Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Prohibition, public health and wellbeing

This piece from the Western Mail, on 21 April, 'Discredited drug policy must change', articulates cogently why prohibition must be 'audited' from a public health and wellbeing perspective. The writer Paul Crawford Walker is also Chair of Transform's Board of Trustees.

Transform has argued for nearly a decade that prohibition, at the least, must be subject to a thoroughgoing impact assessment - health and wellbeing, social and financial costs and benefits must be accounted for and made publicly available. Transform produced a briefing on this, and it subsequently became part of Lib Dem party policy.

An evidence gathering process like this would contribute hugely to scrutiny of prohibition's counterproductivity and it should be the Treasury's duty to conduct this long-overdue exercise. Remember it's us who're paying for it...

Why not drop your MP a letter calling for an impact assessment of prohibition and ask them to pass it on to Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

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