http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... ugs-debate

I've got news for him - recent anecdotal evidence and studies suggest UK drug use is both dropping and diversifying, with cannabis 'losing out' to legal highs for instance. Same with alcohol even.

There will always be a drug trade but that doesn't mean you legalise it (I'm assuming that's his end game here) and potentially create new addicts globally! People will always take drugs but the vast majority don't, so why change anything? The police certainly weren't too long in getting the different classes reset, and it totally ignores the massive homegrown cannabis operations run by Asian gangs, or the Eastern bloc immigrants who are setting up new gangs all the time across the UK where the drugs are only a small but 'necessary' part of their operation.

When you've got Ulster loyalists (I use that term loosely) obtaining, trading and dealing drugs with dissident republicans to the tune of millions in a single carload... well, nobody's gonna want to lose out on that sort of cash no matter what national governments do. That grass you're looking at is not greener

In Ulster both the Provos and Republicans were using the struggles as a front for their criminal activities. It was also why they went political so they got better conditions inside gaol, and early release. Drugs were the core.

As you said the Vietnamese are now big cannabis growers. Though maybe legalising it and making it taxable will allow them to tackle the gangs is a better long term solution?

Because lack of control over manufacture and distribution of drugs places vast amounts of money into the hands of extremely violent gangs who terrorise entire nations. UN treaty forbids states from legalising and controlling supply of narcotics, which locks them into brutal spirals of violence resulting in thousands of grizzly murders every year.

The relatively tame narco terrorist gangs of Northern Ireland are nothing in comparison to the Zetas, but those gangs exist as a result of our policies here and in the USA as much as those of Mexico.

Our main role is as the consumer at the end of a giant supply chain of horrific [LIFTED]. We should change that.