Drugs without the hot air: Making Sense of Legal and Illegal Drugs

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There is a general argument for making alcohol more expensive anyway, but it seems like a good start to make Special Brew considerably more expensive than lagers with less than half the alcohol. The only drug I use is coffee and my ridiculous hypersensitivity to caffeine suggests that any stronger stimulant would kill me immediately. Therefore, increasing the pecuniary and non-pecuniary costs to the user via a policy of prohibition will put off those with elastic demand but not those with inelastic demand.

By enforcing prohibition and providing the disincentive of prison for drug taking you do reduce the prevalence of drug use. I was startled to learn that about 500 people a year die of heroin overdoses after coming out of prison because, having stopped or reduced their use while inside, they have lost the tolerance they used to have. Anyway, the point is that we need to adopt a rational approach to policy making when it comes to controversial topics such as these. Confusingly the US Schedules don’t always match with those in the UN Conventions, and in the US penalties are specific to each drug rather than determined by the drug’s Schedule. It’s much harder to read this book and not feel frustrated at the drug policies adopted by the UK government and others, which are neither sophisticated nor evidence-based.The UK introduced the Psychoactive Substances Act in 2016, which makes all substances that affect the brain illegal – unless they are alcohol, tobacco or caffeine. Nutt, ein renommierter Neuropsychopharmakologe, liefert eine sorgfältige und wissenschaftlich fundierte Analyse sowohl legaler als auch illegaler Drogen und ihrer Auswirkungen.

In a letter to the Guardian a few days after he sacked me, the UK government’s Home Secretary Alan Johnson explained that I “was asked to go because he cannot be both a government adviser and a campaigner against government policy. It helps that, although the book takes a ‘liberal’ stance compared to the current law, it’s not derived from a naive libertarianism.For example, however much politicians may splutter about the comparison, can anyone who lives in this country seriously doubt that alcohol causes far more social harm than ecstasy or cannabis?