Green Party Propose No Punishments for Drug Users
Britain’s Green Party unveiled their election manifesto this week and pledged to establish ‘a Royal Commission or a similar body to review currently controlled drug classifications, within a legalised environment of drug use’ if they gain any political power.
“(The Green Party will) treat drug addiction as a health problem rather than a crime, making drug policies the responsibility of the Department of Health,” they promised, “in order to ensure that resources are targeted at supporting, not punishing, drug users.”
In an earlier equally enlightened statement about drugs in 2006 the party directly criticised Prohibition for forcing free party revellers to risk unsafe conditions such as over-crowding and fire hazards.
“Raves / pay-parties / free-festivals and the like have proved an enduring setting in which various drugs are consumed by many tens of thousands of young people across the country,” they said.
“The popularity of these events and their proliferation in spite of attempts to suppress them makes the adoption of a more liberal approach coupled with a system of regulation a matter of highest urgency.”
Their open-minded electioneering approach contrasted significantly with the stance outlined in their manifesto by Britain’s right wing Conservative Party, who are instead vowing to ‘create a blanket ban on all new psychoactive substances, including ‘legal highs’,” if they’re re-elected (as well as ‘scrapping the Human Rights Act’.)