Posted on 05/19/2003 10:48:55 AM PDT by MrLeRoy
One of Scotland Yard's most senior officers has called for hard drugs - including crack cocaine and heroin - to be decriminalised, saying that police cannot win the war against dealers.
Chief Supt Anthony Wills, the borough commander of Hammersmith and Fulham in London, said that as the state could not control the criminal trade in drugs, it should take it over instead.
"I would have no problems with decriminalising drugs full stop," said Mr Wills. "There have to be very stringent measures over the production and supply of drugs and we have got to remove the drug market from criminals. I do not want people to take drugs but if they are going to, I want them to take them safely, with a degree of purity and in a controlled way."
Mr Wills, who heads more than 2,000 officers, said that draconian anti-drugs measures had always failed. "There are some places where people are beheaded if they sell drugs but even this does not stop the trade."
The officer, who has been a policeman for 30 years and a borough commander for six, has two teenage children and said: "I do not want my children taking drugs: what I am absolutely frightened about is that if my children want to take drugs I cannot stop them because there are animals out there who are prepared to sell them anything to make a profit."
He added: "I am not saying people should take drugs. They are very bad for you but the reality of the world we live in is this: if people want to get drugs they can get them. Drugs are a fact of life and you cannot eradicate them. My only concern is to increase the safety of the community and not to allow these ghastly people to make a fortune out of other people's misery."
Mr Wills's call, made in an interview with the Hammersmith and Shepherd's Bush Gazette, follows the controversy sparked by the Metropolitan Police's "Lambeth experiment" two years ago in which police in south London turned a blind eye to possession of cannabis.
The experiment led to allegations that hard drugs such as crack and heroin were being sold openly on the streets of Lambeth. Cdr Brian Paddick, the architect of the policy, was later suspended then reinstated over allegations that he himself had taken drugs. He has since been transferred to other duties and the experiment has been dropped.
Mr Wills, however, said that he too did not believe police should bother upholding laws on cannabis. "I am very liberal in relation to possession of drugs," he said. "Policing cannabis is a waste of our time as I do not feel the effects of cannabis are any worse than over-consumption of alcohol."
Last night his decision to air his views caused a row. Senior Conservatives said he would encourage young people to think that taking drugs was supported by the police and called on him to issue a retraction.
Ann Widdecombe, the former shadow home secretary, said: "When young people read views like this from a senior policeman they get the impression that taking drugs is okay - well it isn't. Hard drugs kill people and cannabis is proven scientifically to be harmful."
Many Conservatives also argue that the Government has encouraged confusion on the question of drugs by appearing to soften its policy. David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, has already announced that cannabis is to be downgraded from a Class B drug to Class C, meaning that possessing it will no longer be an arrestable offence.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said last night that no action was planned against Mr Wills "at this time". She added that she was not aware whether he had told Sir John Stevens, the Commissioner, of his intention to air his views.
The Home Office said: "All controlled drugs are harmful and will remain illegal. The Government's drug strategy focuses on the most dangerous drugs as the misery they cause cannot be underestimated. We have not seen the interview and so cannot comment on it."
He, unlike I, has a settle opinion that this is the case for all drugs. Now, before this thread erupts into the usual WOD idiocy with libertarians talking at cross purposes with no-brain-chemistry-modification puritans. Could we have a brief interlude where the question of whether the prohibition of particular drugs does more harm than good?
OK, if I may first note that the prohibition of any drug does harm to the principle that adults should be free to make their own non-rights-violating choices (even if the choices they make are stupid).
That grave harm aside, it's possible in principle that some prohibitions do more good than harm while other prohibitions do more harm than good. In practice, though, the most harmful drugs tend to also be the most addictive---hence the most strongly desired---hence the most expensive, and most conducive to the harms of prohibition.
Bully for you. Were you planning on telling us what it said?
And I gave the name of the book.
Good day to you, too.
The people who are most interested in keeping the War On Drugs alive are those who profit from it. Legalizing Marijuanna or any of the stuff Congress likes to call controlled substances, would eliminate the multibillion dollar profits and quickly reduce the market size. Users would be buying in stores licensed and taxed by the government, with the tax revenue going into rehabilitation programs. Even worse for the drug barons, the glamour of doing something illegal would be gone for the teenagers, and there would be no reason left for the drug gangs to hire them to push the stuff in school yards and keep the list of customers multiplying. No more knife fights and gun battles for market territory. No more no-knock raids on innocent people. No more dealers standing on neighborhood street corners. No more confiscated property.
