Only way to beat drugs is to decriminalise them

tHe Mercury’s headline on Wednesday – “Youngsters delivering drugs as if working a paper round” – must have caused many readers to shake their heads in impotent distress.

the social decline it represents seems inevitable, rendering protest – and indeed your headline – hopeless, a mere empty moan, achieving nothing.

We feel completely without agency in the face of sophisticated organised crime, county lines, warring gangs and knives.

Who is to blame? I would suggest that it is generations of cowardly parliamentarians.

this particular can has been kicked down the road for decades. A potential vote-loser, our MPs have ignored it to protect their careers. In the meantime, the infrastructure for illicit national drugs distribution has evolved and grown until it now encompasses our children.

Politicians are fond of the word “tough”.

It is now time for them to make the tough decisions they have put off for so long.

they must decriminalise marijuana at the very least and allow its legal sale through vetted outlets.

other drugs must be considered similarly.

the reasons and procedures for doing so have been presented – and ignored – many times and need no mention here.

Prohibition means loss of government control. As with Al capone, the beneficiaries of prohibition are always the criminals.

So-called “controlled drugs” are controlled only by them, as they laugh all the way to the bank.

MPs must put our young people first and if they lose their seats by doing so, well, tough!

Julian Wright, Braunstone