FT weekend magazine cover story: "Legalise the Lot"

We mentioned this excellent recent article by Mathew Engel in the Financial Times in the miniblog but I thought it was worth posting a scan* of the FT weekend magazine cover.




That this article appeared in the FT is significant given its readership and prestige within the media, and the fact that it made the magazine cover so prominently is testimony to how mainstream the reform arguments have become.



* sorry the scan is a bit rubbish - my only copy got a bit crumpled

Transform commentary in the British Medical Journal

Following on from the last week's BMJ head to head on 'should we decriminalise drugs?' (read the yes response here, the no here) and a reasonably engaging follow on debate in the online rapid response forum (responses to the 'yes', responses to the 'no') this week's print edition of the journal has run six letters in response, including, I'm pleased to say first in line, one from me. (I also get another quote in a summary response from the letters editor).

My letter is a heavily trimmed version of my (really far better and more detailed) online response to the anti-decriminlisation piece by Joseph Califano, combined with some snippets from my response to the pro-decriminalisation piece (or rather the responses to it). In fact even the heavily trimmed letter I submitted (at their request, with a very strict word count) was itself heavily edited, in doing so rather confusing a few of the points being made and somewhat tempering my glee at getting published in the BMJ. I've posted my unedited letter in the comments section below for reference.

All of the letters are behind an annoying subscription pay wall, meaning you can only read the first 150 words and not see the references. This is particularly ridiculous given the the original articles and the rapid responses are all freely available, and the fact that the letters are mostly not much more than 150 words anyway meaning that mostly it is just the last sentence missing. Pointless copyright snottiness that serves no useful purpose, which I am therefore about to unilaterally over-rule by posting my letter, and my quoted comment from the letters editor, in toto:

Prohibition is an ideologically driven failure

Califano's objections to legal regulation of illicit drugs are based on misrepresentation of the reform position bolstered by irrelevant, cherry picked, or misleading facts. 1 A similar piece appeared in the Financial Times 2 and was systematically critiqued in the paper's economists' forum. 3 While Califano's rhetoric has since been moderated, and facts fine tuned, the conceptual flaws remain.

The example of Zurich's "needle park" misrepresents legalisation as heroin was never legally supplied. As an experimental tolerance zone it was a failure. Yet, Califano fails to mention that the government responded by legalising heroin. It set up clinics for long term users, where legally prescribed heroin was used under supervision. The success of this approach on key social, health, and criminal justice indicators led to its replication by many countries including Canada, Australia, and much of mainland Europe. The UK is piloting a similar scheme.

Califano relates Italy's high heroin addiction rate to its de facto decriminalisation for possession, but other countries with similar approaches have lower levels of addiction (Netherlands, Portugal), while the UK has a punitive approach yet higher addiction. Califano's grotesque conflation of Italy's decriminalisation policy with the spread of AIDS ignores the reality that supervised use of prescribed heroin with clean needles results in zero HIV transmission. Califano defends a policy that caused the tragic outcomes he identifies, while attacking advocates of responses that eliminate the problem.

Cheap illicit drugs are freely available under prohibition. Despite Califano's assertions, once an illicit market is established (and criminal profiteers will see to that) levels of use are mostly culturally determined and demand led. Problematic drug use is not driven by changes in availability or price. 4

Califano doesn't understand that the huge profits offered by prohibition attract the violent gangsters now in control, while it is precisely because drugs are dangerous that they need to be regulated and controlled. They are too dangerous to be left in the hands of criminals.



Stephen A Rolles, information officer

Transform Drug Policy Foundation, Easton Business Centre, Bristol BS8 OHE

steve@tdpf.org.uk


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Competing interests: None declared.

References

• Califano JA Jr. Should drugs be decriminalised? No. BMJ 2007;335:967. (10 November.) [Free Full Text]
• Califano J. Drug legalisation is playing Russian roulette. Financial Times 2007 August 16. www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6190a922-4b91-11dc-861a-0000779fd2ac.html
• Financial Times. Economists forum. 2007. http://blogs.ft.com/wolfforum/2007/08/how-to-starve-t.html#comments
• Strategy Unit. Drugs project. Phase 2 report. Diagnosis a recommendations. www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/upload/assets/www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/strategy/drugs_phase2.pdf

note:
regards above where is says no competing interests declared, in the online response I did declare my interests as follows: "I am Information Officer for Transform Drug Policy Foundation and provided some support with factual references for Dr Chand's companion article in favour of drug decriminalisation". The BMJ editors chose not to reproduce this. No idea why - maybe because my interests were non-financial.

Sweden's story in responses

Echoing Califano's citation of Sweden's drug policy in his contribution to the head to head debate,¹ H C Raabe writes:

"Around three decades ago, Sweden adopted the goal to create a ‘drug-free society.' The result is impressive with essentially the lowest rates of drug abuse in Europe, lower than, for example, the Netherlands and much lower than the UK."

