The Drug Problem part 4:strength and purity
It is always important to consider the practical consequences of a change in the law. In suggesting that drugs should be legalised, I am not suggesting that there would be no associated problems. I merely observe that the existing problems will never be dealt with and will never go away through criminalising drug use, and that those problems are made worse by criminalisation.
An obvious example is the question of precisely what it is in the drugs which are sold. Criminalisation ensures that drug supply is in the hands of organised crime. To say that such criminals do not care about the position of the end user is a relatively mild way of formulating the true position. Admixtures in the drug, whether dangerous or not, are not ones that the suppliers are likely to be concerned about because they will not have to bear the consequences of their own failings. There is no effective form of legal redress against the supplier of drugs which have impurities. There is no trading standards office who is going to be carefully looking at these issues and ensuring that drugs contained precisely what they were supposed to contain and nothing else. Criminalisation ensures that this is effectively the law of the jungle, or a version of the American Wild West. There is no basis in such circumstances for ensuring purity of the drug. Therefore criminalisation inevitably involves a consequence that end users will have no means of being confident about the precise composition of that they are buying, and will from time to time suffer severe consequences because of admixtures to the drug.
Another issue is the strength of the drugs which are being provided. One common argument about cannabis relates to the alleged significant distinction between the strength of cannabis as it existed in the past, and the usual present strength of the sample. Apparently the strength of cannabis has significantly increased. The question is why and what impact criminalisation may have had.
Stronger drugs are more likely to hook users in. Experience during prohibition of alcohol in the United States shows that giving control of substances to the criminal underworld usually leads to the substances becoming stronger. That is because stronger substances are more likely to be addictive. It is utterly bizarre that a logical and thus foreseeable consequence of criminalisation is that the questions of strength of drugs used essentially ends up being left to the criminal fraternity. Contrast this with the way in which cigarettes are dealt with. Massive health warnings on every packet. Plenty of information about the nature and strength of the drug being used. The ability for anyone smoking to know exactly what they are getting. Introducing the same level of detail for drugs would make for greater certainty on behalf of the end user. They will know what they are getting, and the strength, and the potential consequences. Whilst accepting that it would be better if no one took recreational drugs, there is simply no evidence that criminalisation is going to stop demand. Therefore is it not much better that the people taking the drugs actually have the requisite warnings and know precisely what they are taking on precisely what the strength is?
Strength and purity might not be two words that one associates with drugs. However it is plain that decriminalising drugs would mean that the strength could be monitored and warned against on the packet, and that the same would be guard against potentially dangerous admixtures.