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Drug-Addled Tories.

There’s a Tory leadership contest going on. Some of the candidates have admitted drug use. Yes, even Andrea Leadsom, perhaps believing doing so makes her more normal and interesting. Michael Gove admitted to taking cocaine on a few occasions. Bon-Viveur Boris, on the other hand claims to have “once been offered” cocaine, “but sneezed”. He “Didn’t Inhale”. I don’t believe him. Do you? The exception is Mark Harper (me neither) who said “I don’t get invited to those sort of parties”. Is that really the man you want leading the country? How did we get on last time, with someone who doesn’t get invited to parties, and whose naughtiest memory is running through a field of wheat?

No. Leaders need to understand the country, and I think someone who’s managed to avoid all drugs into their late 40s simply doesn’t know enough about the country and the people in it, to lead it. Nevertheless, right on cue, the authoritarians who are really proud of resisting a temptation they regard as close to original sin, are lining up to suggest that Drug use, any drug use, renders someone unfit for public office.

Being a cabinet minister isn’t everyone’s idea of a successful life, but the fact that most of the candidates standing to lead the Conservative and Unionist party have admitted to prior drug use is a standing retort to the idea that a line of cocaine is the first step on a slippery slope to being a smack-addled self-arguer in an underpass.

I like to start with the facts. Let’s put Heroin aside for a moment and talk about the most widely-taken recreational drugs, Cannabis and Cocaine. Neither’s good for you, but unlike alcohol, or heroin (or indeed, water) there is no lethal dose for either. That is you cannot smoke yourself to death on Weed, nor can you kill yourself by attempting the Bolivian nose pole-vault. It’s true these substances are psychotropic and habit-forming. Both seem to interact with mental health problems, and both do long-term harm with constant use, but the consensus of the literature seems to be the coincidence of psychosis with drug use is mostly one of self-medication, not a causal relationship. People with mental health problems are strongly drawn to chemicals that make them feel much better, very quickly. The idea that “Skunk” is causing an epidemic of psychosis is not, however supported by the data.

I’ve never understood quite why a culture like the UK’s that so celebrates getting pissed, pretends to regard “drug” use as a unique moral evil. “But it’s the hypocrisy” you say? And it’s true, Boris banned boozing on the Bakerloo line, after penning a screed celebrating the joys of getting trollied; and Michael Gove took Cocaine, but subsequently presided over a department of Education edict banning anyone convicted of possession or supply from ever teaching.

Which is absurd. But as almost no-one gets done for possession for personal use, it really doesn’t matter. Legalising drugs just isn’t a priority for any politician because there’s no votes in it. Just risk.

While the arguments for legalising cannabis are finally starting to bear fruit, few are arguing for Heroin’ s legalisation. But even here, the same logic holds. Heroin only became a social problem after the misuse of Drugs act. Prior to that, most heroin addicts came by their addiction via the medical profession. In the nineteenth century, it was known as “the soldier’s disease” as it affected mainly those who’d picked up a habit in a field hospital. The real problem comes when poor users become dealers to fund their supply, creating a highly effective pyramid marketing scheme, and instead of medical grade diamorphine and clean, sterile equipment, you have a dirty spoon and mucky brown. Even heroin’s problems are largely down to an illegal supply chain.

There is simply no basis for the classification of Cannabis a class B substance and Cocaine as A; if the emetic, poisonous, violence facilitating disinhibitor, alcohol is legal. The policy is objectively mad.

I’m with Professor David Nutt, formerly Tony Blair’s Drugs Czar and professor of psycopharmacology at Imperial College London, who puts all these chemicals on a spectrum of harm, and puts our old friend alcohol just behind heroin. And he’s right. My guess is that a properly regulated legal recreational pharmacopia will see less booze and heroin use, more cocaine and cannabis. And as a result of this substitution, we will all be better off.

Drugs ruin lives. Sure. But they also enrich and enliven them. People take drugs, including alcohol, because we derive utility from their effects. We’re all different. It’s easy to imagine someone shy who might prefer cocaine to champagne at parties. It’s easy to imagine an intense and charismatic individual who’s less hard work when he’s toked on a nice fat spliff, and we all find conversation flows easier when we’ve had a few drinks, which is why we lubricate parties with alcohol. But if you’re taking your poison in the morning, whether it’s vodka on your cornflakes or a “bump” to get you going in the morning, then you’ve a problem.

As the world we live in gets more diverse, so too do the ways we all get our jollies. And everything that’s nice is probably bad for you. We’ve known this since Methuselah was a lad. It’s not the government’s job to control what people do with their bodies and their social lives. The vast majority of us can manage that ourselves. There are social and legal constraints on Alcohol. Lets have similar social and legal constraints on all the others too.

Legalise, regulate and tax narcotics. End the hypocrisy.

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Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell

Several times in my life, I’ve woken up in a pub. Sadly though, these days lock-ins no longer happen to me. I think part of it is the licensing laws. Since the Licensing Act 2003, landlords kick everyone out at 2am rather than lock the doors at 11 and join in the fun, The authorities, too are more punctilious about enforcing the the new rules. Either that, or I’m no longer 25, and I’m no longer invited. But here we are, I’m in a pub, the estimable Coach and Horses on Greek Street, Soho, and we’ve been locked in with a drink-sodden roué called Jeffrey Bernard (played by Robert Bathurst).

