*The Debatewise Blog
Legalise it
We’re off to Amsterdam tomorrow for an IDEA sponsored conference on debate. For a long time I thought there was only one reason to go to Amsterdam – and it wasn’t the Van Gough museum. So it will be strange to go now I no longer smoke.Before Debatewise I spent four years quite heavily involved in the campaign to legalise cannabis. Two of those years were spent trying to open a coffeeshop. I spent a week in Haarlem learning how to run one, I found a great venue on Brick Lane, had the promise of £180,000 investment, developed a fully worked out business plan and had come up with a way we’d get round the complete illegality of the place. But then the government announced it would ban all smoking in public places and I knew we couldn’t continue.
Ultimately this was a good thing. Debatewise is a much better project, much more solid idea and is much less likely to be raided. But I still believe passionately in legalisation and think Britain needs coffeeshops, or legalisation at least.
My view on drugs is quite simple. People have always used them and will continue to do so regardless of laws or other threats of harm. The only power we have is to create an environment where their drug taking causes least harm for them and society. This means we need control over who makes, sells and buys drugs and the only way we can get that is through legalisation.
People think legalisers want to legalise drugs because they’re safe. We don’t. We want to legalise drugs because they’re harmful. The great irony of prohibition is that it gives us no control whatsoever over drugs. All control is handed over to those willing to take the risk to sell them. The more prohibition is enforced the more money these people can make and the more dangerous the type of people who’ll get involved.
In my view legalisation is an inevitability. The disastrous war on drugs, a war that has met not a single objective set for it (drugs are cheaper, stronger and more prevalent than ever before) simply cannot continue for ever. The only question is when will it end.
Oh and for the record, Holland, despite having the most lenient view of cannabis in the world, isn’t in the top 50 cannabis consuming countries in the world.
Drugs should be legalised.