Wednesday 22 August 2012

Excellent interview with Amanda Feilding in the New Statesman


Amanda Feilding: "Tobacco kills 100,000 a year - cannabis a handful throughout history"


I'm really pleased to see another article/post that makes perfect sense when it comes to the illogical policies that are in place world wide when it comes to illicit drugs.  I know it's always easy to talk up people who agree with you but I really think she makes a lot of sense:


"What is your stance on legalisation?
[Drug laws] are often at variance with human rights: it is not clear why a person’s enjoyment of a recreational drug, so long as it causes no harm to anybody else, should be a criminal offence. The war on drugs is a war on drug users – because users are criminalised and must operate in the underworld, they are exposed to drugs of unknown purity and contaminated injecting equipment, and access to treatment is much more difficult.

How could the laws be fixed?
A first vital step would be to decriminalise the possession of drugs for personal use so long as no other crime is committed, as has happened in Portugal and the Czech Republic. A more radical policy, ruled out under the current UN conventions, would be to create a strictly regulated, legal and taxed market in a drug. The obvious starting point would be cannabis."

I have wrote about this subject often, I wish I could do so as well and coherently as she does (although I guess it is her job!) I hope she is very successful in persuading people and helping them to see her point of view.

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