vda

Nigel Farage on Drug Prohibition

Any Questions, 2nd April 2010:

“I have a feeling that prohibition in this whole area simply isn’t working. Every year we say that we are going to fight the war on drugs harder than we have fought it the year before. And I think this is one of those areas of life, and, whilst people may find this distasteful, I think we need a proper full Royal Commission on this whole area of drugs to investigate whether perhaps life might be better for millions of people living on council estates that are dominated by the drugs dealers, that are dominated by the crime that surrounds, the money that people raise, to get these drugs, let’s find out through a Royal Commission whether perhaps we should decriminalise drugs, whether we should license them, license the users, and sell them at Boots – because frankly if you add up the costs of drugs to society the big problem is the fact that they’re criminal and everything that goes with that. And I think there is an argument that says if we decriminalised it we would make the lives of millions of people far better than they are today.”

No comment needed!


Discover more from The Libertarian Alliance

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

28 comments


  1. No comment needed, agreed, but whilst not wishing to be superfluous I do have one, “Well done, keeping letting your inner Libertarian out Mr. Farage, you know you want to”.


  2. It’s difficult at the moment, look at the papers, investigations, lot of police
    involved, once these criminal elements are removed things will get better.


  3. Of course the downside to decriminalisation is the state just becomes the “Drug Dealers” and profits from narcotics, we can’t realistically have state drug dealers using the funds to fill the black holes in their pension pots, for pensions that should have never have been there in the first place. The new investigation units brought in bt TH are working, they are convicting police criminals, new laws to access their bank accounts are bringing results, of course of late we are seeing high numbers of caught cops committing suicide, but that is true in all areas of life, May has made progress on this for all her failings, we have seen a sea change, for once the Police are being Policed, it’s reaping a good harvest, why interfer, let nature take it’s course. Let justice be done.


  4. Why a Royal Commission, why not a democratic commission, who voted
    for a Royal Commission anyway. No One………………………………………….


  5. Criminal elements removed from where Karl – the drug-user federations; the newly appointed commission charged with overseeing the Royal Commissioners’ travel and accommodation fund; or the new-model gun-toting plodders’ essential insurance co-operative?

    All three fit the Bill I expect. If the country had sufficient credit left a call for all three would be essential. The way things stand though, should Mr Farage ever hold the rains of power, like all those having gone before, he’d opt for the soft option: talk a lot whilst doing little. Hoping instead that something new might turn up and let them off the drug hook – a new, rapidly terminal wasting disease perhaps?


  6. Everywhere if you like including the councils, state public office, let’s go
    one further new laws to investigate barristers, I don’t care take it as far
    as you like. Only when you see the map, do you understand the problem,
    take the tanks as far as you like, just make sure they have fuel for the
    journey.


  7. Decriminalise drugs and the 200 year+ establishment economy [drug traficking, prison-industrial complex etc ] would collapse overnight !
    What would the Opium wars and the drug wars in Vietnam-Cambodia-Laos triangle, Columbia, Afghanistan etc have been fought for?

    Few ‘snips’ as a quick summary –

    After the second Opium War which ended in 1860, the British merchant banks and trading companies established the Hong Kong and Shanghai Corporation as the central bank of the Far East drug industry. [H.S.B.C]

    Rio Tinto, the biggest mining company in the world was established in 1873 by Hugh Matheson of the global drug running operation called Jardine Matheson.

    Bayer laboratories in Germany in 1898 created heroin by adding ingredients to the morphine molecule. Bayer would later be part of the I. G. Farben pharmaceutical cartel at the heart of Hitlerโ€™s war machine.

    1914 Americaโ€™s crude and counterproductive Harrison Act; bans narcotics, allows drug peddlers to make enough money that eventually the drug trade will match the oil industry in forming 8% of all international trade, and shows that worldwide; prohibition has been a technique of informal American colonialisation, and since this time drug enforcement agencies and organised crime are in alliance, both greatly fear the devaluation that legislation of drugs would bring.