Jeffrey Bernard is unwell

Jeffrey Bernard wrote the Low Life column in the Spectator until his death in 1997. It was “a suicide note in weekly installments”. Weekly, unless he was “unwell” and failed to deliver his copy on time. He chronicled the lives and loves and descent of old Soho, though the adventures of a cast of a few thousand inhabitants of what was then a glamorous but shabby and disreputable part of west central London. Many of the watering holes, where politicians, journalists and whores rubbed shoulders with Luvvies and criminals, are now closed. The Gay Hussar, a Hungarian restaurant just up the road, where lefties plotted revolution, shut last year. Only the Coach and Horses, or “Norman’s” remains a monument to this lost world. It’s interior remains unchanged since the 1970s, and this production a stripped down, solo version of Keith Waterhouse’s play, is being put on in the very place it was set.

The Pub itself is as much as a star in this performance as Robert Bathurst, who delivered his monologue pretty well, but without the cameos, it felt a bit like a string of drinking anecdotes. Bathurst held up tolerably too, to the inevitable comparison to Peter O’Toole, for whom the part was written. But what made the evening special: You cannot recreate the deep atmosphere of a place like that pub. It’s still in touch with a lost community – though cartoons on the wall, to the graffiti in the bogs and the affection many people feel for the place. I’ve made friends here, and this pub is one of my favourite places on earth. The history and the characters keep drawing me back for “just the one”, and I’m not alone. Celebrities have turned out to support this institution. Stephen Fry attended the Premier, to honour the place where Ian Hislop and Peter Cook could once be found propping up the bar, being witty.

But these people aren’t in the Coach and Horses as much recently. These people have either died, or they don’t drink any more. The life of the piss-artist is, like tinker and jester, one soon to be lost to history. Chronicling the lives of interesting drinkers no longer sells papers, because it’s not sexy to die with one leg, suffering the complications of diabetes. And, as Bernard himself observed, the pub’s great characters drift off, and you’re left with the kind of “character” who’s eccentricity is to lose umbrellas. This generation’s piss artists will be found in Camden, not Soho. If there are great piss-artists, they’re not the sort to honour their predecessors by frequenting the same watering hole to bask in the glow of someone else’s genius. True piss-artistry cannot be other than original and singular, otherwise it’s just alcoholism. And these days the kind of people who manage to survive on a few well-turned phrases and the generosity of older sexual partners don’t drink, they take Cocaine.

Cocaine, you see doesn’t put a spare tyre over those beautiful, instagrammable abdominal muscles, and whilst a coke-head will die no older than the drinkers did, they go quickly and aesthetically of a heart attack, not as a doubly incontinent carcass rotting away with a faint whiff of peardrops and urine. Hanging around outside the pub 10 minutes before opening time grey faced and suffering the DTs simply doesn’t look as funny or clever as it once did, because we’ve watched where it leads.

Times change.

Fullers, the Pub’s owners, want to revamp the property, and manage it themselves. It does need some money spent. Pubs these days must get the basics right, or the people will move, whatever history they have. The “characters” these days don’t need a venue to live in. Today’s equivalent of the Bar at the Coach, is Twitter. And unlike at the Coach & Horses in the 1980s, you don’t need to drink your liver away to hear a great wit’s bon mots.

We cannot keep places frozen in aspic, monuments to moments and people who have passed. We all move on, or perish. The current landlord has made the pub a Vegan restaurant, and I wonder what Bernard would have made of that, so he’s trying. But pub laws are so cruel to landlords who make a success of their pub, as they can find the business they built taken from them. I’ve seen too many PubCos rip the heart out of communities with ill-judged renovations and break the heart of Landlords by installing managers. Sign the petition here, if you agree. But I think, like the drinking anecdotes at a bar, we’ve heard this story before.

Sitting just behind Cambridge circus, between Chinatown and Soho, Fuller’s calculate they can make more money than the current tenants. That which will be lost when they do so is only really of value to a dwindling band of romantics, and fans of a 30-year-old play about a journalist who stopped writing in the ’90s. And that isn’t a magic powerful enough to overcome the brute economics of central London property prices.

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With Apologies to the Late, Great Hunter S. Thompson

Strange memories on this nervous night in England. Two years later? Three? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—the kind of peak that never comes again. England in the late twenty-teens was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time—and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the city half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the beige Rover 75 across London Bridge at 30 miles an hour, wearing a barbour and a tweed suit. booming through the Blackwall tunnel aimed at the lights of Greenwich, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at roundabout too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for first) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as old and angry as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the river, then up the west end or down the A1 to Hertfordshire or Down in Kent. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Young and Free. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our patriotism would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than three years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Hampstead and look South, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

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The Real Reason Drugs are Still Illegal.

I have outlined many, many times why drug policy is insane, and how a properly regulated supply-chain, generating taxes rather than spending them on the futile task of interdicting supply, would be better than the current system of prohibition.

