{"id":4181,"date":"2012-02-25T15:12:02","date_gmt":"2012-02-25T13:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/?p=4181"},"modified":"2012-03-03T13:03:21","modified_gmt":"2012-03-03T11:03:21","slug":"war-against-drug-for-over-40-years-what-changed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/journalism\/war-against-drug-for-over-40-years-what-changed\/","title":{"rendered":"Over 40 years of “war on drugs”… What changed?"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘Will anything sensible be done?’ asked Gore Vidal about the drug war, 40 years ago. So far, there’s no sign. <\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Last week Tom Chivers posted a blog in which he observed that Portugal has recorded a fifty per cent drop in \u201cproblem drug users\u201d, since they decriminalised all drugs. Will our government take note and act accordingly? Don\u2019t be silly.<\/p>\n

In 1970 \u2013 half a lifetime ago \u2013 Gore Vidal wrote in The New York Times: \u201cIt is possible to stop most drug addiction in the United States within a very short time. Simply make all drugs available and sell them at cost. Label each drug with a precise description of what effect \u2013 good and bad \u2013 the drug will have on the taker.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was unlikely, he suggested, that \u201cany reasonably sane person will become a drug addict if he knows in advance what addiction is going to be like\u201d.<\/p>\n

Of course, as he admitted, not everyone is reasonably sane. Some who took drugs would indeed become addicts, just as some drinkers succumb to alcoholism. Yet, despite the dire warnings \u2013 and lies \u2013 of our medical establishment, most people who drink alcohol manage their lives well enough, and neither kill themselves with booze nor find their way to Alcoholics Anonymous. Same, again despite dire warnings, with drug users. One of the two surviving Beatles announced the other day that he had given up smoking cannabis. It\u2019s a long time since the Sixties and Sir Paul is still going strong.
\n
\nIn maintaining our drug laws, the Government is in cahoots with the dealers. As Vidal put it forty years back: \u201cBoth the Bureau of Narcotics and the Mafia want strong laws against the sale and use of drugs because if drugs are sold at cost there would be no money in it for anyone. If there was no money for the Mafia, there would be no friendly playground pushers, and addicts would not commit crimes to pay for the next fix. If there was no money in it, the Bureau of Narcotics would wither away, something they are not about to do without a struggle.\u201d Vidal asked \u201cwill anything sensible be done?\u201d , and gave the answer, \u201cof course not\u201d.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s still the answer here, and so the alliance between the politicians, the police, and the drug dealers still holds firm. Who benefits? Silly question. We all know the answer.<\/p>\n

A disclaimer is perhaps necessary. I have no experience of cocaine or heroin, and I have smoked perhaps a dozen joints in my life, so long ago that I can\u2019t even remember whether I inhaled or, like President Clinton, refrained from doing so. Even my drinking days are far behind me. So it\u2019s as a disinterested spectator of the ludicrous “War on Drugs” that I suggest it\u2019s about time the Government stopped encouraging crime and followed the advice Gore Vidal offered a couple of years before David Cameron went to prep school.\n<\/p>\n

\nSource:: telegraph.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘Will anything sensible be done?’ asked Gore Vidal about the drug war, 40 years ago. So far, there’s no sign. Last week Tom Chivers posted a blog in which he observed that Portugal has recorded a fifty per cent drop in \u201cproblem drug users\u201d, since they decriminalised all drugs. Will our government take note and act accordingly? Don\u2019t be silly. In 1970 \u2013 half a lifetime ago \u2013 Gore Vidal wrote in The New York Times: \u201cIt is possible to stop most drug addiction in…<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,71,20,15,25,33,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-censorship","category-drugs-medicine","category-health","category-journalism","category-military","category-nature","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ph7OQR-15r","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.psyched.be\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}