    1917 18th December; Prohibition Act passed. Alcohol prohibition was a means to establish the massive network of organised crime in the United States. The structure thus produced was perfect, as intended, for drug trafficking once prohibition was over. The main groups campaigning for prohibition and an end to the โ€˜evils of drinkโ€™, groups like the Womenโ€™s Christian Temperance Union and its Anti-Saloon League, were financed by the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and Warburgs, via the Rockefeller Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and similar tax-exempt foundations. Incidentally, it also made a fortune for Joseph Kennedy, the father of JFK.

    28th June 1919; Signing of the Treaty of Versailles at Versailles. U.S. influence makes sure that the treaty included ratification of the International Opium Convention.

    1920. International Opium Convention becomes British The Dangerous Drugs Act, after a cursory debate with just 6 M.P.โ€™s.

    American โ€˜Flappersโ€™ pioneer Cocaine as a fashionable drug throughout the 20โ€™s

    1923 Samuel Russell established Russell and Company for the purpose of acquiring opium in Turkey and smuggling it to China. Russell and Company merged with the Perkins (Boston) syndicate in and became the primary American opium smuggler. Many of the great American and European fortunes were built on the “China”(opium) trade. One of Russell and Company’s Chief of Operations in Canton was Warren Delano, Jr., grandfather of Franklin Roosevelt. Other Russell partners included John Cleve Green (who financed Princeton), Abiel Low (who financed construction of Columbia), Joseph Coolidge and the Perkins, Sturgis and Forbes families. (Coolidge’s son organized the United Fruit company, and his grandson, Archibald C. Coolidge, was a co-founder of the Council on Foreign Relations.)

    1925 Britain; Bill banning use of Cannabis is passed after less than five minutes debate.

    1933 โ€˜Coincidentallyโ€™ Prohibition of alcohol ends just as the US market economy was remodelled. The trade unions gained a large influence, which began dangerously to slow down the economy, since a number of recently unemployed but well organized alcohol gangsters took control.

    Iran-Contra – Barry Seal – etc
    Bank of America laundered CIA drug money
    […]


  8. Mr Farage, has passed the first test, however he has jet to pass through
    the cave of “MEDUSA” and obtain the second Key, Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha..


  9. “…..The way things stand though, should Mr Farage ever hold the rains of power, like all those having gone before, heโ€™d opt for the soft option: talk a lot whilst doing little…….”
    There is nothing more infuriating than being accused of something you have not yet done. I have known Nigel for twenty years and have never known him take the ‘soft option’. He was a member of the Conservative Party until they stabbed Maggie in the back & signed the Maastricht Treaty (which was also the point at which I joined UKIP). Nigel could have had a very comfortable ministerial career in the Conservative Party if he had toed the Party line on Europe, kept his true principles to himself and just got his snout in the trough as so many others in the Conservative Party have done – instead of which he has slogged away for twenty years in the face of often derisory results and hopeless odds whilst having buckets of sh*t heaped on him mostly by his so-called supporters. I think he deserves commendation for his achievements, not condemnation.
    Incidentally Prohibition was enacted by Constitutional Amendment (the 18th) for reasons I have never understood. I had not heard of a ‘Prohibition Act’. Perhaps somebody can enlighten me?


  10. Yes, well good point, so there once was an ugly duckling. There again no
    sympathies for shit they do that to everyone, however the point is people
    want a differnt kind of government to the previous last two corrupt
    failures, he is now master of his own political destiny.


  11. Yes, commendation, but remember this politics is a filthy business, anyone
    who becomes a soldier of politics, must learn to fight in open battle, and
    defeat the enemy, his commendations come in the form of yesterday’s
    victories, these are the medals of politics.


  12. You got this from the Hitchens article someone linked to earlier, didn’t you? ๐Ÿ˜‰ The sentiments expressed are unfortunately too reasonable for our hysterical era (note how the tosser Peter Hain tried to take an easy shot at Farage for it), and will have to wait for a more enlightened time to be quoted favourably in the history textbooks. His own party will probably hold him back, though.


    • Yes, I got the quote from David Webb’s linking to the main article. Hitchens is a patchy writer. I really cannot see how a conservative can support something as dangerously mad as the war on drugs.


