h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Most low level crime exists to fund drug habits. Burglary, shoplifting, mugging etc., mostly by unemployed, unemployable underclass.

Personally, I'd be happy to pay a little more tax to fund their drug habit directly. Personally, I'd like to see heroin, ecstasy, cocaine, crack, crystal meth, cannabis and speed available on prescription, on demand. Unemployed people to get it free, paid for by the likes of me, higher rate taxpayer. I'm funding their habit anyway, by paying for police to try to stop them, prisons to lock them up, and higher prices in shops and for insurance. Why not stop all that wasted effort and expenditure and just give them the drugs they want, clean and safe(r) and cheap? It'll reduce their risk of death, it'll reduce my insurance costs, it'll also reduce my chances of ever having to meet one of these scum in my lounge in the middle of the night.

Why not?

"Personally, I'd be happy to pay a little more tax to fund their drug habit directly. Personally, I'd like to see heroin, ecstasy, cocaine, crack, crystal meth, cannabis and speed available on prescription, on demand."

Cannabis and Ecstasy aren't addictive. Unhealthy, yes, but not addictive. People can become psychologically-dependent on such drugs but that isn't the same as proper, physical addiction.

"Unemployed people to get it free, paid for by the likes of me, higher rate taxpayer."

This is such a terrible, terrible idea that it's barely worth challenging. Suffice to say, try and imagine how many bored unemployed people who want to work you'd turn into hopeless futureless junkies with this policy.

"I'm funding their habit anyway, by paying for police to try to stop them, prisons to lock them up, and higher prices in shops and for insurance. Why not stop all that wasted effort and expenditure and just give them the drugs they want, clean and safe(r) and cheap? It'll reduce their risk of death, it'll reduce my insurance costs, it'll also reduce my chances of ever having to meet one of these scum in my lounge in the middle of the night."

Reasonable argument. The problem with the "drug debate" is that there's no clean, moral side to it. Criminalise drugs and you directly boost organised crime and terrorism, leave the business in the hands of gangster-capitalism and hypocritically step on the toes of all sorts of libertarian issues (why is this drug legal and not this one etc). Legalise those same drugs and you increase availablilty and hence addiction and health problems and increase the damage to poor neighbourhoods.

A policy of "free drugs for addicts" would cut crime but would also increase attractiveness (it becomes a more risk-free habit) and create a huge underclass passing on the message that "if you get hooked you can get it from the government for nothing". Eventually, a massive junkie dependency-culture is created putting a massive strain on the welfare state which leads to cutbacks elsewhere and eventually people are going to object to the sheer, awful, unfairness of it all at the ballot box.

"try and imagine how many bored unemployed people who want to work you'd turn into hopeless futureless junkies"

Hey Sorb, I've got nowt on this week. Fancy getting us a couple of quids worth of contraband?

A good idea as long as:

a) they are slowly weaned off the stuff.
b) my cannabis dependancy is also paid for...mannnnnnn.
c) the law is changed such that if I do meet any scum in my lounge in the middle of the night it can be asumed that it's not for any dependancy and they are just plain scum and you can defend yourself to whatever level I wish.
d) the cost of insurance, food, goods etc is gauranteed to fall.

I've believed for a long time that the only answer to the crime associated with drugs is to drop the bottom out of the price and take away the vast profits that are the incentive for the criminal gangs. No profit, no incentive to supply.

How long will we have to wait for some politicians with the conjones to legalise the supply of drugs. Legalise, control access, educate on the dangers. With the example of USA prohibiton and how it funded the massive growth of the Mafia within living memory I despair of the problem being solved in my lifetime. As per usual Johann Hari, in this mornings Independent is right on the money:

http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/johann_hari/article2758791.ece

"Cannabis and Ecstasy aren't addictive."

I never said they were, and I don't give a monkey's either way. The fact is people steal in order to buy this stuff. I speak from personal experience.

