Airstrip One

Why independence matters

Bruce Anderson writes an eloquent plea for the legalisation of heroin. This bit is the crux of the article:

Then the Americans agitated for a tough UN Convention on heroin. Like most proposals to erode our national sovereignty, this appeared to emanate from high-mindedness; it is not easy to generate the political courage to dissent from a widely supported proposal to tackle drug abuse. So the UK agreed, thus creating a heroin problem and a crime problem.

Of course Britain had a working, home grown answer to the heroin problem. It would not necesarily work everywhere, but it worked here. And now? Because of international, mainly American, pressure we changed our policies and largely created our present crime problem.

This is why independence actually matters.