Vice

Having heard about this story on the radio en route to work this morning (In my car) I began thinking about various vice issues.

On the story itself, I find it bizarre that in order to get a drug addict off one drug you offer encouragement in the form of more prescribed drugs if their urine sample comes back clear.

It's not so much the issue of giving drugs to addicts - although I'm not convinced about prescribing Methadone as a treatment, it turns a Heroin addict into... a Methadone addict - it's more the fact that you shouldn't offer an incentive to someone that resembles the very thing you're trying to fix.

It'd be like giving Mars bars to compulsive eaters, lap dances to sex addicts, booze cruise tickets to alcoholics etc.

Anyway onto the bigger picture. As with prostitution, I fail to see how making drugs illegal protects anyone that matters. The only people the current laws protect are drug dealers.

You protect them from having to pay any tax on their ill gotten gains and also from prosecution - Why would anyone want to snitch on their drug dealer? As well as the violent repercussions they would probably face for doing so, they'd also lose their supply of drugs. The only way you would be able to bust drug dealers would be through surveillance and tracking. This costs a lot of money. If drugs were legal, drug dealers would be out of business overnight. All they'd have left would be the dole - which many of them claim already*

Unlike the pot-heads that want certain less harmful drugs legalised (I.e. the ones they take so therefore must be OK) I say legalise all drugs. There are plenty of legal ways of fucking your own body up so as long as you don't force them onto anyone else (Which would still be a crime) and pay taxes on them like the rest of us do with our drugs of choice (alcohol & tobacco) then why should I care?

The illegality of drugs increases the appeal, especially to those who are young and impressionable. Perhaps by removing the 'coolness' of drugs, people might actually realise that Pete Docherty is a rubbish musician and deserves none of the fame he has.

The most dangerous aspect of drugs is the impurities they have. By giving people clean pharmaceutical quality drugs, this problem is fixed.

In order to supply Britain's junkies with all this quality smack, we could buy all the opium off of the poppy farmers in Afghanistan. They would then love us and cease to support the militias in the area... Would you want to piss off your number one customer?

As I said at the top, I think prostitution laws are a farce. They don't protect vulnerable women (Many of them drug addicts), they only protect pimps - many of whom now hold women against their will in slavery.

Although I started watching "Confessions of a London call girl" to see if Billie Piper got her kit off, it occurred to me when her character was whinging about paying 40% of her ill-gotten gains to her "agent" that most high earners in this country have to spend their 40% elsewhere.

I'd allow prostitutes to operate in licensed brothels (located all over the country - none of this "zones of tolerance" shite) then if a punter had any problem with them or felt they were being mistreated then they could report the brothel to the authorities without fear of reprisals. Again they would also be paying taxes.

Plus think of all the carbon saved as the only people who would be wanting to fly to Amsterdam from Britain would be the ones who actually want to visit rather than those that go merely to use the facilities.

If we legalised drugs and prostitution, just think of all the police resource that would be freed up to catch criminals that do pose a threat to innocent members of the public.

Finally, GB is reviewing the 24 hour licensing laws. Bearing in mind that the law hasn't even been in place for a year yet, does he not think that it might be an idea to wait for it to bed in a bit more before deciding what to do?

Whenever you get something new you take advantage of it as much as possible to start with but after a while you just know it's there and are less bothered about it. Give it another year and there will be less alcohol related incidents than there were before the law was changed.

*Convicted drug dealers are often found to be claiming unemployment benefit (I have no stats) as they have no recorded income. I am not implying that those claiming unemployment benefit must therefore be drug dealers.