Prohibition

Over the past few years we have had a series of recommendations to change the way we deal with drugs, from scholars, scientists, even top policemen, as well as people whom the government has hired specifically to look into the issues. Blakemore, Birt, and now Nutt (and whatever you think of Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom of North Wales police him too) have all concluded, after reasoned study and argument that our current system is not fit for purpose and does more harm than good.

Not a single one of these people is remotely what you could call "pro-drugs".  Not one of them has any kind of vested interest in the outcome.

Yet every single time their recommendations have been trashed by the rank amateurs we supposedly hire to "represent" us, with an interest in the votes of the Daily Mail and Express readership and so on.

So, since there's bound to be an election in the next sixteen months, remember this: Prohibition is killing people, the world over. Politicians who vote for prohibition are sanctioning these deaths. And every single bloody one of you who votes for a politician that supports prohibition is guilty of aiding and abetting these state sanctioned murders and executions.

And there can be no more important issue than a policy that kills. The law is supposed to be about protecting us, not making the dangers immeasurably worse. 

There are so many tragedies in life for which government is not responsible and on which people then call for action - fair play. But these are tragedies the blame for which sits squarely and I would say almost invariably at the door of number 10 and St Stephen's entrance. They are disgusting and immoral. Whatever you think of drugs themselves and the people who use them.

Now - it's Saturday - why don't you all toddle off down the pub and drink yourself senseless. Murdering Morons! Yes, you people of Redditch especially!

UPDATE:  It seems as if the Pro-Death Alliance and their gang of thugs at the tabloids and scary news vendors might have hounded Prof David Nutt into resigning from ACMD

Professor David Nutt, who happens to chair the government's advisory council on drugs has apparently written that the risks associated with taking Ecstasy are no worse than those of riding a horse:

Ecstasy 'not worse than riding' The panel will review the latest evidence before making its decision Taking the drug ecstasy is no more dangerous than riding a horse, a senior advisor has suggested. Professor David Nutt, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), outlined his view in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. The council, which advises the government, is expected next week to recommend that ecstasy is downgraded from a class A drug to a class B one. [From BBC NEWS | UK | Ecstasy 'not worse than riding']

Of course some of his prohibitionist colleagues are outraged and suggest, obnoxiously, that he should "consider his position" as head of ACMD. Something similar happens to me recently on our local "eDemocracy forum":

I have to say that Jock is confused in his position on drugs, and considering what he does for a living I find his attitude totally irresponsible and maybe he ought to consider his position, and I hope Rex Knight finds out what Jock thinks on the subject. Headington and Marston Neighbourhood Forum

So you know, I am amongst other things a hall warden, responsible for the safety and discipline of 550 first year undergraduates in halls of residence, whom I know perfectly well (but can do little about), go out at night made more unsafe by prohibition, lack of knowledge and so on. Rex Knight is the deputy vice-chancellor - and in that piece was presumably expected to sack and evict me for my views according to the odious author.

It appears that most of the very small number of deaths (30 each year out of an estimated half million users per weekend) are caused by lack of information about what you should do about the side-effects - like Leah Betts, they hear that they need to take lots of water when they get hot and so flood their brains and other organs. Most of these deaths are probably in the age group I look after, who, perhaps first time users, have not the experience to challenge the "street wisdom".

Without prohibition, with quality controlled drugs (the other biggest danger is that the drugs are tainted - often even not containing any MDMA at all in fact), with appropriate warnings and proper instructions most if not all of these victims would be alive today. Prohibition has killed them and anyone, everyone who supports prohibition is complicit in their manslaughter.

I remember in the seventies there were scare stories that kippers, lots of black coffee, and burnt toast were all carcinogenic. They might have turned out that way, but didn't. Did we, as the government does now about Ecstasy, stick our collective fingers in ours ears and say "there is no safe kipper" as an excuse for banning them? There are all sorts of things that can be found, after decades or centuries of consumption, to have potentially serious adverse effects.

Further, while the government does interfere and  these young people die of ignorance and criminal adulteration, we know that in the US for example, they consider there to be a safe enough dose to be testing the use of MDMA amongst patients experiencing traumas they dare not talk about (and previously it has also been tested as a weight loss drug and a truth drug I understand). So either the US government or the UK government must be wrong!

Anyway - we also know, don't we, how to make a horse safe! Which is class C by the way - go figure!