The arguments are compelling to all except those who cannot accept that “Drugs are bad” does not equal “Drugs should be illegal”. Think about the issue in any depth, and most people come to the same conclusion. Politicians such as Nick Clegg and David Cameron have been on record as favouring a more liberal drug policy, as do many police I’ve spoken to on the subject (in a social, not *ahem* professional capacity).
So why does nothing happen when such people get to the top of the tree?
Most people do not take drugs, (at least outside the unofficially sanctioned, and generally accepted “few spliffs at university”) and hope their children won’t either. Many are absolutely persuaded (wrongly, as it happens) that one puff of a spliff is a first step on the road to becoming a smack-addicted self-arguer in the underpass. It is more reasonable to think of substance abuse as a mental illness, afflicting some people who take drugs. Alcohol is at least as bad in this regard as some substances listed as Class “A”. Let’s not pretend there’s much difference between the self-arguers in the underpass with special brew, and those who inject Heroin. In fact they’re often the same people whose objective is oblivion. The drug used to achieve it depends upon circumstance and personality. The dependence isn’t a feature of the drug, but a consequence of multiple factors. Such substance abusers are highly visible. They are also a small subset of people who take drugs.
Ultimately the problem with drug laws is the people most affected: users, are either highly visible and acting as cautionary tale, or utterly invisible to officialdom. No-one is asking the happy stoners, the gak-snorting partiers, or the functioning junkies who only get high/stoned at the weekend and pay for it out of income, what they think. These people have to hide their opinions on drug laws. They either don’t really care as their fix is just a phone call away, and won’t rock the boat and cannot take the risk of coming out publicly as being users. Furthermore, should these people get caught up in, for example, a drug bust, all legal incentives will be for them to claim the drugs as a “problem”, and hope to be treated as an “addict” rather than be dealt with administratively by courts. Problem users and drug related crime are therefore created in the statistics where absent the illegality, there would not be. Any hard data on drug use and effects on any but the most extreme problem users, is hard to come by, which skews the data, most of which is in any case highly motivated, assuming cutting use is the purpose of policy, not minimising harms.
Thus the media picture of “drugs” is set according to the availability heuristic: A problem, leading to destructive behaviour; when the reality, for most users, is vastly different.
Politics is full of solutions that are simple, easy to understand and wrong. The opponents of drug liberalisation have the simple logic of the statement “Drugs are bad, so ban them”. The legalisers have to make the complex, counter-intuitive argument that most, if not all, of the harms that flow from drug use are a direct consequence not of their psychopharmacological effects, but of their illegality. And frankly most people to whom you need to make that argument will already be assuming you’re a filthy junkie and will be ignoring you anyway. It’s an extremely difficult argument to make to most people.

For example, it’s likely there would be fewer heroin users were a full recreational pharmacy available legally than there are now. Why? Because of the pyramid marketing of drugs is particularly effective for heroin. Users become dealers to fund their habits. There were few problem opiate abusers before it was made illegal, and most of those picked the habit up in hospital. Just try making that argument to a Daily Mail reader.

Secondly, and perhaps more pertinently to any politician thinking of putting drug law on a less insane footing, is prohibition has gifted the most profitable business in history to criminals. In doing so, it has created rich, powerful and ruthless people, used to violence who have thought nothing of assassinating politicians. 
Any politician who looks like getting the supply-chain out of criminal hands would be a direct threat to the people currently in charge of a multi-billion dollar industry in a way an enthusiastic drug warrior would not be.

There is no public clamour for drug reform. Users are people who by definition can already get the drugs they want. Most people are happy that drugs are illegal, and are inherently conservative. And there are vested interests in law-enforcement and the criminal fraternity in favour of the status quo. A simultaneous monstering from the Tabloid press and the immediate threat of assassination by some of the most ruthless criminals on earth? Is it really a surprise when politicians who’re known to be privately in favour of liberalisation keep their heads down over something of such marginal interest to most of the electorate, who in any case, have already made up their minds?

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on the Psychoactive substances bill

America has a law called the “Federal Analogue Act” which attempts to do what the Conservatives are planning to do with the Psychoactive substances bill in the Queen’s speech. It didn’t work in the ‘States, and it won’t work here. It’s vague: What does “substantially similar” mean. How can you prove it’s for human consumption? As a result, it’s hardly been used. 

Worse than it being pointless, what it is trying to do is dangerous.

“Designer drugs” are dangerous: they’re untested, the side-effects are unknown and the metabolism is often slow. People have died, because they don’t know how, or how much to take of any substance, which may be highly toxic. Why then do people take them? Because they can’t get the stimulant, Cocaine; relaxant, Marijuana or the Halucinogenic, LSD or Psilocybin they want, and these “designer drugs” are “legal” and therefore thought by users to be safer than the “killer drugs” that have been banned.
People have been told “drugs kill”. But we know what the lethal doses are for LSD, Psilocybin, THC and Cocaine hydrochloride. There isn’t one. (It’s about 6 litres for water, and about 300ml for Alcohol by comparison). These compounds aren’t “safe”, and have deleterious effects on physical and mental health, especially with long-term use. But their dangers are a known quantity, just like they are for alcohol. People have been smoking Marijuana, and eating hallucinogenic fungi for millennia. These, really should be considered no different to alcohol. Chewing Coca leaves is a prophylactic against altitude sickness, and a stimulant effect a bit stronger than coffee and are legal in much of South America. So why are they banned here? 
Habit.
And the prohibition of stimulants and psychoactive substances has led to exactly the same death and carnage that prohibition of alcohol did in the USA. A business of enormous profitability has been gifted to criminals. Billions have been spend interdicting supply rather than taxing use and profits from the recreational drug business. This is stupid.
And now, any Chemistry graduate can synthesise novel chemicals, and sell them as “plant food”, and people will try to take them to get high. This only happens because reasonably safe compounds are banned, and the ban enforced with all the power the law affords.
This habit is INSANE, and it’s only supported because the scientific literature is focussed on how to make the drug war work, rather than on working out what and why drugs do what they do, and what to do about it when people take them. All “experts” are from the Law Enforcement/Medical prohibition complex. Banning more substances is just a regulatory whack-a-mole with cis/trans isomers, making matters WORSE not better.
Instead of assuming all drug use is bad, accept that people have always, and always will, like to get off their tits from time to time. Sure, tax the products, like alcohol and tobacco, through the nose if necessary to cover policing costs, quality control and healthcare. Most people will treat Marijuana like they do Merlot: something pleasant to have at the end of the day. Cocaine: A bit like they do Tequila: Something to put rocket-fuel into a night out. A few will become dangerously hooked, as they do right now with alcohol.
My guess is that were recreational narcotics legal, there would be more Marijuana and Cocaine use, and less Alcohol and Heroin. LSD and Magic Mushrooms are not seriously habit forming. They weren’t a problem when Psilocybins cubensis could be bought openly in Camden head shops pre 2005, and they won’t be a problem after they’re made legal again. The harms from all drugs would probably go down thanks to a safer supply chain, and the tax revenue would help the Government balance the books. All those drug-warriors in the police could be re-deployed to something socially useful, like enforcing parking offences or stopping littering.
No country to liberalise drugs laws has seen any major problems, despite heroic efforts of the bansturbationists to manufacture evidence to the contrary. Yet the major problem with prohibition: an illegal and unregulated supply chain remains in place. Imagine the good that could be done were the criminals, and their profits removed from the business.
You want to stop dangerous “designer drugs”? Legalise and regulate the relatively safe stuff that’s currently banned.
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Kill All Drug Users?

