Following a healthy break from any critical writing I have to admit that sitting back down and producing something has proved far more difficult than in 2014; then my creative juices seemed to flow more freely whereas now every word seems to creak forth. I have toiled over this short article and present it now, raw as it is, in the hope that it's completion may oil the machinery of this stuttering blog back into life.
After watching this excellent interview with a retired police Captain I then came across the following article from Charlie Brooker which strikes at a different issue but surely contains within it yet more evidence in a forever growing mountain of fact, figure and personal account which make a mockery of prohibition and the so called 'war on drugs'.
At the risk of falling into the same pattern of regurgitation for which Brooker lambastes the UK media; the following is a summary, as I see it, of the main points raised by the police Captain Peter Christ:
Control over market place. Legalisation would take control of the currently illicit black market for drugs and place it into the hands of organisations which could be regulated, controlled and taxed.
Control over purity. As a result of the above point the manufacture of controlled substances could be closely monitored. The current system ensures that the drugs available in our society are often cut with a huge a variety of excipients in order to bulk them out and ensure larger returns. These chemicals are often poisonous, corrosive or carcinogenic - far more damaging themselves than the illicit drugs they are masquerading as.
Crime. Prohibition creates illegal markets which are controlled and driven by violent crime. It also creates overpriced, low quality drugs which result in large amounts of non violent crime such as burglary and shop lifting which fund addiction. The police Captain quotes homicide figures around the time of alcohol prohibition in the United States. As prohibition was introduced in 1920 homicide rates climbed every year until a 1933 peak, when alcohol legalised. Murder rates then fall year on year to pre prohibition levels by 1937.
One of the most striking points which Christ makes is the following: If we cannot even keep drugs out of prison, how we do ever imagine we can keep them out of a free society. Drugs are always going to be in society, this is fact - from that stand point where would we rather the drugs in our society were originating from? Gangsters, thugs and worse; or a licensed, regulated market place with controls on access, purity, strength and anything else we would care to monitor.
This week I read an article on the legalisation and regulation of Marijuana in Colorado - it has been such a roaring success they have exceeded pre determined taxation levels, crime is down, and the typically polarised Democrats & Republicans are in agreement; legalisation it works.
We have a government hell bent on privatisation. Privatisation for the sake of it, ideologically driven; our NHS, housing, fire service, forensic service, even our New Year fire works display in London - ticket only. It's just such a shame that this one market, ripe for the picking and laden with societal benefits is a topic the government daren't go near.
