If illegal drugs are legalised then surely
drug harm MUST increase?
Two dangerous
legal drugs must be safer than 10 or more legal ones.
No! Even if overall drug use did
increase that does not mean overall drug harm would
increase. The illegal drugs are safer than the legal
ones.
Consider this parallel:
There are too many cars on the road and we don't want
to encourage more car users. What would happen if a
car manufacturer came up with a far safer design of
car? We wouldn't prohibit the trade and use of that
safer car on the grounds that overall car usage might
increase. We would encourage people to switch or to
adopt the safer option when they first bought a car.
Even if car usage did increase, as seems the trend
with cars and drugs, the harm caused by that usage
would fall.
Evidence suggests that
severe regulations are associated with greater misuse:
Advisory Council on the Misuse of
Drugs report 'The classification of cannabis under
the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971':
"Annex A: In attempting to analyse the
likely impact on prevalence of reclassification,
there is very little relevant domestic learning to
draw on. But it is possible to look at the experience
of other countries, albeit in circumstances where
civil penalties have replaced criminal sanctions. In
particular, the experiences in Australia, the
Netherlands and the United States are illustrative.
In each of these countries a reduction in the
penalties for using cannabis has not led to a
significant increase in use."
http://www.doh.gov.uk/drugs/acmd/cannabisreportmar02.pdf
Dutch, USA and UK
Drug Use Comparison Statistics from The Green Party:
"Any lifetime use of cannabis by 15 year olds (in
1995): 29% in the Netherlands; 34% in the U.S.; 41%
in the U.K. (Sources: Dutch Institute of Health and
Addiction, U.S. Institute for Drug Abuse; Council of
Europe, ESPAD Report)".
www.greenparty.org.uk/drugs/news/holland.htm
Users of the more dangerous legal drugs
will switch to the safer alternatives:
Ninety per cent of drug harm in the UK is caused
by legal drugs. Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom
said "More than 50pc of all people dying from
drugs die from tobacco, just under 50pc die from
alcohol. Five or six per cent die form all the other
drugs put together". Meanwhile safer
alternatives remain illegal. We know "the high
use of cannabis is not associated with major health
problems for the individual or society"
according the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs
whose legal duty is to advise Government about drug
dangers.
Vital factors to consider are the reasons people
take drugs and the addictiveness of drugs. The former
binds people to the drug, the latter binds the drug
to the person. We tend to take drugs mostly during
the transition from childhood to adulthood, an
understandably stressful time. By our late twenties
most have settled down to a career and family and
drug use usually declines then. This is the case with
cannabis also but not with tobacco. Tobacco is
significantly more addictive than heroin or alcohol.
Cannabis is less addictive than caffeine explaining
the ease with which users give up. Cannabis use does
seem to be the safest means of reducing stress by
means of drugs.
The increased attraction of young people
to illegal drugs will vanish:
"He had discovered a great law of human
action, without knowing it - namely, that in order to
make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only
necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain."
"Tom Sawyer," by Mark Twain, Chapter 2,
"The Glorious Whitewasher"
