North Wales Police chief calls for drugs to be made legal

Oct 11 2007 by Carl Butler, Daily Post

NORTH Wales’ Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom is calling for the legalisation and regulation of all drugs – and next week will ask North Wales Police Authority to back him.

The region’s top cop reckons existing drug laws are “not fit for purpose”.

“In a nutshell, I’m advocating the repeal of the Misuse of Drugs Act and the consequent legalisation and regulation of all drugs,” says Mr Brunstrom, who describes drugs prohibition as “unworkable and immoral”.

“Central to existing UK drugs policy is the ABC classification system. It is now indefensible both legally and ethically.

“It is arbitrary and subject to politically motivated manipulation. It is a disgrace.”

The Chief Constable has set out his arguments in a detailed report which will go before the Police Authority on Monday. He hopes his document will be adopted as the North Wales response to Government and Assembly Government consultations about future drugs laws in the UK.

Mr Brunstrom says: “UK drug policy for the last several decades has been based upon prohibition, with a list of banned substances placed into three classes – the ABC system – and draconian criminal penalties for the possession or supply of controlled drugs.

“This system has not worked well. Illegal drugs are now in plentiful supply, and have become consistently cheaper in real terms over the years. The number of users has increased dramatically.

“Drug related crime has soared equally dramatically as a direct consequence of the illegality of some drugs, and the huge profits from illegal trading have supported a massive rise in organised criminality.”

Mr Brunstrom wants the Authority to back him in calling for a change in the Misuse of Drugs Act to the Misuse of Substances Act which would include alcohol and nicotine.

He also calls for the Authority to affiliate to the charity Transform Drug Policy Foundation, which campaigns for the repeal of prohibition to be replaced with a legal system of regulation and control.

Yesterday the charity praised Mr Brunstrom for his “great leadership” and warns “those that denounce him should be wary of relying on what Mr Brunstrom calls ‘moralistic dogma’.”

Danny Kushlick, Transform Director said: “We are absolutely delighted at Mr Brunstrom’s paper. The Chief Constable has displayed great leadership and imagination in very publicly calling for a drug policy that replaces the evident failings of prohibition with a legal system of regulation and control for potentially dangerous drugs.”

The current system for classifying harmful drugs “illogically excludes” both alcohol and nicotine says Mr Brunstrom. In fact while alcohol and tobacco cost the NHS £1.6bn each annually, illegal drugs cost the NHS £0.8bn.

Drugs will not go away and if they cannot be eradicated the principal object of public policy has to be reducing as far as possible the harm they can do.

Despite his criticisms about the drugs law, Mr Brunstrom promises “as a police officer I will continue to enforce it to the best of my ability, despite my misgivings about its moral and practical worth.”

Police chief wants all drugs legalised UK Reuters

Police chief wants all drugs legalised

Thu Oct 11, 2007 11:20am BST

[] []

LONDON (Reuters) - North Wales police chief Richard Brunstrom has called for all drugs, including heroin, to be legalised because current policy is based on "dogma rather than evidence".

Brunstrom said the Misuse of Drugs Act should be repealed as the current UK drugs policy is based upon a "wholly outdated and thoroughly repugnant moralistic stance based upon rhetoric and dogma rather than a rational (and more ethical) philosophy".

He also pointed out that it is impossible to combat an industry worth an estimated 8 billion pounds a year in the UK.

The chief constable laid out his arguments in a response to a Home Office drugs consultation, and will present them to the North Wales Police Authority on Monday.

In a report, he calls for a new classification scheme -- a scientifically based "hierarchy of harm" to include all substances of abuse such as nicotine and alcohol.

Brunstrom argued that overwhelming evidence suggested drugs could not be eradicated and that the main aim should be to reduce as far as possible the harm they can cause.

"If policy on drugs is in future to be pragmatic not moralistic, driven by ethics not dogma, then the current prohibitionist stance will have to be swept away as both unworkable and immoral -- to be replaced with an evidence-based unified system (including tobacco and alcohol) aimed at minimisation of harms to society," the report said.

"This logical, rational and consistent approach will inexorably and inevitably lead to the legalisation and regulation of all harmful drugs, in place of the current policy of proscription and enforcement for some drugs and the legal regulation of others, selected subjectively."

He said such a policy would reduce drug-related crime and free-up funds for treatment.

That would never work here , our cops could not live on what we pay them .

Sure. Pour gasoline on a roaring fire.

Why, the whole concept will aid our culture and our society immensely.

Then legalize every current act know as perverted, immoral, unethical, or illegal.

Who needs law and order anyway? Whats that racist and profiling concept about anyway.

Just don’t ask for my tax dollars to pay for the costs of drug-related crimes and treatment programs.

He said such a policy would reduce drug-related crime and free-up funds for treatment.

Great ideas, all. Now, if the UK comes to their senses about guns and Muslims, maybe they'll survive after all. Somehow I doubt that they'll have the same eureka moment about those problems, though ...

Perhaps it is time to take the opposite approach. That of eugenics through drugs. (I’m not proposing this seriously, just that it makes for an interesting picture.)

1) On top of perpetual government welfare, why not offer the poor free drugs if they want them, as well as free sterilization? Many would choose the path of painlessness, since they have already chosen the path of failure. They just stay stoned until they die. The only difference is that society lets them, instead of throwing them in prison.

2) Prisoners should also have all the drugs they want, except that the last year of their sentence would be at a drying out facility. Being in a perpetual stupor, they would be much less prone to violence against each other and guards.

3) Embrace the philosophy of “my body, not the governments” in other regards. That if you are an adult, it is not up to government to restrict or tax you for smoking or drinking, for using illegal or prescription drugs, taking herbal medicines, refusing vaccines, trying to cure cancer with chiropractic and prayer, reckless consensual sexual activity, etc. But it is ALSO not their job to pay for anything you do to yourself in the process.

He's talking sense, prohibition never works, if you take away the illicitness you take away a great part of the allure.

"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."
- Abraham Lincoln

"The prohibition law, written for weaklings and derelicts, has divided the nation, like Gaul, into three parts -- wets, drys, and hypocrites."
- Florence Sabin