It's almost official - it's all been a 50 year waste of time, the worldwide 'war on drugs'. According to this report in the Daily Telegraph, some seriously sensible people like the former heads of MI5, CPS and the BBC have come out in support of a new parliamentary committee calling for the decriminalisation of drugs. Ok maybe saying John Birt, former Director General of the BBC is 'sensible' might be going a bit too far, but even so it should be coming clear to all enlightened folk that our policy towards drugs has been an unmitigated disaster in every respect.
Despite all the huge law enforcement effort put into cracking the so-called drug cartels, availability has never been greater, along with potential illegal profits to be made. The whole damn charade, from small time drug busts to warships on the high seas has only succeeded in ensuring that the street price has been maintained and not slumped due to over-supply. Of course the same basic economic laws of supply and demand that keep capitalism supposedly running smoothly operate just as well in the unregulated and tax free world of international drug supply. In my mind all we've succeeded in doing is create the perfect conditions in which mega criminality can flourish. The price is kept stable and law enforcement just takes out the inept or unlucky, leaving the field open for the ruthless and skilled. Just look at what's happening in Mexico.
Lets all hope that the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform can have more success in influencing government policy than they have in choosing a snappy working title. Their chairman Baroness Meacher is quoted as saying
“Criminalising drug users has been an expensive catastrophe for individuals and communities. “In the UK the time has come for a review of our 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. I call on our Government to heed the advice of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime that drug addiction should be recognised as a health problem and not punished.
“We have the example of other countries to follow. The best is Portugal which has decriminalised drug use for 10 years. Portugal still has one of the lowest drug addiction rates in Europe, the trend of Young people's drug addiction is falling in Portugal against an upward trend in the surrounding countries, and the Portuguese prison population has fallen over time.”
Agree entirely but what government will have the cajones to face down the Daily Mail etc?
ReplyDeleteI agree, but I've always wondered whether drcriminalising drugs would then leave the government liable to compensate those damaged by them.
ReplyDelete@Shooting Parrots - Why? No one is compensated from the damage that the legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco, do!
ReplyDeleteIf the government forced people to take them then maybe, not if it just allows people to take them
ReplyDeleteOne of my favourite lines from The Wire (tv series set in Baltimore) went something like this
ReplyDeletecop 1: winning the war on drugs 1 brutality case at a time
cop 2: this isn't a war
cop 3: why?
cop 2: wars end!
Don't hold your breath Jim
Whenever I see the stories about Portugal I have a sneaking suspicion that it won't directly translate to the UK. After all our 24 drinking relaxation didn't lead to a "continental cafe culture".
ReplyDeleteFor me the problem lies far more with our lacklustre desire to actually do anything about addicts, locking them up inside where they have better access to drugs than outside doesn't help. Clean prisons that actually offered proper rehab is the way forward, and I for one would perfectly happily pay more tax for that.
It's not the drugs that are the problem, it's the results of the drugs - shoplifting, burglary, even murders. If we don't put people in jail - which I agree is not the answer - then we need to put them somewhere else to 'dry out' and perhaps make something of their lives. I hate seeing the youngster in court whose lives have been destroyed by drug taking.
ReplyDeleteI've always taken the view that it is not the government's duty to protect people from their own stupidity. Make sure that they are aware of the risks as with obesity, smoking, alcohol, etc., try to protect the young if possible by age related restrictions, but beyond that they should do nothing.
ReplyDeleteIn the case of drugs, it would in my view, be far better to sell them at pharmacies where they would at least be pure and of known strengths. This could reduce crime, not only by the users trying to get drug money, but also by putting the pedlers out of business.
It would also discourage the invention of new, "legal" drugs and the cries of anguish that "if only the government had banned it, my darling wouldn't have taken it".
Way back in the late 70s / early 80s a number of college friends became probation officers. All of them smoked dope and most had done acid.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if probation officers are still disproportionately drawn from the radical end of the student spectrum - but I'm not surprised that former heads of this and that organisation are calling for decriminalisation - because they probably also came from that milieu. The former DPP Ken MacDonald actually had a conviction for posting dope to a friend.
It would be nice from a libertarian perspective to go back to those late-Victorian days when everyone was free to go to hell in their own way, and there were no drugs (or firearms) laws. But our culture is not that of Victorian England any more - one hugely important difference being a welfare state, one which actually gives extra benefits to addicts (it's a disability).
As anon said, what works in Portugal won't necessarily work here. If you go to France or Spain you'll see young people getting pleasantly drunk in the evening, walking arm-in-arm in groups, maybe singing - just enjoying themselves and totally unthreatening. Similarly you can go to a small-town carnival and sit on the pavements till late in the evening with your small children, enjoying the atmosphere and the wine.