I don’t know if any of you are on the YouGov site. But it is addictive. A bit like twitter, but with 500 characters. I wrote an Opinion on the Legalisation of Cannabis.

Why do we gift the most profitable industry in history to criminals? Successful Interdiction of supply is incompatible with a free society, so why bother? Legalise. Enjoy the benefits of police no-longer alienating swaths of the population enforcing ridiculous prohibition, who can be deployed elsewhere. Tax the trade. Enforce quality standards, Treat problem users medically rather than criminally. EVERYONE is better off.

I received the following comment

EXTERMINATE once the users , dealer and growers are suitably dead there will be no further problem And anyone calling for legalisation MUST be tested one trace and its guilty

So there we have it – some people getting high is more of a problem than a murderous state executing people without due process. That’s the level of idiocy we’re up against, people. And for the record, I suspect this is what he genuinely believes. I have come across plenty of police who think like this.

You cannot stop people desiring to get out of themselves chemically. Whether it’s booze or narcotics. And in a free society, you cannot meaningfully interdict supply of psychoactive chemicals. To some people such as my correspondent above, that means a free society is the problem. Perhaps he needs some time in the salt-mines to learn the value of freedom?

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A Conversation about Drugs with some Policemen.

I had a (social) conversation with some people who worked for Dibble at the weekend. Some were world-weary cynical beat officers, who ultimately agreed with me. The younger warranted officers, and those civilians (I hate it when the filth use that word) working for organisations like the Serious and Organised Crime Agency did not. The question was the war on Drugs, and for a couple of my friends, it is axiomatic that we need to start imprisoning people who take drugs as well as those who sell them – “like Singapore”, they said. One said “like Mao”. Scratch a policeman, you find a fascist who believes in the state’s right to make decisions for you. At least until they reach 40 and realise the futility of this approach in what is still, despite the Police’s best efforts, still a free society. My friend who wants to execute heroin addicts, is also a keen proponent of arming the police…

Let’s start with an assumption: We want to live in a free society. It would be possible to meaningfully interdict supply of narcotics and to discourage use with draconian law-enforcement, but to do so would be utterly incompatible with that free society.

From that flows the observation that we, as a society are unwilling to interdict supply of narcotics – the cost in lost trade, in law enforcement effort, in disruption to innocent people’s privacy and so forth are too high. We cannot therefore meaningfully interdict supply.

The result of this is that the trade in narcotics goes on. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry, the profits of which fund organised crime, and which has poor customer service and lousy quality control. Manky, shared syringes and less than sterile smack lead to infections and that cadaverous heroin pallor. Cocaine is often cut with other stimulants, sugars, novocaine and cow-dewormer, which weakens the immune system. The problems stemming from this are due entirely to the illegal supply chain and would be mitigated by legalisation.

Gangs fighting over profits bring violence and death to the streets. This too is a problem of the criminal supply-chain and would be mitigated by legalisation. Acquisitive crime by users to fund their habit would be mitigated by a legal and controlled (and possibly medicalised for genuine addicts) supply chain.

The logic of prohibition stems from the observation that even pure Cocaine and Heroin are really bad for you, habit-forming and have potentially catastrophic effects on people’s lives, and should therefore be banned. The logical leap made in this reasoning is undone by the first assumption made in this piece. WE CANNOT MEANINGFULLY INTERDICT SUPPLY IN A FREE SOCIETY. Access to booze is more controlled than is the access to drugs, which are freely available once you have a dealer’s number. Dealers don’t care whether you’re 18, have a real problem controlling your intake, or are otherwise vulnerable, so long as you have the cash, of which, incidentally they care not its source.

People have always used psychopharmacological substances wherever they’re found, from Reindeer piss containing extract of Amanatia Muscaria to hemp, tobacco booze psilocybin mushrooms and coca, to get high. Even in the UK, anyone who wants illegal drugs can get them, whenever they want. So it doesn’t necessarily follow that there would be more users with a legal supply chain. And those who did use, would be using better, cleaner product with fewer side effects, and not enriching criminals while doing so. Indeed Marijuana, a drug with few social side effects would often be a substitute for alcohol leading to less violence in taxi-ranks at 3-am. So too the “party drugs” would mean less blood and vomit on the streets as the loved-up do less pagga than the pissed-up.

