Gone mad? I think not,If the criterion is harm minimisation then...

Gone mad? I think not,If the criterion is harm minimisation then not only should we be giving out sage advice, we should also be licensing supply. Only one of my children ever worried me with his attitude to drug taking when he was a teenager. In truth, given that "no drugs" didn't appear to be an option, I would have preferred him to have been sourcing his mind bending substances from a BP supplier rather than from some spotty pusher. Fortunately for him and for my anxiety levels his drug experimentation phase didn't last long. Not so for one of my daughter's friends. Dead at 19 with a heroin needle poking out of her arm.

Prohibition didn't work for US alcohol and it hasn't worked for a whole spectrum of illicit substances. What prohibition has done is undermine the rule of law in both western democracies and in third world countries as well as making a very private and very ruthless class of drug suppliers very rich, very powerful and very politically influential.

The winners in the war on drugs are the drug lords. Everyone else loses.