Polanski accuses Times of ‘scraping the barrel’ over his claim to be charity spokesperson – UK politics live

Zack Polanski defended the Green party’s proposal to legalise hard drugs in his Today programme interview. He stressed that the policy was “to legalise and regulate, and the regulate is important”.

He told the programme

double quotation markThe war on drugs has clearly failed. It has failed in cities right across this country and more and more people are often taking dangerous drugs.

So, do we want people to buy them on the black market or on street corners? Or do we want people to go to a pharmacy or a medical health professional where, if they have an addiction to dangerous drugs, we can work with them to take a public health approach based on harm reduction?

Polanski said this policy would allow the police to spend more time on other problems.

double quotation markA lot of police time is spent on stop and search for cannabis use, for instance. It doesn’t escape people’s notice that that is often in the politics of racism. If you’re a young black person, I think it’s something like you’re 18 times more likely to be stopped and searched than your white peer, despite the fact there’s no evidence that they’re more likely to to be dealing or using drugs.

And so I think it’s important that we make sure the police time is spent properly, which I think is about community prevention, about cohesiveness and bringing communities together.