"try and imagine how many bored unemployed people who want to work you'd turn into hopeless futureless junkies with this policy."

None, I'd suggest, or very, very few at worst. I'm just suggesting that, since unemployed people don't pay for prescriptions for "normal" drugs, they shouldn't pay for these.

I can't see many bored unemployed people thinking "I really want to get a job to boost my personal dignity, but I haven't found one yet. I know! Skag!".

Time and again, you give junkies - who, like the poor, will always be with us - a clean, legal supply, and crime falls. I LIKE it when crime falls. What is the problem here?

If it's concern for the wellbeing of those who are addicted - screw 'em. Personal choice and responsibility starts here. They're losers anyway, the best we can do as a society is make sure they're law-abiding, non-violent losers, so let's do that. It's not giving up on them - they've already given up on themselves. It's protecting us from what they will and do do if they can't get what they want. It's cheap, and easy to do.

I honestly don't understand why we don't do it.

I heard a very persuasive talk about this given by a former drug enforcement agent, might have been a cop. He was in favour of legalising, not merely decriminalising, all drugs. He pointed out that the war on drugs had not reduced the number of addicts, nor had any drug law ever passed. His most important point was:

If you legalise drugs, you're not addressing the drug problem. If you legalise drugs, you're addressing the CRIME and VIOLENCE problem.

When you've done that, then you can address the drug problem constructively. But the surely the sensible first thing to do is stop people shooting each other over turf, stealing from people to pay for habits, etc.

SoRB

"I honestly don't understand why we don't do it."

Here's a thing to think over. A while ago, in one of his typically-hectoring TV shows, Mark Thomas covered the "drug debate". In order to make his pro-legalisation argument more palatable he focussed on people who use cannabis for medicinal purposes. He took such a user to Jack Straw (then Home Secretary). Straw was told that Thomas had someone with him who had cannabis for medicinal purposes. Straw promptly informs police and has man arrested. The show encouraged my initial response which was "isn't Straw an awful man?! Who would do such a thing?! Clearly wrong!". Having grown up a lot since then and got a lot more life experience the true nature of Straw's actions is obvious. It was clearly morally the wrong thing to do but in his position he had no choice and could have acted in no other way and Thomas was clearly setting him up to make a point. If Straw had not acted in the way he did the opposition would have latched onto his non-actions as proof of hypocrisy and unsuitability for office. The press would have attacked him mercilessly. All this over one small incident in which right and wrong are quite clear cut.

Now take the bigger picture and the ambiguity of the "drug debate" wirh its "no side has the moral high ground" murkiness and try mixing in political opportunism and the state of the print and broadcast media. Try and imagine just *one* party advocating the legalisation (even decriminialisation) of just *one* drug and imagine the forces that could be brought to bear.

There are doubtless dozens of people in all parties as well as in the police and judiciary who'd agree with your analysis and would never openly take on the anti-drug argument. It's too emotive and too well-supported.

It's also worth remembering that the anti-drug argument plays to idealism. Faced with the reality of the extent of drug use in spite of drug laws you'll get the argument "yes, but is this *really* the sort of society we want? Shouldn't we be working to try and *prevent* this rather than legally acknowledge it? If we save just one life isn't this *worth* fighting for?" I've encountered this sort of mentality in debates about all sorts of things and it's one that, regardless of its overwhelming naivete and almost-religious (indeed often actually-religious) utopianism will not brook any sort of quarter to hard-headed reality. It's hopelessly blind to the fact that it's desire to create a better world ends up making a worse one and, when it's pointed out that it does, well how can *it* be at fault?! It's the world's fault for not playing along! It has to try *harder*!

This is the strongest, most emotive argument in the anti-drug armoury and it's the one that will be trotted out in major newspapers and TV programmes as soon as anyone is foolish enough to advocate even a mild liberalisation of drug laws. We can change society to think differently? Think again, the "drug debate" hasn't moved-on in forty years and people have known the "war against drugs" has been a formality that's going nowhere for over a decade.

