In which we entirely agree with John Harris of The Guardian

Something we entirely agree with:

No one, surely, is going to be able to roll back a social transformation that dates back to the era of Margaret Thatcher.

Excellent, now that we've got the issue of council housing out of the way we can move onto important matters:

Which takes us to the question posed by our presumptive next king-but-one, and the stupid tangle of legal and cultural conventions that get in the way of recognising what is happening, and doing something about it. Just as hardened heroin addicts are often killed by dealers who play fast and loose with their supply, so it is with scores of young ecstasy users. In other words, for as long we allow our young people to ingest chemicals cooked up in bathtubs by career criminals, with no means of checking what on earth they are about to swallow, tragedies will happen.

I am as unsure about the sweeping legalisation of drugs as Prince William appeared to be. God knows how you liberalise the supply of crack; the idea of powerful hallucinogens available from your local off-licence seems problematic to say the least. But the idea of decriminalising at least the possession of most drugs seems increasingly unanswerable – and in time, it is not hard to envisage the liberalisation of cannabis pioneered by a handful of US states extending to Britain, as well as ecstasy being legalised, made subject to official standards, and freely bought and sold.

We are not unsure. As Harris ably describes it is the very uncertainty of what is being ingested which causes the problems with what is being ingested. Even with heroin this is true - certainly, Shipman turned out to be a mass murderer but he was also an entirely functional one and also entirely functional GP for some decades while on good, pure, pharmaceutical grade stuff. 

We actively desire that suppliers be held responsible for the purity, consistency, of what they supply, just as in any other area of life. All of which means that it should be legal, so we can sue them, so that there is the incentive to create brands which are indeed consistent. 

It really is worth noting that the branding of food took off in the 1850s, largely solving the problems of adulteration rather before legislation upon this matter in the 1870s. Food that doesn't kill people gains market share against that which does. Drugs which don't kill people will equally so.

It may even be that drug taking is immoral, that it's a waste of a life, but whose life it it anyway? To be a liberal is to say that it is the life of the person living it. And we here are utilitarians, simply desiring what works best given that fallible material being worked with, human beings.

We're still not quite convinced that heroin should be sold in sweetie wraps so that 5 year olds can chase the dragon. But the closer that consenting adults get to being able to purchase known drugs, in known purities, with the standard consumer comebacks for failures on either part, then the fewer people will die from taking drugs - and, of course, the more people will be able to follow their desires.

And what else can drug policy be other than management at least damage of something that happens anyway?