There are many reasons to legalise drugs and it’s not because I give a hoot about drug addicts.

Too much of our policing is devoted to catching drug addicts and convicting them. Too many scarce hospital resources are expended on overdosing drug addicts. These people turn up in emergency centres on a Friday and Saturday night. They are violent towards the medical staff and if they are saved will only go out and continue to take drugs again and then turn up in emergency centres over and over again.

In my opinion, drug addicts should be looked after in a separate section of a hospital where specialised medical staff can have assistance of extra strong security. A raving drug addict can overpower a couple of nurses and worse still he or she is probably infected with hepatitis or aids or both. There is no way that ordinary medical staff can minister to this sort of person. Not to mention the potential danger to other ordinary people in need of medical treatment.

Not only do drug addicts take up hospital resources but they also commit crimes to support their habit. Therefore, perfectly innocent victims are dragged into the drug maelstrom. Home invasions, burglaries, purse snatching and assaults are often the result of desperate addicts needing a fix.

It’s all about money. It usually is. We don’t have the financial resources to minister to drug addicts. We don’t have the police to round them up. We don’t have the police to catch them when they steal and assault. And quite frankly after trying to catch the drug lords and their parasitic pals, we are not having much success because there are billions of dollars involved. When one drug baron or lord, or whatever aristocratic title he adopts, is arrested there are a million more ready and willing under the rock from which he crawled.

What the drug aristocrats are depending on is that drugs should remain illegal and expensive so we have to make drugs legal and cheap. There goes their enterprise! Prohibition has only made matters worse and we should learn from past mistakes about forbidden fruit and all that.

If drugs were decriminalised and allowed to be distributed cheaply on prescription to registered addicts, then the big boys of crime would no longer provide a service. Naturally, that would apply to small time pushers who would be left with nothing to push. This would cut down the number of robberies due to drug addiction.

It all seems so logical that I worry that I’ve missed something. I probably have since nothing in life is that simple. Still, it’s worth a try.

After all, the alternative approach has only exacerbated the problem. An added bonus of decriminalising drugs is that having to front up at a pharmacy with a prescription is not very glamorous and it just may save the lives of some foolish young people who believe that taking drugs is oh so trendy.