Norman Baker, the Lib Dem home office minister, has rightly suggested that to dismiss out of hand a report which the government itself commissioned, which finds that making drug taking a crime does not reduce its use, is both short sighted and counter productive.
Just as America discovered that banning alcohol was no way to combat drunkenness and that all it did was to establish organised crime as a significant element of its economy, so we have seen after nearly half a century of failure that criminal sanction does not stop drug users, but it does create a vast operation of organised crime among the suppliers. Indeed the drug industry is now so large it has to be included in the nation’s GDP; this is one of the reasons why an angry Cameron has been hit with a two billion euro surcharge which he is refusing to pay.
The modern post Thatcher Tory party has managed to gather into its tent the opposite of the old tradition of one nation Toryism. Every kind of prejudice which exists in the political firmament, exists in the Tory party. A drugs policy leading to the most overcrowded prisons and the largest organised crime network in Europe is the least imaginative approach to a serious social issue which needs therapy to be the driver of a better outcome.
The Lib Dems are swimming against the tide in the campaign run up to the general election when few of their current MPs are likely to survive. Norman Baker deserves to be one of those survivors and he probably will be.