  13. Well he should get his shights adjusted, didn’t have any effect, I don’t know
    where people get the ideas from, another point have the police “Bucked”
    the drugs problem like they have in other areas of statisitics.


  14. I am not familar with council estates, so I don’t know what goes on around them, but can there be such a big problem in poverty ridden areas, I don’t think so, perhaps the matter is subject to paranoia or hysterical mania by those in the PC brigade after all it keeps them in a job. However, it is odd, I have traveled all over Norfolk, although I accept there are drug adicts in the county their numbers appear to be quite small, nothing of concern I might say. Of course there could be drug infested areas, I saw a programe about brixton, many people stopped had drugs, I think this was down to economics, the drugs economy had just filled the lack of industrial economic growth and lack of jobs for people who lived there, so it must be presumed quite rightly, they try and make money by sellling drugs, this is what has happened in mexico the drugs economy just replaces the real ecomony, it works in the same way as industiral economy creating jobs and wealth and becomes a way of life for many involved, established economic development. I don’t think there is an easy solution, but point of fact, spending millions of pounds arresting people for a tiny amounts of drugs and then releasing them as in PCL doc is stupid, the money could be better spent on health care, or on welfare for those are genuinely unable to work. What, when the tobacco industry goes, because they have stopped smoking, will they become drug dealers to fill the economic black hole, will they no longer grow tobacco and start growing cocaine, one can only wait and see, but we must not falsely give the impression we have a big drugs problem in the UK compared to other comparisons we do not, the PC brigade will alway’s cry we do, it’s how they create their jobs and justfiy their existance, We all now the story of “Little Red Riding Hood” don’t we.


  15. Peter Hitchens’s take on drugs is indeed baffling. He thinks alcohol should be banned (though he himself likes the odd drink), but that alcohol is too firmly fixed as the nation’s intoxicant of choice to do anything about it now. In one sense it’s quite consistent – if you believe that whatever harms people ought to be made illegal then why stop at cannabis, cocaine etc? Here he is making a fool of himself in a Guardian interview: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/21/peter-hitchens-addiction-drugs-war

    He calls himself a conservative yet has a more nanny-state approach to drugs than any left-liberal I have ever read. Conservatives generally believe that people ought to be left alone to manage their own risks, right?!

    Theodore Dalrymple’s take on the whole question is equally baffling given his relentless emphasis on personal responsibility: http://www.city-journal.org/html/7_2_a1.html


    • The Dalrymple line is at least explicable. He spent most of his career looking after people whose minds and lives had been seriously messed up by drugs. The Hitchens line is just perverse.


  16. I admired Hitchens and felt surprisingly sad at his passing. He was able to store detail of the kind I forget within days and, rather irritatingly, had the ability to retrieve it instantly. He was certainly a great debater, a brilliant talker with a wonderfully sonorous voice. So important. A good enough writer too but I changed my mind about him, at least to some extent, after reading Catch 22.

    The older he became the more he seemed to chop and change his views. He knew it of course but I find that trust in a man comes through constant reliability. If you must tack – do it slowly. In the end I felt that I no longer could predict where he precisely stood with culture and politics. His views on religion held firm I think even when he knew he was dying. Bless him for that.

    He loved England yet chose to turn Yank. He disliked Yorkshire people (it’s not possible to love England and dislike Yorkshire people – Is it?). He was a terrible snob I feel. Not just because he thought that dropping aitches was deplorable (that’s why you must always call me Christopher). He also occasionally supported the dropping of high explosives. He valued thinking people, especially writers, yet smoked and drank himself into an early grave. Constantly referred to his own father as ‘The Commander’ which irritated me no end and probably irritated his father too. (He seemed to be taking the piss out of him because he was ex-military – a lower life-form. But that’s just my view and I’m only guessing. Maybe someone read it differently?)

    I doubt very much that Chris and I would have got on very well. In the end I thought him to be far too up-himself. Fair do’s though – there are several of his books that I’ve yet to read.

