All these things that I have done

The policy

It is my position that the risks I take with my body are mine to chose. I do not see it as a function of government to tell me what I may or may not put into my system any more than it is their function to tell me my sexual orientation or what job I should do. I would also apply this to prescription drugs in that if I do not wish to take medication then that is also my right. I do agree though that is is the governments job to protect their citizens so if I am a danger to myself or others in my base state then the state can offer me a choice between detention in a secure facility or taking medication if that is the only way protection can be achieved.

The application

There is nothing (well, few things) more annoying to a mathematician than inconsistency and that's exactly what we see in the application of drugs policy. Both alcohol and nicotine are available freely to persons over the age of 18 despite the fact that they can cause people to act irrationally and/or aggressively (particularly the former) posing a risk to others or themselves, cause significant health problems if taken on a regular basis (particularly the latter) and are highly addictive. By contrast, possession of cannabis, ecstasy or LSD is punishable by a prison sentence of up to 2 years. Now I'm not claiming that there are no potential health risks etc. associated with these drugs but those health risks are not (as far as I am aware) more significant than those available freely to cigarette smokers.

The arguments

Also, finally I would just like to bitch about the way that the drugs policy has been argued in the past, particularly in the case of cannabis. The drugs tzar and others are always going on about how cannabis is a "gateway drug" and how many people who take heroin have also taken cannabis at some point in their lives. There are 2 problems with this argument.

1. Just because a large proportion of heroin users have also taken cannabis in the past that does not prove that taking cannabis leads to heroin. This is a prime example of the fuzzy logic I have complained about else where. The statistic does not say how many people who use cannabis have never used heroin and therefore is of practically no use. The only thing I can see that it helps us to conclude is that people who take heroin are likely to have taken other drugs previously - hardly a surprise.
2. The claim, as I understand it, is that the dealers use cannabis as a hook to push other more risky stuff onto people who wouldn't otherwise take it. Well if cannabis wasn't illegal then they wouldn't be able to do that would they! That problem, in so far as it does happen (see 1), is due to the government created situation cannabis users find themselves in. If they could get the stuff from a licensed bar or other retailer then they wouldn't be being exposed to criminals in order to get their supply.

Another annoying claim is that drugs use leads to crime. There is almost no way to prove this one way or the other since the criminal status of drugs a) keeps prices artificially high and hence often out of the reach of the mid/lower income person on a regular basis and b) means that people who take drugs are forced to associate with criminals in order to obtain them. As far as I am aware there is no evidence to suggest that rich London media types out of their heads on cocaine are more likely to housebreak so it seems that this argument is on relatively shaky footing.

Addendum: Since writing the above David Blunkett has decided to take an even more self-contradictory stance on cannabis policy i.e. that it will be illegal to posses it but we won't actually bother to arrest anyone for it. This means that while people will feel more free to buy cannabis without risk nothing is done to address the problems which are inherent in the criminal status discussed above - mixing with criminals and purveyors of harder stuff, artificially high prices and no quality control. This is probably one of the few ways the drugs policy could be changed which makes it more contradictory and less useful!

This post was originally posted on my website in the anticipation that I would write many more rants. In the end, I never got round to it so I'm moving it to here. The opinions outlined here are solely based on my beliefs and I'm always ready to argue/debate them - even change them!

As you may have gathered from above I am feeling much more perky today. Went bowling with the gang from work last night which was pretty cool although I didn't do very well - I have a very strange swing apparently! By some freak coincidence all the people who were good at bowling ended up on the same team (no-one had done any for so long that we had no idea who was going to be good!) so they won both matches by miles. I then managed to catch a bus after some faffing around at Marble Arch and get back, collect my bike (which had spent a whole day at Glouster Green without being stolen - practically a miracle) and get home by 10:30. Which meant that I actually got some rest this evening. Its amazing how much difference that extra hour (going to bed @11 as opposed to @12) makes - it must be a sleep cycles thing I think. Now I'm back at work, I'm meeting up with Suz this evening and I've got my Josie and the Pussycats CD so I'm happy. It's great although really it needs somewhere I can bounce up and down while I listen to it but this'll do.

I think it's time for another one of my perennial rants. Last night went I went to catch the bus back to Oxford they started coning off 3 of the 4 lanes of Park Lane leaving only the innermost lane. I was rather worried by this as I wasn't sure how the bus would stop so I went over to ask one of the workmen who assured me that the bus would pull up just past the cones. In the event however the bus just zoomed straight passed us. As you can imagine, I was rather annoyed so I decided that it would be foolish to stay and jumped on the tube to Notting Hill Gate - and in the end I beat the bus there! What really bugged me though was that there were about 10 other people at the bus stop. None of them made any effort to find out what was going on and when the bus went past us they didn't seem inclined to actually do anything - no one else came down to the station anyway. I wonder how many buses had to sweep past them before they moved. I just don't understand it - people are so passive. And they're so easily lead - each waiting for someone else to make the first move and sure that if the other people are waiting they must know something that you don't. I can't imagine when it would be better to sit around in a situation like that than actually do something definite to improve things. Even if you didn't get to Notting Hill before the first bus you'd defiantly get there before the second one. Maybe its all linked with my rant about logic. If we could just encourage people to think and reason a little more they might be less likely to just sit around and let things happen to them. The only excuse I can think of is that they might not have any cash for the tube left but I find that hard to believe somehow.