Prohibition doesn't work

According to former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper:

'It's not a stretch to conclude that our draconian approach to drug use is the most injurious domestic policy since slavery. Want to cut back on prison overcrowding and save a bundle on the construction of new facilities? Open the doors, let the nonviolent drug offenders go. The huge increases in federal and state prison populations during the 1980s and '90s (from 139 per 100,000 residents in 1980 to 482 per 100,000 in 2003) were mainly for drug convictions. In 1980, 580,900 Americans were arrested on drug charges. By 2003, that figure had ballooned to 1,678,200. We're making more arrests for drug offenses than for murder, manslaughter, forcible rape and aggravated assault combined. Feel safer?'

I could compare those figures to those of 'liberal' Holland, but that would be driving the point home. And never mind that, from a libertarian point of view, the government has no business in interfering when I want to use either alcohol, tobacco or - gasp - MDMA; provided of course I don't interfere with the freedom of others by (for example) robbing them or endangering their welfare by getting behind the wheel.

Meanwhile, Tim Worstall takes a shot at the subject as well, by quoting the Torygraph:

'If having taken drugs doesn't disqualify journalists from pontificating as to how public policy should be shaped - and there's no evidence from the newspapers leading the calls for Cameron to come clean that it does; one of them retains the former addict Will Self as a columnist - why should it disqualify politicians?'

Update 18/10: Via AS: there've never been more marihuana arrests. Meanwhile, Canadian researchers find clues that pot may actually be good for your memory (color me sceptical).

Not via AS: this BBC article on the dangers of cannabis smoke.

12:37

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