Drugs

Posted on LiveJournal 31st July 2009

In April, Scientific American magazine published a report about Portugal demonstrating that the legalisation of drugs works. That's right. Let junkies have their junk; improve society. But it's hard to get voted into office if you believe that drugs should be legalised, especially in America. There's such a big deal about the War on Drugs that any other suggestion, no matter how successful or helpful, will be regarded as being "soft on crime". This sort of organised stupidity is encouraged at the highest levels. How much money is being wasted on this dumbass war? Thankfully, someone's done the math for me: it's about $60 billion.

Well, they did a heroin legalisation run in Zurich in Switzerland which dramatically reduced the amount of people taking heroin in the city, and also had the knock-on effect of completely eliminating heroin-related crime. It was such a success that they're going to roll out the programme nationally. Check out the graphs on page 3.

Also, from my own experience with drug users, the fact that it was illegal didn't seem to deter any of them. Moreoever, even if they were legal, it wouldn't encourage me to do them at all. Maybe, as with abortion, the legality of drugs has no effect at all on how many people use them. In other news, being in prison does not stop people from doing drugs, as this British Medical Journal report demonstrates. Sometimes, incarceration is actually the starting point for drug addiction, as this 1994 report on Kent Prison shows.

You would think the Americans would have a better understanding of drug policy, given the 18th Amendment to the United States Consitution, popularly known as Prohibition:

1. After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

This law turned out to be so completely stupid that it had to be repealed in 1933, with the passing of the 21st Amendment to the US Constitution, the only time this has happened in the history of the union:

1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

Both alcohol consumption and violent crime dropped immediately as a result. Think about that - legalising alcohol dropped alcohol consumption. And legalising heroin in Zurich dropped heroin consumption. Legalising dangerous drugs works. It lowers consumption, it saves lives, it disempowers criminal drug gangs, it eliminates all drug-related crime, and harmless individual drug users can do as they see fit without fear of harassment.

So ask yourself: What's the real problem?

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