THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

This law, which plagues governments, boards of directors and all other decision makers, has always existed. At one time this law was closely allied to the Law of Unforeseeable Consequences.

An unforeseeable consequence, is something which may happen as a result of an action, and which a reasonable person could not have foreseen. Quite reasonably this might be also called an unintended consequence. However with increasing specialisation among decision makers and their advisers, they often appear to be blinkered to perfectly foreseeable knock-on effects of their decision making. At the same time our elected representatives often make their decisions in response to the campaigns of the popular press.

Take drugs legislation. Now let me make this clear I am not claiming either politicians or the press barons – especially the owners of the so called “Red Tops” – are in cahoots with drug dealers. Non the less a consequence of their actions is they create an economic environment that allows drug dealers to make big profits.

Drug Dealing is a form of Free Market Capitalism. It operates on all the laws of the market. Price is set by two factors: demand; and scarcity.

Demand - is a factor the government appears unable to influence, for a number of reasons some people want to take mind altering drugs. Some people settle for a legal drug alcohol, while others prefer one of the wide range of alternative and illegal drugs which are available.

Scarcity – is a factor the government controls. If a drug is legal the price that can be asked is relatively, as the supplier is taking no more risks than the supplier in any other operation. If a drug is illegal the price will rise.

The supplier is taking greater risks, he operates in an illegal environment. Possibly his overheads will include payments to other criminals for “protection”. The drug user, who in all other aspects of their life may be perfectly law-abiding, is also forced into this criminal sub-culture. Thus the law-abiding drug user becomes, to some extent, alienated from authority. Another nail is hammered into the coffin of decent society.

It should not come as a shock to the legislators that the mere act of making a drug illegal, will not stop people taking the drug, but it will create an open door for organised crime. In the 1920s in the U.S.A. the sale of alcohol was made illegal, the era we now call “Prohibition”. This did not stop Americans drinking. It merely created a demand, a demand the Mafia was willing to satisfy. In fact the Mafia did so well out of Prohibition, that they secretly made donations to the funds of politicians who favoured prohibiting alcohol.

In fact the effect of declaring certain drugs to be illegal has worldwide repercussions. Soldiers are dying in Columbia and in Afghanistan in wars which are in part financed by the illegal drugs trade. I do not claim drugs are safe for their users. Far from it, as a former addict I know they are bad, but I also know other legal drugs are equally addictive and cause the user harm. Therefore it seems to me the justification for outlawing some drugs is not rational.

Furthermore if one considers the revenue lost to the Treasury and therefore the nation the justification becomes even weaker. If only 2.5% of the population use illegal drugs in a week, each spending a very conservative £5 for their drugs this would represent at a minimum £67 million lost VAT. To this should be added, any special drugs taxes probably a total of 50% of the total street price probably another £250 million. This is not the end of lost revenue, if drugs were legal the dealers would be paying income tax, and they would no longer be able to claim unemployment benefits.

Mr Johnson said he was worried about social impact of lowering the classification of Cannabis. Co am I but there we diverge. He should recall what Blair said in 1997 “Tough on crime tough on the causes of crime.” Politicians should face up to reality, the so called war on drugs is lost, it was lost many years ago. Legalising drugs does not mean drugs should be freely available – indeed the opposite can be the result of legalisation. What has to date been an unregulated black-market will, upon legalisation be open to scrutiny – both supply and consumption can be regulated by the state.

Let us bring to an end the present ludicrous and somewhat hypocritical situation. Rizla, the company who manufacture cigarette papers for those who roll their own. Produce a very large paper which has only one use – to roll what is called a “Joint”, so called because drug users used to join together 3 cigarette papers or more.

In nearly every town in this country, even the smallest market town, somewhere there will be a shop which sells these large cigarette papers. In all probability the same shop will sell small scientific brass scales and weights, these scales are used for weighing drugs when they are being sold. This same shop will probably include in its stock small special pipes for smoking Hashish and hubblebubble pipes too.

The dealer at the school gates, - the mythical bogey man of the Red-Top Newspapers will be far less likely to be able to operate.

The "Social Ills" caused by legalisation may well be less, than the effects upon society which can be laid at the door of continuing to outlaw, substances a large number of people use.