Oh dear. Looks like, after two years of thinking and talking about it, that they’ve bottled, choked.
Why is it so difficult for people to understand that it’s the illegality that causes the problem? That being so, it’s the reversal of the illegality that will be the solution.
The full report is here.
Talking about legalization they say:
In the case of cannabis, the government would also have to gain control of domestic cultivation and then, if necessary, expand it to help meet the demands of the market.
Are we sure these people weren’t smoking some as they deliberated? WTFF? The only way they can conceive of a legal market is if it is a Government monopoly?
For those using ‘harder’ recreational drugs like cocaine, a network of licensed specialist pharmacists or ‘druggists’ could be created671,making drugs available only to licensed users.
??????? Hello Mr. City Derivatives Trader, Hi there Miss Solicitor, would you like to register as a drug addict for your Saturday night toot?
What are these people thinking? Does anyone believe that this would wipe out the black market?
Against legalization they say:
What if, in the event, it turned out that the number of drug users increased substantially and/or that people continued to use them unsafely, just as tens of thousands of people use alcohol and tobacco unsafely?The total amount of harm caused by drugs, far from diminishing,might increase or even soar.No one knows. The downside risks of legalization are incalculable.
Err, no actually. We could in fact look at a time and place where drugs are indeed legal and see what the effect upon the society was. Like, say, 19th century Britain. Opiates consumption was of the order of 260 doses per year for every man, woman and child in the Kingdom (mostly in the form of laudanum). Yes, there were indeed addicts but none of the other problems we currently associate with drugs. The Empire was created by drug crazed addicts then: leaving aside the anti-colonial argument, that’s not particularly strong evidence for the case that allowing people to ingest what they wish causes great harm to society now, is it?
This last point, about irrevocability, is worth pausing over as it, too, counts as part of the case against legalization. If cannabis and other illegal drugs were ever legalized, it would almost certainly not be possible to de-legalize them, any more than it is possible now to contemplate the de-legalization – i.e. the legal banning – of tobacco and tobacco products.The deed would be done; there would be no turning back.
An extremely odd argument. We actually only banned them a century ago.
Under a regime of legalization, the government would almost certainly want to tax drugs heavily, as it taxes alcohol and tobacco. It would want to do so in order to raise revenue, in order to discourage excessive use and also, in this particular case, to fund the new regulatory mechanisms and institutions that would have to be put in place. The prices of drugs, far from falling or remaining stable at their present low levels,would almost certainly increase.Drugs that are now illegal but cheap would almost certainly be legal but more expensive.
The consequences would be predictable. In the first place, a black market – probably a large-scale black market – in drugs would quickly develop.This market would deal not only in cheaper supplies of drugs but also in counterfeit and, almost certainly, contaminated drugs.Criminal gangs would dominate this black market just as they now dominate the existing black market, and they would import legal drugs illegally just as they now import illegal drugs illegally. Smuggling would be rife.
As Gary Becker has pointed out (and I’m still rather proud of the line "Not every cokehead of my aquaintance has fallen so far as to become a Tory MP") that rise in prices as a result of taxation will reduce usage. But this argument that we’ll then have a black market….well, we’ve got that already, without the pure drugs, with the Hep C, AIDS, thieving and without the tax revenue. Not all that strong an argument there.
They are right though when they say that we couldn’t simply legalize because of a UN agreement that we should not. But then bugger the UN anyway.
So, their actual conclusion, a Misuse of Substances Act which would include both alcohol and tobacco:
Like the Blakemore/Nutt hierarchy above, the harms index that we propose would include alcohol and tobacco.
So, err, the solution to the heroin trade is more controls on fags and booze?
Sheesh.
Actually, they then immediately say themselves that this is nonsense, thankfully.
They do seem to have missed the main point though. Either my body is my own, in which case I am free, or it is not, in which case I am a slave. Ingesting what and as I wish is thus a test of my freedom: if the law does not permit that then I am a slave. The only way to have a free country, a free people, is to legalize drugs.
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