London: Funnyman Russell Brand has said that Philip Seymour Hoffman was a victim of "stupid" drug laws.
Brand criticised the stigma attached to drug addicts and the "ineffective" drug laws, which he said made the late actor's death "inevitable", reported Guardian online. Brand said that while laws continue to criminalise drug users, addicts are less able to seek help in a controlled and regulated way.
"Addiction is a mental illness around which there is a great deal of confusion, which is hugely exacerbated by the laws that criminalise drug addicts," Brand said. The star went on to argue that prohibition is not an effective way to combat addiction and actually increases the problem.
"We know that the people who devise drug laws are out of touch and have no idea how to reach a solution," he said. "What prohibition achieves is an unregulated, criminal-controlled, sprawling, global mob-economy, where drug users, their families and society at large are all exposed to the worst conceivable version of this regrettably unavoidable problem," Brand added.
Hoffman died, aged 46, of a suspected drug overdose.
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