UK - 'Will anything sensible be done?' asked Gore Vidal about the drug war, 40 year..

[edgarshade]

Daily Telegraph

By Allan Massie Lifestyle Last updated: February 21st, 2012

With reader comments

Last week Tom Chivers posted a blog in which he observed that Portugal has recorded a fifty per cent drop in “problem drug users”, since they decriminalised all drugs. Will our government take note and act accordingly? Don’t be silly.

In 1970 – half a lifetime ago – Gore Vidal wrote in The New York Times: “It is possible to stop most drug addiction in the United States within a very short time. Simply make all drugs available and sell them at cost. Label each drug with a precise description of what effect – good and bad – the drug will have on the taker.”

It was unlikely, he suggested, that “any reasonably sane person will become a drug addict if he knows in advance what addiction is going to be like”.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/cultur...-drug-war-40-years-ago-so-far-theres-no-sign/

 

[OTGee]

Interesssting stuff, too true. Thanks for sharing mate

 

[edgarshade]

The highest rated comments are a bit strange today though. One poster hinted that the BNP (extreme right-wing political party in the UK) actually hire people to comment on such articles.

Update: It looks things have swung back to normality in the comments now.