To stimulate the debate, Alex Wodak of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation and Jo Baxter from Drug Free Australia shared very different views about how we should control access to drugs.
http://yourview.org.au/issues/10-Should-illicit-drugs-be-legalised-in-Australia
Ignoring the good advice of Families and Friends for Drug Law Reform:
http://www.ffdlr.org.au/resources/docs/ActivistGuide.htm
... I wrote way too much, way too complex :)
I encourage you all to have a go at articulating what you believe and why. I think it's time to speak up and make a difference.
I can't link directly to my comment at YourView, but here's what I wrote.
Regulate like alcohol (or better)
Drugs are dangerous, so we should regulate them. Paradoxically, prohibition is no regulation at all. We can only regulate what is legal. Criminal suppliers do not ask for age identification and are not forced to guarantee the quality, purity, or even identity of the products they sell. In contrast, the government regulates the production, packaging, marketing and availability of alcohol and tobacco, just as it regulates cars and all aspects of road transport. Clearly, it is possible to regulate behaviours that some consider dangerous, so that mature, responsible individuals can undertake them safely and with benefit.Drugs were not "an enormous social and health problem" in 1961 when the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs created the International Narcotics Control Board, banned Cannabis, and enabled enormous criminal profits. Prohibition was ideological from the start, and based on flawed research that was tainted by racist and ethnocentric prejudices.
50 years later, by all measures, drugs now cause great harm in every country. But by far the most harm associated with drugs is created or exacerbated by prohibition and the police, prison and treatment industries and criminal cartels that feed off the system. Prohibition has done nothing to reduce the risk of actual harms that drugs pose, like addiction. And the harms that prohibition has created - incarceration, massive corruption, violent criminal gangs, and drugs that are not what the dealer claims they are - are much greater than any harm the drugs themselves might cause.
"The vast majority of drug users world wide are casual users who cause no harm to themselves or others."
http://www.undrugcontrol.info/en/issues/ending-the-war-on-drugs/item/3051-drug-policy-in-the-andes
Despite the real harms that prohibition creates, most white educated drug users are getting away with it. The heaviest burden falls on people who are already disadvantaged - black communities in the US and impoverished communities in supplier nations.
One more argument: a moral one. We can't grow up under prohibition, which seeks to ban choices we may regret: choices that challenge us to grow. Obedience is an immature virtue at best, and often very much worse.
I value my drug experiences because they have challenged me to grow and connect. I would prefer to buy these tools from a regulated supplier, so I can be confident of what I am buying and what sort of inebriation I can expect. And so that my purchase doesn't profit violent criminal gangs or corrupt government officials. Like I can buy alcohol. Legally and regulated.
