Yes, There Is A War on Drugs

John Rentoul’s column in the Independent on Sunday this week was uncharacteristically unpersuasive. His text was Mencken’s aphorism that “There is always a well-known solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong” and Mr Rentoul suggested the Cardoso Commission’s report on drug legalisation is an example of this approach. Well, perhaps. But I think “neat, plausible, and wrong” actually better characterises the Drug Warriors mania for prohibition. To which one might add “ineffective” too.

Most advocates* of decriminalisation or legalisation (as Rentoul says, two different approaches) concede that these alternatives will not eradicate all of the problems associated with drug use but argue instead that they will make it easier to deal with the consequences of drug use. (Of course there’s a philosophical objection to prohibition too and to the criminalisation of often-victimless behaviour but that’s a different argument again.)

Credit to JR, however, for admitting in a subsequent blogpost that his assertion that “For all the vogue for “experiments” with decriminalisation, it is notable that nowhere in the world has conducted such an experiment successfully” is incorrect.