• “The last few years have seen an extraordinary shift in thinking about this issue with increasingly mainstream figures arguing we should consider legalisation as an alternative to what they regard as the failure of the law-enforcement strategy.“ – BBC’s Mark Easton 

• “I think what was truly depressing about my time in the civil service
  was that the professionals I met from every sector held the same view:
  the illegality of drugs causes far more problems for society and the
  individual than it solves. Yet publicly, all those people were forced
  to repeat the mantra that the Government would be "tough on drugs",
  even though they all knew that the policy was causing harm.” -  Julian Critchley (Ex- director of the UK Anti-Drug Co-Ordination Unit)

• "The
  only completely effective way to ameliorate the drug problem, and
  especially the crime which results from it, is to bring the industry
  into the open by legalising the distribution and consumption of all
  dangerous drugs, or at the very least by decriminalising their
  consumption." - Alan Duncan MP, Conservative Former Cabinet Member

• "If the UN is right and drugs account for 70 per cent of organised
  criminal activity,’ argues Glenny, ‘then the legalisation of drugs
  would administer by far the deadliest blow possible against
  transnational organised criminal networks." - Misha Glenny

• And here we come to the vital distinction between the advocacy of
  temperance and the advocacy of prohibition. Temperance and self-control
  are convertible terms. Prohibition, or that which it implies, is the
  direct negation of the term self-control. In order to save the small
  percentage of men who are too weak to resist their animal desires, it
  aims to put chains on every man, the weak and the strong alike. And if
  this is proper in one respect, why not in all respects? Yet, what would
  one think of a proposition to keep all men locked up because a certain
  number have a propensity to steal? – Felix Mendelsohn, 1915

•  "The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably
  by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for
  the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot
  be enforced." – Albert Einstein

• "As long as the government can arbitrarily decide which substances are
  legal and which are illegal, then those who remain behind bars for
  illegal substances are political prisoners." – Paul Krassner, 1999

• "There is, in my opinion, no government policy that is as immoral as
  drug prohibition…" – Nobelprisvinner i økonomi, Milton Friedman

• The government is good at job creation. Every arrest of a drug dealer creates a new high-paying job opening. – Peter Guither

• "In the end, legalization of certain substances may be the only way to
  bring prices down, and doing so may be the only remedy to some of the
  worst aspects of the drug plague: violence, corruption, and the
  collapse of the rule of law." – Jorge Costaneda – Mexican Foreign Minister
  

• “No
  one is asking for some free-for-all for drugs. I want drugs to be
  controlled and regulated, but we do not want to allow what has happened
  over the past thirty years to continue, whereby, in an illegal market,
  criminals – irresponsible people – sell poisoned drugs that kill young
  people. We want to say to those irresponsible people that we will
  control them, take their market away and not allow young people to be
  their victims any more. I believe that the experience of Switzerland
  and the Netherlands, and now of other countries, is that the only way
  to do that effectively is to collapse the market by replacing it with
  one that can be regulated, licensed and controlled." – Paul Flynn MP Labour

• “The fundamental problem is the collision between the dramatic rise in
  the use of drugs and a policy that prohibits them. I say to the noble
  Lord, Lord Alton, that drug users impinge on the rights of other people
  only when they steal, and they have to do that only because of
  prohibition.” Liberal Democrat Baroness Walmsley

• "I joined the unit more or less agnostic on drugs policy, being
  personally opposed to drug use, but open-minded about the best way to
  deal with the problem…However, during my time in the unit, as I saw
  more and more evidence of ‘what works’, to quote New Labour’s mantra of
  the time, it became apparent to me that … enforcement and supply-side
  interventions were largely pointless. They have no significant, lasting
  impact on the availability, affordability or use of drugs." – Julian Critchley -Former director of the UK Anti-Drug Coordination Unit in the Cabinet Office

Vurdert til: av 114 lesere

Tips oss hvis dette innlegget er upassende