"Let young have drugs instead of drink"

We've had this discussion before. I agree it is a very sad state of affairs when people have to come up against the whole drug market in order to procure drugs that they need for an addiction.

However, this is a very complex matter and the question I have is this: there is a huge street market in many of the 'legal' drugs currently. In a recent interview Ginger Baker (drummer from Cream) said that he got hooked on morphine in the 1970s because "people were selling on when their script was more than they needed". This still goes on - there is a flourishing illegal street market in legally prescribed drugs - painkillers, benzodiazepines, methadone, nutritional supplements (I kid you not), theft of prescription pads. It is also not someone having a few spliffs on Necker Island. It affects the poor and the dispossessed. So IMHO no easy answer.

Well, we can see the damage legalised drugs (alcohol and cigarettes) do, and that includes crime of all kinds including gangs producing illegal and smuggling alcohol. I seem to remember a couple of men being killed drinking illegally produced hooch only a couple of years ago. Plus, of course, cigarette smuggling.

I would like to see using drugs decriminalised but dealers hit hard and even those sharing drugs with others being penalised. Remember a young girl died when she and friends accessed drugs at a party where the parent was absent but had a stash of drugs for personal use hidden in a cupboard.

I would like drug and alcohol use seen as an aggravating circumstance when a crime is committed rather than a mitigating circumstance as it is at present. If you hit someone when you are drunk/under the influence of drugs you get a higher sentence than if you werent and so forth.

Agreed, Jess! Sometimes it's the illegality that makes these things attractive, and of course it engenders so much drug related crime, from shoplifting to gang warfare.

The Economist has been arguing for legalising drugs for a long time. The argument is that illegal drugs create crime. Gangs of young men in London for instance, selling drugs. The kind of thing that happened during prohibition of alcohol in the USA. Also that legal drugs will not be cut with poisons and will be standard strengths. Which would reduce heroin deaths. All of these are very good arguments.
I cannot see any UK government moving much in this direction though.

I was at a conference recently where I heard Baroness Meacher speak on this. I thought she was dreadful, meandered, didn't really seem to have a grip on the subject other than that she had been briefed by someone who wanted her "name" for their cause. Her understanding of the complexities were really shallow. So I shan't be wasting too much time worrying about what the Meacher of Baroness of High Rank of Title has to say about it.

IMHO what does Baroness Meacher know about real life....