Pubdate: Sat, 01 Nov 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
Author: Simon Jenkins
Page: 41

MINISTERS HIGH ON THEIR WAR ON DRUGS NEED A SPEEDY CURE

A Psychology of Macho Law-Making Steers Policy - in Defiance of 
Public Opinion and Common Sense

The government should ban all reports on drug legalisation. They get 
you hooked on rage. Evidence-based reform is a gateway substance to 
common sense. Just send a message: no thought means no. Parliament's 
response to this week's report on the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act shows 
that psychoactive substances are the last taboo to afflict Britain's 
elite. It has got over past obsessions with whipping, hanging, sodomy 
and abortion, but it is still stuck on drugs. There is no point in 
reading the latest research on drugs policy worldwide. It is spitting 
in the wind. The only research worth doing is on why drugs policy 
reduces politicians to gibbering wrecks.

In 2000 the Police Foundation committee chaired by Lady Runciman (on 
which I served) proposed an end to imprisonment for "soft" drug 
possession and cultivation, together with lower penalties for hard 
drugs. In particular we pointed to the nonsense of classifying 
half-safe drugs such as ecstasy with heroin, suggesting that the 
latter was no more harmful than the former. It was pretty mild stuff.

Tony Blair's Downing Street went ape. What would they say at the 
Daily Mail? Blair's aide Alastair Campbell ordered the hapless home 
sectary, Jack Straw, to rubbish our report over the weekend before it 
was even published.

In the event the report was welcomed by the Mail, as well as by the 
Express, the Telegraph and more liberal papers. The Mail on Sunday 
even published a poll showing 60% of people in favour of 
decriminalising cannabis. Such was Straw's embarrassment that he 
later partly climbed down. Cannabis law enforcement was eased, but 
the sense of panic surrounding the subject remained. There has been 
no liberalisation since.

It did not matter that the law was almost 30 years old and had 
manifestly failed to suppress narcotic use or abuse. It did not 
matter that most of the press were in favour of reform, or that at 
the time, eight Tory shadow ministers admitted to having taken drugs.

Today it still does not matter that a 2012 ComRes poll showed three 
quarters of MPs in favour of reform. An Observer poll last month 
showed 52% of the public wanting US-style legalisation of medical and 
recreational marijuana, while a Sun poll this week had 71% accepting 
that the "war on drugs" had not worked. The Sun itself concluded: "We 
can't just carry on with the status quo."

If the Archangel Gabriel came down from heaven and said 
decriminalising drugs would end war, banish poverty, reduce obesity 
and defeat child sex abuse, it would make no difference to a British 
cabinet. David Cameron might have favoured reform before taking 
office, as he will doubtless favour it after leaving. When he has 
power to do something about it, he runs scared. The great taboo 
tightens its iron grip on his throat, as it does on that of his 
ambitious home secretary, Theresa May.

This week's report is another reminder of the limits of the criminal 
law in telling people how to order their own lives. It finds no 
correlation between the toughness of penalties and drug consumption. 
You can nudge but you cannot ban. Besides, illegality imposes huge 
burdens on the justice system, prisons and the health service. A 2009 
report by the charity Transform suggested legalisation could save as 
much as UKP14bn, while taxing cannabis, as the US has started doing, 
could raise UKP1.3bn. Better by far to spend this money on countering 
addiction and policing the drugs market.

It is foolish to deny that drug abuse can cause harm, as does the 
consumption of other substances. This is not an issue. The issue is 
the capacity of the law to mitigate it. "Sending a message" may make 
ministers feel tough, but it is clearly wrecking thousands of lives 
and enriching criminals. Cameron pleads that "our drugs strategy is 
working". That some areas of consumption are falling  in tough and 
tender regimes alike  does not make the policy a good one. Drug abuse 
is about physical and mental health. It should no more be about crime 
than is obesity or alcoholism.

The Independent yesterday asked, "Is Britain ready to grow up?". I 
fear the answer is no. I cannot face more reports on how much more 
humane are the drugs policies of Switzerland, the Netherlands, 
Portugal, Colorado and Uruguay. I give up reading of the hell that 
criminalisation  abetted by an antediluvian UN - inflicts on the 
people of Mexico, Colombia, Afghanistan and Burma. Pretending to ban 
cocaine production may delight rightwing opinion, but it exacts a 
ghastly price from people in producer countries.

As for the government proposal to ban "legal highs", the Home Office 
appears not to have heard of the internet. The BBC revealed last 
August that there are now 23 distinct online operators on the dark 
web, covering about 250 products. This market has doubled in size in 
the past year, with heaven knows what unregulated junk flooding the mail.

The best deterrent to drug misuse is publicity, just as the best cure 
is treatment. Instead Theresa May and her political colleagues 
(including Labour) are the drug dealers' useful idiots. To leave 
young people to the mercy of pushers and adulterators is the real 
crime. The chaotic nature of these markets causes more harm than do 
the substances themselves. Nor does the liberal Home Office minister 
Norman Baker, who backs reform, have a coherent strategy. He wants to 
"crack down on the Mr Bigs and criminal gangs". I can hear them 
laughing. His job should be to regulate them out of business.

The psychology of repressive lawmaking and its appeal to political 
machismo is the most sinister branch of public life. The belief of 
those in power that they can command private behaviour with the flick 
of a law or the cosh of a penalty is fantasy. I once hoped that sheer 
embarrassment at the harm they cause might shame Britain's 
politicians down the road increasingly taken by those in the rest of 
Europe and north and south America.

But no. May could not even bring herself to publish her own 
department's factual survey on the drugs market for three months of 
infighting with Baker and the Lib Dems. Britain will soon be to drugs 
what Ireland is to abortion, in a dark ages zone. Unlike Ireland it 
cannot even blame religion, only stupidity.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom