Ben calls for drug laws to be scrapped

Ben Elton has called for crack cocaine to be legalised.

The comic says making the drug legal would stop poor estates being “at the mercy" of criminal gangs.

Addressing a meeting at the Scottish Parliament yesterday, Elton said British society had a ‘blinding hypocrisy’ towards drugs, as illustrated by the Kate Moss saga.

‘We have to look seriously at legalising crack cocaine,’ he told MSPs. "If I were a politician I could not say that - but I am not, so I will grit my teeth and say we have to look at it.’

The 47-year-old argued that decriminalising drugs would mean that the government could tax their use, and monitor them to ensure they are not laced with more dangerous chemicals.

He added: ‘I don't take illegal drugs. I don't want my children to take drugs. But I don't want them to live in a violent ghettoised society

‘People taking crack is not a good thing. But streets without machine guns would be much better.’

He said the problem was drug use was so widespread that existing laws were now ‘contemptible”.

‘The real problem is not the drugs; it's the criminalisation of the community," Elton said. “The fact is that this vast nation of social criminals, of whom you are all acquainted, is linked arterially to a corrosive, cancerous core of real criminals. Desperate, heavily armed, ruthless, callous, murderous real criminals.’

 

Published: 1 Jun 2006