But, replies Andrew Byrne, "Sweden's goal of a drug-free society has been a cruel hoax on its people. Read the official EMC [European Monitoring Centre] figures from Lisbon: high rates of hepatitis C, enormous alcohol problems, amphetamines at higher rates than many other European countries. Its approach has been repressive, expensive, and largely ineffective. Along with the USA, Sweden is one of the last western countries without a needle services for drug users. This leads to HIV, bacterial infections, and other preventable and costly burdens on the Swedes."

Stephen A Rolles concludes that there is no correlation between the harshness of prohibition's enforcement and the use or misuse of drugs. "Some countries with harsh enforcement policies (including, prominently the UK and US) have very high levels of use while other countries with very different policies, such as Greece, or more famously, the Netherlands, have low levels of use comparable to Sweden."

Sharon Davies, letters editor

BMJ, London WC1H 9JR

sdavies@bmj.com

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Competing interests: None declared.

References
1. Califano JA, Jr. Should drugs be decriminalised? No. BMJ 2007;335:967. (10 November.)[Free Full Text]

Foriegn Policy Magazine and Fox News ask 'should drugs be legalised?'

The drug law reform debate has been getting some high profile coverage lately. Last week saw powerful opeds in the Washington Post and Washington Times, the week before saw two more in the Financial Times. This week sees a cover story in the prestigious Foriegn Policy magazine (this is currently subscription only - but the text is available here thanks to Mapinc.org).

The Foriegn Policy cover story by Drug Policy Alliance director Ethan Nadleman (who has written on this subject for FP in the past) has also garnered some comparatively rare coverage in the US's conservative Murdoch news channel Fox News. Whilst the brief studio discussion is dismnissive, the actual news piece does at least allow for Nadleman to make his point and summarizes the arguments reasonably well.

Prohibitionist rant trashed in the FT Economists' forum (with some help from Transform)

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It is gratifying to see that the absurd prohibitionist rant from Joseph Califano that appeared in last week's Financial Times ( 'Drug legalisation is playing Russian roulette' ) has been thoroughly trashed in the FT Economists' forum as part of the paper's ongoing high profile debate on drug legalisation and regulation.

The Califano piece followed two pro-reform op-eds that had appeared earlier, all three of which are covered in last weeks blog , including a point by point critique of Califano's statistical and analytical crimes against reality. It is of course appropriate that the FT allows the different points of view in this debate to be aired, but equally correct that statements made by either side are held up to critical scrutiny. This is precisely what the Economists' forum (for the 'world's top economists') -and indeed the FT's public forums- are for, and is one of the joys of the internet.

I was pleased to see that a comment from myself was included in the Economists' forum. I make no claim to be one of 'the world's top economists', my economics A-level doesn't really qualify me, even with a grade A, FROM BACK WHEN IT MEANT SOMETHING! I do, however, have some knowledge of drug policy, and the forum occassionally accepts guest comments 'on merit' or by invitation. My first comment concerned misunderstandings about the term 'legalisation' but, mercifcully I thought, left the published Califano piece unscathed.

Subsequently, however, Califano posted his entire published FT op-ed (unedited) in the Economists' forum, rather than respond specifically to any of the posts that had been made previously, apparently misunderstanding the the 'discussion' part of 'discussion forum'. This prompted a robust response from Professor William Buiter, author of the pro-legalisation piece that had provoked Califano in the first place. Buiter notes, amongst other useful observations, that:

"I don’t really know how to respond to the long contribution by Joseph Califano, which is more of a rant than a logical and fact-based argument. The non-sequiturs in the way he jumps from the experience of localised liberalisation (in the Netherlands, Zurich and Italy), to the likely impact of global liberalisation are almost painful to behold. Righteous anger is no substitute for reason."

The FT's Martin Wolf then suggested I provide a forum response to Califano's post, specifically its dubious factual content. Since I had already blogged along these lines I posted an edited version of that critique, which was also published. Wolf then notes:

"I want to thank Steve Rolles, in particular, for destroying the factual basis of Joseph Califano's shocking intervention. It is depressing that this combination of hysteria, misrepresentation, intellectual confusion and mindless moralism continues to foist upon our countries a policy with such catastrophic consequences.

Like the Bourbons, Mr Califano has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. He seems totally incapable of distinguishing the consequences of drugs from the consequences of prohibiting them. Tragically, the attitudes he displays continue to sustain a policy that is destroying millions and millions of lives around the globe.

I am encouraged, however, by some of the other comments here, which suggest that people are relearning the good old principle that when in a hole one should first stop digging.

There's not really much to add to that except a general observation that giving hard core prohibitionists a platform seems, increasingly, a good thing, since they do such a splendid job of making themselves look stupid and undermining their own position - especially when exposed to rational debate and intelligent informed scrutiny. Thank you then, the Financial Times.