"Jobs, jobs, jobs", they say, those politicians. They know that if there are a lot of people out of work they will not get re-elected. And yet they do everything they can to load costs and burdens on to employers. With so few parliamentarians who have ever owned and run a successful business, there is little understanding of what it’s like to start and manage a successful enterprise.

Policy making is supposedly influenced by scientific evidence. If an outcome of a policy keeps on constantly producing substantial negative results, it stands to reason that policy should be revised according to what the evidence suggests. There is, however, one policy that has led to a continuing disaster decade after decade: the criminalisation of drugs.