We go with the kids to Whitby Regatta every August, in that beautiful seaport. But we're off the streets by nine or so, and by ten the police sirens are starting up for their busiest weekend of the year. England ain't Portugal.
It may surprise most people but there is no evidence whatsoever that banning drug use is beneficial to society. We forget that the UK has always prescribed heroin to addicts until the 1970s. The difference then in crime rates and health outcomes between the UK and the US(with a Zero Tolerance policy) is astounding.
ReplyDeleteOver 100 years ago in the US, all drugs were legal. There were no drug dealers, no drug crime, no drug violence and not even a drug police squad. Addicts had families, went to work and lived like everyone else. When they tightened up the laws, heroin and cocaine was still prescribed to addicts but crime didn’t increase very much. It was only when they totally banned drugs that drug use became a major societal problem. It was the same story all over the world.
BTW: Addiction rates have never changed over the last 120 years. Only usage rates, the number of prisoners, crime rates and deaths have changed.
We also forget that 90% of drug users never have a problem. Like alcohol, only a small percentage of people abuse their drug of choice.
Quote from 'English Pensioner':
ReplyDelete"It would also discourage the invention of new, "legal" drugs and the cries of anguish that "if only the government had banned it, my darling wouldn't have taken it"."
I think that's a good point, it has surprising parallel with the issue of patents, so much so that I'll use that as an analogy to explain.. :)
Patents were born out of intent to let inventors keep the results of their work. The hell at the end of that well-paved road is a world of inferior gadgets, as people strive to sell anything at all without infringing someone else's patent! All kinds of dodgy workrounds exist, consuming lawyer's time, etc.. If people were granted protection to profit from their work, rather than the idea itself, and specific plans were covered by copyright law, a more liberal technological economy might exist than what we have now because independent invention of the same idea could not be forced into submission by what amounts to a protection racket.
The same logic applies to drugs. Many of the most effective are known, but are banned or so severely restricted that they amount almost to uselessness! (12.5 mg of codeine is barely more than a placebo, as anyone with real pain knows). The very idea that some poor sap is going to inhale toluene has resulted in inferior protective laquers being sold to entire industries! Fear is dominating reason here, badly. As a result, people seek to try all kinds of new prohibited avenues where they aren't being herded into something against their will. These people are not born stupid. They will invent new ways faster than people can close the doors behind them.
Far better to let sheep walk the old paths, because whether they are smart or stupid, it makes better sense. Any shepherd could have told every fool in the 'war on drugs' that the effort is like forcing animals into a stampede to find their own way out of the mess.
Given the scale of alcohol consumption, it ought to be enough to bring civilization to oblivion in days, but it does not do this. Its degree of social threat shifts with many times and social moods, but the fact that it is under any kind of control at all comes from the simple fact that people ARE allowed to do it. It's the only way to regulate it in any way at all.
It's high time the same logic applied to drugs. Of all the types out there, there are only a few that people really gravitate to out of choice. If this were allowed, the medical profession will have a far easier time diagnosing and treating those who take them and get ill.
I could go on, but my point is that it is extremely easy to come up with good reasons to stop fighting this and turning a problem into further expensive disaster. I just stated some of the more obvious ways we can go, or avoid going...
This post really hits home the amount of tax payers money that gets wasted on fighting the so called war on drugs could be much better spent sorting out the massive problem of heroin addiction we have worldwide etc
ReplyDeleteJordan,
ReplyDeleteBut how do we tackle the massive problem? What would you suggest? Are you in favour of the argument that says lets go back to prescribing and de-criminalising?
Thanks for commenting,
Jim
Hi Jim,
ReplyDeleteI was looking through your blog after the Russell Brand documentary on BBC Three last night (16/08/12). For anyone who didn't see it, whilst you might not like him or agree with him, it is well worth an hour of your time on iplayer. As I'm sure you are aware he is pushing the abstinence based recovery approach and I think he would also push for decriminalisation if he thought he could get away with it. It seemed to go down well with the masses on Twitter last night but I wasn't convinced with his argument (www.lexiconlane.co.uk/drugaddiction)- I'd be keen to hear your views on the documentary if you saw it.
Donna
Donna,
DeleteBetter late than never - I've finally got around to watching this on i-player and have written something today 'Brand on Addiction'.
Cheers,
Jim
As progress is made through the years to shift the perception of drug addiction and relieve the stigma, those who are suffering in their addictions will be given hope and recovery will be seen as possible.
ReplyDelete