After decades of experience with criminal drug prohibition in numerous countries, it is clear that the prohibition has hardly any restrictive effect on the availability or price of ‘illegal’ drugs, nor on their use.
Politicians don’t seem to want to get to the bottom of the situation, but almost always resort to aggravating the criminal ‘fight’ against illegal drugs. Year after year, this has resulted in more and harder crime. Many ordinary citizens are also victims of this. This criminal-law approach does cost more and more taxpayers’ money and does not contribute to reducing the availability of illegal drugs.
The police, customs, the Public Prosecution Service, the judiciary and others are deployed daily as implementers of the policy devised by politicians. Sometimes with great personal risks, for a goal that just doesn’t get any closer. A mirage.
It is high time to realize that politicians who continue on this path are the cause of a great deal of misery in society and can therefore be individually held accountable for the damage that their policies also inflict on individual citizens.
The production and use of illegal drugs should be removed from criminal law. This will put an end to criminal production and trade and all the misery associated with it.
From a public health perspective, measures can be taken to regulate production and accessibility. These types of rules also apply to alcohol and tobacco. The use of the latter two drugs in our country leads to approximately 20,000 deaths every year. The currently number of deaths caused by the still illegal drugs are approximately 300.
Although alcohol and tobacco are much more harmful, they are fortunately not combated by criminal law. Otherwise we would have had a lot more drug crime by now. There must be a realization that limited influence can be exercised on the choices of adult citizens when it comes to their bodies and minds.
There is no way that successfully ‘free’ adult citizens can be forced to abstain from drugs such as alcohol and tobacco. You can’t do that with other drugs either. If that awareness becomes the basic attitude, citizens can be better approached and informed about the use and risks of all drugs. It is already apparent that an excessive increase in excise duty on tobacco is causing tobacco crime (illegal production and trade) to increase again. The high price of tobacco invites consumers to look for illegal supplies and thus a growing market for criminals. Not smart of the politicians, who ignore that element!
In fact, there are even politicians who want a pack of cigarettes to reach a record high of € 40 or more in a few years’ time. How stupid can you be?!
It is a kind of announcement to (future) criminals, because those politicians actually say:
“Hey, criminal vote for me(my party), I work on your illegal revenue model and provide you with a lot of tax-free income…..”.
