Pubdate: Sun, 15 Sep 2013
Source: Observer, The (UK)
Copyright: 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited
Contact: http://www.observer.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/315
Author: Jamie Doward
THE TUDOR PILE THAT'S HOME TO A THINKTANK SET ON SHAKING UP BRITAIN'S DRUG LAWS
From Her Oxfordshire Home, Amanda Feilding Leads a Group With the
Sort of Academic and Political Influence That Could See Cannabis
Being Legalised - And, Crucially, Regulated
Beckley Park, a moated stately home in Oxfordshire, built during the
reign of Henry VIII, seems the sort of place that inspires writers to
hyperbole. Its gardens boast perfect boxwood topiary, fires burn in
huge grates and nobility look down imperiously from thick stone walls.
So it is no surprise to learn that Beckley has featured in at least
one novel. The author of Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, set his
first book, a satirical novel called Crome Yellow, at Beckley.
Huxley, who wrote The Doors of Perception, an exploration of the
altered state of consciousness he experienced while taking the drug
mescaline, was a visitor to the house in the 1920s. But not even a
visionary such as he could have foreseen that Beckley would go on
pushing at the doors of perception long after he had died.
The Grade I-listed home is the headquarters of the Beckley Foundation
(beckleyfoundation.org), a thinktank that is testing the boundaries
of drugs policy reform with a persistence that has seen it amass a
strong body of academic and political support, but has also drawn
huge controversy.
Headed by Amanda Feilding, who is Countess of Wemyss and March but
prefers not to use the title, the foundation has helped frame open
letters, published in national newspapers, signed by past and present
presidents, businessmen and other global leaders pushing the case for
reform of the UN's prohibitionist drugs conventions.
"Drugs are more heavily regulated than nuclear weapons," said
Feilding, an adviser to Guatemala's president, Otto Perez Molina, the
leading advocate for global drug policy reform.
"I'm not for making drugs available at Tesco," she added, "but common
sense suggests the answer is regulation. We have got caught in a
terrible misconception about drugs. We all know people who have died
and suffered from them. But 200,000 people a year around the world
die from using illegal drugs, compared with five million from tobacco."
Beckley was responsible for producing, in 2007, a scale of harm
register for drugs, both legal and illegal, that ranks substances
according to the risks they pose to users. The register has been
taken up widely across Europe, but it does not help the foundation's
cause that Feilding's belief in the medicinal properties of illegal
drugs has led to her being portrayed as a sort of refugee from the
1960s who wants to revive the decade's hippy counter-culture.
Feilding has instigated, co-authored and funded research conducted by
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US, into how magic mushrooms used with
psychotherapy can produce what she claims is an almost 100% success
rate in helping people overcome addictions.
She has also worked with several prestigious British universities,
looking into issues including whether MDMA (ecstasy) can help people
with posttraumatic stress disorder, and whether cannabis can be a
useful analgesic.
It is this latter drug that is occupying much of Feilding's attention
at present. This week, Beckley will publish a 143page cost-benefit
analysis examining what would happen if cannabis was licensed, and
regulated, in England and Wales.
The study, conducted by the widely respected Institute for Social and
Economic Research (iser.essex.ac.uk), is a model of rigorous academic
analysis, carefully caveating its findings and outlining three
scenarios illustrating what could happen to demand if cannabis was
decriminalised.
Few such studies have been attempted, and most have made wild assumptions.
"One of the difficulties in working in this area is that the public
debate is of such low quality," said one of the report's authors,
Stephen Pudney, professor of economics at the University of Essex.
"There are lots of people taking one side or another. Our intention
was almost to draw up a shopping list of things you would need to
achieve [in terms of regulation] to have a better debate."
The ISER research is likely to be studied closely by politicians in
the US states of Colorado and Washington, who have voted to legalise
marijuana, as well as those in Uruguay, which is to become the first
country to introduce a legal, regulated market for cannabis,
encouraging growers and sellers to produce in large enough quantities
to put drug traffickers out of business. The report examines 13
factors, including the cost to policing and courts, mental health
services, the cost of regulating the new market and potential
increases in crime as a result of more people using cannabis.
It assumes cannabis would be taxed at 70% (compared with 72% for
alcohol and 83% for tobacco) and that its level of
tetrahydrocannabinol THC, the mindaltering substance found in
cannabis would be restricted to 10%. Much of the cannabis currently
sold on Britain's streets contains around 15% THC.
Agreeing a level of taxation is difficult, Pudney admits. Too low and
there would be claims that the government is promoting drug
consumption. Too high and the illicit market would continue to
thrive. "It's the same debate as with tobacco," he added. "If you
raise taxes it encourages smuggling."
Under the most plausible scenarios outlined in the report, a licensed
cannabis market would see consumption of the drug in volume terms
rise between 15% and 20%, while the illicit share would be somewhere
between 20% and 30%.
The report states: "We estimate that tax revenue from licensed
cannabis supply in England and Wales would fall somewhere in the
range UKP0.4bn-UKP0.9bn." And once the reduced costs, such as for
policing, and the extra costs, such as regulation, are factored in,
the authors say the contribution of cannabis licensing in England and
Wales to the exchequer "is expected to lie in the range UKP0.5bn-1.25bn".
But to focus simply on the numbers would be to miss the key point,
Pudney argues. Regulation would allow the government to control the
licensed drug's content. For example, the government could insist
that the cannabidiol (CBD) content of the drug, the anti-psychotic
component that balances out THC, be increased, or THC levels reduced.
In this way, a regulated market might help counter the huge explosion
in skunk, the potent strain of high-THC cannabis that is linked to psychosis.
Pudney is the first to admit there are many unknowns. Would, for
example, the UK experience a rise in drug tourism, with its
associated costs? And on the question of cannabis becoming a gateway
to other, possibly more dangerous drugs, Pudney and his team are dubious.
"In our view, the evidence for a large gateway effect among cannabis
consumers is weak," they write.
Feilding said the ISER report showed the case for regulation was
strong. "If you are going to protect the young, then I believe
governments can do a better job than the cartels," Feilding said.
"People like changing their consciousness, and they're going to go on
liking it."
Huxley would surely agree.
[sidebar]
CANNABIS LAWS A BRIEF HISTORY
July 2001
Start of 13-month cannabis decriminalisation experiment in London
Borough of Lambeth.
October 2001
Home Secretary David Blunkett announced intention to reclassify
cannabis from class B to class C.
July 2002
Drug tsar Keith Hellawell resigns in protest at plans to reclassify cannabis.
January 2006
The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) advises retaining
cannabis in class C, following Government request for reconsideration
in light of concerns about psychotic illness and increased supply of
high-potency sinsemilla ("skunk").
January 2009
Cannabis reclassified as class B.
October 2009
Firing of ACMD chairman Professor David Nutt is followed, over the
subsequent six months, by the resignation of seven other ACMD members
in protest at the government's response to its recommendations.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom