Legalise all Drugs says Police Chief

[Rudie]

Controversial police chief Richard Brunstrom has called for the legalisation and regulation of all drugs in a new report.

Mr Brunstrom, the chief constable of North Wales, described the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 as "not fit for purpose" and "immoral" and urged its repeal.
Mr Brunstrom, in a report to North Wales police authority, described the current UK drugs strategy as "unwinnable".
He said: "The Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 should be repealed and replaced by a new Substance Misuse Act based upon the legalisation and careful regulation of all substances of abuse in one consistent manner."
Mr Brunstrom urged his authority to support the stance in its response to the Government's Drugs: Our Community, Your Say consultation paper.
In a 30-page document - Drugs Policy, A Radical Look Ahead - Mr Brunstrom said: "UK drugs policy for the last several decades has been based upon prohibition with a list of banned substances placed into three classes - the ABC system - and draconian criminal penalties for the possession or supply of controlled drugs.
"This system has not worked well. Illegal drugs are now in plentiful supply, and have become consistently cheaper in real terms over the years.
"The number of users has increased dramatically. Drug crime has soared equally dramatically as a direct consequence of the illegality of some drugs and the huge profits from illegal trading have supported a massive rise in organised criminality.
"Most importantly, the current system illogically excludes both alcohol and tobacco.
"A new classification system, a 'hierarchy of harm' encompassing all substances of abuse and based upon identified social harms, should, in my opinion, be at the centre of a new substance misuse regime - one based upon evidence, not moralistic dogma."

Reputation Comments on this post:

cool article- definitely a forward thinking chief of police

[Rudie]

Sorry about the links guys.

Didnt realise they where there until after posting and cannot edit my posts.

[Whit]

Thanks for the post.

Shame to say, yet another person with the right ideas, without the power to actually do something about it.....

[Stiney]

Fair play to him, he expressed similar sentients at a police chief meeting in 2002 but the idea of legalization and regulation was voted for against by 640 to 60 by the 700 members in attendance. Still 60 is a start but unfortunately I can't see the figure rising much higher in the future going on the reaction of the police administration this week. Brunstrom is a chief constable and can get away with expressing opinions like that, but for a rank and file police officer to do the same would be proffesional suicide I'm sure.

[Evil GIR]

Too many people are brainwashed by BS to believe that the legalisation of drugs is a good thing. We just still have this stupid image of the drug uses being a shady individual that injects Heroin in some dark ally.

When you say drugs I don't think many people can even distinguish one between another and so they all just get lumped together and seen as evil and bad.

[Tzetze]

Richard Brunstrom was interviewed on sky news a couple of days ago. I only caught the end of the piece, but he seemed to be very composed and was handling the interview very well. That is until the interviewer threw in the fact that he had used a picture of a car crash victim (dead) in an ad campaign without consulting the victim's family.

He was clearly annoyed that this was brought up and commented that because there was an ongoing investigation into this, he couldn't comment on the matter any further. The ‘journalist’ knew full well that he wouldn't be able to comment, but kept pressing the matter until the interview finished.

Same old tactic seen time and time again. Dig for a skeleton and use it to discredit the interviewee publicly.

I was disgusted by this interview and I sincerely hope it doesn't do too much damage to Richard Brunstrom's campaign.