LEGALISATION IS KEY TO REVERSING OUR FAILURE TO TACKLE SCOURGE OF
DRUGS

It's correct that "drug policies don't work" (your report, 31 August),
so what's the solution? Alistair Ramsay suggests changes which he
admits will not be cheap, and have no chance of working. It is absurd
to suggest we can achieve "ultimate abstinence", or that we should
even try. It is not the business of the state to tell adults how to
live their lives.

However, there is something that would make an enormous difference to
drug-users and the majority of us who are non-users: legalise the
manufacture, distribution and sale of all drugs. This would do more to
reduce crime than anything else and would, at a stroke, drive all
dealers out of business.

Drug users would no longer be enmeshed in the underworld, and our
dismal council estates would cease to be the fiefdoms of vicious criminals.

Neither Dr Ramsay nor any other advocates of the status quo argue that
a large number of people really want to become junkies but are
deterred because it's against the law. To base public policy on that
fallacy is, to use your words, "dangerously short-sighted".

ANDREW ANDERSON

Granton Road

Edinburgh