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UK: Mowlam bequeaths controversy with 'legalise drugs' call
Liam Clarke Sunday Times
Sunday 21 Aug 2005 MO MOWLAM'S unerring ability to cause controversy has survived her. The Northern Ireland secretary and cabinet enforcer has left behind a book, to be published next year, in which she advocates the legalisation of all drugs, including heroin and cocaine. Such a legacy from a government minister, once given responsibility for the international war on drugs, may provide Tony Blair with a rueful reminder of the controversy she sparked with her admission while in office that she had smoked cannabis at university. Mowlam had been working on the manuscript for much of this year with Jon Norton, her husband, and had almost finished it. Last Thursday, the day before her death, Norton told their publisher, Polity, that he will complete it by the end of the year. "We are very proud to publish this important book. I am delighted Jon has decided he does want to finish it," said Louise Knight, Polity's editorial director. She said the working title of the book was Legalise Drugs and added: "They are putting forward an argument for regulation, not just for a free-for-all. It is based on Mo's extensive experience." Before her death, Mowlam had floated the idea of legalising drugs at a series of informal speaking engagements entitled Audiences with Mo Mowlam. She became convinced that it could be a popular idea if properly presented. She attracted controversy when she confessed to smoking cannabis while working as a social anthropology student at Durham University in the late 1960s. "I tried marijuana, didn't like it particularly and, unlike President Clinton, I did inhale," she said. "But it wasn't part of my life." She later argued for the sale of cannabis to be taxed and regulated in the same way as alcohol and tobacco. A central part of her case was that the tax on the sale of drugs should be ring-fenced to fund addiction and health projects. Mowlam formed her view that addictive drugs should be sold at regulated outlets as a result of her experience as a minister in the Cabinet Office between 1999 and 2001. At the time she publicly encouraged such solutions as the growing of alternative crops by "drug farmers". However, on leaving office she became convinced that a more radical approach was needed and advocated that legalising narcotics was the most practical means of destroying the illegal market. She wrote in 2002 that "the illegal drugs trade is now the third largest industry in the world. It is worth well in excess of $500 billion a year. The people running the industry have vast financial resources at their disposal, which virtually no government can stand up to". Her book is also expected to be highly critical of the American-led war against drugs and of George W Bush's policies on the issue. Her posthumous strike at Anglo-American drugs policy is likely to sit uncomfortably with Blair, who broke off his Caribbean holiday to praise her as "one of the shrewdest political minds I ever encountered" and "a natural politician, could read a situation and analyse and assess it as fast as anyone". Blair is not expected to attend Mowlam's funeral, which is described as private, but he will be going to a more public memorial service later this year. In Northern Ireland, where Mowlam is credited with helping to put together the Good Friday peace agreement, there are calls for a permanent tribute. Among possible memorials being discussed are a park in the grounds of Stormont, a cancer ward in a hospital or a religiously integrated school.
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