Reform of the drug laws is in the air - or at least in the papers. Many liberals instinctively feel that radical reform of the drug prohibition would be a good thing.

More authoritarian people tend to suppose that this is because liberals believe that the individual should be able to do whatever s/he likes, no matter how harmful, as long as it doesn't effect others.  This argument they find flawed as there are clearly people in society less able to look after themselves and make sensible choices than others.

However, whilst certainly a factor in liberal thinking, it is far from the clinching argument. The practical effects of prohibition are seen as so awful that the continuation of the current regime seems to dogmatically ignore facts.  Bertrand Russell said:

“The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.”

So it is with the laws around drugs.  Whilst the evidence stacks up in favour of legalisation, liberals have no chimera's against not doing so.

Mary Anne Sieghart in The Times today deals with some of the evidence in the drugs debate and quotes from Transform Drug Policy Foundation:

"Transform estimates that the prison population would fall by between a third and a half, ending overcrowding and the need to build more jails. Billions of pounds spent enforcing prohibition and coping with its consequences would be saved. Hundreds of thousands could be treated as patients rather than criminals. The number of drug-related deaths would fall dramatically. And desperate young women could be rescued from pimps, potential rapists and murderers."

Mary Anne Sieghart - The Times

These figures seem too fantastic to be true. Certainly drug-related crime accounts for much of our massive prison population, but few would seriously contend that by reducing the legal impact of one social ill - no others would spring up in their place.

Only by implementing these reforms would we really understand the impacts;  a fantastically problematic argument for those of us who advocate some of the most radical measures.