"As per usual Johann Hari, in this mornings Independent is right on the money:

http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/johann_hari/article2758791.ece
"

I have something of a love-hate relationship with Hari, a decent and thoughtful man who sometimes writes fatuous nonsense (see his ridiculous article about the BBC having a "rightwing bias"). That's not a bad article but it's shooting fish in a barrel - IDS is an idiotic old Thatcherite and his drug propositions are ridiculous (especially his "solution" to heroin addiction which shows an astonishing lack of common sense and a great deal of Tory wishful-thinking. It's so silly I'm wouldn't be surprised if Hari has quoted him out of context).

I also tend to think that legalising and regulating drugs is a more sensible approach. For a start, there's an issue of freedom - people should be free to take drugs which harm themselves, unless it also harms others (so a smoking ban in public places might be more justifiable than a ban on cocaine). Legalising them would bring the prices down which would put the illegal dealers out of business and mean that you wouldn't have so much crime to fund habits. I think that also SoRB overstates the cost of introducing this - it would probably mean a long term cut in taxes because there would be less crime and police work. I read some time ago that the value of the world cocaine market is only a small fraction of the US 'war on drugs' budget.

On the other hand, I think Zagreb's right that you might have some serious negative social consequences.

The ideal institutional arrangement would mean that there was no financial incentive to illegally deal in drugs (to eradicate the organised crime element), but a (preferably non-intrusive) disincentive to getting addicted to them (to minimise the social impact). Is there a way of coming up with a system that would do that? I'm having a hard time thinking of one.

I live across the water from one of the most concentrated centres of drug abuse in North America, Vancouver's downtown Eastside. The only policy that has seemed to have any effect is the *Four Pillars* program started by the city government some time ago. http://www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/fourpillars/

It includes the controversial government funded (perhaps not for long) safe injections sites and methodone treatment. It is making progress, albeit painfully slow progress and hopes are that by 2010 and the olympics things may be better.

As far as pot, we have an active culture with such places as the *New Amsterdam Cafe* http://www.clubvibes.com/listings/listingsdetail.asp?id=2505 and the *BC Marijuana Party* http://www.bcmarijuanaparty.com/ both of which operated pretty much unimpeded until US foreigh policy and the US DEA stepped in through international law. Before then it was mostly live and let live and no one seemed to be hurt or seen as not contributing to the economy. Indeed, the pot bidnez in BC was estimated to be worth as much as a billion dollars a year. This brings me to the figures I see plastered all over the papers when it comes to drugs.

Is it really a billion dollars? Is heroin up there at hundreds of millions of dollars every year? E? Various other drugs? If that truly is the case then there must be a helluva lot of functioning drug addicts out there because the cost of property crime numbers don't add up. Is my dentist on heroin? My lawyer? Does the bus driver smoke pot? In all probability they might, but I don't care as long as they do their job well and don't make mistakes under the influence. If they do then they should be prosecuted, punished and barred from doing whatever they did. Otherwise I'm just as likely to give the nod to my grocer who is a functioning alcoholic.

"a (preferably non-intrusive) disincentive to getting addicted to them"

There already is one. It the well known fact that drug addicts are losers. I have the money and the contacts to support a pretty good skag habit, if I wanted one. But I choose not to do it, because I prefer to spend my time and money on things that don't turn me into a constipated idiot.

I'd like society to acknowledge that there is a small but measurable percentage - maybe 1% - of people who really will, of their own free will, choose to do this stuff. I'd like it to also acknowledge that the rest of us, the other 99%, might perhaps *try* it, but ultimately reject it because basically we're sensible and looking out for our own self-preservation.

Would legalising drugs lower crime though? Or are criminals just likely to move on to the next easy scam? Car crime is high, would giving everyone a free car lead to a drop in car thefts?

After the American Prohibition ended, did the Mob hang up the knuckledusters and become law-abiding tax-payers?

