Heroin Legalization Programme Approved by Swiss Voters

Story from 'The Huffington Post' here.

To all who opposed the injecting room here in Melbourne a number of years ago note the words:
"...and is credited with reducing crime...".

What some other people think of our (?)
"war on drugs".

Iain Banks
“The choice we have is not between a drug free society and a society with drugs; it is between a society with drugs and a sensible attitude to them and a society with drugs tearing itself apart in a preposterous, nonsensical “War against Drugs” which not only was lost long ago but which grinds on now with almost zero benefit and something approaching 100% collateral damage. Support Transform to help end the war and promote a society at peace with itself.”
Source: Transform - 04/1999

William Burroughs
"President Bush said in his television address not long ago: 'Our outrage against drugs unites us as a nation!' A nation of what? Snoops and informers? Take a look at the knee-jerk, hard-core shits who react so predictably to the mere mention of drugs with fear, hate and loathing. Haven't we seen these same people before in various contexts? Storm troopers, lynch mobs, queer-bashers, Paki-bashers, racists - are these the people who are going to revitalize a 'Drug-free America'?"
Source: ‘The Drug User’ Documents 1840-1960, Foreword

Ben Elton
Addressing the Scottish Parliament recently:
"The real problem is not the drugs, it's the criminalisation of the community. And the fact is that this vast nation of social criminals, of whom you are all acquainted, is linked arterially to a corrosive, cancerous core of real criminals. The law is effectively the number one sponsor of organised crime."
"The logical answer appears to be legalising. One thing is certain, doing nothing is not an option."
Source: BBC News May 2006

"I firmly believe that hugely radical solutions are now required. It is about legalisation, not de-criminalisation."
Asked whether he was referring to hard drugs such as heroin, cocaine and crack, Elton said: "Yes. I think we need to get the police, the government and the emergency services in front of the criminals, not behind the criminals.
"It is now a self-evident fact that criminalisation hasn’t worked. All it has presented us with is organised crime."
Source: Scotsman - 23.07.02

“There is no moral high ground to be had in blindly ignoring the utter failure of 30 years of drug legislation, while loudly calling for more of the same. No one who is content to bang on about tougher sentences and zero tolerance while leaving our crime-bedevilled communities to their grim fate has any cause to think themselves righteous.”
“It is a matter of simple fact that a large proportion of people in this country, particularly young people, take drugs. Very few of them are drug addicts but they are all criminals under the law - the problem is that this vast nation of social criminals is linked arterially to a corrosive, cancerous core of real criminals.”
“One thing is certain - doing nothing is absolutely not an option. A crisis is developing, a crisis created by the law and from which the law offers no protection. Both the Government and the media are failing the community. It is time for a proper adult debate and I personally believe that that debate must now encompass the possibility of some form of legalisation.”
Source: ‘Legalisation Might Be The Only Way To Halt The Drugs Epidemic’ Daily Telegraph - 8.11.02

Aldous Huxley
"Complete prohibition of all chemical mind changers can be decreed, but cannot be enforced, and tends to create more evils than it cures."
Source: "Drugs That Shape Men's Minds," Saturday Evening Post, 1958

Stephen King
"I think that marijuana should not only be legal, I think it should be a cottage industry. It would be wonderful for the state of Maine. There's some pretty good homegrown dope. I'm sure it would be even better if you could grow it with fertilizers and have greenhouses. . . ."
Source: Hightimes magazine, January 1980

Carlos Fuentes
"The only way to curb the violence of the drug cartels in Mexico is by legalizing drugs."
Source: AFP website

Sir Paul McCartney
"I support decriminalisation. People are smoking pot anyway and to make them into criminals is wrong. It's when you're in jail you really become a criminal."
Source: Independent on Sunday, 28/09/1997.

Ringo Starr
"Why don't they just make it all legal?"
"I don't think the campaigns of the government in this country or America are doing anything. I think it's an absolute waste of resources, the way they're going about it. You go to clubs, everybody's taking stuff, that's how it is. Most lawyers have inhaled, they've had a joint, they've had a snort, they've had a drink. Then they carry on with their lives.""The downside of all that, like Jimi Hendrix, is we have lost a lot of musicians. But any law wouldn't have stopped him taking it."
Source: interview in The Big Issue magazine quoted in The Daily Mail “WHY ALL DRUGS SHOULD BE LEGALISED BY RINGO - Campaigners' Fury at Ex-Beatle” 28.07.98

Lemmy
"I have never had heroin but since I moved to London in 1967, I have mixed with junkies on a casual and almost daily basis. I hate the idea even as I say it, but the only way to treat heroin is to legalise it."
"If it were on prescription, then at least two thirds of the dealers would disappear and you would have records of who was using it. If a junkie has a regular supply, most are able to do a job. They will never rehabilitate until somebody - you - gives them a chance to."
Source: Speech at the Welsh Assembly 03.11.05

Woody Harrelson
"One thing I don't like is that I have become the poster boy for marijuana, certainly in the States, I don't know about here so much. It all came from a TV show I went on years ago and said a few things about the bullshit laws banning marijuana. The main thrust of my argument is not just its legalisation - which I think should happen - but that the war against drugs is unwinnable. Millions of people use pot and always will, so it is a war against the people. It all comes down to freedom. You should be free to do anything, even if it is self destructive, as long as it is not hurting someone else or their property. I absolutely believe that."
Source: Press Gazette 17.11. 05

Jack Nicholson
"My point of view, while extremely cogent, is unpopular. . . . That the repressive nature of the legalities vis-a-vis drugs are destroying the legal system and corrupting the police system."
Source: Widely quoted, but source unknown

Rupert Everett
"I don't think prostitution will ever end, just as drug taking will never end. Both should be legalised as a way of controlling them. Cut out the middleman. Tax them. Use the money to fund clinics for the victims."
Source: The Telegraph Newspaper, 08.06.08

Nigella Lawson
“..whatever one feels about alcohol or any other drug, it appears to be the case that the desire for intoxication is innate in humans. Any primitive society investigated by anthropologists depicts peoples who either danced themselves into whirling states of frenzy or who ate berries calculated to induce hallucinations (or both). Both my children, from the age when they were barely stable, used to twirl themselves around until they fell down helplessly dizzy. I agree, just because something is innate doesn't make it good, but whatever, prohibition can never be the answer.”
Source: ‘More Es and less flannel, (subtitled) Drugs may be bad for us, but banning them is not the answer’
The Observer, 06.08.00

Jonathan Ross
“For a long time I’ve felt that the war on drugs is a lost cause. As a parent I’m obviously aware of the dangers of drugs but its clear to me that these dangers are massively increased by the criminality involved in an illegal market. I’m supporting Transform because I’d like to see a more honest, rational and compassionate approach to the drug problem. ”


Source: Transform Annual Report 2005

As Burroughs said:
"JUST SAY KNOW".