Making it legal is the brain dead and 'ok we give up, you win' approach. The problem starts with lack of education and the 90's era of teenagers producing children (which is still happening) when they can't even look after themselves. I am 32, when i left high school in 2001 i was just about seeing the complete lack of common sense creeping in. Now it is wide spread. You go to any pub in the country and you will see empty cocaine bags behind the u-bends of toilets. Absolute diving headers. And where girls/women used to be sensible regarding this type of thing, they are now doing it in abundance. I cannot believe how in the last 20 years or so how thick the country has become. We don't make anything, trade anything or educate anywhere near enough anymore. This cesspit, especially in the northern working class towns breeds turds who will buy, sell and take drugs because the lack of education and common sense is turning folk into zombies. There is no future for most. Not surprised they turn to drugs, although that doesn't excuse it. Just listen to the music coming out of car windows these days. Trance and that black Harlem crap who sing (talk) about drugs, stabbing and shooting folk. You need LSD to make sense of it. Society is screwed but you can't just give up and say 'ok let's legalize it' Imagine how bad it would be then? Having a pint why someone is sniffing coke at the side of you. Yeah good idea!! To be honest i think we are too far gone with this sort of thing anyway, immigration, radicalization. Our children and their children are all screwed BUT....... i revert back to the point. I don't care how thick you are, if you are picking up thousands a week in an industry where children look up to you and you abuse that position then you should be dropped like a stone and i hope Wakey do exactly that. The sort of thing we try and keep our children away from being shoved into their faces by their role models. Despicable.

I go into schools to try hopefully to educate year 5s, 10 year olds, as that is when you can get arrested, about the affect of drugs and drink, to tell them about prison life and real stories from real people affected by it. Hopefully they take it on board, only time will tell. Again these so called role models know better. They have the choice, no one makes them. Too much time, money on their hands I don't know, but it's their choice so no sympathy here for the consequences they will face.

Correct sir and you are to be commended in trying to make a difference in what seems like an already lost battle.

Legalising drugs is not giving in its looking at the problem in a different way, the current way simply does not work, has never worked and will never work no matter how tough you get on the sentences.

It depends on what you mean by work.

At the moment I don't often see a group of drugged up teens or for that matter adults on the Street when I'm out with my family.
If it was all legal it would be similar to seeing people when drunk.

I think the mistake some people are making is that people of all colours, races, creeds, and most importantly class take drugs -not just working class people who have nothing better to do. The same as alcohol, which lets not forget is also a drug which kills and causes people to do ridiculous things. To me the route of the problem is deaper than people just want to get drugged up because they like it (even though some people will do it for that reason), there's a problem in society as to why people would seek to escape reality this way. But treating addiction as a crime instead of an illness is just going to see more people in prison that just need help and more education on the subject. However in the case of Adam Walker, I don't think any professional sports man should take drugs (including alcohol) full stop.

Jesus h Christ - that's such a mish-mosh of ill-informed, offensive, racist, moralistic Daily Mail nonsense, I don't know where to begin; it sounds to me like you've been watching so much dystopic, dark future sci-fi, such that you now see the world as an episode of The Walking Dead. Either that, or you're so disconnected from and frightened by youth culture, that you've retreated to the moral high ground and dug yourself in.

I agree that in a professional environment where drugs, and certain behaviours, are prohibited, the employer has and should exercise an absolute right to deal with people who transgress - but to dismiss drug use in the way you've described it is just ignorant.

To the other poster's point about not seeing marauding gangs fighting over supplies of alcohol - that happens instead in the boardrooms of multinational booze manufacturers, because for some perverse reason, we have legalised and accepted some mind-altering substances, but not others; if we had a more sensible approach to this stuff, the criminal activity that you've identified would reduce significantly - plenty of countries have done it, with positive effects. In the UK, there's too much moralising for it to be a sensible conversation - but one would hope that as the influence of old duffers and the Daily Mail diminish, some politicians might be brave enough to tackle it.

Smoking cigarettes is a big killer, because of personal family issues, I think smoking cigarettes should be illegal , especially in public. Government has tried to put off people smoking especially the Young by putting more and more restrictions on cigarettes. But I also I'm a bit of a libertarian and believe anything you do in your own home and doesn't affect anyone else should be ok.

This is from the NCDD (National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence) website

Alcohol, more than any illegal drug, was found to be closely associated with violent crimes, including murder, rape, assault, child and spousal abuse. About 3 million violent crimes occur each year in which victims perceive the offender to have been drinking and statistics related to alcohol use by violent offenders generally show that about half of all homicides and assaults are committed when the offender, victim, or both have been drinking. Among violent crimes, with the exception of robberies, the offender is far more likely to have been drinking than under the influence of other drugs.

Hardly a surprise given alcohol is legal and easlily available. If drugs were legalised making them widely available to all you'd find a different story. Sorry but if the answer is legalise drugs then you are asking the wrong questions.

The question is why not ban alcohol

You are only making assumptions that the figures would rise if drugs were legal

So you don't think they would rise if it was made legal yet you want to ban alcohol to reduce the same figures? Yeah, that makes sense.

The way to solve a problem is not to give more people easier access to said problem!

No I didn't say it wouldn't go up, I don't know. And if drugs are to be banned based on that assumption then alcohol should be banned based on real stats. What you are doing is picking on one kind of drug, if you don't think people should take drugs, especially in public,then ban all drugs including alcohol. Alcohol is one of the only drugs that is allowed to be taken in a public place.

Here are 2 stats from UK gov

There were 3,674 drug poisoning deaths (involving both legal and illegal drugs) registered in 2015.

There were 78,000 deaths in 2014 which
were estimated to be attributed to smoking.