Why Drugs Should Be Legal (Except Heroin)

I have a close friend. He smoked his first joint at 15, in his late teens he experimented with Acid and Speed, at university he took E’s and Coke at the weekend and in his adulthood he… is a respectable professional who pays his taxes, enjoys gardening and contemporary art.

If at anytime over the last fifteen or so years he had been unfortunate enough to be arrested for possession of these, he certainly would not have the job he has now and may have gone to prison. There is a lot of conjecture about how to reduce drug-related crime.

Well here’s an idea: stop arresting people for it.

At the moment hundreds of thousands of people are languishing in prison because of possession of drugs, these people are not criminals, they are made criminals by a hopelessly unjust system.

Legalising drugs would have many benefits.

Currently, according to a 2003 UN report the global drug trade generated an estimated US$321.6 billion that year. Because this industry is unregulated this money goes into the hands of unscrupulous distributors (such as the Taliban, or Mexican drug cartels) when it could go into the coffers of democratically elected governments. It is no coincidence that the power of the American Mafia was at a zenith at the time of Prohibition.

Prohibition then (as now) has been proven to not work. I can go into any club in my hometown and buy drugs. If it is blatantly not working, shouldn’t we look for an alternative?

Currently, if people want to buy drugs they have to come into contact with criminals. Where would you prefer to buy a bag of dope? Your local pharmacy, or some guy in a pub cark park? Perversely, this perpetuates the link between drugs and poverty. The middle-classes venture into poor neighbourhoods to look for drugs and (as Adam Smith would agree) create a market and jobs in places where there are few prospects.

The legalisation and nationalisation of the drugs trade would mean governments would be able to tax and regulate the strength and purity of drugs. The majority of drug-related deaths occur because something else has been mixed into it, and the tax dollars could finance drug education and rehabilitation projects.

Lastly, the real absurdity of the current situation is that the laws regarding drug use are made by people who proudly boast of their ignorance of drugs. Try walking into your local house of elected officials and asking how many people have snorted a line or popped a pill. Imagine people devising the rules for the next Football World Cup who knew the velocity of a football, how much players perspire or run in 90 minutes, the composition of the player’s diet and uniforms, but had never watched a game of football. This is the situation we have now.

I have excluded heroine from this because it’s a horrible, dirty drug that people wouldn’t use if they had access to reasonably priced coke or acid. And I don’t really like gardening.