イギリス英会話ブログ

Illegal drugs are widely-available, and widely-used, in the UK. The National Criminal Intelligence Service estimates 500,000 to two million ecstasy tablets are consumed each week in Britain. It is perhaps difficult for Japanese to imagine such a situation as demand for mind-altering substances does not appear so high in Japan. Or, it may just be that drugs are an issue in Japan, but one that does not attract much media attention. In the UK, especially since the spread of dance-music culture, drugs like ecstasy are fairly easy to get hold of and immensely popular.

The American style ‘War on Drugs’ has been spectacularly ineffective in the UK, and opinion about how to deal with the social problems caused by drug use is beginning to change. Recently, a UK parliamentary committee commissioned report found the use of “Ecstasy” to be less dangerous than tobacco and alcohol in social harms, physical harm and addiction. There are calls within the police for drug categorizations to be ammended to reflect more realistically the harm caused to society by different drugs.

There is a feeling that continuing to criminalize an activity so widely-indulged in is actually counter-productive. I think the English are a fairly law-abiding bunch, but it would seem that there are a lot of people who are prepared to break the law when it comes to buying and using recreational drugs.

Some people argue that legalization would take the drug business out of the hands of the criminal groups that run the black market in the UK, but I wonder if it wouldn’t just give criminal groups a legitimate face. Proponents of legalization also argue that it would make drugs safer to use as vendors would have to guarantee the purity of their products - which would have to contain what they claim to contain. A large proportion of deaths related to drug use are caused by people taking something without knowing clearly what it contains, and whether or not it is pure.

Whatever the arguments on either side, we are very unlikely to see legalization any time soon. While it may be paradoxical that legalized alcohol and tobacco cause great social harm, but are not regulated, there is a barrier of ignorance and suspicion when it comes to currently illegal substances which makes it almost certain their sale and use will not be de-criminalized. In a way, though, the illegality of drugs adds a certain frisson of excitement to their purchase and use which, in a way, makes them more appealing to the very groups that the government would like to protect from their harmful effects. If purchasing ecstasy was just a matter of visiting a chemist, or some other specialist retailer, maybe it would lose some of its appeal and just become a hum-drum part of everyday reality.

Many young people are attracted to drug use by it’s exciting illegality - the sense of joining an underground culture that stands in opposition to the boring puritanism of mainstream culture. Perhaps many recreational drug users do not desire legalization for just this reason.