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War on drugs is unwinnable, but locking up Mr Bigs is still worth it

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Citation

Hamilton-Smith N (2018) War on drugs is unwinnable, but locking up Mr Bigs is still worth it. The Conversation. 26.01.2018. https://theconversation.com/war-on-drugs-is-unwinnable-but-locking-up-mr-bigs-is-still-worth-it-90649

Abstract
First paragraph: Nine serious criminals weresentencedat the High Court in Glasgow, Scotland on January 22 for offences relating to the wholesale supply of cocaine. David Sell and the rest of the gang were reportedly handling up to a ton of the drug every year, with a final street value in the region of £150m to £160m. They received a total of 87 years in prison for their trouble. Yet years of academic evidencesuggestthat convicting such serious offenders will make no difference to the drugs market in the medium or long term. Those living in the most affected communities don’t need experts to tell them that: after 40 years of the “war on drugs”, the impact of such enforcement on supply has been negligible.

Notes
Copyright Statement: The Conversation uses a Creative Commons Attribution NoDerivatives licence. You can republish their articles for free, online or in print. Licence information is available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/

StatusPublished
Publication date online26/01/2018
URLhttp://hdl.handle.net/1893/26605
PublisherThe Conversation Trust
Publisher URLhttps://theconversation.com/…l-worth-it-90649
Place of publicationLondon
ISSNNo ISSN

People (1)

Dr Niall Hamilton-Smith

Dr Niall Hamilton-Smith

Associate Professor, Sociology, Social Policy & Criminology