Horizon last night did a reasonably balanced program looking at the various claims for and against cannabis, the world's most popular illicit drug. You can watch it again on iPlayer if you missed it.

They looked into its history - that it is likely that it has been used by humans for around 3,000 years at least. Into claims that it is a "gateway drug" that encouraged users to move onto harder drugs which showed in trials with rats that this was unlikely. And into claims that it damaged young brains which in trials with mice seemed to suggest that it did indeed create long term memory degradation when given to/used by young adolescents (defined as below around 15 years of age).

They also seemed to be confirming that, assuming one's brain was properly developed before using cannabis regularly, the potential longer term side effects are nonetheless relatively rare.

They looked into some of the claims made for its medicinal properties, talking to a doctor in California who, under their medical marijuana rules seems to prescribe it for all sorts of things from chronic pain to slight anxiety or even, as the presenter suggested, "writers block". And in the one UK licensed pharmaceutical grade production facility was astonished to find that many strains also contain an anti-psychotic substance (which to me reinforced the idea that somehow people in danger of developing mental illnesses may actively seek it out as self-medication).

So, what does it all suggest about the predominant public policy of prohibition? The presenter, "addiction specialist Dr John Marsden" (he looks after patients with addictions to "harder" drugs like cocaine and heroin), concluded the program by saying that the real "problem" with cannabis was the waste of potential it causes - presumably he felt, as an addiction specialist, that all the other [possible problems are relatively low risk enough to make a blanket policy unwarranted.

But even here I think he's quite wrong to infer that such a "waste" of potential is good enough reason for legal prohibition - after all, one user's "waste" of life "sitting around smoking dope all day and doing nothing useful" as Marsden put it I think, is another user's occasional recreation. Set aside any debate as to whether George Washington managed to found the greatest nation on earth whilst toking on the stuff! Exactly the same claims could be made of alcohol, and the evidence is available in far greater numbers - that it can cause psychoses, all sorts of physical and mental illnesses, sitting around drinking all day is a waste of potential, it can also have medicinal benefits. Yet Churchill won the war on the stuff!

Yet we license one for sale and prohibit the other with criminal sanctions that themselves do as much to destroy lives as the substance itself (witness in the USA the scheme where anyone convicted of a possession charge would be denied university funding for example). We know that prohibition drives the supply into the hands of criminal gangs who have no compunction about selling it to those even proponents of legalization would want to protect - the youngsters whose developmental processes can be damaged by access to it too young - and further whose business model tends to encourage them to try to sell other, potentially more dangerous drugs, to their existing customers to maximize profits. We have seen how, after downgrading, the consumption in this country actually dropped. It will be interesting to see whether the uprating to category B will increase consumption again and thus prove utterly counter productive.

As with alcohol, a legalized weed, as shown in the images of medical marijuana dispensaries in California, and also the cafe culture in the Netherlands and the more free attitude in Switzerland, would give people more choice about methods of taking the drug - reducing, probably, the predominance of smoking it (it is at its most potentially harmful when smoked with tobacco). And it would increase awareness of the different strengths and their effects as decent shops would sell a range, rather than, at present, having to take what you can get wherever you can get it.

The law, as usual with drugs laws, is counter-productive. The resultant criminal culture surrounding it makes society less safe not more. It is not based on the evidence. It is not consistent with attitudes to other drugs such as alcohol where even the drunk is more capable it seems of exercising their own judgement most of the time and is also freer to get help because it is legal and not so much of a taboo subject. The recent reclassification defies belief frankly and is simply another reason to oppose all government interference in our lives as ill informed and nannying.

Our legislators should be ashamed of themselves.

Nick Clegg has a piece in the Independent this morning repeating his suggestion of last week that we should consider joining the Euro. Not, it has to be said, now and in a hurry - he does not see it as a way out of the mess the financial markets are in - but in recognition that the world after this crisis will be a different economic landscape in which ganging up together with Europe may outweigh the loss of credibility the City of London will have wrought on itself. He concludes:

But given the gravity of the economic crisis in Britain, and our unique exposure to international financial markets, silence about the euro must end. The future has never been more uncertain. People are increasingly desperate for stability in our economic affairs. We must be ready to think anew. [From Nick Clegg: We should consider joining the euro - Commentators, Opinion - The Independent]

Indeed, we must think anew, but alas the Euro is still part of the old world not the new. It is the system itself that is broken. It is true that one could argue that the Euro is slightly different from the rest of the system in that its central bank is not controlled by a single government with spending plans it would like to get that central bank to finance. At the moment that is; and God forbid that it ever should - we don't want these people to have any control over our lives, as liberals, do we?

If the Euro is able to survive the current crisis, with the pressures of Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland at least threatening to break all the rules, it will be a stronger currency I am sure if it emerges out the other side, but how long would it take for it to be ready to absorb an economy the size of the UK's?

Then also I notice talk that the BRIC countries, and at least China and India, as global creditor nations, will hold a lot of sway when the G20 meets in a few weeks time, are resurrecting something similar to Keynes' idea of the Bancor as a sort of a supra-national reserve currency. I doubt that they will readily accept a switch from one "national" reserve currency to another. The very notion of a reserve currency linked to one particular geopolitical grouping skews the system against all the other nations by effectively ensuring they have to buy that reserve currency in order to trade. In the new world where these economies are nipping at our heels it is economic imperialism, and protectionist, to believe we have a right to be some global super-currency.

I really think we have to begin to look beyond the era of "central banking" - it's not like it's been around that long - less than a century in reality. It has proven time and again to be a hostage of markets owing to the moral hazard inherent in the private banking system knowing they will be baled out in a crisis and has been a constant source of inflation. Not even our most monetarist governments have been able to control the money supply. It is one of the great monopolies that our liberal predecessors knew were a great cause of inequity.

As well as establishing this group to look at the electoral use of technology, the party needs to establish a group of, if you like, futurologists, to look at how the technological advances, especially in communications, over the past couple of decades can facilitate even more wide ranging changes right down to the institutions we have accepted till now as the very life-blood of the economy. The genie is out of the bottle, we are in a new epoch, and it seems to me that the opportunity this financial crisis affords us to do away with some of the old and facilitate the new is unmissable.

What a jolly wheeze - I seem to have had the honour (I think) of being nominated for the position of Minister for Drugs (Legalization, Regulation and Taxation thereof) in Mark Wadsworth's Bloggers Cabinet. It's been a while since I wrote anything substantial on the subject of drugs, probably but uncharacteristically cowed by my opponents' disgraceful use of my previous writings on the subject in May's local elections.

Anyway, it's an interesting coincidence that I've just had a bit of a spat with someone on our local Headington & Marston Neighbourhood Forum about this very subject. Someone whose naive response to the "drugs problem" is to get tougher, to wage the "war on drugs" ever more fiercely and adopt a "zero tolerance" approach to dealers, traffickers and users alike. Whose entire argument appears to be based on the insane rantings of the likes of Anthony Daniels and Nicholas O'Kane.

So anyway, I just wanted to share with you the core principle on which I would develop Mark's commission, were it for real and as I explained to my correspondent on the local forum (who had gone so far as to hope, in a public forum, that I should lose my job for holding this opinion):

"No legislator has, in my opinion, a moral or natural right (and therefore cannot have one created for him by democratic mandate however strong) to implement or support laws which demonstrably kill or harm more people than the problem they are supposed to solve. Such laws are morally repugnant. And those who support them are just as bad. Some do so out of ignorance and don't think much about it - they are perhaps forgivable, but others think they have considered the issues and come to a reasonable conclusion which they promulgate with gusto. They are worse than the politicians and laws they support, for they give them the succour of public opinion. They are tantamount to promoting murder as a weapon of the law."

Whatever you think of drugs and the people who use them or even abuse them, it is not the aim of legalization to promote their use; indeed as a policy whose aim was to reduce drug use and the harms which can arise from their misuse, prohibition has spectacularly failed with more drugs on our streets supplied by a now immense industry controlled by organized crime.

For prohibitionists everywhere, I urge you to recall Einstein's definition of "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

PS: Watch out I hope in January for a new Lib Dem group - "Liberal Democrats Against Prohibition". Not just about drugs of course, but the isue will figure highly, obviously.

If there were a few comments after dinner on Saturday night at the NLC with new acquaintances, maybe even friends, about how little of the days' talks actually helped some of them understand Libertarianism as an idea (after all, the links between aging and nano-technology and Libertarianism could have been obscure without a primer in Libertarian philosophy first) Sunday began with something that more people would recognize as a Libertarian issue...

