Lord Alan Sugar has stirred the controversial pot in the UK by suggesting on Good Morning Britain that the country should legalise cannabis in an effort to drive down levels of knife crime related to drug gangs.
The Apprentice front man suggested that cannabis could be regulated ‘like alcohol and cigarettes’, and that this would lead to a drop in violence overall but especially with the out-of-control knife problem in the capital.
Sugar said, ‘My idea would be, one element of it, if it was legalised it would do away with a lot of gang culture, very similar to Prohibition in America many many years ago back in the 1930s, when alcohol was legalised again it just wiped out the crime and corruption.’ Parents of abducted girl, 5, meet her rescuer 40 years on Lord Sugar said he changed his opinion during a debate on medical cannabis in the House of Lords. He said, ‘[The debate] kind of prompted me to jump up and ask the whether if marijuana was legalised, albeit very, very heavily regulated, in the same way alcohol and cigarettes are, whether this would put the kibosh on the gangs.’
What are your thoughts on what Sugar said? Do you think cannabis should be legalised in Ireland too? Tell us in the Facebook post comments.