In response to a recent letter in the Oxford Mail...

I believe Alan Page (1st Feb) is completely wrong on drugs, though I am probably in a minority. Prohibition, especially of something addictive, is mad. It makes criminals of people who literally “cannot help it” once they are hooked.

For most of history humans have used natural based drugs for health, recreation, and even religious rites. In the nineteenth century when both opium and cocaine were legal, the group most likely to indulge were upper class women. They really only became illegal when the lower classes wanted to join the fun, and often on racist grounds at that.

While they were legal and available in controlled, measured, self-administered doses, addicts functioned perfectly well with few adverse health or social effects, unlike those whose poison was or is alcohol.

People get into more risky methods of use, such as injecting, to get the greatest “hit” precisely because they do not know where their next one may come from or when. The worst will use multiple substances to compensate for an irregular supply of their preferred drug.

On the same principle as “good money drives out bad” who would go to the shady man in the darkened windowed BMW to get a supply of unknown quality or strength if your local pharmacist or nightclub were selling regulated doses alongside the beer or cough mixture?

And you can bet respectable companies have plans for that eventuality already in place.