Session 5: Ban the Ban: The Human Cost of Prohibition by Dr John Meadowcroft
Session 6: The Idea of a Private Law Society by Prof Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Session 7: The Modern Panopticon State v Freedom: Why State ID Cards are Bad by Guy Herbert of NO2ID
Session 8: Post-modernity and Liberty by Marc-Henri Glendinning

Session 5: Ban the Ban: The Human Cost of Prohibition by Dr John Meadowcroft

Meadowcroft lectures on Public Policy at King's College London and has recently edited a book called "Prohibitions" for the Institute of Economic Affairs examining the effects of the outlawing in various parts of the world of a variety of what may be regarded as "victimless" or "consensual" goods, services and activities such as recreational drugs, boxing, firearms, pornography, prostitution, alcohol and others.

He showed how in every case the outcome for the users, consumers or participants as well as the wider community is almost always worse than the effects of that which is outlawed. These arguments should be familiar to most of my readers, for I have rehearsed them, at least in respect of recreational drugs, often enough. The handing of lucrative markets to organized crime, the lack of knowledge, information and harm minimization facilities to users, the side effects of this crime on others in the community, the corruption of public officials and so on.

It was interesting in particular to see how murder rates seem, possibly coincidentally of course, to have risen and show consistent continuing rises after the banning of guns in most countries including the UK, since this is an area I know even some Libertarians (including myself until recently) find quite difficult to argue.

Consequently, he argues, prohibition is bad public policy. Rather than assisting in preventing harm it always increases harm from things that are essentially, in the classical Liberal sense, none of the state's business - what you do with your own bodies and lives which by and large do not affect others, except with consent.

I notice that, as they apparently do with all their publications, the IEA has sent a copy of "Prohibitions" to every Member of Parliament. I am sure their mailbags are full of this somewhat higher quality of "junk mail" as no doubt some of them see it and one wonders how many of them have read it, or even passed it onto their staff to read it and brief them on it. I shall be asking Lib Dem MP Tom Brake in particular, currently embroiled in an illiberal attempt to further curtail the availability of cannabis seeds against party policy, what he thought of the book and how it affected his decision to press ahead with his ill-advised private member's bill or whatever device he used.

Over the summer, in the run up to party conference in September, a number of us noted that, for a supposedly liberal party in which one might expect prohibitions to be roundly condemned as a matter of course, that we do not have a party group, association, "ginger group" whatever you want to call it, dedicated to fighting the seeming increasing tendency by our own policy makers to join in with orgies of "bansturbation". One thing I am hoping to do is to start a group "Lib Dems Against Prohibition" and perhaps try and get a motion into Harrogate conference on the issue. Watch this space. Maybe we can get Meadowcroft up to speak at a launch event.

Following Meadoowcroft came an eagerly anticipated session by someone regarded by many, it seemed, as something of a high priest of Libertarianism, and judging by the little informal gatherings in coffee afterwards, he certainly had some new acolytes in the room...

Session 6: The Idea of a Private Law Society by Prof Hans-Hermann Hoppe

I had long understood that there was a school of thought, anarchist to the core, that you don't even need to have "law enforcement" handled by the state - for many, particularly the Classical Liberals, the idea of a "minimal state" includes, more or less, only law and order and perhaps national defence as legitimate functions of that state.

Hoppe disagrees. And disagrees compellingly with answers to what might seem the most convincingly argued objections. I will definitely want to blog further about this, so I'll keep it quite brief here. Basically he argues that this Classical Liberal vision of a minimal state is a logical impossibility. Since by its very definition the state has the "territorial monopoly on arbitration" it has no incentive to minimize itself. Since it is enforcement, judge, jury and executioner all rolled into one, it has every incentive to increase the number of things it criminalizes to justify its own existence.

Instead, he posits the idea of a "Private Law" society in which individuals insure themselves against the aggression of others (in the widest possible sense - from breaches of contract to physical violence) in a free market of insurance providers (remember that we will have, effectively, abolished the state and certainly its ability to grant monopoly and protection to such providers). In the purest free market they will always have the incentive to pursue violators of the core maxim of non-aggression on behalf of their clients. And when disputes arise between insurers, counter-claims and the like, competing providers of arbitration (appeal) services also have an incentive to produce objectively fair outcomes. Their clients also have the greatest incentives to be themselves non-aggressors - to abuse a familiar phrase you would lose your no claims bonus if you biffed someone!

