DON'T DEMONIZE DEALERS, LICENSE THEM!

by Caroline Coon, artist, co-founder of Release and veteran campaigner for the legalisation of drugs.

The campaign for the end of prohibition is often pejoratively stigmatised as silly, hippie, white and "middle-class".

This has enabled the putative progressive policy voices of the socialist left, fetishizing their "working class" origins, to close their ears to the very sensible arguments put forward by those who want to bring drugs within the law. Bringing drugs within the law will enable society and the police to control and reduce the potential dangers of excessive drug use and take drugs out of the grip of armed criminal gangs. The refusal of the white Left establishment to promote an educated debate about the end of prohibition has helped bolster the idea that the legalisation campaign is disreputable.

As a consequence, any Left politician who wants to gain respect and promotion within the party or influence in the community has either to avoid the drugs issue entirely or parrot the "respectable" line which is to maintain the status quo and ever more authoritarian and punitive policies of criminalisation.

Exceptional white MP's who have campaigned against the disaster of prohibition include Labour's Paul Flynn, Brian Iddon and John Owen Jones and for the Conservative's Alan Duncan and Peter Lilly.

For black politicians and opinion makers, whose legitimacy in any position of power or influence has been traditionally thwarted by racial prejudice, the need to be respectable is especially necessary.

But black politicians must engage in this debate because racism is at the heart of the illegal drugs issue. Most dealers of cannabis are black. And so they should be. Cannabis is an agricultural crop indigenous to non-white countries like Jamaica, India, Afghanistan, and Morocco.

There are more young black men in jail in this country than there are in university. Our jails are crammed with poverty-stricken people coming from 'black' countries as mules for drug dealers. Drug crime and gun gangs are most damaging to black communities.

Every time I, a white woman, puff on a joint I am aware of the human cost. I am acutely aware of the black people who grow and sell my recreational drugs of leisure who have their lives ruined or are killed for my pleasure. For 30 years I have campaigned against demonising the growers and dealers of cannabis. I have pointed to the racism that criminalizes pot but legalises alcohol.

So I am getting tired of being accused of being a "white, high profile middle class person who wouldn't bother with alienated black men".

Hey, stop pointing your finger at veteran white campaigners likes me! Point your finger at black politicians. What are they doing? It is about time that black politicians got educated about the issue. Black politicians from Tarik Ali, Lee Jasper, Trevor Phillips to Diane Abbot either say their are bored with the drugs issue or they contribute to the "drug war" fantasy that drugs can be banished from society with more sever laws and more police.

Black youth is drawn into the criminal gang culture because cannabis is a sellers market. Black youth, discriminated against in education, discriminated against in the job market but with pride and aspiration will as night follows day, gravitate to where they can make money.

But don't blame silly, hippie "middle-class" campaigners for this racist scandal. Don't accuse campaigners like me for not caring about all those black drug dealers, our dealers, yours and mine, who are imprisoned or killed.

Blame black politicians. Blame politicians like Paul Botang, David Lammy and Oona King who for the sake of being "respectable" refuse to enter the debate. Black politicians are betraying the very community they are primarily in power to serve. Util black politicians enter the debate on our side, on the side of those who are campaigning for the end of prohibition, black youth will continue to be decimated by racist drug laws.

I challenge black politicians to leave their smug, respectable comfort zone and enter the dangerous vanguard of progressive debate. Black politicians must campaign to end prohibition. Drug dealing must be brought within the law like all the other consumer products we enjoy.

Caroline Coon, May 2005