British Cocaine Documentary Advocates Legalization

British Cocaine Documentary Advocates Legalization

"30 years of the war on drugs have achieved almost nothing except to make a few people fantastically rich, to arm our inner cities, to criminalise a generation of users, and to leave tens of thousands of Latin Americans dead.

Let's be honest. People try drugs, whether in the form of alcohol or pills, because they are fun. In his book Cocaine, Dominic Streatfield quotes the monetarist Milton Friedman: 'I do not think you can eradicate demand. The lesson we have failed to learn is that prohibition never works. It makes things worse not better.'

....over the past 15 years, the US has spent £150 billion trying to stop its people getting hold of drugs. In Britain and the US almost 20 per cent of the prison population is inside for drugs offences. So what is left? We can muddle on or we can legalise cocaine - and indeed all drugs.

It should be sold over the counter... at a reasonable, taxed price that does not encourage a black market. Then we must attack demand by using some of the millions saved to invest in education drives that are honest. Look how effective a generation of anti-smoking education has been in bringing the public behind stringent restrictions on smoking in public, but not an outright ban..."

As someone who struggled long ago with addiction to a legal drug, and as someone who after two decades of sobriety became collateral damage in the drug war, I find this approach fascinating. And I applaud it 100 percent.

Unfortunately, only documentary filmmakers have the nerve to speak so openly and honestly. Politicians - even some who would endorse this view in private - do not.