It probably needs more explanation than can be given here and as I say I want to blog about this more, because he certainly convinced me. I do, of course, have a certain disagreement with him about rights in landed property in particular that I need to think on and try and reconcile, but it a compelling vision of how a truly free society unencumbered by a monopolistic state could be considerably fairer and lead to much less rather than more confrontation and aggression simply because of the financial incentives involved.

I think it probably leaves me with one area of policy to explore further and understand better before I can call myself an individualist-anarchist - welfare, but this one is a significant step towards that! If I remember this conference for just one thing, it will have been Hoppe's contribution, I am sure. And inspired choice of speaker whom we were extremely lucky to get hold of who explained what will for many be one of the far outer reaches of Libertarianism that even many "hard core" Libertarians will have been challenged by I suspect.

And so, from the most theoretical talk of the weekend to what must be one of the most pressing issues for anyone concerned about our liberty in a very practical sense here in the UK...

Session 7: The Modern Panopticon State v Freedom: Why State ID Cards are Bad by Guy Herbert of NO2ID

Again, this session deserves a blog post of its own, and so I will keep this brief. Most of us in the room were I am sure already pretty united in our opposition to the National ID card program being prosecuted by the Labour government. But for me, however strong that opposition, it has largely been from the heart - the "I am a Liberal and I am against this sort of thing" of Clarence Henry Wilcock in 1950 quoted by Nick Clegg in his leadership campaign and since.

Guy Herbert provided the intellectual ammunition for me argue from the head and not just the heart, to understand the sinister machinations in government, and especially the bureaucracy that have attempted to foist this controlling policy on us for most of the last century. Indeed, I came away with the distinct impression that the Leviathan has been trying this for decades and all that is new is that they have finally found a government stupid or naive enough to swallow its arguments and agree to it!

At its heart, the National Identity Register (the database) is the most important issue (this much I knew, but perhaps not why). The state seeks to create the "single source of truth about the citizen", to fundamentally revolutionize the very definition of personhood, from independent individual, who is known through the various connections and activities they do to one in which it is only possible legitimately to exist with the permission of the state and the possession of its membership card.

The superficially beneficial arguments for having ID cards; that they will make your dealings with the state from which you benefit - welfare, health and so on, more efficient; that you will be better able to prove who you are in a whole range of circumstances; and, the worst, that it will help in the "War on Terror" - we've all heard them, and they do give the idea of a policy intended to help us - are not only superficial, but that the real agenda is not actually understood by most of the politicians charged with selling the idea to us.

That real agenda is about control and knowledge, the most intricate web of knowledge about every one of us. It seems likely, for example, that we will need to present our ID to rent hotel rooms, to buy mobile phones, to get bank accounts, insurance, perhaps even to rent your home, and that every time your ID is checked in one of these situations that will be logged against your entry in the National Identity Register. It will so fundamentally alter the balance between the state and the individual that it can be properly termed totalitarian. And even if implemented y people with benign motives is hugely open to abuse, both now in the sense of incompetence as the government has shown in data loss scandals over the past year and in the future in the hands of who knows what flavour of government with more sinister agendas.

Forget the politicians' assurances that safeguards will be implemented. Even since it was announced the functions the database will fulfill have ballooned more than most of us appreciate, can be extended without reference to parliament and are almost entirely in the hands of bureaucrats who do want to know every last thing about you in their area of responsibility. It is truly scary, sinister stuff, and as I say I will return to it again no doubt. And the worst part of it of course is that many, even most people accept the platitudes of politicians that this will be good for us.

I believe it is no longer acceptable for those political parties and individuals who say they oppose ID Cards and the ID Register to have little blog buttons or mere "oppositional" press releases, or "stunts" like saying we will go to jail rather than register for one, we have to up our arguments and explain more precisely the menacing revolution that the whole project threatens. If you only watch one video from the conference, I urge you to watch this one and like me, hopefully learn about the real agenda in more depth, and be appalled!

And so to the final session....