I'm not entirely sure that legalising drugs would lower crime significantly. Drugs have fallen in price in real terms - (a quick bit of research with a Young Adult reveals that hash is still £15 a quarter and heroin is still £10 a bag, same as it was 20 years ago. Cocaine has become significantly more affordable though). It also appears that availability has soared over the same period. As the price has come down and supply has gone up, has crime fallen? Has it heck as like.

IMO, drug abuse is used as a handy catch-all to cover a huge rise in criminality. But whilst we're all hung up on the idea that most low-level crime is committed by drooling smackheads, we're not even bothering to look at what other factors may be to blame.

I don't know what they are: could be social inequality, poor parenting, failing education systems or increased cosmic rays. Somebody will probably come along soon and blame it on the slave tade. Truth is, there could be loads of reasons but while we continue to march to the tune of the War on Drugs beat and collectively chorusing "Crack causes crime", we'll never find out.

In reply to Zagreb's long post, I'm going to pick out just one line to respond to:

"It's also worth remembering that the anti-drug argument plays to idealism."

The anti-Iraq war movement played to idealism. It mobilised perhaps two MILLION people onto the streets of London to protest. The third largest party in the British parliament openly opposed it. The second largest meekly supported it at the time, but now say they wouldn't have if they'd known then etc. etc. Few people outside the government thought it was a good idea, or supported it.

And it happened anyway.

IF a government with a reasonable control over its party and a decent majority has the will, religious, moralistic opposition will be irrelevant. We have seen, over and over again over the last ten years, that if a government decides to do something, it simply doesn't matter what anyone else thinks.

As long as the Americans approve.

And there's the rub. There is NO POINT lobbying our government about this. The drug laws in this country will not change until the drug laws in the US change. Any discussion is academic.

Let's hope President Clinton rides in on a massive wave of goodwill, wins a second term, and in her second term with nothing to prove and no third term to seek, pushes legalisation through. It could happen. I doubt it, but I hope it does.

SoRB

"Would legalising drugs lower crime though?"

Every time it's been tried, it's worked. Over and over again, if you stop criminalising drug users, give them treatment and drugs instead of punishment, crime in the area you're doing that *plummets*, often practically overnight.

"Or are criminals just likely to move on to the next easy scam?"

The *organisations* of criminals who live off the drug trade will, indeed, attempt to diversify. Prostitution, gambling, 'protection', etc. will likely be their focusses, as ever. The end of Prohibition did not, it's true, see the end of gangsters.

But those aren't the criminals we're talking about. Those people are not the people who burgle my house, mug me or break into my car. The people who do that are the addicts, people who despite the low prices and easy availability, need more than they can afford.

Also, if you simply stop chasing people, arresting them, locking them up, fingerprinting them, interviewing them, cautioning them, prosecuting them and jailing them for having a spliff, how much time and money do you save *immediately* that could be better spent addressing crimes that have victims?

"Car crime is high, would giving everyone a free car lead to a drop in car thefts?"

Daft question deserves daft answer: yes, it would. And if we could afford to do it, as a nation, and the environmental consequences weren't nightmarish, we WOULD do it. As it is, as a society, until recently we had a nationalised railway system and local authority controlled bus systems. That was the best we could do, short of buying everyone a car. But if the means existed to give everyone a car for free - why wouldn't you?

Thing is though, I don't *think* most car thefts are acquisitive crime. Could be wrong, but I believe most cars that get taken are taken for thrills and giggles, not because the person wants the car. OR they're taken in order that they be sold on for cash - again, it's not the car that's the focus, it's the money.

