Business & Finance0 min ago
First Minister's Smackhead's Charter?
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decriminalise all drugs - a referendum-winning masterstroke?
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I have always been mystified by the ongoing cultural Victorian attitude towards drugs.
The 'war generation' would understandably regard a drug problem as something alien, to be feared, and crushed.
But the people in power now are my generation, or younger, and I grew up in a far more tolerant environment, which I always thought that more liberal attitudes would have filtered through to the powers that be in terms of a rational approach to illegal drugs.
Western society's laughably named 'War On Drugs' continues to be a vastly expensive and ever more obviously monumental failure - mainly because governments refuse to look at the realities that face them.
You cant have a 'war' on drugs, because it is not a physical enemy, it's an ingrained habit within society, exactly the same as alcohol and nicotine, without the cultural acceptance, and therefore legal framework in place to manage it effectively.
It is time for governments to simply stop pretending that 'drugs' are a temporary aberration, and address the issue in an adult fasion.
As a society, we don't have a choice about whether or not we have drugs - and it's naive to pretend that we do.
The choice we do have, is how we manage them, and that means removing the criminality which will remove the vast swathes of organised crime that make millions from the industry - which is what it is.
It's not use being po-faced and Victorian, and pretending that drugs are only something 'the lower classes' indulge in.
Drugs affect every strata of our society, and until we start approaching the issue as something we can and should understand and control, instead of something that has invaded us, and we are powerless against it, we will continue to blunder along pretending that we all hate drugs, which is hypocritical, and we are going to 'win the war' which is facile.
That said, suggesting an instant 'legalisation' as a manifesto promise, is equally naive, and will rightly fail.
There is a mature and sensible approach to the issue of drug addiction - using it as a political tool to win votes is not it.
The 'war generation' would understandably regard a drug problem as something alien, to be feared, and crushed.
But the people in power now are my generation, or younger, and I grew up in a far more tolerant environment, which I always thought that more liberal attitudes would have filtered through to the powers that be in terms of a rational approach to illegal drugs.
Western society's laughably named 'War On Drugs' continues to be a vastly expensive and ever more obviously monumental failure - mainly because governments refuse to look at the realities that face them.
You cant have a 'war' on drugs, because it is not a physical enemy, it's an ingrained habit within society, exactly the same as alcohol and nicotine, without the cultural acceptance, and therefore legal framework in place to manage it effectively.
It is time for governments to simply stop pretending that 'drugs' are a temporary aberration, and address the issue in an adult fasion.
As a society, we don't have a choice about whether or not we have drugs - and it's naive to pretend that we do.
The choice we do have, is how we manage them, and that means removing the criminality which will remove the vast swathes of organised crime that make millions from the industry - which is what it is.
It's not use being po-faced and Victorian, and pretending that drugs are only something 'the lower classes' indulge in.
Drugs affect every strata of our society, and until we start approaching the issue as something we can and should understand and control, instead of something that has invaded us, and we are powerless against it, we will continue to blunder along pretending that we all hate drugs, which is hypocritical, and we are going to 'win the war' which is facile.
That said, suggesting an instant 'legalisation' as a manifesto promise, is equally naive, and will rightly fail.
There is a mature and sensible approach to the issue of drug addiction - using it as a political tool to win votes is not it.
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