stop crime, decriminalize drugs

It breaks Noni’s heart to see our criminal justice system and our jails clogged with young people whose only crime was to get busted with an illegal drug, and she wants to know what is so special about equally or more harmful alcohol and tobacco products that make them legal and everything else illegal.

"Drug classifications are arbitrary and vary from one place to the next," sighs Noni. "In my time I've seen more harm done by abuse of alcohol than by any other drug, and while I'm certainly not judging regular drinkers, I do think the government has got it wrong when it elevates alcohol over every other drug and ultimately seeks to make it the ONLY legal drug."

"As far as I'm concerned, all drugs are drugs and it would be nice if we could all get through life without them, but we can't," sighs Noni. "Making alcohol and tobacco legal and the others illegal is giving a rap to the legal drugs that they don't deserve."

"Why have drugs possibly less harmful than alcohol and tobacco been banned?" asks Noni. "Why are kids being busted, fined, jailed and even sentenced to death in some countries for possession of drugs that are only attractive because they ARE illegal or because they are more suitable for particular individuals?"

"What this country needs to do is legalize all drugs and provide a chain of one-stop drug outlets that provide a smorgasbord of drugs with all sales being monitored by health professionals to ensure that everyone knows the risks of what they're taking and nobody overindulges in anything."

"I'd ban the sale of cigarettes and alcohol from existing outlets and put them in the same basket as other drugs because that's what they are," says Noni. "There would be no unfair discrimination between drugs and when people pick up their liquor and cigarettes being sold alongside cannabis, Ecstasy, LSD, GHB, ice, heroin, cocaine and everything else they won't be deluded into thinking tobacco and alcohol aren't real drugs."

"Kids starting off with drug experimentation would be able to do so in a safe environment with professional advice," says Noni, "and isn't that better than what's happening now?"

"When all drugs are legal the tantalizing factor of doing something 'bad' is removed," explains Noni, "and a lot of kids, if given a choice they don't have now, won't even want to become involved with drugs."

"What this system would also create is a crime-free drug environment and dare I say it, a healthy drug environment, too," says Noni. "No pushers, pimps and muggers; no exorbitant prices; no busts; no jails."

"Wouldn't that be a more sensible system than the mess we have now?"

Read more by Noni on this subject:

legal v illegal drugs

classifying drugs and criminalizing users