No quick drug fix - failure of British drug legalization

National Review, March 24, 1989 by Anthony Lejeune

All the old arguments are rehearsed. Would it be helpful or disastrous to legalize the sale of cannabis? Some people would like to legalize cocaine and heroin too: or, if not to put them openly on sale, at least to make them fully available for the treatment of addicts-which, say other specialists, would be quite mad. My own view has not changed since I first considered the problem all those years ago. Legalizing cannabis, let alone the harder drugs-although it might break the pushing chain and keep some youngsters from becoming involved in crime-would be too dangerous. By lowering the inhibition against taking any drugs, it would cost more lives than it would save. Cannabis does not necessarily lead to heroin or cocaine, but almost all heroin and cocaine addicts have started on cannabis.

There are no easy answers, no absolute solutions, just as tbere is, unfortunately, no magical "British system"-only a bitter common problem which, like many of the world's problems, we must simply live with and struggle to contain.