Session 8: Post-modernity and Liberty by Marc-Henri Glendinning

No disrespect to Marc-Henri Glendinning but I confess after all the excitement of Hoppe and the surge of anger generated by Herbert, it seemed a little surreal to end the day with post-modernist philosophy and, whilst I certainly wasn't switched off by this stage I will need to watch this session again to understand it and be able to comment on it more fully!

I did pick up on the general idea that (at least the vanguard and leadership of) the statist left have metamorphosized from what was at least an intellectually honest and fundamentally well-meaning promotion of socialist redistribution with an image of a fairer society, to one which is superficially much more "cuddly", that seems to provide succour and answers to everyone in a supposedly more free mixed economy and society but which masks a more insidious creeping totalitarianism that is anything but benign, putting the state at the centre and subjugate the individual. Beyond that, though, I will need to revisit the session to tell you any more.

And so ended one of the most intellectually stimulating and varied weekends I have ever had I think. I will need, as I said, one of David Friedman's nano-bot enhanced brains I think to be able to really thoroughly cogitate on the many ideas, some new to me, some just newly explained, I got out of the whole event. And I have material enough to keep my blogging controversial enough till next year's conference!

Everyone who helped arrange the weekend and all the speakers are to be commended, and the rest of the audience helped make it a convivial weekend in all sorts of ways in the formal sessions and in the more informal breaks and dinner. The "broad church" of Libertarianism was there for all to see, and I only wish that we could have had more Lib Dems there, perhaps ones skeptical about Libertarianism, for I am sure they would have had many of their misconceptions - in particular that Libertarianism is some selfish right wing "beggar thy neighbour" creed dispelled.

I don't suppose they were referred to the local DAAT (Drug and Alcohol Action Team), or SMART (Substance Misuse Arrest Referral Team), nor will the "formal warning" likely include a Drugs Testing and Treatment Order (DTTO). They're unlikely to have a probation officer who needs to send their details to the Employment Service to get their benefits stopped, but what the hell - they've got off basically...

...one rule for the few, and one for the many. Britain's drugs laws...useless, counterproductive and deadly...but usually only if you are poor.

Just so you know, when I was eleven, at prep school, I used to have two knives.

One, a "Swiss Army Knife" was a thing of pride - everyone vied to get one with as many different gadgets on as they could. That one I used to carry in my pocket all the time; you just never knew when you would come across a pencil that had not been turned into "pencil cricket" or a desk with a screw that could do with being removed for the delectation of watching the next occupants of it have it collapse on them...:)

The other was one of those "Ray Mears" type things - it folded its four inch blade, kept razor sharp (because there wasn't much else to do with it and one of those sharpening blocks), into its wooden handle. It was meant for whittling my woggle with or whatever it was that we Scouts did, but it occasionally came in handy for cutting up sticky-backed plastic or something like that!

Come to think of it I must have had another one as well - one that had a fixed blade and was worn in its scabbard on my belt whenever I was in uniform. Oh, and if I recall, I bought them all, with my saved up pocket money, myself, and whilst I may well look a decade older than I am now, I did not, I assure you, at eleven!

And the most memorable book I read at school that year?  The Cross and the Switchblade .

I don't remember anyone, ever, getting stabbed, except perhaps by accident when their woggle was whittled too much. We soon grew out of them, when we graduated to the CCF and started playing with guns instead! But I do recall some of the Duke of Edinburgh types remained loyal to their knives. So, blame the Duke of Edinburgh maybe, or Peter Duncan definitely, but the knife itself - what a useful piece of equipment!

Don't they have pencil cricket or woggles that need whittled, any more?

Oh, and I still have a fold-away thing for my pipe that has a blade and a stiletto type poker thing on it - am I going to gaol?

...but if some of you arrived here because of a scurrilous Labour leaflet trying to discredit me because of my opinion on drugs issues, I wanted to settle your minds, I hope, with a synopsis of my position...

I am indeed in principle in favour of legalizing the vast majority of recreational drugs - for adults. Once legalized, their supply should be regulated, controlled through a licensing system, and taxed - which can help fund more treatment instead of prison cells. It is not the state's job to prevent adults in particular choosing to put something into their own body, or indeed, like dangerous sports and so on, what they do with their own body, if others are not harmed by that. Such laws actually remove the ability of the individual to be morally responsible for what they themselves do.