Legalizing and licensing knocks out the profits. Politicians who support the War On Drugs are doing so for one reason only, they have a lobbiest funded by a drug baron slipping large quantities of cash into their pockets to keep the drug profits flowing. Their interest is in keeping the War On Drugs alive, well funded, and managed with the same bungling incompetence that has filled the prison system with bottom-level dealers and users, and left the big operators untroubled and the price of cocaine and heroin profitably high.
The advertisng campaigns currently used to combat drug use are part of the problem. Teenagers who have tried drugs compare the advertising to their personal experiences with the drugs and decide the government is feeding them a pile of B.S. From that point on they view anything the government tells them as propoganda no matter what the subject. This leads to a serious erosion in their faith in our political system and the intelligence and honesty of our politicians. Intelligently educating people on the dangers of drugs such as crack, cocaine, PCP, heroin, crystal methedrine, etc. would be much more efective than the current system.
Part of the tax money raised from the sale of the drugs can go into the general tax fund. That combined with the hundreds of billions of dollars of savings from eliminating the War On Drugs and the hundreds of billions of dollars of savings from reducing the number of people currently incarcerated in our prison system for drug use combined with the income taxes paid by the drug users who would be working and paying taxes instead living off our tax dollars in jail would make a tremendous differnce in reducing our overall tax burden.
All drug users are by definition criminals. Criminals are all scum.
Therefore, we should vigorously prosecute and imprison these criminals (users) as well as their dealers (criminal free market capitalists) regardless of costs (we should not let cost interfere with our prosecution of criminals.) After all, we don't let murderers off because it is expensive to keep them on death row.
Also, all drug users are immoral, by definition. We are not going to align ourselves with the forces of immorality. (Gambling, drinking alcohol, tobacco, and wild dance, while previously considered immoral are now okay because they are legal. What is illegal is by definition immoral.
Besides, they are all unwashed hippie anti-conservatives anyway, so screw them.
I proposed an analogy: the state has a legitimate interest in preventing highwire walkers from falling on disinterested partys below, even thought competent highwire walking might be argued to be a "non-rights-violating" choice. The question is whether a regime of no-knock laws, wiretaps, universal prohibition of equipment used in highwire walking, etc. is more or less harmful than lax enforcement, or abolition of laws against stringing highwires across busy streets. I think the harm of letting the occasional highwire walker fall (even onto disinterested innocents) is less than the harm of the bizarre strict enforcement regime I suggested.
This is admittedly a silly example, but it does highlight the possibility of harms to others in what would appear prima facia to be a non-rights-violating choice.
I see, we don't get the interlude of rational discussion I had hoped for. You libertarians just jump right in with philosophical assertions of abstract rights. I guess it will be only a few more posts and we'll have the "drugs ruin lives and therefore any enforcement measures are justifiable" types weighing in.
According to you, since what is illegal is by definition immoral, it was immoral to be a private businessman or pious observant Christian in Albania until recently. Of course, I guess, someone with the screen name dark_lord might be expected to take the view that might makes right, and therefore the dictates of the state are the definition of morality. On the other hand, I don't think you'll find much sympathy for your position among the vast majority of posters here who harbor the American Founding-Fathers' suspicion of the state.
Fighting to keep this nation Free is a goal that I will never surrender.
The rest of your response is just circular logic. A good programmer would reccognize it for what is, useless code and wasted memory space.
Not all harms are government's business---certainly not the harm an employee does his employer by using drugs, or drinking, or staying up too late the night before work, etc.
I proposed an analogy: the state has a legitimate interest in preventing highwire walkers from falling on disinterested partys below, even thought competent highwire walking might be argued to be a "non-rights-violating" choice.
I reject the analogy; the highwire walker is a single slip away from being a clear and present danger, whereas a string of bad choices lie between a drug user and e.g. his neglect of spousal or parental obligations.
I see, we don't get the interlude of rational discussion I had hoped for. You libertarians just jump right in with philosophical assertions of abstract rights.
How did you miss the second of my two paragraphs?
Gambling, drinking alcohol, tobacco, and wild dance, while previously considered immoral are now okay because they are legal. What is illegal is by definition immoral.
Besides, they are all unwashed hippie anti-conservatives anyway, so screw them.
Based on some of d_l's other posts, I believe he has displayed sarcasm in his post. Actually a pretty good Dane, Kevin Curry, CAGuy, Cultural Jihad impersonation.
Based on some of d_l's other posts, I believe he has displayed sarcasm in his post. Actually a pretty good Dane, Kevin Curry, CAGuy, Cultural Jihad impersonation.
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