LDDPR Website Launch

6.41.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Fri 23rd Oct 2009

Welcome to the Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform website.

It is my hope that this website can become the hub of activity promoting drug policy reform within the Liberal Democrat party.

This website is intended to be a resource where those interested in drug policy can discover how prohibition of currently illegal drugs impacts upon individuals, our local communities, and on communities around the world.

For those already well-informed on the issues surrounding drug policy reform, it is my hope that this website can become a thriving forum. A forum I hope will produce an effective political policy for the reduction of the negative impacts drugs and prohibition are having across the globe.

For those candidates who wish to stand under the banner of Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform, it is my hope that we can produce campaigning materials that will lay out in detail the reasons to embrace the LDDPR position. With LDDPR support, I hope Liberal Democrats across the country will be able to confidently state their support for sensible, evidence-based policy aimed at the reduction of crime, prostitution and personal suffering, and at the promotion of education, compassion and the safety of our children and young people.

All around this nation children are being pressured into drug use without any knowledge of how it may affect their lives. Teenage prostitutes are putting themselves in grave danger to fund an addiction they can not control. And British soldiers are being killed in Afghanistan by bullets and bombs bought with the proceeds from an illicit heroin trade that we could end if we only had the courage to do what is right.

LDDPR will only achieve its goals if you contribute your ideas and invite others to do the same. We are working against the clock. With youth unemployment at a historic high, we risk losing another generation to the horrors of prohibited addiction. And with Barack Obama in the White House, and large sections of the media on our side, there has never been a better opportunity to change locally and internationally how politicians address this issue.