Can we throw Michael Gove in prison for his cocaine use?

[AlaskanOilBaron]

I mean seriously, this fella was Justice Secretary- i.e. responsible for sending people to prison for using cocaine - and he's used cocaine?

What a complete twat. He tied himself in a pretzel on Andrew Marr trying to talk his way out of it, how he was 'fortunate' and so on - THAT'S EXACTLY THE POINT. He got lucky because he's white, because he's middle class, and so on -so sod the poor fools who haven't been so lucky?

I do hope this is the end of his career.

@laminateanecdotes
I agree with your post way up thread, questioning who benefits from drugs remaining illegal.

who benefits from drugs remaining illegal ?

Firstly it's the dealers. After all, if you could pop to Sainsburys - or your local hash store - why on earth are you going to risk associating with criminals ? Quite aside from the quality and regulation associated with legal products.

After that, it's the people the dealers must pay to carry on in business. Policemen, lawyers, other criminals - they'd all lose a pretty wedge if anyone came even close to legalising drugs.

I smile inwardly to myself when I read of a "swoop" on a cannabis factory, and some ropey specimens are paraded as "proof" that the War on Drugs is just one more bust away from being won. Of course the reality is that's a sacrificial bust - a little morsel dropped into the local drugs squads lap ... it ties them up for ages while the real factories - tax paid, electricity paid, rates paid (which is the biggest element) and rent paid - knocks out this weeks production run. Quite a few industrial landlords would lose a hell of a lot, if the real cannabis factories of the UK were closed down. (British Sugar for one ).

That's cannabis. Cocaine and opiates (heroin mainly) are imported of course. Again, a whole network must be up & running to keeps supplies regular. And when it's more reliable to get heroin from your local dealer than it is Columbian coffee beans from your supermarket (out of stock two weeks running) then I put it to, dear reader that anyone who can even begin to believe the "War on Drugs" (going since 1971) can be won - or even fought to a draw - is an idiot.

I'll believe the War on Drugs is serious when I see some metrics which aren't self-sustaining. Because currently the only real way we have of measuring "success" is number of arrests/weight of product seized. And even they are declining as the Great British Public is exposed to the unpalatable truth that law and order is a commodity like everything Tory, and we get what we are willing to pay for. Which ain't really a lot.

So yes, who really benefits from the current drugs regime ? It certainly isn't the person in the street. Who has easier access to drugs than ever before, which - thanks to some innovative distribution and production techniques - are cheaper than before.

If you could feed the UK drugs laws into an AI learning machine, it would give you a high probability that they had been written by drug dealers and their staff.

There are a few litmus test subjects which can be applied to politicians - drugs is one.

The saddest thing is the UK didn't really have a drugs problem - 2 police officers for all of London in the 1950s - until it decided to make one for itself. And whilst very little from the 1950s is still working, the drugs laws just keep giving and giving. That's what happens when you listen to Americans too much.

Well said.

Organised crime benefits from drugs being illegal.

Sexual exploitation (pimps, CSE rings, traffickers) benefit from drugs being illegal.

Budgets for policing, borders, some aspects of the military and secret service and the criminal justice system more generally benefit from drugs being illegal.

Most of the illegal arms trade in Britain completely relies on things like even just marijuana being illegal.

People still take drugs.

Many people are killed directly by them by "legal" alternatives, by adulterants and by not knowing the doses as a consequence of the laws against them.

Many people are assaulted, killed, stolen from, raped, arrested and so on.

Addicts become the criminal scourge of whole areas because of criminalization, because they must already mix in criminal circles to get their drugs, they become unemployable if they weren't already, and those drugs are as a consequence of being sold by criminals expensive, meaning one addict who needs to find hundreds of pounds a day without a job can become the criminal scourge of a whole area, and these people could probably have their habit served safely for a few pounds (with a tax yield, too!) by their local pharmacist and/or doctor without too many problems and if was done right, little/no crime involved.

Criminalization of drugs is much like a lot of other things - we'd be better off without it, but it justifies power and expenditure for those above who crave both, so it will stay.

I double scourged too! (In my defense I was distracted)

Sorry! That makes a double double scourge which might be a record

I’m surprised to find sensible, well thought out views.

I must admit, I try to keep my late teens/early 20s raving (showing my age) quiet these days, unless I’m with old friends from that time in my life.

Agreed laminates, decriminalization the only way ahead, one day they'll have to do it. I remember when addicts could st go to their gp and get a prescription, no black market, no drug related crime apart from the occasional arrest of a dope user. Created overnight by taking prescribing away from gps and creating big drug supermarkets known as clinics attempting cures with a suspect invention, methadone. Utter madness. Completely created problem. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I’m surprised to find sensible, well thought out views.

Don't worry, no danger of anyone taking a blind bit of notice. Far too much money in keeping drugs illegal. Returning to the OP, the only risk Gove would face in regard to illegal drugs is if he really fucked up and started talking sense. Then he would have to go.

I really don't like "wars" when used as hyperbole for public policy. Mainly because it's simply a fig leaf for dishonesty. You fight wars to win. So what are the criteria for winning this war - which, let us remind ourselves - precedes the "war on terror" by several decades ?

By pretending it's a "war" all successive governments have done is ensure a gravy train for life for the right people. With the dishonest pretence that somehow there can be a "winner" in such a war. Which there can't. By definition. After all, the War On Drugs is probably older than a good number of posters on this thread. It's certainly twice the age of my DS.

Given that most of the Tories are salivating over a post-Brexit empire reboot, all this drug-taking seems entirely appropriate. We can revive our glorious opium trade and wage war on countries that try to refuse our wares.

Given that most of the Tories are salivating over a post-Brexit empire reboot, all this drug-taking seems entirely appropriate.

There's nothing quite as hypocritical as a Tory trying to defend prohibition whilst extolling the free market. They are mutually exclusive. Prohibition is the socialist action of the nanny state that eschews bodily autonomy. If you accept prohibition, then the free market is an illusion and - as George Bernard Shaw so sagely observed - you are simply arguing over the price