Should leisure drugs be legal or illegal? The debate is raging yet again after the sacking of David Nutt, a government adviser on drugs policy.This journalist is urging complete legalisation of leisure drugs on the basis that adults should be free to consume whatever they want, at their own risk.
It's a tricky argument, mainly because nobody knows exactly what the effects of going legal would be. Would it make little difference, or would there be many more people taking drugs and possibly ruining their lives?
It seems to me that the prediction of lots more druggies and lots more social decline is probably half-baked scaremongering. Yes, we would replace the existing problems with some new ones, but the new ones would be much easier to manage and not so damaging.
All the harmful effects of illegality - contaminated drugs, unintentional overdoses, unhygienic consumption and gang warfare - would be drastically reduced. But it's also true that going legal might encourage more people to take leisure drugs, and health and social problems may increase.
Hang on, though. Yes, consumption might increase, but under much safer conditions, so the chance of coming to harm would be much less. It would be more like taking prescription drugs, with all the rigorous controls that apply to them.
And the argument that adults should be free to ingest whatever's on offer is a strong one. If we're free to eat junk food or slimming pills or herbal remedies, why shouldn't leisure drugs be on the menu?
Intelligent adults are capable of assessing the pros and cons of the drugs in question and deciding whether to accept the risks or not. Why should the state make the choices for us?
But leisure drugs won't be legalised any time soon. The government is terrified of what it might unleash. They prefer the status quo with all its stink of crime and trickery.
