'After the War on Drugs, Tools for the Debate' part 10
Once the meaning of control and regulation is made clear, it becomes much easier to grasp that the response to illegal drugs need not be any different to our current response to legal drugs (see ‘fault-lines within existing policy’ ), or for that matter any other issue in the public health arena. Making the case for a public health-led response is crucial to getting the reform message across. It is a concept people are familiar with and understand (in relation to, for example, tobacco policy), and it helps direct the emphasis of the discourse towards evidence-based policy making and harm reduction – and away from the ideological dream of achieving a ‘drug free society’.
The fact that certain drugs are currently dealt with via the criminal justice system is a quirk of the history of prohibition, and not the conclusion of any kind of rational analysis or evaluation. Drugs, quite simply, are primarily a public heath issue and should be dealt with as such by the relevant public health agencies (see principles of drug policy).
Prohibition not only undermines public health efforts to reduce drug harms (by diverting budgets to enforcement and stigmatising the most vulnerable problem users with criminality) it actually increases harms associated with use by encouraging high risk behaviours (e.g. injecting/ sharing needles), it stifles access to accurate safety
If the case for a public health-led response can be made effectively, it can only lead in one direction – away from irrational ideological commitments to prohibition and towards evidence based regulation and control. Once you have people thinking along these lines you are well on the way to winning them over.
part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
part 5
part 6
part 7
part 8
part 9
Print copies are also available, please contact Transform
4 comments:
Looks like "Class D" evidence based controlled availability to me.
One country has it already!
Hurrah for New Zealand!
the restricted list is still in place in New zealand but BZP has been removed from it so theres actually nothing in class D - for the time being anyway.
I never heard about this, what is NZ's position on BZP now then?
er, its illegal
Post a Comment