Overview
- On BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg, Zack Polanski argued for a “legalise and regulate” approach to all drugs, framing it as a public-health response to drug harm.
- He said UK drug enforcement is “very racialised,” citing disproportionate stop-and-search of young Black people and calling current laws hypocritical.
- Polanski said he has never taken drugs or drunk alcohol and rejected being the “fun police,” saying people should be free to choose if it is done safely.
- He called Sir Keir Starmer’s PMQs line that the Greens are “high on drugs, soft on Putin” “pretty disgraceful” and “beneath the office of the prime minister.”
- Reform UK policy chief Zia Yusuf issued an open letter proposing a head-to-head debate in Greater Manchester this week, as the Feb. 26 Gorton & Denton race is cast as a three-way contest with Reform seen by some as frontrunner and one recent poll putting the Greens near 19%.