That is not to say that I want to see an increase in drugs use. Just that I believe that it is the current approach, the "war on drugs", that creates and sustains an illegal underground market that encourages people into multiple addictions and puts people into the hands of criminal suppliers who could not care less about the health of their customers so long as the money rolls in. It was recently suggested that the international trade in illicit narcotics is now the world's third largest trading sector, after I think it was financial services and energy. When heroin was legal in this country we had 18 registered addicts in the country - despite it being used in common, over the counter, drugs such as cough syrups. Make it illegal and we have seen the level of addition soar exponentially.

This is a long considered and pragmatic position, that agrees with many professionals in the fields both of law enforcement and drug treatment. Basically, that the current system, based on criminal enforcement, puts far more people in danger from drugs - it makes it easier to peddle to children, because the peddlars are unseen and uncontrolled (and sometimes children in the schoolyard themselves). It creates the core of gang and gun culture. It makes it harder to seek help when, in doing so, you have to out yourself as a criminal.

From Colombia to Croxteth, Afghanistan to the Aylesbury Estate, more people die because of the criminal networks engaged in the drugs trade than from the drugs themselves. Our politicians know this and continue to pursue the obviously failed "war on drugs" strategy because it is a populist one that's sure to get some people huffing and puffing and voting for them - don't fall for it - they are nothing short of accessories to murder! We need a mature debate about these immoral laws (any law that actually colludes in and creates the environment that breeds killings in our communities is an immoral law).

Nonetheless, as the desperate Labour party scaremongers know, my theoretical position on drugs is not one that has much relevance in the role of a city councillor, which is why we Lib Dems have decided not to rise to this astonishing personal attack, marring as it does what has been a reasonably well conducted campaign so far, and concentrate on the positive things we wish to do within the remit of the city council. I do not want any more people, and predominantly younger people as many of the victims of the current drugs system are, dying because of a populist and immoral set of laws that create more problems than they fix.

Now, perhaps you will stick around a bit and read up on my positive ideas for the pressing problems on which Oxford City Council could have an influence, such as affordable housing, and partnership working to bring a bit of business sense and community ownership into the management and development of community owned assets - in the process, I hope, giving more opportunities to people to do something fruitful with their lives and leisure time and not get onto drugs in the first place!

A: Before the government bans their legal substance of choice...

It was probably too good to be true, a "legal high" giving similar effects to ecstasy. And so it proves to be. The government, following orders from the bansturbators at Euro High Command (who says we still have control of our own domestic laws any longer?) is to move to ban BZP, Benzylpiperazine. According to the Guardian it is likely to become a class C substance by the end of the year:

Move to ban stimulant BZP | Science | The Guardian:
Owen Bowcott
The Guardian, Tuesday March 4 2008 Article history

BZP, a psychoactive stimulant promoted as a legal alternative to ecstasy and amphetamines, is to be banned in Britain. The government's advisory committee on the misuse of drugs will today begin the process of making it a controlled substance, following a recommendation from the European Union. It is likely to become a class C drug before the end of the year. BZP was once almost marketed as an antidepressant until its similarity to amphetamines was noted. It has been associated with vomiting, anxiety, insomnia, mood swings and seizures. It is already a controlled drug in eight EU countries. The EU action is binding and requires all EU member states to take legal action within a year. There has been no direct evidence of BZP causing death, although it has been linked to several fatalities in the UK.

I haven't tried it yet. I was going to a few weeks ago when I felt a bit down and thought it might be safer than trying to get a black market ecstasy tablet or some MDMA - it's really good for social situations that make me nervous and where I would not want to get drunk just to be able to strike up a conversation with strangers.

The whole sorry saga highlights just how idiotic the drugs laws are, and in particular the British classification system that Jacqui Smith has recently re-inforced with her deadly new death strategy. If BZP becomes a class C drug, while those it seeks to emulate are class B, amphetamines, and class A the even less harmful MDMA/ecstasy, where is the science behind that? Yup, you're right, there isn't any.

They may as well make sugar and chocolate class Bs on a whim if you ask me. Both are "linked" to several thousand fatalities each year in the UK. There's better science there it seems to me to justify that. But more than this, no doubt the search will go on for another substance, as yet uncontrolled, that will give similar effects, and the drugs laws will play catch up once again after legal businesses have built up a good trade in unadulterated doses because they can operate in country in clean, clinical lab factories and not kitchen top clandestine chemistry sets.