Pubdate: Tue, 19 Feb 2013
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Ian Birrell
Note: Ian Birrell is a former speechwriter for David Cameron

LEGALISING DRUGS WOULD BE THE PERFECT TORY POLICY

It Would Save Money, Be Tough on Crime and Aid Global Security. What 
Could Be More Conservative?

Two European countries have decriminalised all drugs and disproved 
the argument that usage rises when prohibition is lifted

Afew weeks ago I had a coffee with one of the most admired Tory 
thinkers. A radical libertarian, he spent his time railing against 
the interventions of Europe and inadequacies of government, arguing 
how they combined to infringe basic freedoms. Given the stridency of 
his views and hostility to the state, I asked if he supported the 
legalisation of drugs. "Oh no," he said. "That's totally different. 
It's just wrong."

I enjoyed listening to his tortured arguments as he sought to justify 
why the state he had just been decrying should stop millions of 
people enjoying themselves. But the question was far from facetious. 
As the illegality of drugs looks dafter and more disastrous by the 
day, the Tories should follow the lead of some Republican cousins in 
the United States and start fighting for reform.

This might sound strange. It was, after all, a Republican president 
in Richard Nixon who launched the ludicrous war on drugs to shore up 
his support. Yet there has always been a freethinking strand of the 
American right that opposed prohibition on principle, while it was 
two Democratic presidents, in Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who 
admitted using drugs yet hypocritically ramped up spending on enforcement.

Reformers on the right have been boosted by three recent events: the 
emergence of a conservative campaign for saner penal policies in a 
nation locking up a quarter of the world's prisoners; the 
post-election inquest causing smarter Republicans to cast around for 
new ways to connect with young and minority voters; and landmark 
referendums in November voting to legalise marijuana in Colorado and 
Washington.

Liberalisation is moving from the libertarian fringes towards the 
mainstream. This is unsurprising when a city like Baltimore ends up 
arresting one in six citizens in a single year alone. Polls are 
shifting in favour of legalising cannabis, especially among the 
young, while there is growing acknowledgment of the racist undertones 
to the war on drugs, with disproportionate numbers of African-Americans jailed.

As the blogger Andrew Sullivan noted, the successful referendum 
campaigns rebranded reform as a conservative measure. It was not 
hippies demanding the right to smoke their spliffs, but parents 
concerned about their children. They demonstrated how drug 
legalisation, as well as being right and long overdue, is an issue 
that should appeal to Conservatives here if only they could shake off 
fear of public opprobrium.

It is offensive to see people criminalised and imprisoned for using 
stimulants many politicians admit to having used, especially when 
countless experts and ceaseless inquiries found drugs such as 
cannabis and ecstasy less harmful than alcohol. It is one more reason 
for the disconnect between politicians and the people who put them in 
power. Yet the concept of legalising drugs is caricatured by 
opponents as pushing the idea of having drugs on sale everywhere  as 
if they are not already.

Legalisation would replace the freest of markets that exists to the 
benefit of the world's most vicious crooks with a system in which 
supply is controlled, products regulated and profits taxed. This is 
safer for children, since parents will have more control than they 
have at present; it is safer for users, since the drugs can be tested 
for strength and purity; and it is safer for society, since it cuts 
off funding for the gangs that scar our cities and the cartels that 
carve up the world. Ask yourself why we have troops in Mali? One key 
reason for the country's collapse was corrosion caused by the cocaine 
trade, which is leaving such a destructive trail across west Africa 
by inflaming corruption, fuelling violence and funding the war chests 
of extremist militias. The lack of joined-up thinking in the west is 
extraordinary.

Current policies are staggeringly wasteful of taxpayers' cash, 
something that should always concern conservatives. A report last 
year found more than UKP65bn spent globally each year on enforcement, 
yet the booming illicit trade is the same size as the Danish economy, 
the 32nd biggest in the world. In Britain, annual public expenditure 
on treatment, policing and criminal justice in relation to drugs is 
UKP4.5bn  yet the cost of cocaine on our streets has fallen by half 
over the past 15 years.

Drug reform should appeal to a Conservative party seeking ways to 
connect with young and ethnic minority voters, who bear the brunt of 
street enforcement strategies by police. Instead of resorting to 
failed core vote strategies aimed at frightened older generations, 
here is something bold, conservative and modern. It makes sense on 
economic, political, social and moral grounds. Given the voices 
starting to come out in favour of legalising drugs, it is scarcely 
even controversial these days.

It is also popular. For just as in the US, pressure for reform is 
growing. A new poll out today by the campaign group Transform finds a 
majority now favour permitting cannabis use, while four in 10 Britons 
favour total decriminalisation and more than two-thirds favour a 
comprehensive review of all drug policies. Support cuts across 
political divisions and embraces readers of all papers.

The war on drugs is stumbling its way to deserved and inevitable 
defeat after causing terrible collateral damage. Leaders in Latin 
America are demanding an end to policies that wreaked havoc in their 
region, while already two European countries - Portugal and the Czech 
Republic - have decriminalised all drugs and disproved the argument 
that usage rises when prohibition is lifted. Britain should become the third.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has called for a royal commission, 
while Labour's shadow cabinet recently discussed its stance on drugs. 
The Tories, whose leader showed unusual courage and realism on this 
subject before taking office, should seize the opportunity to 
outflank them by proposing total relaxation of drug laws. What could 
be more conservative than a policy that is tough on crime, saves 
money, protects children and aids global security?
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom