Pubdate: Thu, 30 Oct 2014
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Page: 34

OFFICIAL: TOUGH OR TENDER, DRUGS POLICY DOES AFFECT THE AMOUNT OF 
DRUG ABUSE. BUT TOUGH COSTS MORE

No party ever won or lost an election because of its drug policy.

Yet it is a subject that strikes fear in the hearts of most 
politicians and leaves them deaf to demands for a review or reform.

They are locked in the old wisdom that if drug use is harmful the 
best way of tackling it is punishment, too timid to examine the facts 
or challenge conventional thinking - even though a significant number 
of ministers in both past and present cabinets, including the prime 
minister, admit that they have experimented with drugs themselves. 
Only the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has consistently argued 
that policy should be based on an examination of what works.

He has not got the royal commission he wanted, but the Home Office 
report published this morning, a comparative study of different 
regimes of drug control, should make all politicians think again.

The study is a small but important reward for the Lib Dems' 
persistence in calling for evidence-based policy.

Ministers and officials have surveyed the experience of 13 countries 
from Japan to Portugal, with widely varying approaches to drug use. 
Its critical finding is that there is no evidence of a direct link 
between the harshness of penalties and the number of drug users.

Portugal and the Czech Republic have both decriminalised possession, 
but their levels of drug use are sharply different.

Different cultures and social pressures, it suggests, may be a bigger 
influence than government policy. The ball is back in the politicians' court.

If it is not supported by the evidence, the only reason for 
persisting with a penal approach is that it is too difficult 
politically to reform it. But as defeat is quietly admitted in the 
war on drugs in one country after another, UK policy is becoming 
damagingly out of touch.

Drug abuse in Britain is a big and expensive problem.

According to the latest crime survey there was a small rise in 
England and Wales last year: 8.8% of all over-16s, an increase of 
about a quarter of a million people, admitted taking illicit 
substances. Cannabis was the most widely used drug by a wide margin.

But the average age of drug users is rising and the number of 
teenagers who admit taking drugs fell again, in line with a five-year trend.

That is not to underestimate the cost to themselves and society of 
the one in 10 who is classed as a problem user. The Centre for Social 
Justice claimed recently that the wider costs add up to UKP21bn. More 
soberly, the British Medical Association puts the figure at UKP16bn. 
Interventions  medical and penal  cost more than UKP1.2bn. 
Drug-related crime costs UKP14bn. More than 2,500 people, mainly men, 
die of some form of drug poisoning each year. And behind the 
statistics are ruined lives and broken families.

The issue is not whether or not drug abuse is harmful.

It is how best to minimise the harm it causes.

Some of those harms are not immediately apparent.

Continuing to prosecute for possession of cannabis, for example, was 
shown in a report last year for the drug charity Release to have a 
seriously distorting effect on inner-city policing.

In London in 2010, there were more than 1m stop and searches for 
drugs, half of them on young people, a disproportionate number of 
them black (even though drug use is about twice as high among white 
people). Fewer than half of the white people stopped were charged, 
compared with nearly four-fifths of the black people.

Each year, more than 40,000 people are convicted of possession, a 
conviction that will damage their future employability, make further 
offences significantly more likely, relationships less certain and 
reduce earnings capacity by on average a fifth.

Young people's lives are being irreparably damaged by a policy that 
is intended to help and protect society.

The evidence does not all go one way, particularly on class A drugs. 
Tough regimes in Japan and Sweden are matched by low drug use. But, 
the report observes, these are notably cohesive societies with 
similar cultural attitudes to drug-taking. What decriminalising 
possession can do is to open the way to treating drug abuse as a 
matter for health rather than criminal policy.

So in Portugal, decriminalisation has meant fewer cases of HIV and 
Aids as well as lower policing costs and fewer people in prison.

There is enough evidence in this report alone to advocate reform.

It is time listen to the experts.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom