Wired Up.

I heard recently that David Cameron's favourite TV programme is the US TV drama series, 'The Wire'.  The series, which ran for five seasonsm revolved around the efforts of the Baltimore police department to defeat the drugs trade in that city, whilkst at the same time bayyling against internal police politics and political corruption.

What the  series illustrated well was that the so called 'war on drugs' is ultimately unwinnable.  No sooner is one drugs network dismantled then another one moves in to fill the vacuum,  Given the size if the international drug economy, the state, even the US with its mass of police departments, FBI, CIA, DEA and the rest can only fight a war without end, costing bullions of dollars and tens of thousends of lives, as is being brutallyillustrated at the moment in Mexico in the struggle between the Mexican state and the drug cartels and amongst the cartels themselves.  In Britain, the same struggles go on at a much lower level but, apparently with as litle chanve of success. Even in a village like Silverton mosty people have friends or aquaintences who engage in the use of illegal drugs for recreational purposes.

Twelve years ago, when I lived in Scotland, the Scottish Socialist Party called for the legalisation of cannabis and thedecriminalisation of other drugs such as Heroin, and was widely attacked in the scottish press for doing so.  In the years since, drugs decriminalisation gas become policy in countries such as Switzerland and Portugal, and allied to active medical intervention to break users from addiction has led to a fall in overall drug use in those countries.  These policies have now recieved support from the Global Commission on Drug Policy that includes former UN secretary General, Kofi Annan, Former US secretary of State, George Schultz and Sir Richard Branson. Unfortunately it seems, that the current US administration, undeer constant threat from yje christian, conservative, fundamentalist Right. and the British government, as usual, in thrall to its American masters, seem to see no alternative but to keep going down the road to nowhere where  drugs policy is concerned., What Cameron should learn from 'The Wire' is that the War On Drugs not only has failed, but untimately corrupts all those who involve themselves in it.