edgarshade
Bluelighter
Telegraph
By Nigel Farndale
6:50AM BST 12 Jun 2012
With reader comments
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9314600/Why-do-some-people-want-drugs-to-be-legal.html
By Nigel Farndale
6:50AM BST 12 Jun 2012
With reader comments
A few years ago it seemed unthinkable. But recently, public figures on both the Right and Left have called for the decriminalisation of drugs. What are they thinking?
Yet in recent months there has been a shift in mood and politicians are no longer afraid to debate decriminalisation. Why? What has changed? Well, the short answer is the attitude of world leaders.
How, then, could legalising drugs, as its advocates argue, really be the lesser of two evils? Well, the more you delve into this subject, the more you see the ironies. Take the easy availability of drugs in prison, where inmates are supposed to be rehabilitated. Or the fact that cannabis use in Holland, where the sale of the drug is tolerated in coffee shops, is lower than in Britain, where it’s illegal (around two to three million people use it regularly in this country).
The argument for legalising hard drugs? That seems even less convincing. You can’t really have moderate heroin use in the way you can tobacco or alcohol. If heroin was made legal, surely many people who wouldn’t have dreamt of trying it would give it a go. And in purely practical terms, how would this actually work? Dalrymple made a good point when I asked about this: “The idea that we could regulate drugs carefully is ludicrous,” he told me. “We can’t even regulate a public examination system in this country.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9314600/Why-do-some-people-want-drugs-to-be-legal.html
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