Nick Clegg: If you are anti-drugs, you should be pro-legalisation

Comments

[robertnow]

Nick Clegg wants to give tax payers money away to anybody but the squeezed middle - a Liberal Democrat who has no idea how to govern.
Rewarding criminals, drug takers, healthy welfare dependants, healthy unemployed, housing benefits of £500 per week - you name it and Clegg is for it.

[Grumble000]

At least we know no Tory would ever advocate such a position.

Saturn’s Children: How the State Devours Liberty, Prosperity and Virtue is a political science book by Alan Duncan and Dominic Hobson. Its main thesis is that states (in particular, the United Kingdom, on which the book concentrates) expropriate private property, eliminate personal liberties, and undermine the material well-being of the people.

Its title refers to the Roman myth that Saturn, fearing his children usurping him, ate them at birth. The front cover of the hardback edition features Saturn Devouring His Son, a painting by Francisco Goya portraying the myth.
Controversy

The book courted political controversy due to Alan Duncan's role as a Conservative MP and Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Chairman of the Conservative Party, Brian Mawhinney. As a consequence, many of the book's stridently libertarian messages disagreed with the position of Duncan's party, which, at the time, was suffering considerable internal divisions, culminating in a leadership contest in 1995.

Perhaps the most controversial of the policies advocated in the book was the position taken that all drugs, currently controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, should be legally available to the public. When the book was published in paperback, this chapter was omitted. Not wanting to hide his views, Duncan formerly offered the offending chapter for download on his official website, for the benefit of 'enquiring students'. However, in the run up to the 2010 General Election, it was removed.

Don't we!!

[robertnow]

Legalising drugs will result in many more people not wanting to work and on welfare and benefit support.

[Malcolm Dunn]

What a ludicrous man Clegg is. If this is the best he can do it would have been better for his own cause if he kept his mouth shut.I believe in very, very stiff sentences for drug dealers, does that make me pro-drugs?. Dickhead.

[Saddleback]

I'm pro-drugs and pro-deregulation. For me it's a matter of freedom - it should not be up to the State what I choose to ingest.

[and equally, I don't expect the State to bail me out if I screw up]

My version of Conservatism is innately focussed on the self - choose your path, take the consequences.It rather perplexes me when a magistrate dishes-out a penalty to some low-level street drug-user but everyone knows she's sourcing her weekend Bolivian Marching-powder from the same supplier that the street cannabis-user was using.

[Mystic Merv]

Well, 'wor Dave' was very much in favour of decriminalisation back in 2002.

[Herod]

Nick Clegg: If you are anti-drugs, you should be pro-legalisation
Says it all really. Ordinary people would be considered for section if they made such a "Alice in Wonderland" statement. Yet senior politicians say such rubbish as if it were not merely intelligent, but wise, and they say such things every day.
We stupidly elected them, perhaps it is us who should be sectioned.

[Bill melotti]

Er. He actually said 'anti drugs, pro reform' and elsewhere in interview said he was not in favour of complete decriminalisation. Not that I'm any fan of clegg the interview was wishy washy. But this headline is wrong.

Most people in favour of liberalisation had a few puffs at college but really have not seen the devastating consequences of abuse and addiction. Add in the effects on Nhs and economy through being too wasted to work and I doubt you'll be in surplus from the tax revenue you collect.

If anything we should simply get tougher. As part of this research they should also include countries which have very harsh sentencing for drug smugglers/dealers (typically Asia) and see how low drug usage and knock on crime is as a result of that. I'm not in favour of capital punishment but mandatory life sentences for drug smuggling would cut it right back.

[William Blakes Ghost]

So we are villifying and punishing smokers (nicotine addicts)for the unecessary burden they put on government and the taxpayer, we are villifying and punishing alcohol drinkers (alcoholics) for the unnecessary burden they put on the government and the tax payer.

If we legalised drugs, it would spread the habit throughout the land an generation after generation of addle brained drugs addicts would cripple our crumbling welfare services and what for? Then of course they will be villified (even more than today and punished). What level of Cannabis duty do people think it will be? 70% 80%?

It wouldn't effect criminal classes. They would just invent stronger more addictive substances for people to be 'naughty' with. The only difference is that even more would be off their faces to start with. Nick Clegg the junkies and criminals politician. Is their no depth these scum sucking parasites will go to get a vote?

[AndrewBoff]

Legalise the lot.