The good thing about being a supporter of drug law reform is that’s it’s a goal that actually has a chance of coming true before I keel over and die (hopefully at a ripe old age in an orgy of sex and cocaine).
Chairman of the Bar calls for decriminalisation of drug use
Nick Green QC is chairman of the Bar Council, the professional organisation of barristers in the UK. Writing in the organisation’s magazine this month, Green called for the decriminalisation of drugs for personal use, arguing (rightly) that a growing body of evidence supports the proposition that decriminalisation can have a number of positive consequences for drugs users and society. He lists the freeing up of police resources, the reduction of crime and the revolving door of imprisonment as peace dividends of ending the drug war, alongside improved public health. Noting that much of the mass media are given to moralising gestures and the whipping up of panic when it comes to drugs, he argues that the Bar Council, made up of lawyers and counting most judges amongst its ex-members, is in a good position to provide a rational argument, being familiar with both sides of the drug policy argument.
Mr Green’s intervention represents another profession speaking out in support of drug law reform at a time when the tide appears to be turning away from the prohibitionist model that was tried throughout the twentieth century, failed to suppress the flow of illegal drugs and added its own side-effects (including an entrenched criminal market and a global epidemic of injection-driven HIV) to those of the drug problems it was supposed to prevent.
When the supporters of prohibition are limited to a hysterical clergyman (not exactly a fountain of rational thought), and Peter fucking Hitchens, you know the jig is up. We can end teh war on drugz nao plz?
Another political hot potato is drugs. Drug related crime costs the economy about
£13bn a year. Again a growing body of comparative evidence suggests that
decriminalising personal use can have positive consequences; it can free up huge
amounts of police resources, reduce crime and recidivism and improve public health.
All this can be achieved without any overall increase in drug usage. If this is so, then it
would be rational to follow suit.
A rational approach is not usually the response of large parts of the media when it
comes to issues relating to criminal justice. This is something the Bar Council can
address. We are apolitical; we act for the prosecution and the defence and most of the
judiciary are former members. We can speak out in favour of an approach which
urges policies which work and not those which simply play to the gallery. And this
will save money and mean that there is less pressure on the justice system.
Interesting piece. And I like the evolutionary illusration you got there at the top.
How’s the job hunting going anyway?
I’m now on a steady income. Sadly, to keep it up I need to suck at least 12 cocks a night.
LMAO, well, that is life in your average office to be fair. Maybe not literally, but most jobs are whoring exercises to some degree.
I hope it’s going well for you. If you’ve just started out as a trainee at a legal firm, maybe even as a paralegal, it might be low pay for a couple of years but stick at it and it’ll pay off.
Good luck.