Misuse of Drugs Act

Surprisingly coherent view from Simon Jenkins in The Times :

The 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act has long been the most harmful, counterproductive and politically mesmeric law on the British statute book. It has long borne no relation to reality. There is hardly a young person in the land who has not tried cannabis and some four million people use it regularly, undeterred by the most draconian drug laws in Europe. These laws have left drug distribution in the hands of criminals and made British cities, small towns, even rural villages the most drug-ridden in the Western world.

The cramming of jails with users and dealers has had no deterrent effect. Indeed the Home Office's tolerance of drug abuse in its own institutions has them prime centres of hard drug addiction. Drug illegality has corrupted the police, plagued schools private and public and become the single biggest cause of industrial-scale crime. Yet successive governments have refused to reform the 1971 Act. Even the right-wing press is now in favour of reform, as are numerous opinion polls.

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