What a load of tripe.

…or, said otherwise, live and let live.

Illegal drugs are illegal because, unlike alcohol, tabacco, junk food and dangerous sport, they’re not approved of by the general population.

And in order to ‘protect our children’.

The economic and social costs you suggest would conceivably be less if drug prohibition were to be lifted, though no legislator has ever bothered to quantify these costs either way – talk about fact-based policy!

In any case, the welfare state – which I think is a good thing to have – shouldn’t be used as an excuse to curb individual liberty or to replace personal and parental responsibility. Voluntary organisations are something else altogether.

Incidentally, I think seat-belt and crash helmet laws are illiberal too.

[Daphne – The thinking which underpins all democracies, Julian, is that the right to swing your fist ends where another man’s nose begins.]

I wonder what the prison brass get for not allowing narcotics inside the prison.

What a trio!

Hey Pecksniff,

I don’t agree. For the party to be a runaway hit, it needs to include Hugo Chavez and good old Fidel. What a party that would be.

@ Li Ding,

Her type would ‘arise’ PARTICULARLY in a nunnery. As usual, Daphne was spot on in her assessment of this saga.

Each human person always stores an amount of homosexuality within them even when they are predominantly heterosexual.

This homosexuality is mostly used in emergency cases and is widely practiced by both sexes in prisons and amongst mono sexual communities.

Oh….and just one thing there are also bisexuals.

Happy Christmas to you and your family and keep up the great blog.

Very good piece, though.

[Daphne – Laws on illegal drugs are not designed to stop people putting stuff in their own bodies. They’re designed to avoid the costs and social damage of having other people clear up the resulting mess. It is the same reasoning which gives us laws on seat-belts in cars and crash helmets on motor-bikes. In countries where people are free to take as many drugs as they please, you will generally find that it’s because there is no obligation for anyone else to mop up afterwards, or pay for it. In Malta, the social cost is paid by the welfare state and volunteer organisations, and there is a cost paid also by those who are robbed by desperate drug addicts.]