Legal cannabis the only solution, says UK report

Legalisation of cannabis 'only solution to crime and addiction problems' | Society | The Guardian - Carolyne Davies:

November 21, 2016 - "Cannabis should be legalised in the UK, according to a report that has the backing of several cross-party MPs including the former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg.

"Current cannabis policy in Britain is a 'messy patchwork' of legislation intermittently enforced by regional police and an embarrassment, says the report by the free-market thinktank the Adam Smith Institute.

"The government must recognise that legalising the Class B drug is the 'only workable solution to the problems of crime and addiction in the UK and modernise and legalise', the report says.

"Politicians and the public should recognise the UK’s drug strategy 'has failed in its core aims to prevent people from using drugs, manufacturing drugs, and to put a stop to the crime, corruption and death that is taking place on an industrial scale around the world'.

"The report, The Tide Effect: How the World is Changing Its Mind on Cannabis Legislation, says legalisation would ensure the drug meets acceptable standards, remove criminal gangs from the equation, raise revenue for the Treasury and protect public health.

"A legal cannabis market could be worth £6.8bn annually, providing up to £1bn to the Treasury. It would also lower criminal justice costs, with 1,363 inmates currently in prison in England and Wales for cannabis-related offences at a cost to the taxpayer of £50m a year, the report says.

"Legal regulation would also allow long-term studies of the drug’s health effects that are not currently possible, it says."

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/nov/21/uk-should-legalise-cannabis-adam-smith-institute-report
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Ferguson, MO, shows cost of militarizing police

Police Militarization in Ferguson -- and Your Town | Cato @ Liberty - Walter Olson:

August 13, 2014 - "Why armored vehicles in a Midwestern inner suburb? Why would cops wear camouflage gear against a terrain patterned by convenience stores and beauty parlors? Why are the authorities in Ferguson, Mo. so given to quasi-martial crowd control methods (such as bans on walking on the street) and, per the reporting of Riverfront Times, the firing of tear gas at people in their own yards? ('"This my property!" he shouted, prompting police to fire a tear gas canister directly at his face.') Why would someone identifying himself as an 82nd Airborne Army veteran, observing the Ferguson police scene, comment that 'We rolled lighter than that in an actual warzone'?

"As most readers have reason to know by now, the town of Ferguson, Mo. outside St. Louis, numbering around 21,000 residents, is the scene of an unfolding drama that will be cited for years to come as a what-not-to-do manual for police forces. After police shot and killed an unarmed black teenager on the street, then left his body on the pavement for four hours, rioters destroyed many local stores. Since then, police have refused to disclose either the name of the cop involved or the autopsy results on young Michael Brown; have not managed to interview a key eyewitness even as he has told his story repeatedly on camera to the national press; have revealed that dashcams for police cars were in the city’s possession but never installed; have obtained restrictions on journalists, including on news-gathering overflights of the area; and more."

Read more: http://www.cato.org/blog/police-militarization-ferguson-nationwide
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