[MattSAU2XR8]

Decriminalising drugs is a very broad concept. At one end of the spectrum it might mean a person caught smoking a joint in his living room after putting in a ten hour day at work doesn't get fined or whatever - and this seems pretty sensible.

But at the other end of the spectrum lets assume someone buys some MDMA legally at the pharmacy, and suffers a brain injury, or some cocaine and has a heart attack, or some LSD and then goes mad and kills someone, who is to blame and who pays for the aftermath? Not saying it will happen often, but it would be silly to say it will never happen.

As things stand at the moment:
- Legal drugs of abuse are limited to cigarettes and alcohol
- Illegal drugs of abuse include most medical drugs (including opiates, benzoes), and then of course heroin, speed, MDMA, LSD, marijuana.
- Quite a few people take presently 'illegal' drugs and a small percentage of them come to grief.

The argument for decriminalisation seems to be that if it is not illegal then the drugs will be purer and users will be more likely to seek help, and so less harm will result.

But the flipside is that if the drugs are not illegal, will more people end up taking them, so that although the drugs are less dangerous, more people taking them can still lead to the same amount of harm?

I don't have a 'moral' position to push here. Don't really care what other people put in their bodies. But at the end of the day there will always be a subset of the population who are inclined to take more drugs than is good for them, or not pay takes, or not wear seatbelts, or not fence their pool, or not wear lifejackets, or drink while boating at night, of not vaccinate their kids, or not educate their kids, and so on. So why decide to decriminalise drugs only - why not just decriminalise everything?