As for Heroin, it seems obvious to me that legalisation would reduce dependence: currently the Smack supply chain is a pyramid scheme – low level dealers do so to fund their supply, and so recruit their mates. No-one sets out to be a junkie, but many fall into it. Fewer would if other drugs were freely available. The explosion of problem heroin users happened AFTER the drug was made illegal. Before, Morphine addiction was known as the Soldiers’ disease as most picked up their habit in hospitals.

Ultimately a fully legal recreational pharmacy would probably see heroin and alcohol substituted for marijuana and cocaine. Two chemicals with low lethal doses will be substituted for two substances in the short term at least, it’s impossible to overdose to death. And instead of funding an army of Police and customs officials, and wasting scarce military resources on impoverishing Andean and Afghan farmers, we can tax the most profitable trade the world has ever known.

There are simply no sane arguments for continued prohibition of narcotic drugs, something even most police officers eventually work out.

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Some Strikingly Weak Arguments against Cannabis Legalisation

James Snell wrote the “no” piece on this online poll. I don’t know whether he’s writing for pay, or whether this is actually what he believes, but the arguments are strikingly weak. What’s also remarkable is that he writes for HuffPo, Left Foot Forward and so on. The political left are the authoritarians, and openly so. In the past they are always the ones who argued for liberty against the overweening, overmighty state, but now, the Gramscian march through the institutions is complete, with lefties dominating the legal profession, the quangocracy and much of the civil service, Lefties now feel comfortable advocating the state force people to behave as Fabians think they ought.

Cannabis legalisation, it seems, is the current cause célèbre for those who don’t have consequential things to advocate. Compared with other – more urgent and more important – issues the world over, making certain substances legal seems trivial and self-indulgent. However, it is not just my job here to denigrate the question itself; I am also required to actually argue against the unleashing of this dangerous and untested drug on the public at large – which I will attempt to do now.

It is not “dangerous”. There is no lethal dose for THC, as there is for alcohol. Or salt. It isn’t good for you, and I will come to that later, but THC isn’t dangerous. Nor is it “untested”. People have been smoking hemp for at least as long as they have been drinking booze.

The first statement I shall offer is one I believe to be obvious. Cannabis is dangerous, and therefore making such a dangerous thing legal would be bad. The reasoning behind this is pretty simple: the evidence for a causal link between cannabis use and irreversible mental illness is growing

No it isn’t. Few studies that I can find (which aren’t funded by overtly prohibitionist government organisations) conclude a causal link. Most regard schizophrenia as the main potential problem, but sufferers take all and any drugs more often and in greater volume than people who don’t exhibit symptoms. Cannabis use and schitzophrenia are a co-morbidity, there’s no evidence Cannabis CAUSES the condition, though it may trigger the already prone, and even the evidence for that is weak. The symptoms of schitzophrenia first manifest themselves in teenage years. Most pot smokers start…. in… oh. Andrew Wakefield was struck off for concluding cause of autism by MMR vaccine on just such spurious grounds, yet the massive violence of the law is deployed on similar logic.

and it is self-evident that legalising a drug will increase the number of people who use it,

No it isn’t. With legal drugs, you can have some control over who you sell them to. With illegal drugs you can’t. The drug is universally available now, despite decades of draconian enforcement against suppliers.

the frequency of its use and the total quantities concerned.

All the evidence from Amsterdam, Colorado, Uruguay and Portugal seem to suggest that Cannabis is a substitute for alcohol and the vast majority of users moderate their income. The point is anyone who wants pot right now, when it’s illegal, can get it. You just go to a pub, and discretely ask about. Young male bar-staff with tattoos are usually a good bet, so I’m told.

Except of course the very ill people, who might benefit from the drug’s powerful effects on appetite and chronic pain. They can’t get the drug. They must live in unnecessary pain.

Legalising cannabis might not just prove to be the first nation-wide test of the gateway drug hypothesis: it might also be gateway legislation as well.

The Gateway drug hypothesis is absolute bollocks. How many people smoked pot at university? 60%, 70%? How many of those ended up smack-addled derelicts?

I dislike the terms ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ drugs, due to the fact that this sort of classification inevitably makes cannabis look like a healthy alternative to the really bad stuff: the Diet Coke of getting high – but this is a not insubstantial point. As we all ought to know by now, such illusions are simply too good to be true.

Is there an argument there? If there is I can’t see it. Cannabis is, according to people without a stake in the status quo, like professor of pshycopharmacology, and former UK Government drug Czar, David Nutt regards Cannabis as significantly less harmful than alcohol.

Another irritating thing about the campaign to have this particular substance accepted by the statute books is the self-righteousness.

…Absolutely no “self-righteousness” from prohibitionists. No sir….

Bill Maher, in the US, declared on his show (the modestly titled Real Time with Bill Maher) that cannabis legalisation is the new civil rights struggle – after those of marriage equality and the ever-present fights against sexism, racism and the like. His audience-in-a-can duly applauded, by the way.

The US locks up millions of (mainly black) people for non-violent drug offences. Black and White teenagers are roughly equally likely to smoke pot, but Only black people are likely to suffer gaol time for doing so. To suggest (and by a lefty no less) that this isn’t a civil rights issue is telling. We might not be quite as egregious in punishing people for getting high on this side of the pond, but there are still distinct racial differences in the likelihood of incarceration for drug offences. It is a civil rights issue.

To me, this remark is not only stupid: it also represents a hideous degradation of the aforementioned: the real civil rights issues.

I think I’ve demonstrated why it doesn’t….

A statement such as this demonstrates the rottenness at the heart of the pro-legalisation lobby: a hedonistic bunch masquerading as martyrs. While there is real suffering, and real hardship, going on elsewhere – an apparently major concern for some people in the West is the ability to make use of recreational poisons without fear of the police getting involved. It is a parochial concern, at best. At worst, it is a deliberate desire for legalisation-endorsed selfishness.

What a vicious, bigoted, small-minded argument, which pre-supposes the state’s right to legislate behaviour which harms no-one else, and may even be a substitute for less harmful “poisons” like alcohol. Why is getting high on pot any more “selfish” than getting pissed on wine or beer? Why allow one, and not the other.

To sum up then; Cannabis use is being increasingly demonstrated to be harmful.

No it isn’t

The harm it causes is not insignificant.

Yes they are, and many of the “harms” are caused by prohibition, not the drug itself.

For that reason it ought to be banned.

Even if you accept the harm argument, it doesn’t follow that it ought to be banned. The aim should be to minimise harms. If cannabis, which is widely, nay universally, available despite viciously-enforced laws against it, causes harms aside from the law-enforcement effort, then these may be better mitigated at lower cost in a situation where the drug is legally available.

I’m not defending the status quo; how we control the supply of drugs has to change (although I reject the misleading use of ‘prohibition’ to describe the current government’s drug policy), but caving in to Russell Brand or Nick Clegg’s demands for ‘reform’ will not lead to less consumption, nor to less damage. It will only create a wider potential scope for harm, and a greater amount of actual suffering.

The status quo is indefensible. Not one single argument used in the rest of that summing up stands up to any scrutiny at all. The habit of prohibition is so ingrained in some minds that the illegality and the harm have been bound together. It is, or should be, clear to any graduate who smoked pot at university that “harm” from cannabis use is rare, and concentrated in people already prone to mental health issues, who often tend to be multiple substance abusers. Is cannabis a cause or a symptom to these people? Most harm is caused, not by the drug, but by prohibition.

In any case, harm is no reason to prohibit with the full violence of the law. People do things that are “harmful” but fun, from skiing to horse-riding. They take the risk of harm on board, but people derive utility from these activities. Horse-riding like smoking pot, is fun.

No increase in crime and disorder has been associated with decriminalisation or legalisation experiments. Often quite the opposite. And consider the opportunity costs of the money currently spent policing supply, and interdiction; money which could be better spent dealing with the small number of problem users. Instead of paying for policing, users could be taxed to pay for any externalities.

Finally and most obviously, James fails to deal with the potential medical uses of Marijuana. My late Grandmother had multiple sclerosis. Cannabis helped her. It appears to be excellent at mitigating chronic pain, and for cancer sufferers counteracts the appetite-suppressing effects of chemotherapy. Any stoner, jonesing for cookies would be able to attest the latter. Yet BECAUSE it cannabis is illegal, what little research is allowed into the medical uses, has focussed on separating the enjoyable from the medicinal. Does no-one else think this absurd, because to me it sums up the utter perversity of the whole damn system.

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Won’t someone Think of the Children?

Kathy Gyngell, Research Fellow and bansturbationist at the centre for policy studies is worried:

the people who perturb me are middle-aged political converts to this ‘cause’ – Nick Clegg, Nigel Farage, Daniel Hannan and Norman Fowler. Whether intentionally or not, they have aligned themselves in a culture war which pits the liberal against traditionalist, cosmopolitan against parochial and old against young. This is what drugs’ legalisation is about: a war over fundamental values. It is not a battle about basic freedoms – far from it. Drugs enslave

Some of the harder drugs are extraordinarily habit-forming. But society copes with alcohol easily enough. It will cope with a bit of pot.

I doubt whether any of these politicians are or were ‘recreational’ drug users, let alone former addicts; or that they’d wish drugs on their children. Yet they’ve been persuaded that a hypothetical taxed and regulated system – one they’ve been told would cut police and prison costs, undercut criminal gangs and end the war on drugs to boot – would sanitise drug use. It wouldn’t. It would normalise it

Why does she doubt these politicians smoked pot at university? I know of only a handful of people, mostly military obsessed or weird, who never tried. Certainly pot use, in certain circles is already “normal” and it causes almost no problems. Cocaine use is on the rise, again with very little social effect. It’s alcohol which causes the blood and vomit on the street.

But like the pro-legalising think tank head I sat next to at dinner recently, I suspect Mr. Hannan’s grasp of the drug problem is pretty limited. My dinner companion typically had no idea how marginal an activity drug use is compared with smoking and drinking – living as he does amongst London’s metropolitan liberals.

Few people have the criminal contacts to get hold of weed, which is easy for the police to interdict (it smells) and therefore getting scarcer. People are instead taking cocaine – easy to conceal, high margin. With the rise of mobile phones it’s a delivery business.

He was surprised that fewer than three per cent of adults smoke a spliff on any sort of regular basis compared with the 20 per cent who smoke daily and the overwhelming majority who regularly drink alcohol. He had no idea that cannabis use overall had declined in the UK, and so markedly amongst adolescents – 30 per cent in the last 15 years

Of course cannabis use has fallen. As has LSD – they’re hard to get. People are moving onto cocaine, whose use is rising.

