Coventry MP Bob Ainsworth: Make drugs legally available

[dutchman]

An ex-minister who had responsibility for drugs policy has called for all drugs to be legally available.



Bob Ainsworth, a Home Office minister under Tony Blair, said successive governments' approaches had failed, leaving criminal gangs in control.

The Coventry North East MP wants to see a system of strict legal regulation, with different drugs either prescribed by doctors or sold under licence.

Ministers have insisted they remain opposed to legalisation.

Media backlash

Mr Ainsworth is the most senior politician so far to publicly call for all drugs, including heroin and cocaine, to be in any way legalised.

He said he realised while he was a minister in the Home Office in charge of drugs policy that the so-called war on drugs could not be won.

The Labour backbencher said successive governments had been frightened to raise the issue because they feared a media backlash.

But he predicted in the end ministers would have no option but to adopt a different approach.

He said: "Politicians and the media need to engage in a genuine and grown up debate about alternatives to prohibition, so that we can build a consensus based on delivering the best outcomes for our children and communities. Prohibition has failed to protect us.

Billions spent

"Leaving the drugs market in the hands of criminals causes huge and unnecessary harms to individuals, communities and entire countries, with the poor the hardest hit."

Mr Ainsworth said billions of pounds was being spent "without preventing the wide availability of drugs".

"It is time to replace our failed war on drugs with a strict system of legal regulation, to make the world a safer, healthier place, especially for our children," he said.

"We must take the trade away from organised criminals and hand it to the control of doctors and pharmacists."

All three main parties at Westminster remain opposed to legalisation.

Last week Home Secretary Theresa May said the government's drugs strategy would remain focused on rehabilitation and reducing supply.

Crime Prevention Minister James Brokenshire said: "Drugs are harmful and ruin lives - legalisation is not the answer.

"Decriminalisation is a simplistic solution that fails to recognise the complexity of the problem and ignores the serious harm drug taking poses to the individual.

"Legalisation fails to address the reasons people misuse drugs in the first place or the misery, cost and lost opportunities that dependence causes individuals, their families and the wider community."

[rebbonk]

[dutchman]

Labour leader Ed Miliband moved swiftly to distance themselves from the MP's 'irresponsible' ideas'. 'Bob's views do not reflect Ed's views, the party's view or indeed the view of the vast majority of the public,' added a spokesman.

Does Milliband or his party have any views of their own in the first place? It seems to me they just look at what the Daily Mail and recent polls are saying and decide that will be their current policy

[PoundShopPeter]

I wonder if his views on the war in Afghanistan have changed as well