Gee, I wonder if any of our former “drug czars” feel the same way:

A former senior civil servant who was responsible for coordinating the government’s anti-drugs policy now believes that legalisation would be less harmful than the current strategy. Julian Critchley, the former director of the Cabinet Office’s anti-drugs unit, also said that his views were shared by the “overwhelming majority” of professionals in the field, including police officers, health workers and members of the government…. In a contribution to the debate on the “war on drugs” on a BBC website, Critchley spelled out his reasons for now supporting legalisation and claimed the government’s position is hypocritical. Yesterday Critchley, who is now a teacher, confirmed that the blog posting accurately conveyed his views.

“I joined the unit more or less agnostic on drugs policy, being personally opposed to drug use, but open-minded about the best way to deal with the problem,” he wrote on the blog. “I was certainly not inclined to decriminalise. However, during my time in the unit, as I saw more and more evidence of ‘what works’, to quote New Labour’s mantra of the time, it became apparent to me that … enforcement and supply-side interventions were largely pointless. They have no significant, lasting impact on the availability, affordability or use of drugs.”