in a pub about drugs and their effects and warning about the dangers of these evil substances....with a ciggy going in one hand and a pint of beer in the other. Prohibition pushes the thing underground. We lose sight of the problem. Then the drugs get dangerous. They're obviously not subject to quality control and users have no way of knowing what they contain. A drug that might of itself do no harm may be hyped up with something that does. There were stories of bad chemistry students lacing the tiny amount of LSD needed to lift off with strychnine. Not nice. A little too much of that and your trip will terminate somewhere in the afterlife! But yes, prohibition isn't working. It has the forbidden fruit effect on the young. Loading comments... One hesitates to disagree with a man who has so much obvious experience in this field; but experience does not always mean one can analyse a problem dispassionately. Having admitted that users will "do anything" to obtain drugs, in an article whose main conclusions point logically towards legalisation, Mr Paddick then abandons logic in the final paragraph by saying we need to maintain high prices in order to make drugs harder for users to get hold of. The high price of drugs is created entirely by the fact that they are illegal. Who benefits from this? First, the vicious gangs who organise the trade (which are nowhere mentioned in the article). But, equally, the British Judicial System