    Hugo: I’m simply suggesting that Mr Farage is likely to toe the Establishment line given all we’ve seen before concerning British MP’s. I’m not directly accusing him of anything. I even voted for the bloke. Good luck to him I say but should he survive the various and many runnings of the BBC’s left-wing gauntlet and eventually gain some degree of power, I fear he’ll buckle. He doesn’t seem to have well-funded and powerful backers. Does he? You know him Hugo so you tell me. He also desperately needs a gifted 2IC – the one he’s got now will not cut the mustard I’m afraid.

    Anyway lads (and lasses) the suns out and I’ve got to mow the sodding lawns again.


  17. Anyway if you look at the facts and fugures both labour and Conservative havw got it wrong, probably in truth spending billions on wefare and a failed drugs policy in the last 13 years, ther’s still a problem a bigger one so they say, so their policies are a conclusive failure. I wonder just how much can you achieve with the law and the police, i see this morning Ice Cream vans are the lastest on the hit list of government, from next year all Ice Cream vans over five years old are to be banned in Sheffield, and it will probably roll out all over the UK, new EU laws introduced by Cameron will mean all vans will have to undergo expensive convertions, or vans replaced with the new ยฃ70,000 regulated versions, bye, bye, to Mr Ice Cream man, another British tradition, of course with the nut, nut, laws like the obesity PC brigade many vans are banned from anywhere near schools no, so their candle was
    slowly burning anyway. so I think the only conclusions are they are indeed well and trulely sunk beyond doubt. Can any one understand how british life and freedoms are turning into a kind of concentration camp affair under the EU, surely you must be able to see that at the very least, I wonder if the EU ministers have shares in the new van production plants, they must have some interests to introduce such a policy in the first place, of course institutions like the DVLA don’t help they want as much EU regs as they can get to make money and justifiy their existance. Of course people will have to take a gamble on Farage, he may be the only hope, yes, the British establishment might get to him true, but there again they might not, especially if he has the support of the people, who by point of fact are turning away from the establishment in droves. Of course, Ukip are indeed short of funds, they do indeed need arrows for thier archers this is true. But in saying that people can send donations to Ukiip, if they wish, I’m sure they would be glad however small. I think people of Britian need to stop for a few minutes, ponder on how your lives and freedoms are being erroded by labour and Tory governments, if they stay in power there will be so many laws, you will cease to exist, you will be no more than poverty stricken prisoners on an island in the North sea, controled by despotic head cases.


  18. Peter Hitchens writes well and there is much that we could agree on. But his attitude to recreational drugs (I presume that even he would allow them to be used for medicinal purposes) has always been a complete mystery to me.

    On the one hand he complains, quite reasonably, about the growth and scope of the nanny state.

    On the other hand he continually calls for the enforcement of draconian drug prohibition. Since this inevitably involves the creation of an array of victimless offences, it always leads to precisely the intrusive, costly and freedom destroying type of law enforcement that he would appear to oppose.

    One can agree with his views on the evils of drug use, but one would have thought his conservative instincts would have told him that the state-mandated “cure” to this particular disease is +always+ far worse than the disease itself.

    To his credit he debates the issue in a pretty fair and transparent way, but it is always rather sad to see an able commentator like this barking up the wrong tree.

    As Sean says, “patchy” is really the word for Hitchens.


  19. Of course we are being told a trident of lies told by Labour, Tory and Liberals on welfare policy, they say they want to get people back to work, yet in truth they bring in mountains of legislation to put everyone on the dole, this is the reality of their employment policy, unemployement, unemployed people. The public are sick of laws, sick of the EU, the laws they debate are a nonsense, what about banning horses from the Highway, yes this will become a reality in our time, just because the EU dictators say so. Anyone who wrongly beleived the conservatives about a cull on EU laws is a fool, they are being slipped through like snakes in the grass, the conservatives will do nothing about immigration, their laws are to complex to be inforcable, it will just create further paper mountains speeding up the bankrupcy of Britian, while the lawyers and PC brigade get rich on the process, and retire to sunnier climbs and holiday in the top spots in the Med, with their EU chums until they reach 45. And we continue to have tens of thousands of illegal immigrants slipping through the net, albit easier than before, I like the Tory policy on immigration only this week, we see a murderer escaped, left the country and came straight back in under a different name with fake id and passport, seems easy to get into Britain even if you are a killer or bus bomber, no difficulty here at all.Of course the police response is a simple one, shot some poor innocent tube punter in the head, while the observation pricks have a piss behind the wall and get the wrong man. Is britain in safe hands! I don’t think so, not hard to see why so many people are changing to Ukip, the reason is obvious, no doubt at all.


