LEGALISE DRUGS NOW

The drugs debate is of such importance that all aspects, including the most
fundamental, must not go unmentioned.

What has to be admitted in the first place is that people of any generation
have failed to shape and provide a world which young people can embrace and
relish, for the anticipation of their entire lives, with joy, eagerness and
clear-mindedness.

I regard the booming drug culture as, in part, a symbol of my own personal
failure in fighting to make a world the young can inhabit with clear-eyed
delight. My own blame is at least matched by those who have governed us
for the last half-century.

Whereas we have it in our power to transform the world - and our own
society - into a thing of adequate justice and harmony for all to share in
the full clear-headedness of their own being, we have instead allowed a
place of uneasiness and escape to arise which many of the young can
tolerate through befuddlement.

Whether drugs should be decriminalised or not isn't the most urgent
question. Where, for young people's sake, do we find an inspirational
present, and a future?

Ian Flintoff
London, SW6