Day dream believer.

Guy from the Adam Smith Institute day-dreamed Letters To The Editors whilst wandering around in the Lake District, As he had no mobile internet with him (tut tut) they were never sent. This should have gone to The Times. I think it is just so right and proper, I've given it the oxygen of publicity here.

Sir, Your leading article of August 11 is misguided. Decades of bitter experience have shown that no amount of military might can win a 'War on Drugs'. Indeed, all such interventions actually achieve is to raise the market price of these substances, and give the cartels an even greater prize to fight over. The human cost of this failure is enormous. Surely it is time to accept that the only sensible solution is to take narcotics out of the hands of gangsters, and legalize, licence and regulate their production and sale. As well as depriving criminals of a lucrative market, this would have considerable health and social benefits, reducing the incidence of overdoses and poisoning, and making treatment of addicts much easier. Empirical evidence from Portugal, which decriminalized drugs in 2001, bears this out.