[Peace-discuss] Sense from the UK

[C. G. Estabrook]

[If AWARE is serious about its anti-racism, it could find no better place to 
begin than the decriminalization of drugs -- all drugs.  From the racist Harry 
Anslinger's criminalization of marijuana in the 1930s to the US government's 
support for the terror state of Colombia -- justified by the "war on drugs" -- 
the criminalization of drugs has been the excuse for police oppression -- 
especially against people of color -- since Prohibition.  It is very much so 
today.  Anti-meth campaigns increase as an increasingly impoverished rural white 
working class becomes troublesome to our rulers.  As our Libertarian friends 
remind us, why is the government telling us what we can put in our bodies, so 
long as we are not harming others (as in e.g. drunk driving)?  Alcohol and 
tobacco kill far more people each year in the US than all illegal drugs 
combined.  --CGE]

	Julian Critchley
	All the experts admit that we should legalise drugs
	Thursday, 14 August 2008

Eight years ago, I left my civil service job as director of the UK Anti-Drug 
Co-Ordination Unit. I went partly because I was sick of having to implement 
policies that I knew, and my political masters knew, were unsupported by 
evidence. Yesterday, after a surreal flurry of media requests referring to a 
blog I wrote that questioned the wisdom of the UK's drug policies, I found 
myself in the thick of the debate again, and I was sorry to discover that the 
terms hadn't changed a bit.

I was being interviewed on the BBC World Service, and after I tried to explain 
why I believe that drugs should be decriminalised, the person representing the 
other side of the argument pointed out that drugs are terrible, that they 
destroy lives. Now, I am a deeply boring, undruggy person myself, and I think 
the world would be a better place without drugs. But I think that we must live 
in the world as it is, and not as we want it to be. And so my answer was, yes, I 
know that drugs are terrible. I'm not saying that drugs should be decriminalised 
because it would be fun if we could all get stoned with impunity. I'm saying 
that we've tried minimising harm through a draconian legal policy. It is now 
clear that enforcement and supply-side interventions are largely pointless. They 
haven't worked. There is evidence that this works.

Unfortunately, evidence is still not a major component in our policy. Take 
cannabis. When I was in the Anti-Drug Unit, the moves towards making it a class 
C drug began, and I hoped that our position on drugs was finally moving in a 
rational direction. But then Gordon Brown ignored his scientific advisers to 
make it a class B again. It was a decision that pandered to the instincts of the 
tabloids, and it made no sense whatsoever.

There is no doubt at all that the benefits to society of the fall in crime as a 
result of legalisation would be dramatic. The argument always put forward 
against this is that there would be a commensurate increase in drug use as a 
result of legalisation. This, it seems to me, is a bogus point: tobacco is a 
legal drug, whose use is declining, and precisely because it is legal, its users 
are far more amenable to Government control, education programmes and taxation 
than they would be otherwise. Studies suggest that the market is already almost 
saturated, and anyone who wishes to purchase the drug of their choice anywhere 
in the UK can already do so. The idea that many people are holding back solely 
because of a law which they know is already unenforceable is ridiculous.

Ultimately, people will make choices which harm themselves, whether they involve 
diet, smoking, drinking, lack of exercise, sexual activity or pursuit of extreme 
sports. In all these instances, the Government rightly takes the line that if 
these activities are to be pursued, society will ensure that those who pursue 
them have access to accurate information about the risks; can access assistance 
to change their harmful habits should they so wish; are protected by a legal 
standards regime; are taxed accordingly; and – crucially – do not harm other 
people. Only in the field of drugs does the Government take a different line.

The case is overwhelming. But I fear that policy will not catch up with the 
facts any time soon. It would take a mature society to accept that some 
individuals may hurt, or even kill themselves, as a result of a policy change, 
even if the evidence suggested that fewer people died or were harmed as a 
result. It would take a brave government to face down the tabloid fury in the 
face of anecdotes about middle-class children who bought drugs legally and came 
to grief, and this is not a brave government.

I think what was truly depressing about my time in the civil service was that 
the professionals I met from every sector held the same view: the illegality of 
drugs causes far more problems for society and the individual than it solves. 
Yet publicly, all those people were forced to repeat the mantra that the 
Government would be "tough on drugs", even though they all knew that the policy 
was causing harm.

I recall a conversation I had with a Number 10 policy advisor about a series of 
announcements in which we were to emphasise the shift of resources to treatment 
and highlight successes in prevention and education. She asked me whether we 
couldn't arrange for "a drugs bust in Brighton" at the same time, or "a boat 
speeding down the Thames to catch smugglers". For that advisor, what worked 
mattered considerably less than what would play well in the right-wing press. 
The tragedy of our drugs policy is that it is dictated by tabloid irrationality, 
and not by evidence.

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