EU Commissioner: Smoking Bans not Draconian Enough

EU Commissioner Vladimir Špidla seems to be upset that not all member states are as draconian as the UK in implementing the smoking ban:

“Smoking bans currently differ widely across the EU. While Ireland was the first EU country to make its pubs and restaurants smoke-free, puffing cigarettes is still allowed in some pubs in Germany and Belgium. And smoking is still common in both bars and restaurants in central and Eastern European countries like Hungary and Romania.” (source)

Clearly, such differences can’t be tolerated. This would be bordering on subsidiarity.

No Victory in Sight in the War on Drugs

“Millions uprooted, terrorized or made refugees. Hundreds of thousands imprisoned. Thousands killed. Trillions of dollars lost. Wiretapping and government surveillance of civilians. Our civil rights eroded. No end in sight. Iraq? Hardly — it’s the war on drugs.
(…)
This war has gone on for years. It has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and filled our jails. Criminal gangs prosper and proliferate. It has eroded our civil liberties. The drug trade has seriously destabilized Mexico, Columbia and Bolivia. There is no victory in sight.

The economics of the drug trade are clear. Demand remains undiminished. The cost of production remains low. Arrest a horde of producers, smugglers, wholesalers and retailers and all that can happen is that the profit margins go up. That is what must take place when supply diminishes while demand remains steady. Higher profits brings more recruits into the trade. ” (John Frary in the Western Standard)

Simon Heffer on Drugs and the NHS

In a recent telegraph column, Simon Heffer argued that heroin addicts should be made for to pay for their NHS treatment. He further argued that making users of illegal drugs pay for their treatment is justified because these drugs are illegal, even though some legal drugs may also give rise to expensive health problems. Making drug users pay for the health costs of their drug habit is not implausible in principle. The problems lie in the details of Heffer’s argument and they matter in practice.

Legal and illegal drugs

The argument that illegal drug consumption deserves a harsher treatment simply because it is illegal