Should illicit drugs be legalised?

Western nations have been fighting a war again illicit drug use for more that half a century. Governments have made decisions, usually on public health grounds, that using certain drugs is a bad thing. The strategy to stop illicit drug use has been to criminalize its production, distribution and use.

This is clearly not working.

If anything, the criminalization of the illicit drug trade has fostered a new and more danger evil in the form of organized crime. It was the same during the prohibition in the 1920s.

It is time to try something different. It is time to start treating the use of certain drugs as a public health issue.

Governments should intervene to either the supply drugs or license suppliers. Drug should be available on prescription at prices that cut the dealers out of the market. Converting users from criminals into patients would go some way to make drugs uncool and provide greater opportunities for treatment and remediation at an individual level.  

The success of such a reform might be estimated by reference to the impact of the removal of Prohibition in 1933 and the experience in countries like Denmark and the Netherlands. In both cases substance abuse continued to some extent. But a lot of the nasty side affects went away.

We have to ask ourselves, would decriminalization of the illicit drug industry make things worse than they are now?

Richard Oakes