George Michael Has Been Treated Far Too Leniently Imagine being a latterday Pontius Pilate presented with two offenders and faced with a dilemma: which to grant a second chance and which to sentence to a long term in jail. Do you free the nervous Jamaican single mum caught at Heathrow with 30 capsules of cocaine in her intestines, having been persuaded to act as a drug mule by a gang promising money to educate her children? Or the multimillionaire pop star caught with crack cocaine in a London public lavatory? [continues 391 words]
If the War on Narcotics Is Failing, Then Giving Up Isn't The Answer IT DIDN'T need Lord Birt and his "blue skies" thinking to tell the Government that the war on drugs has failed miserably. In fact, anyone who tried to make out that it was being won would be seeing the sky rose-tinted, through their spectacles. As a report by the strategy unit at the Cabinet Office makes clear, the result of the global war against drugs so far has been a massive increase in drug consumption. I can quite believe Lord Birt's estimate that the cost of crime associated with heroin and crack use in Britain is UKP16 billion a year. [continues 912 words]
