Drugs

Its a strange fact, but I have been in a room with more heroin than any drug dealer, or drug baron ever. I could explain why that was, but I'll leave that for another time.

Think about the pandemic. Firstly, no one was allowed to leave their homes. This was true in many countries of the world. law enforcement continued as normal but there was a drastic drop in crimes like burglary because everyone was at home. No one was allowed out. And obviously you can’t shoplift if the shops are shut.

Then think about after the pandemic. Supply chain problems, lorry driver shortage. Empty shelves in shops.

This whole episode must’ve hit the supply of illegal drugs to the U.K. significantly. Wrong. The supply of illegal drugs during the pandemic was unaffected. Illegal supply chains are far more resilient than legal ones.

The War on Drugs has been in place for over 40 years. Not the most effective war. Maybe its time to change tactics.

For whatever reason, our politicians are scared to change course when it comes to the “war on drugs” but we need to change course and the new page in the Manifesto explains exactly what this new approach would look like.

For anyone who thinks that the current approach works, I would suggest they spend time in Broadmead Bristol during the working week. I would also suggest they spend time watching the security at hospitals. Hospitals are spending a huge amount of resources on treating drug users with complications that could be avoided if the criminality of drugs were removed and if the products were improved.

The Police currently ignore the low level nuisance that addicts create, but the Police are still heavily involved in the crime and anti social behaviour that addicts bring. This is in addition to pushing huge amounts of resources into a never ending war on drugs that will never be won.

Given our history with how we used opium in China, the UK of all countries should have its eyes open to how drugs are still being used to affect societies.

The excellent book 'Chasing the Scream' by Johann Hari gets to the heart of the problem.

The War on Drugs has failed, and failed badly.

The War on Drugs is an American imperialist policy rooted in racism that it has inflicted on the rest of the world and expect compliance.

The US has ensured that any country that legalises drugs will be met with automatic UN sanctions. This is why countries like Portugal, where drugs are effectively legal, have not legalised them, but instead removed the penalties when the law is broken making them pointless to enforce. But this is political hoops being jumped through because US imperial policy has effectively removed the sovereignty of the nation state to decide the best policies for itself.

The war on drugs was born out of racism and continues to penalise people of colour today. I cannot see any reason why we should continue down the path we have been on for nearly 100 years when we have seen that prohibition achieves no change in human behaviour and that the war continues to this day, more vicious than ever.

For anyone who says that legalising drugs creates more drug addicts, I would say, read the book, particularly the part about Rat Park, then come back to the policies I am suggesting and see if we are creating Rat Park or not.

But for now, an early version of the Utopian manifesto on this subject can be found here.