LEGALISE DRUGS NOW!

The UN Convention on Narcotic Drugs meets in Vienna to determine its next 10 year 'strategy'. I have used the opportunity to make one of my ritual attacks on the utter failure of the "war" on drugs - a "war" which has enriched criminals and led to the promotion of drugs use. I have called (again) for legalisation of most illegal drugs to destroy the profit incentive that drives forward their sale. They should be available through government regulated outlets while health warnings about their use are stepped up.

I assume I will get coverage in the north west regional press, and no doubt some Liberal Democrats will be upset with me for being "off message." But I feel strongly about this issue. Politicians should be leading the call for change, not leaving it to newspaper columnists.

Gradually the protests against existing policy are growing - 30 members of the House of Lords have raised their voices - but the majority of elected politicians stay mum. It is so easy for opponents to score points against those brave enough to declare that the emperor wears no clothes.

Former deputy drugs tsar, Mike Trace, writes in the Guardian that evidence of the failure of policy is overwhelming but that nothing will change. "We can all book our seats for 2019 to go through this charade again," he says.

THE DRUG DEALERS' BEST FRIEND

The most stupid words of 2009 have already been written. They come from the pen of Hamid Ghodse, president of the International Narcotics Control Board, in his foreward to its latest report.

He writes: "multilateral drug control should be considered one of the greatest achievements of the twentieth century."

The Board adminsters the prohibitionist policies of the 1961 UN Convention on Narcotics and its various additions; 95 per cent of UN member states have signed up to the rules restricting the use of 119 narcotic substances.

The result has been an unmitigated disaster. Demand for narcotics has not diminished but soared, fuelled by an unregulated criminal trade worth hundreds of billions worldwide. Corruption has muliplied, police forces and governments have been subverted, British troops die in Afghanistan, millions of users have been imprisoned for doing something that caused no problem to others, and harm reduction policies have been given little room for development.

I have no reason to believe that Mr Ghodse is in the pay of the drug barons, but like their 1920s US predecessors in the era of alcohol prohibition their immense profits depend on the application of the Narcotics Board's control policies.

They don't have to pay him; he is their dupe.