For today’s young people are more, not less, responsible than before, they drink less, use drugs less, commit fewer crimes and volunteer more as a recent Demos report shows. In these newly competitive times, the last thing this generation need is a drugs legalising experiment foisted on them by ageing libertarians.

Yes they are much more responsible. They’re also quite capable of lying to researchers about their drug use, and making their own decisions. NOTHING I have seen suggests to me that pot causes problems. It may exacerbate problems already there, but no more so than does alcohol. The link between schizophrenia and cannabis use is, according to all literature not published by a government-sponsored “education” campaign, suggests a co-morbidity, not a causal relationship, however comforting it is for parents of sufferers to believe it’s the pot that “caused” the problem. People with mental health problems take all and any drugs in greater volume, whether legal or illegal, stimulant or depressive.

Anyway, there already is one – in Colorado. It does not look good. According to Dr. Christian Thurstone, the director of one of Colorado’s largest youth substance-abuse treatment clinics, regular high school drug use has leaped from 19 per cent to 30 per cent since Colorado legalized medical marijuana in 2009 for adults

So under a legalised system, the proportion smoking rose to that which it was in the UK, before pot got hard to come by? I’m SHOCKED, that people like to get high. SHOCKED.

Drug warriors, like prohibitionists like to present it as an a-priori benefit when drug use goes down. Furthermore, there’s the tired assumption that the pot available now is stronger and therefore worse, than that which our parents smoked (True in the USA, but less so in Europe) and this is mainly down to freshness – our parents smoked pot grown in Morocco (or mexico, if American). Our kids smoke pot hydroponically forced in someone’s basement.

I simply don’t accept that it’s necessarily  bad for people to get high/pissed/stoned once in a while.

Drugs enslave

That’s is probably true of Heroin. But not of pot. Pot is likely to be a substitute for getting smashed on alcohol for young people. Which drug has the worse social effects? Most of the harms associated with drug use are due to Heroin and (in the USA meth and crack), which is highly addictive, lethal if the dose is wrong and with catastrophic health effects. No-one sets out to be a junkie. They probably start with Pot. When pot is hard to come by, their dealer suggests cocaine (which is easier to get these days). When there’s no cocaine, a dealer might suggest heroin – smoking at first, before finally injecting. The slippery slope exists, for vulnerable people at least.

Why would a dealer do such a thing?

Because he’s dealing to fund his own habit.

What the heroin market is at present is a highly effective pyramid marketing scheme. Why do people take heroin? Because they can’t get medical grade diamorphine (which has fewer health effects, no track-lines, infections, and crap injected into viens). A legal supply chain (not decriminalisation) would break the hold of the dealer, prevent dealers recruiting users to fund their own habit and close down the heroin marketing pyramid.

The number of problem heroin addicts rocketed after the misuse of drugs act. Before the misuse of drugs act, most people became addicted to opiates in hospital. It was known as “the soldiers’ disease”.

Legalised drugs would mean more people taking pot and cocaine, and fewer people drinking to excess and injecting heroin. I can live with that.

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In a War on Drugs, Why are Humans Going to Gaol?

Read this excellent post. Ewan Hoyle is a Liberal Democrat from North of the Border, likely an endangered species. But at their best, the Liberal Democrats are prepared to say what they think, hoping in vain that being right somehow correlates with being electable, which in the main, it doesn’t. In doing so, he asks one pertinent question:

The passage up the lower slopes of the political mountain is getting increasingly smoother, as can be seen in the substance of the Home Affairs Select Committee report that was published last Monday. But when the arguments reach the political pinnacle, they are met with the usual intransigence and a gentle nudge off the nearest cliff-edge

The reason is of course the cost-benefit analysis. The UK is a signatory to the UN conventions on Narcotics. Much of the Popular press is extremely hostile, as is the majority of the (voting) public.

As soon as something other than the simplistic ‘war on drugs’ is suggested, Leah Bett’s parents will make damn sure that which ever politician introducing the changes will be Personally associated with front pages like this.

Never mind that the Rachel Whitear was killed in an environment where the strictest penalties are enforced for supplying heroin, and that it seems likely that while there may be more users (and in a liberal drug environment, I doubt even that), there is a simplistic cause/effect narrative that will be played upon HARD by opponents of reform.

Ewan argues passionately in his post that a new narrative is needed and that confronting the political class with the need to admit failure is the stumbling block.

I disagree.

To take an extreme example: The German people collectively admitted guilt after WWII, and now they are model Global citizens, dominating others only with the excellence of their engineering the hardness of their work-ethic, economic prudence, and environmental concern. The drug warriors need to be demobilised, just as completely as the Wermacht in 1945 because they are WRONG, and nearly as murderous, destabilising entire continents in a utterly futile attempt to stop people self-medicating.

So why don’t I think there would be more Rachel Whitears in an environment of legal and readily available supply? Because she died because of an overdose due to an unusually pure dose of street smack. This isn’t going to a problem with a legal supply chain producing medical-grade products of known and predictable strength. But won’t there be more people tempted to experiment? Ask yourself this: If you could get cocaine or opium, why would you experiment with injecting yourself with Heroin, something that is associated with catastrophic social outcomes? Very few people want to become junkies.

