A contributor, a Mr Falconer, has posted a comment on a rather old thread ('Fighting the Fake War on Drugs'). I have responded to it there, but thought the exchange deserved a wider circulation than it will get on that old thread. I have ignored the more wearisome boilerplate in his case, but have offered direct rebuttals of some of the accusations of dishonesty which eh makes against me. My responses are in bold type.

Mr Hitchens,

The only one telling lies here is you. You know full well that prosecuting drug users is a futile strategy, which is why we do not follow it. Proof of that can be found with immediate ease, by looking across the Atlantic, where a vigorous war against drug users is still in full force. The result? The so-called "land of the free" has the biggest prison population in the world, with over two million people behind bars, of which over fifty percent are non-violent drug users.

***PH writes: This sort of misleading phraseology is typical of the drug propagandist. They may well be non-violent drug-users. But they are not in prison *for* non-violent drug use. Anyone with access to a search engine can look up an article from the (far-from-unfunky) US magazine 'Rolling Stone;' (key phrase "Top 10 Marijuana myths") which points out : ' About 750,000 people are arrested every year for marijuana offenses in the U.S. There's a lot of variation across states in what happens next. Not all arrests lead to prosecutions, and relatively few people prosecuted and convicted of simple possession end up in jail. Most are fined or are placed into community supervision. About 40,000 inmates of state and federal prison have a current conviction involving marijuana, and about half of them are in for marijuana offenses alone; most of these were involved in distribution. Less than one percent are in for possession alone.'

Less than one per cent. Got that? The writer also seems to have failed to notice the increasing legalisation of marijuana, either directly or through the ruse of 'medical marijuana' in a majority of US jurisdictions. With a few minor exceptions, the US has followed the British path of de facto decriminalisation of marijuana possession over many years, masked by the maintenance on the books of unenforced laws which appear stringent. ****

You are also a liar by omission, because you never invite people to imagine the consequences should we follow the stupid American prohibitionist model. It would require the creation of a police state and prison gulag system the equivalent of....er, the USA. The only beneficiaries would be the evil corporations which profit from human misery through privatised prisons.

You're approach is ilogical & narrow minded. How can it possibly benefit someone who has a drug problem by locking them up? Statistics show that prison sentences for drug addicts in the USA does nothing whatsover to deter use, in fact it does the exact opposite, with the vast majority of drug users who receive prison sentences relapsing on release.

The reason society is moving closer to legalisation is not because of some imaginary "Big Dope" lobby, which is a scare tactic that you have invented, [another lie],



***PH writes: Similarly I ask readers to seek out a 'Washingtion Times' article by Kelly Riddell from 2nd April 2014, which opens with the words : 'Billionaire philanthropist George Soros hopes the U.S. goes to pot, and he is using his money to drive it there.

With a cadre of like-minded, wealthy donors, Mr. Soros is dominating the pro-legalization side of the marijuana debate by funding grass-roots initiatives that begin in New York City and end up affecting local politics elsewhere.

Through a network of nonprofit groups, Mr. Soros has spent at least $80 million on the legalization effort since 1994, when he diverted a portion of his foundation’s funds to organizations exploring alternative drug policies, according to tax filings.

His spending has been supplemented by Peter B. Lewis, the late chairman of Progressive Insurance Co. and an unabashed pot smoker who channeled more than $40 million to influence local debates, according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. The two billionaires’ funding has been unmatched by anyone on the other side of the debate.

Mr. Soros makes his donations through the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit he funds with roughly $4 million in annual contributions from his Foundation to Promote an Open Society.'

****

....but because millions of people, through their personal experience are discovering the complete uselessness of prohibition; that it does absolutely nothing to deter drug use or rehabilitate, in fact prohibition does the absolute opposite by creating forbidden fruit, while at the same time worsening every problem associated with drug use, and creating other problems which did not exist prior to the introduction of prohibition -for example drug gang violence, drug adulteration.

***PH remarks: The principal protection of the individual against adulterated illegal drugs comes form the fact that their sale and purchase is illegal, and people are therefore clearly warned not to use them at all. If they then do so, it is surely at their own risk.

I have several times pointed to the case of Japan, which enforces laws which Mr Falconer would no doubt describe as 'prohibition', and has as a result achieved a much lower level of drug use (as admitted in the recent Home Office report on the subject, though they baselessly ascribed this to 'cultural differences' because it would otherwise have spoiled their argument) than in any other advanced free, law-governed and democratic country.****

The only people who benefit from prohibition are the drug traffickers, corrupt politicians, the security services and the privatised prison corporations. These are the people you side with when you argue for a new front in the War on Drugs. When, eventually drugs are legalised, and the sky does not fall on our heads, you will have to accept that you are entirely on the wrong side of history on this issue, and your arguments are ridiculous and simplistic.

***PH writes: Mr Falconer has shown here no sign of having read or understood my actual case, made in my book 'The War We Never Fought' and in many articles here. So I am not sure we can rely on his description of my arguments.***



I also suggest you watch the excellent film Kill The Messenger, about the journalist Gary Webb, who exposed cocaine trafficking by the CIA, and whose career as a journalist was utterly destroyed as a result. He supposedly committed suicide by shooting himself in the head, twice. Which leads me to ask how much do you get paid for being a shill for prohibition, when you know that any logical examination of prohibition policies leads to the conclusion that it does not work and must be reformed. Thirty pieces of silver by any chance?

***PH writes : I campaign against drug liberalisation because I strongly believe it is wrong. Nobody has ever offered me money to take up this case, or to influence my views on this or any other subject, nor would I accept it if they did. ***