January 30, 2013 at 5:54 p.m.
Letter to the editor
It's time we took a more pragmatic approach to drug policy
It was only a matter of time before health professionals would publicly advocate progressive drug policy as the pharmacists have in seeking needle exchange [BDA Sun, Friday, February 2]. I bet that their stand is based on witnessing suffering in the community and scientific research-based evidence that their proposed solution actually reduces suffering.
Great step in the right direction but a relatively small one since other communities put needle exchange into practice decades ago.
I do hope that health officials will listen to and promote the BPA proposal and that the minister will find support in Cabinet when he takes the matter forward.
When the Bermuda Government follows this eminently sensible course perhaps it will be in the mood to consider other progressive avenues, which extend the rational and humane approach it started with Alternatives To Incarceration (ATI).
Then it will move our drug policy further away from being in lock step with the Americans, who we love, but who have implemented disastrous drug policy.
The time has surely come to adopt an overall strategy of basing drug policy on research-based, scientifically supported and humane action.
Look to the pragmatic actions of other governments. For a start, recognize the vast differences between 'hard' and 'soft' drugs and implement policy accordingly.
There is a mountain of evidence suggesting that if our children/youth are experimenting with drugs, (and 75 per cent of Bermuda College students apparently have) then we should greatly prefer them doing so with pot than with methamphetamines or heroin or crack cocaine.
Yet our failed prohibition drug policies actually encourage 'hard' drugs by making them as available, if not more so, than 'soft' drugs (just as prohibition in the U.S. made hard liquor more available than it ever has been since prohibition, while beer and wine could not be found at all). No laws need to change, just policy. Just as the Commissioner of Police sets the limit over which officers ticket speeders, at say 50kph, so our Director of Public Prosecutions should be encouraged to prosecute only those pot possession arrests exceeding a certain limit, say an ounce. We have the power to stop our youth from being put on the stop-list.
D. W. Robinson JP
St George's[[In-content Ad]]
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