‘Legalising dagga could end gangs’ - Crime & Courts | IOL News

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The Anti-Drug Alliance is calling for the decriminalisation of dagga, saying money spent on criminalising it should be spent on rehabilitating drug users.

In a report, “At what cost? The futility of the war on drugs in South Africa”, released this month, the alliance’s chief executive, Quintin van Kerken, said legalising dagga would help to make the government money, as it would be able to tax it.

“Regulating and controlling illegal drugs would collapse the illegal markets and get the drug smugglers and dealers out of this business,” he said.

“If we want to really get tough on the drug-dealing gangsters let’s take away their biggest source of revenue and try to collapse the illegal drug business for good.”

In 2011, Professor JP van Niekerk, managing editor of the South African Medical Journal, made a similar call...

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