In theory, you can disapprove of liberalisation and want to keep illegal drugs illegal, while still believing that it is better to cut off the flow of money to crime syndicates by allowing doctors to prescribe hard drugs to addicts. This was the policy known throughout the world as "the British system". From the 1920s, doctors provided an alternative source of drugs to addicts, who could not break with their dealers. With the collaboration of the medical profession, I am sorry to say, the Home Office ended the system in the 1960s and the result is the crisis we see around us.
In Switzerland, Germany and Canada, doctors are reviving the British system. With a minimum of fuss, Britain is too. Professor John Strang of King's College, London, has run pilot projects, which Ainsworth set up – "very quietly because Downing Street would have gone wild if it knew what I was doing". The worst addicts were given heroin and their behaviour was compared with the behaviour of a control group taking methadone, the medical profession's preferred and often inadequate substitute. Unsurprisingly, methadone users also bought street heroin when they were out of the sight of doctors. Urine tests showed, however, that those given heroin gave up on the criminals' drugs. Several told the professor that taking drugs in a supervised clinic meant that they stopped injecting in the groin. They were building the strength to break free from the circle they shot up with.
Read more at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/19/bob-ainsworth-drugs-policy-legalisation
edgarshade
Bluelighter
UK - We'll never be able to take crime out of the drugs trade
The Telegraph
By Alasdair Palmer 6:05PM GMT 18 Dec 2010
With reader comments
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/alasdair-palmer/8211712/Well-never-be-able-to-take-crime-out-of-the-drugs-trade.html
The Telegraph
By Alasdair Palmer 6:05PM GMT 18 Dec 2010
With reader comments
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/alasdair-palmer/8211712/Well-never-be-able-to-take-crime-out-of-the-drugs-trade.html
Public//Enemy
Bluelighter
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- Sep 14, 2005
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good will destroy our business model haha
cilosyb
Bluelighter
This whole argument can be discredited by the precedent that repealing alcohol Prohibition here in the states set: there is almost no criminal activity involved in the alcohol trade now. Trying to draw a parallel between drug crime and sex crime is nonsense. The sex crimes referenced in this involve coercion and violation of people's rights and dignities. Choosing to use drugs can be an informed decision that you make on your own. The contrast could hardly be greater. Lastly, I believe even the UN has been calling for a legalisation debate, which renders the argument that legalisation would conflict with UN mandates somewhat weak. It's a toothless organization anyway. These are all just weak arguments that detract from the real issue.