From sun to bust

I spent Sunday in the Solent on a boat sailed by my cousin Peter. A good wind in our sails, choppy seas, and glorious unbroken sunshine as we sped past the glistening white Needles.

There was hardly another  boat in sight. I wondered why, and suddenly remembered the Men’s Final at Wimbledon was on. Must remember in future – that is a very good moment to put to sea.

As we neared our mooring in the Beaulieu river the skies clouded, the temperature dropped and a day of fabulous detachment from the world beyond came to a rather grey conclusion.

Driving back up the A3 into London, somewhere around Twickenham, the car was overtaken at speed by two blaring police squad cars, blue lights flashing. At a road junction a mile or two later, another squad car was speeding in from the left, and yet two more from the opposite direction.

A police van and another squad car were on the corner, a number of officers were on the pavement and several young men and women were standing against a fence. In the time I was stopped at the traffic lights, I counted at least six squad cars, two vans, and some 15 to 20 police officers on the ground. I saw no sign of weapons. It had all the hallmarks of a drug incident.

I wondered how it would look once the cuts have kicked in. I wondered too whether one consequence of the cuts might prove to be a fundamental review of the criminalisation of drugs.

Snowblog has addressed the question of legalising all classified drugs before. Indeed the Economist magazine continues to argue the case for it. The costs of enforcement, the vast underworld of pain and wretchedness spawned by the ‘drugs war’ are a blight across the world. The illegal drugs industry is worth many hundreds of billions of pounds across the world. They dominate prisons, politics, business, policing, social work and so much more in every major society on earth.

One is left wondering, as I did not whilst under sail in the Solent, in whose interests the current drug policy prevails.