The northlondonhippy

It’s clear to any­one with an open mind and access to the facts that the pro­hi­bi­tion on drugs is not work­ing on any level. Sup­plies are at an all time high, potency is up while prices con­tinue to fall and pris­ons world­wide are filled with oth­er­wise law abid­ing folks who are no threat to soci­ety or other peo­ple. Yet, in the face of all that, our lead­ers con­tinue to cling to irra­tional poli­cies that only make the sit­u­a­tion worse.

I’ve been pro-legalisation for many, many years. I can see the seri­ous harm that cur­rent drug leg­is­la­tion causes to soci­eties around the world and that dam­age it does to indi­vid­u­als. As an oth­er­wise law abid­ing cit­i­zen myself, I find it absolutely abhor­rent that I am crim­i­nalised because I enjoy smok­ing cannabis in the pri­vacy of my own home.

There has been much made in the media recently over cannabis with many trumped up scare sto­ries based on weak sci­ence and a rep­e­ti­tion of non-facts to jus­tify a reclas­si­fi­ca­tion of weed back to Class B from its cur­rent sta­tus of Class C. Those of us who have taken the time to exam­ine the facts know that this is a polit­i­cally moti­vated move, meant to make our new lead­er­ship appear strong on the drug issue, with no regard for how it effects soci­ety. When it comes to drugs, most peo­ple in power refuse to be ratio­nal on the sub­ject, instead they prey on your emotions.

Cur­rent drug pol­icy is built on these twin themes, of attempt­ing to appear tougher than your oppo­si­tion and appeal­ing to people’s emo­tional and moral views. The pre­vail­ing cri­te­ria for deal­ing with this com­plex issue should not be based on any­thing other than, clear, ratio­nal, com­mon sense. Laws should pro­vide the most ben­e­fit to the most peo­ple. That’s com­mon sense. Cur­rent drug leg­is­la­tion ben­e­fits only one group of peo­ple, the black mar­ke­teers who insure their wares are read­ily avail­able to any­one who wants them at wildly inflated prices.

You don’t have to believe me, as there is a cover story in the most recent edi­tion of a pub­li­ca­tion called “For­eign Pol­icy” which has been mak­ing waves in polit­i­cal cir­cles around the world. This rather con­ser­v­a­tive, respected and high­brow mag­a­zine is call­ing for the com­plete legal­i­sa­tion of all drugs. It’s extremely well-presented, thought­fully con­sid­ered and thought pro­vok­ing and wor­thy of your valu­able surf­ing time. Please read it by CLICKING RIGHT HERE.

It’s not just crazy, pseudo-intellectual hip­pies based in north Lon­don who want to see drugs made legal. A top police offi­cer, a bit closer to home has come to the same con­clu­sion. Richard Brun­strom, the Chief Con­sta­ble of North Wales is prepar­ing to sub­mit just such a pro­posal to the Home Sec­re­tary, lay­ing out this very sen­si­ble solu­tion regard­ing ille­gal sub­stances. My friends at the Inde­pen­dent news­pa­per had THIS STORY on the front page of their news­pa­per on Monday.

When­ever I’ve per­son­ally spo­ken to law enforce­ment offi­cers or read about their views in the press, they always seem to sup­port decrim­i­nal­i­sa­tion or legal­i­sa­tion. These are the peo­ple on the front lines in the “war on drugs”, so their voices should carry a bit more weight and grav­i­tas than even our elected politi­cians, who remain blink­ered to reality.

Here’s another exam­ple of the view from some­one for­mally, very senior in law enforce­ment. Lord Rams­botham, who used to be the chief inspec­tor of pris­ons, has come out in full sup­port of Chief Con­sta­ble Brunstrom’s pro­pos­als. Again, my friends at the Inde­pen­dent pub­lished THIS REPORT today, which details Lord Ramsbotham’s comments.

As an aside, I’m still con­tin­u­ing to be amused by the giant schism between the Inde­pen­dent (the one pub­lished Mon-Sat) and the Inde­pen­dent on Sun­day regard­ing drugs. While the daily ver­sion of the Indy con­tin­ues to pro­vide fairly bal­anced and com­mend­able cov­er­age on cannabis, the IoS is fol­low­ing a pol­icy of mis­rep­re­sent­ing facts to jus­tify fic­ti­tious ban­ner head­lines nearly every Sunday.

I’m sure some­one at the Indy is track­ing back to my site and read­ing this. I’m also cer­tain I can’t be the only one amused by this silly sit­u­a­tion and I bet their own employ­ees are laugh­ing too!

The most recent exam­ple of this poor level of jour­nal­ism in the Inde­pen­dent on Sun­day, was a mis­quote from Mr. Nice, Howard Marks regard­ing an as-yet unproved link between cannabis use and psy­chosis. I won’t pro­vide a link, so as not to fur­ther embar­rass the IoS, but what Mr. Marks said is that the sit­u­a­tion is wor­thy of fur­ther study and the ques­tion was sim­i­lar to that old favourite, which came first, the chicken or the egg? Does cannabis cause psy­chosis or does hav­ing psy­chosis help steer peo­ple towards cannabis for relief? It should be stud­ied fur­ther, because the reports so far are extremely incon­clu­sive and like most things in this world, far more com­plex than a news­pa­per head­line can allow.

The gov­ern­ment has already said that a proper rethink on drugs pol­icy is out of the ques­tion, Their minds are closed to even pos­ing the ques­tion for debate. In a free and open soci­ety, how is that ben­e­fi­cial to anyone?

I don’t under­stand what the prob­lem is with ratio­nal thought, exam­in­ing the hard facts and reach­ing a sen­si­ble, common-sense con­clu­sion. I apply these sim­ple rules to absolutely every­thing in my life, both pro­fes­sion­ally and per­son­ally and these this approach has never, ever let me down.

Why can’t we present the facts prop­erly? Why do we have to be ruled by peo­ple who refuse to con­sider things unemo­tion­ally? Why can’t we just do what’s right and ratio­nal? Shouldn’t we all be doing our best to make the world a bet­ter place?

I just sited sev­eral exam­ples of intel­li­gent, ratio­nal peo­ple, with expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge on the sub­ject of drugs, offer­ing up alter­na­tive views on some­thing we all agree is a prob­lem that requires a solu­tion. Why won’t they lis­ten? Why do the pow­ers that be auto­mat­i­cally react as a reflex in attempt­ing to dis­credit both the mes­sage and the messenger?

Wouldn’t chang­ing our tack on drugs be pru­dent? Isn’t our new PM sup­posed to be a fan of pru­dence? Isn’t he in favour of a free mar­ket econ­omy? Doesn’t he claim to care about the future of Britain? Then why won’t he even enter­tain a full and frank dis­cus­sion of the issue? Is there a wider agenda which lurks beneath all of this?

I don’t have the answers, but I do have some more thoughts on the sub­ject, which many of you know is near and dear to this hippy’s heart. I’ll be return­ing to the sub­ject soon, with a glance in the direc­tion of the lat­est anti-drug phe­nom­e­non, the cannabis-hysteria mum as well as offer­ing a pos­si­ble expla­na­tion why cannabis is cur­rently under such a seri­ous assault from the estab­lish­ment. Bet you all just can’t wait!

(read the hippy’s cannabis truth series)

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