I have ridiculed some of Siân's policies here and here, but in all fairness, the Green Party's drugs policies are pretty sound:
* Regulation and control over the sale of cannabis for medical and recreational use.
* A local democratic tax on cannabis sale, where the purchaser chooses a local project to receive a percentage of the profits.
* Licensed cannabis supply based on the Dutch coffee shop model.
* Decriminalising recreational drugs such as ecstasy and psychotropic mushrooms.
* Providing heroin on prescription as a route into a range of other consensual treatments.
* Improving information and health education relating to all drugs.
* A ban on advertising and sponsorship of tobacco, cannabis or other currently illegal drugs.
However, she doesn't mention cocaine or crack-cocaine. It's all well and good pointing out in your manifesto that "57 per cent of all crime and 80 per cent of burglary in the UK is to feed a heroin or crack drug habit", but if she says (quite sensibly) that heroin should be available on prescription, what about cocaine or crack-cocaine? Would they be available on prescription as well?
What she also doesn't mention is that the London Assembly has absolutely no authority whatsoever to implement such policies.
Once I dipt into the future
12 hours ago
4 comments:
They may not be able to pass laws but they can influence police priorities.
I'm not sure I agree with hypothecation of the taxes but otherwise makes sense.
Why should a Cannabis tax be "democratic"? It might as well be wasted on grandiose Government schemes like all other taxes...
GS, Snafu, there's plenty to quibble with here, but the policy as a whole is still streets ahead of anybody else's.
Incidentally Mark on your question about crack, I think one answer is that if you got rid of the problem of heroin supply the market for crack would almost disappear. Most crack users are poly-substabce users and the highest proportion of them heroin users. It seems that they generally get pushed onto it by their heroin dealers when they haven't got any heroin to sell them - I know, it shouldn't work like that - how such strong uppers and downers must interact I don't know.
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