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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Decriminalise drugs says prisons' inspector
Ananova
Monday 09 Jul 2001 The outgoing chief inspector of prisons is calling for drug taking to be decriminalised. Sir David Ramsbotham said his experience of the jail system has convinced him for the need to tackle the drug trade as a major cause of crime. Last week, Tory MP Peter Lilley said cannabis should be legalised and sold though licensed outlets. Sir David told BBC Radio 4's A Parting Shot on Prisons: "The more I think about it and the more I look at what's happening, the more I can see the logic of legalising drugs. "Because the misery that is caused by the people who are making criminal profit is so appalling, and the sums are so great that are being made illegally... That I think there is merit in legalising and prescribing, or whatever, so people don't have to go and find an illegal way of doing it." Speaking during a visit to a drug-free wing at Bullingdon Prison in Oxfordshire, he said his time in the job had heavily influenced his views. He commented: "I've come a very long way through exposure to what the drug culture has done to the people I am seeing in prison, their families and the community from which they come." Sir David, who is soon to step down from the post, hit out at politicians for seeing him as "the enemy" and for making huge budget cuts, saying: "I'm aware that there are people who have regarded me and the Inspectorate as being enemies as opposed to being own troops. "Now, if they were being really logical that is wholly and utterly wrong. If the ministers are serious about improving the treatment and conditions of prisoners, the people who can best enable that to happen are the Inspectorate." He added: "All I see are cuts, cuts, cuts. Now what does that say about policy? Is the policy really about protecting the public by preventing crime or is it to reduce the cost of imprisonment?"
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