Ultimately the reason there are 330,000 problem heroin addicts in the UK is the highly efficient criminal supply-chain which sees mid-level users recruiting new addicts in order to fund their own use. There weren’t this number before the misuse of drugs act. If you cut out the criminal supply-chain, remove the profits and the incentive to recruit new users, we would go back to Heroin being an addiction of a small number of people, most of whom in pre-prohibition days became addicted in Hospital. Opiate addiction used to be known as ‘the soldiers disease’ for this reason.

 Where Hoyle skillfully deploys libertarian arguments, I agree wholeheartedly with him.

The 21st century war on drugs should instead take inspiration from ancient history and adopt a distinctly Roman style of capture and enslavement. It should be defined by the goal that drugs can be be our slaves but never our masters

Yes. Why do people share a bottle of Chilean Merlot after work. Because the alcohol is a relaxant. A bit of alcohol in the blood feels nice. Funnily enough, that’s why people smoke pot too.

And that goes for all drugs. When a hard-working citizen returns from work on a Friday night and demands a soothing head massage from their servant drug, who are we to dictate whether that drug be a glass of red wine or a cannabis joint. The state has a role in educating on how a drug best be handled, and if a drug looks like it has ambitions to become a citizen’s master, the state and citizen need to be able to work together to put that drug back in its place

However where I part company with Holye is where he takes the prohibitionists “research” at face value. The link between cannabis and psychosis is a correlation for example. Cum hoc ergo propter hoc? Are people prone to psychosis drawn to cannabis? Certainly people get psychotic without regular cannabis use, and many smoke daily without significant harm. However everyone who smokes cannabis who gets psychosis, you KNOW his family will be sure to blame the drug, because it’s easier to believe than the other options. Cannabis use starts in adolescence, as do many mental health issues. Without research which isn’t funded by governments desperate to prove that the war on Drugs is justified we’ll never know if correlation implies causation.

Likewise, the evidence that “skunk” is uniquely wicked and is not the “mild stuff”your parents smoked is extraordinarily weak. Well maybe, but that’s as likely due to freshness of domestic supply rather than the imported, dried and…old stuff our parents smoked. The figure of 33 times stronger, oft cited, doesn’t bear scrutiny.

The fact is, without research  we won’t know. But accepting the prohibitionsts lies and exaggerations without question makes it unlikely we’ll ever get answers, until we change the environment in which research is conducted.

The inertia that led to Nick Clegg being slapped down for calling for a Royal Commission on drugs, is the total buy-in of a medical-regulatory complex and total capture of of the debate by law-enforcement; people who simply don’t see the need to examine the evidence. Drugs are a social evil in their view, and must be fought. All “experts” have until recently been drawn from this community. Even Professor David Nutt, who’s said some sensible things on drugs, often seems more intent on banning Alcohol.

Where I really disagree with Hoyle is the trust of the state, and the mistrust of private enterprise.

the problems that might arise if there were companies who would profit from the artificial promotion of cannabis, or particular strains. It might therefore be wise for commercial interests to be excluded from the market altogether. The best way to prevent advertising and marketing encouraging consumers to make decisions against their interests and those of society is to as far as possible ensure that nobody’s wealth would be dependent upon continued use of the drug or of particular forms of the drug.

It is quite possible a state monopoly is the only model that can demonstrate to the voters that legalisation is a process we are embarking upon with appropriate care, with the highest regard for the health and happiness of the nation.

I simply don’t trust the state to set the price appropriately, supply efficiently, and conveniently enough to deny a market to the criminal enterprises which will seek to maintain their market. It is unlikely a state supply of MDMA would be available where it’s wanted: civil servants don’t attend nightclubs on a Saturday night. Dealers do. By all means tightly regulate the market in terms of quality, and supply to minors. But let the market do its work. Trust people to make decisions based on what they want. What they want, often isn’t the alcohol which is the cause of much blood and vomit on a Friday night. They also don’t want to become junkies. So I agree the state has a role in education, research into effects and quality control, and the provision of addiction services, but leave the supply to people who might actually make it more convenient than the illegal supply-chain.

Until there’s a mature debate around why people take drugs from Cannabis to Cocaine – because they’re fun – and can play a part in a productive life, people will continue to die unnecessarily from dirty drugs of unknown quality and strength. Skunk treated with fungicides without regulation may even be the cause of some of the psychosis. Who knows?

Drug policy reform is not about liberating drugs. It’s about liberating people from ignorance, persecution and the drugs that have power over them. Can we please finally declare a war on drugs so that we can capture and enslave them and put them to work easing our pains and helping us smile. Without a proper war on drugs with sensible, realistic goals, too many people will be left to fight and lose their own personal battles without the knowledge, help – and in some cases drugs – that they need to triumph.

Thanks to the Liberal Democrats, and countries like Portugal with successful decriminalisation experiments, drug legalisation is now firmly on the agenda. It will be a hard push. But first we must persuade people who read the Daily Mail that it’s the Drug war that’s killing kids, not drugs. And we won’t do that by accepting lies told by people who’re totally invested in the status-quo and who believe they’re doing God’s work. Ultimately, decriminalisation is an utterly unsatisfactory half-way house, because it will leave the supply-chain in criminal hands, and THAT’S WHERE THE PROBLEM IS. Decriminalisation should be resisted, lest it discredit what might actually work. And let’s not beat about the bush: The war on drugs has failed, and the collateral damage isn’t worth the outcome. Let’s put the blame for the tens of thousands of deaths worldwide where they belong.

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