the war on (insert flavour of the week) sucks.

I apologise for starting hard but when will governments, and the media, be held accountable for abusing the term 'War On" something, anything, whether that be terrorism or drugs or whatever the flavour of the week so happens to be. The term 'War On' something plays to the mindset of both the vulnerable and ignorant, it plays to the minds of humans, for it alerts basic panic, despite how incorrect and misused it is.

The war on terror is abstract and falsified, especially given American citizens are nine times more likely to be killed by the police officers who 'protect and serve' them than they are to be killed by an actual beard-rocking-scarf-wearing-dynamite-strapped-to-his-waistline-terrorist, whilst a war on drugs is both ineffably irresponsible and damn right wrong.

How can grown adults be told what they can and can't do. How can some things with clear medicinal qualities be kept from those who need it to have a better quality of life. The UK spends over £3 Billion each year on fighting drugs, and yet around two tonnes of cannabis is still smoked each day, in London. In May of this year, South Yorkshire police confirmed a 52% drug driving failure rate. These facts suggest the 'war on drugs' has done nothing to halt distribution. People are still able to buy with ease, whether in London or rural Yorkshire, and people are still able to use at leisure, and without the stigma that now surrounds alcohol, which is a direct result of people being educated on the subject. If nothing else, the 'war on drugs' is a waste of taxpeyers money. The government needs to spend this money educating people on the effects of drugs, like canabis, and then let them make up their own minds using absolute research and readily available facts. That is the way to control it, not with the undeserved label of 'criminal' that is supported by no reasons of why. Addiction is a problem, but this is not a criminal issue, this is a health care issue. There has be a better way to deal with addiction than damn jail. I find imprisonment wrong for a lot of things, one pseudo-solution for a whole kaleidoscope of actions, and as such any slogan of rehabilitation is a lie the moment people are all tossed into the same pen. But to throw addiction into this mixer is just plain corrupt.

Drug reformation should be a matter of education, a matter of health issues and medicinal values, a matter of freedom and choice, not a matter of income and criminality. Cannabis has never killed anyone, and yet it's status goes well beyond illegal, for in the US of A it is a 'Schedule I' drug, which means it's considered to have "no accepted medical use". This is wrong. It is a lie. Medicinal Cannabis is known to help HIV / AIDS, Hepatitis C, Alzheimer's, Insomnia, Arthritis, MS, Glaucoma etc etc etc. It heals, not hurts. Sure, Cannabis has been said to cause things like psychosis, but if this was really true then cases of psychosis would have risen at the same rate as cannabis use, but it hasn't.

Then there's alcohol. The liquid drug, I mean cash-cow, I mean both. Alcohol has been proven to be the most dangerous 'drug' available to people, but then that's only according to a little known chap called David Nutt, the world's leading psychiatrist and neuropsychopharmacologist who specialises in the research of drugs, the man who advised the UK government on drug reformation until his conclusion didn't match up with what they wanted to hear. Then there is the World Health Organisation, who state that 3.3 million deaths are linked to alcohol each year. But you don't need to be a scientist to know the truth about alcohol or drugs or how to deal with them. Look no further than the prohibition of alcohol. This proved that alcohol was more dangerous without any regulation, a point that could be used, with effective results, with regards to 'illegal' drugs.

Then there is the matter of prescription medicines, the over the counter jobbies that get handed out like candy bars to anyone who says the words 'I have an issue'. Well from my experience every one has an issue, it is life. Yet despite the fact prescription drugs are more responsible for deaths than crack, heroin and meth combined, fifty-fold, they somehow remain the answer in the eyes of the law. Well it's no shock that prescription drugs are responsible for a death every 19 minutes in the USA considering big businesses pump them out like skittles in candyland and then hurl these pills at everyone they can, through screens and billboards and magazines and doctors, and at every possible chance. But what is truly horrifying is that for every $1 spent on research and testing these drugs, $19 is spent on advertising. That is wrong. That should be illegal. But their pockets are too deep for that to ever be the case. I just fear it is for this reason that cannabis will not be legalised and regulated, because unlike manufactured pills, cannabis can be grown anywhere, and it is. It would simply hit their sales.

But drug reformation is a necessary step. The drug laws are medieval, and we need a leader to start seeing sense, a politician who will see the health benefits, someone who is going to fight for this change and stick to it, someone like Norman Lamb, or Johann Hari, someone who is going to educate people and then let them choose, let the medicinal values be explored, let the use of cannabis be regulated. George W. Bush admitted that he had taken cocaine, and then he extended the sentencing for use. Moronic. Obama said he had smoked weed and that he would change the laws, but he has gone and made the law even stricter, harsher, even more of a crime. No wonder we can't trust these people. They say it to get elected, and then do the opposite to please the moneybags. We need an honest politician, we need a Lamb.

The War on Terror, and the War on Drugs, are both wrong. These policies and ideologies and lies need addressing, and they need addressing now. Let's transform the policies, lets get drugs under control.