Simon Jenkins (Chairman of the National Trust)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/16/drugs-politics-not-drugs-policy-inquiry
‘Britain on drugs is where China is on hanging, Saudi Arabia on beating, Russia on censorship and the Taliban on girls’ education. Drugs policy is the last legislative wilderness where “here be dragons”, a hangover from days when abortion and homosexuality were illegal and divorce expensive. It petrified home secretaries of left and right alike, Jack Straw and Jacqui Smith as much as Kenneth Clarke and Theresa May. So scared was Tony Blair that Alastair Campbell had to order the smothering of the 2000 Runciman report.’
‘Most sensible people find the present regime disastrous and want drugs regulated, rather than the wild west that is the urban drug scene today. It is politicians who think “soft on drugs” implies some loss of potency.’
‘The menace to public health comes from the failure of government to legalise, test and regulate supply, which is what it should do for all narcotics.’
‘We are dealing with the darkest of bourgeois taboos. Of all the things on which the world has declared “war” in modern times, self-harming substances must be the daftest. Yet the result has been to destroy millions of lives, expend trillions of dollars, and helplessly corrupt sovereign states, from Afghanistan to Colombia. It is the greatest single failure of modern statecraft. It is the dark ages, and we are still in them.’
