Why we should legalise drugs

In this blog post Anyone’s Child campaigner Marie reviews Justice on Trial, namely Chapter 3 – Why we should legalise drugs, by Chris Daw QC.

After listening to Chris Daw speak on the Anyone’s Child webinar last June, I felt compelled to buy and read his book Justice on Trial when it was released shortly afterwards.

Although the whole book was a revelation, it was of course chapter three, Why we should legalise drugs that held the most interest for me.

This chapter paints a dark picture of the damage our current drug laws inflict on it’s citizens by telling the stories of two very different people, both of whom lost their lives to prohibition.

Gary, the forty-three year old drug addict and dealer, beaten to death for a few pounds – the misery of his grim daily existence without hope, laid bare. 

Contrasted starkly by the other side of the coin – fifteen year old Martha, living a life full of promise, her precious young life lost because of normal teenage curiosity.

The chapter has a little light of hope towards the end when Chris Daw takes us to Switzerland and shows us how the Swiss people have tackled the problem of drug use. Holding up for us, perhaps, a model of how things could be.

On a lighter note, reading of how Queen Victoria enjoyed sharing cocaine laced chewing gum with a young Winston Churchill was an eye opener, not to mention her use of cannabis for period pain….

Chris finishes the chapter by addressing the question of why prohibition persists despite all the evidence against it, which he concludes is (as perhaps we already know) quite simply politics.

Politicians believe that they cannot win votes by advocating regulation and legalisation of drugs and so we all, as members of a democracy, share in that responsibility.

I am campaigning with Anyone’s Child because I know we need to speak truth to power and force our politicians to speak out and implement change, so other families don’t have to suffer as mine has.

If you’re not convinced, I strongly urge you to read this book.

Read Marie’s story here.