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UP IN SMOKE – Should Drugs Be Legal?
By Kirk Owers | 14 September 2011 |
 Illustration By Stan Squires Every year a bunch of raw-eyed stoners get together to smoke doobies, play tribal music, dance with wood elves, paw each others stash and parade the streets of Nimbin in faded tie-dye. Mardigrass is supposed to raise support for legalising marijuana but it does very little for the cause. If anything it’s an event for concerned parents to take their teenage children and say – look, this is the kind of entertainment you settle for if you take too many drugs. What is interesting about Mardigrass is that despite its efforts pot may indeed become legal in the near future. Over the last ten years the case for legalising cannabis – and drugs in general - has gathered real momentum. The people who are leading the debate don’t live in kombis and they have no interest in space-cake. In fact they are the kind of well-groomed professionals who are usually on the other side of the divide waving fingers, billy clubs and rule books. One such collective is Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) a powerful American lobby begun by frustrated cops and law makers. These are people who know the war on drugs has been an abysmal failure. They deal with its brutal consequences every day. According to their estimation: “Prohibition costs taxpayers tens of billions of dollars every year, yet 40 years and some 40 million arrests later, drugs are cheaper, more potent and far more widely used than at the beginning of this futile crusade.” They argue that most drug-related problems are caused by prohibition not the drugs themselves. “Prohibition gives criminals a monopoly over drug supply. Driven by the huge profits criminal gangs kill each other, law enforcers, and children. The drug trade is unregulated and is, therefore, beyond our control.” LEAP want all drugs to be made legal so their distribution can be regulated and the police freed up to focus on actual crime. Their website states: “We believe that sending parents to prison for non-violent personal drug use destroys families. We believe that in a regulated and controlled environment, drugs will be safer for adult use and less accessible to our children. And we believe that by placing drug abuse in the hands of medical professionals instead of the criminal justice system, we will reduce rates of addiction and overdose deaths.” Parts of America have already begun legalizing weed via a technical loophole. 14 states have legalized medical marijuana in recent years and more than a dozen others are considering the idea. According to Time Magazine: “Pot has gone from being a prohibited substance to one that is, in many places, widely available if you have an ache or a pain and the patience to fuss with a few forms.” Their investigation suggests stoners have little trouble obtaining a doctors certificate and purchasing legal dope from a registered bud tender. The Global Commission on Drug Policy released a damning report on the global situation this June which concluded that criminalization of drugs has failed and led to devastating consequences. They call on all governments to undertake experiments to decriminalize the use of drugs, especially marijuana, to undermine the power of organised crime. Instead of punishing drug users, the commission argues that governments should “end the stigmatization of people who use drugs but who do no harm to others.” In Australia Dr Alex Wodak, director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at Sydney’s St Vincent Hospital, has been pushing for the legalization of marijuana for many years. “In a few years time, we’ll have more Australians smoking cannabis than we have smoking tobacco and by default that market is largely taken over by criminals. Having a black market that size is not good for anybody and inevitably big black markets can only survive if there’s significant police corruption,” he told a conference last year. While supporters of the current drugs laws argue that legalization would led to more drug use and bigger health problems this is contestable. Evidence from countries who are currently experimenting with decriminalization like Portugal, Germany, Switzerland suggest that drug deaths have fallen and drug use has stabilized. It’s worth stressing that no one is claiming that drugs don’t pose significant health problems but some law enforcers and medical experts believe this is in itself as a good reason to legalise them. Whatever your position on this controversial issue this much is clear: when the list of people calling for an end to the war on drugs include former police mayors, high court judges, medical experts, the current president of Greece and former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan you know this is no longer a fringe debate. X – Kirk Owers What do you think? Feel free to comment below. |
Nowhere in this article did it glorify drug taking or drug culture. Please take the time to actually read before you write. you might even learn something about sentence structure so you dont come across as a complete douche.
Your mum must be so proud..
As stated, police could concentrate their efforts on actual crime! Classic statement.
The big thing holding govts back, especially in Australia ... is FEAR. Fear of the backlash from conservatives that might see them ousted from govt. I'm talking state govts here but the Federal govt is the same.
Once people get over the fear factor, we might actually start to clean up the mess and the criminal aspects of the drug trade.
Despite its critics, the Kings X experiment for serious drug addicts to get their dose safely has worked wonders.
Many of those users would be dead if they weren't in a controlled environment.
Tracksmag readers are open minded (I assume)but geez it'd be nice to get this discussion out in the greater public.
There's always hope I s'pose.
I've often wondered this myself though have come to the conclusion t hat decriminisation is probably better than legalisation. Too many people get too damaged by drugs but making it legal isn't the answer in my view.
Cheers
Mark