  20. many of the people refered to in these articles are “Hoodwinkers” just look at the powers of these new unacountable Police Commissonaires,we already had millions and millions spent under labour in respect of victim support, ie, trial nobbling, where policemans wives types leaked confidential slanderous information to the so called victims, may who were in fact not of the best moral or law abiding character. we now see commissoniars setting up further divisions of this under a new name, not really for the victims, but just another form of job creation for those in the golden circle, Britian is becomming third world, being run like a third world dictatorship, what happened to the so called acountability of these new commisonaires, it seems to work like this we buy them a brand new ยฃ30,000 car, they pass on the old one to a family memeber, well not that old, and get a paid driver to run them around like the Queen of England, I thought we only had one head of state, they seem to be comming out of the woodwork from every direction, and point of the compass, God, who ever allows these millage allowances, I knew a certain person in the SS, her millage allowances were more than a day’s a pay for some people. I like the way the catchment was managed, the SW in Norwich goes to cromer, and the SW in Cromer goes to Norwich. Demented or what.


  21. Why should victims not be allowed support, I heard of a case were a poor
    man got his bike stolen from outside of a butchers shop after he failed to
    lock it, if a person becomes scared to ride a bike after such an incident why
    should he not be allowed access to victim support services, shrinks and
    SW’s, he should have all the tax payers aid he wants thats what VS is
    all about.


  22. Of course now the conservatives have lost control of Norfolk County Council, Ukip has really shown who has the balance of power, when backed by other councilors, but one must ask, what is their intention about state crime, we have another three F.O.I. disclosures this week, again police involved. We can’t like live under statists involved in organised crime, it simply cannot continue. Some years ago i had a friend of mine who worked in governmetn he worked for the home office now, deceased, he alway’s was a yapper when he’d had a few but I liked to listen because i knew he told me the truth, i remember one night he told me about the statists latest scam, going on long term sick, and working for agency in other areas of the county, picking up two pay packets. of course nothing stay’s silent forever, and they got rumbled with a slap on the wrist, we thought the problem had gone awaythat was until the leaks about cases at the Norwich N&N and the publications of the hearing evidence this week, according to the file, the
    problem has not gone away but futher out of the county, a conduct hearing
    this week held a locum guilty of going on sick leave, he then went to work
    at Guy’s hosptial in London, whislt on sick leave, he has been suspended
    for one year no doubt on full pay, after the panel found him guilty of dishonesty, it gives serious concerns, I was at the hospital a few months
    ago and they were giving out leafelts about internal crime, do you know
    anyone making ghost medical records and files, Well? Anyway isn’t it
    scary, In hospitals of all places, what in god’s name is going on, but do be
    worried with this new agency set up by the government has no powers
    to deal with it, because they are not the police and have no legal powers
    so they claim.Of course it’s been a good week this week, the person in charge
    of a school has run off with the money, we have the F.O.A. and another
    PC heading for the dock. Goodnight All! Dixon Of Doc Green.


  23. But Clark, this is going on everywhere in in the courts, their are forging
    and falsifying just about everything they touch. Thank god for Ukip. That
    retired J.J. goes on about crime in the county, it’s because his court keeps
    covering their arses if they work in government.


  24. Of course, these internal disciplinary quangos are a joke, same with local resolution with the police, the evidence comming out during these secret hearings and tribunlas should be before the “Old Bailey”everybody sick of this slap on the wrist cover their arses culture, at one time, much of this stuff would have made front page news with a ten year stretch, bollocks to local resolution, and inernal discipline it does not work, this sort of light slap on the wrist for serious crime or murder, just creates more crime, they know they get away it. The statist crimianl proceedures must be they same as they are for the people, at the moment they are not it’s a two tear system, a secret system for them but not for us, who would end up in jail for identical matters.

Leave a Reply