SoRB

The drug laws are laughable, and the so-called 'drug war', if not lost is very nearly lost. Making all drugs legal would in the first place stop everyone and anyone who takes drugs being a 'criminal' by vertue of taking drugs. Don't forget it ain't just low life scum that take drugs, I think it'd be harder to find someone who'd never taken illegal drugs than someone who took them, doctors, cat-walk models, rock stars, the bloke next door and the girl serving in the fish n chip shop they're all liekly to have experimented, or even heavens forbid partake in a bit of weekend/evening recreinational drug use. Whilst its so easy to puchase illegal drugs in any city or town, it'd seem to suggest that the current position of their illegality is pretty much pointless anyhow.
I doubt very much that legalising them would affect (in the medium to long term) the number of addicts/users, its not difficult to get hold of anything that might take ya fancy as it is, so having them legal wouldn't really alter that much at all. Anyhow, isn't have the deal with drugs and half the appeal (or part of it anyhow), that they are* illegal; tell the kid not to put his fingers in the socket... what will he do? The profets from the tax on drugs could be used to fund rehab for addicts, set up free needle exchanges (thereby preventing the harmful affects of dirty needle use). And with so much crime being drug related, it'd almost certainly reduce the bill from teh poliece, not to mention reducing the amount of muggings, burglery and such like low level crime to which drug addicts resort to fund their addiction.
But of course it'll never happen, especially in the UK with government moving ever closer towards banning already legal drugs... right, where'd I put me charley?

To those people who think free drugs would mean a huge surge in drug use I have to say you are 100% right. That's not the horror scenario it may seem though.

Let me tell you about a friend of mine: He got a decent job while he was still living at home with his family and with his new relatively huge disposable income he bought an ounce of weed. He was able to smoke as much as his lungs and twisted noodle could handle give some away to close friends and sell to not so close firends and still come out on top from it. From that day to this he has never paid for a spliff in his life. Is he on heroin now?

No.

He doesnt even smoke weed much anymore. Life has got in the way for him but he will have th occassional session with old friends. Friends who are mixed bag of hardcore tokers and simillar busy people with jobs and hobbies that require a clear head.

I know heroin addicts who work (legal jobs not stuff like prostitution)though they are in the minority and most coke-heads I know do work. I think the situation would stablise pretty soon if people treated illegal drugs booze the same way they do booze as a recreational thing that is a *part* of your life. For this to happen we need the law to allow for that to legally happen.

Sure there are and would remain many who are so mentally/emotinally fragile that heroin either drags thenm down or becomes their buffer against reality. Having met many addicts Im still not sure which way round it is. They are suffering already to pretend that our curent drug laws are protecting anyone is sheer bloodyminded ignorance of the all to apparent facts.

one ove

Does anyone remember how Ecstasy was going to be the end of civilisation as we knew it. Well it seems there is still enough of it left for global warming and terrorits to have a go at

The real question is what are all the law enforcement workers going to do when people arent being searched for drugs arrested or imrpisoned. What wil the police have to keep them busy if they arent fingerprinting burgled houses and saying "Dont get your hopes up that we'll catch 'em" to victims of crime. Then there's the glazers replacing broken windows, tabloid headline rights shocking no one at all with their Liam Gallagher *exclusives*. The list goes on but if they arent doing all that reptative stuff maybe we as a nation might get back to do ing useful things.

Drugs mean jobs.

Usually crap jobs that stop us getting on with the business of progress. So we should stop chasing our tails admit the facts and move on.

SoRB, do you drink? And if so, why doesn't that make you a loser?

I assume beacause he doesn't break into someone's house to get enough cash to buy a pint?

SWL,

"Would legalising drugs lower crime though? Or are criminals just likely to move on to the next easy scam?"

It's an interesting question, and I think we need an economist to help answer it. By legalising drugs, or even more extremely by making them freely available, you'd eliminate the market for illegal drugs. What happens when you eliminate part of a market? My guess would be that some of the people working in the illegal drugs market could move into other illegal markets, but their margins would be smaller (otherwise why wouldn't they have moved into those markets before?). Again, I'm only guessing here, but wouldn't that mean that the illegal economy as a whole would be smaller and so would employ less people? And that's just the supply side. Lowering the prices of drugs or making them free might mean that a low paying legal job might be a better prospect than crime to fund a drug habit.