Minister for a Day

This is a piece I penned recently for a regular slot titled 'Minister for a Day' in Whitehall and Westminster World 21 April

Danny Kushlick
becomes Home Secretary for a day

7:00am Wake up, shaking myself into comprehending that yes, David Cameron has included me in his new government. My kids think it’s hilarious, having heard me sing: “Build a bonfire, build a bonfire; put the MPs on the top.” So shoot me, I’ve sold out. However, as young men we both experimented with cannabis, and he did call for a serious discussion of drug legalisation as a backbencher on the home affairs select committee back in 2002, so here we go. My brief is to kick into gear the process of getting the UK out of the drugs war. I’m looking forward to having fun.

For nigh-on 20 years I’ve campaigned against successive governments’ attempts to convince the Great British Public that the drug war keeps them and the wider world safe from the threat of ‘drugs’ (bar, of course, the legal ones: alcohol and tobacco). With the upcoming publication of a comprehensive impact assessment of global prohibition that I’ve commissioned, people will begin to see the flaws in that policy. Despite the evidence, my predecessor seemed more willing to discuss her husband’s viewing habits than legalisation and regulation of drugs.

I guess hiring me for a day to deliver this message is probably the easiest way to deal with the inevitable controversy. It’s got to be better than wasting some genuine ministerial talent, like David Davis.

8.00am First meeting of the day is with the permanent secretary and senior departmental colleagues. No love lost here, but a job’s a job. Like George Best in his heyday, Sir David Normington turns on a sixpence and says he has convened an interdepartmental meeting to announce the end of UK support for a prohibitionist drug policy.

I begin by letting the assembled group know that there will no longer be a need to mislead voters into supporting the very regime that creates the ‘drug menace’. Drug policy will now protect the public, rather than party political interests. No more will the UK support a policy that operates as a price-support mechanism for illegal drug traders, and turns plants into products worth more than their weight in gold. We will be taking £160bn a year away from the international criminals and at the same time drastically reducing crime (government figures suggest half of prison inmates have some kind of drug habit). No longer will drug policy punish the poor and disadvantaged the world over.

Concerns about half-empty prisons, redundancies amongst customs officers and organised criminals, and lack of material for draconian commentators such as Peter Hitchens, Melanie Phillips and Simon Heffer to froth over are raised and rebuffed. We’ll talk about resource reallocation later, I tell my officials.

The real concerns about increasing levels of drug use are discussed within Mr Cameron’s newly adopted framework of promoting overall wellbeing. It is now widely recognised that high levels of use and misuse are most closely associated with high levels of inequality and more general disparities in health. The Home Office will now be tasked with genuinely identifying and tackling low wellbeing as a cause of crime.

Oh, and we will also be releasing documentation, withheld under the misnamed Freedom of Information Act, that shows that UK governments have privately discussed the benefits of legalisation for at least 20 years.

Just as they stand up to leave, I tell them that the PM is minded to abolish prisons entirely. “Only joking,” I tell them – sadly.

10.00am The interdepartmental meeting. Chancellor Vince Cable begins by informing the group that we will no longer spend £4bn a year fighting a battle that creates £16bn worth of costs – and a living hell from Afghanistan to Colombia, and on the streets of every industrialised nation on earth. UK policy will now follow the sage analysis proffered (but then buried and ignored) by the PM’s strategy unit in their drugs report of 2003: that prohibition is the problem. Defence, intelligence and Foreign Office bods seem delighted that a significant source of insecurity will disappear from their in-trays. As we leave, two senior officials tell me sotto voce that they used to be warned away from discussing legalisation, lest it damage their careers.

12.00pm Time for a legally boozy lunch with Hillary Clinton (you didn’t seriously think that Cameron would go it alone, did you?). Time for the ‘special relationship’ to work for peace rather than war, methinks.

3.00pm As I walk back to my (very temporary) office, I am about to call key journalists but feel an infinitesimally brief pain in the side of my head. As the afternoon sunlight fades to grey, the last words I hear are my own: “And I thought I was on a roll. I was so looking forward to being president for a day. I could have ended world poverty… So shoot me…”

4.00pm The PM wrings his hands (eat your heart out, Tony Blair) as he issues a press statement confirming that a gunman of Colombian origin was shot while fleeing from a book depository overlooking Parliament Square. Meanwhile, rumours persist that Damian McBride and former drugs tsar Keith Hellawell had been emailing each other about the whereabouts of a grassy knoll.

Fear prevails at the UN as voices for drug law reform are smeared

Today Ministers from around the world are in Vienna for the High Level Meeting of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs to set a new ten-year UN drug strategy. Whilst fear and inertia has generally prevailed amongst our political leaders, we have also heard a huge range of serious voices calling for a debate on replacing drugs prohibition with legal regulation and control. At the same time a concerted effort has been made by Antonio Maria Costa the executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), to smear those calling for reform as “pro-drug”.

The effect has been to stifle critics of the status quo, and make a rational and mature exploration of alternative approaches into a political no-go area, by inaccurately and offensively portraying advocates of change as ‘pro-drug’.

In a recent paper the head of the UNODC admitted that the drug control system had a "dramatic unintended consequence: a criminal market of staggering proportions". Costa added: "The crime and corruption associated with the drug trade are providing strong evidence to a vocal minority of pro-drug lobbyists to argue that the cure is worse than the disease, and that drug legalisation is the solution."

This was the latest in a series of similar public comments over several years seemingly based on the absurd false binary that since Costa views his position as ‘anti-drug’ then anyone who disagrees with him must be ‘pro-drug’. However, despite his attempts to malign those calling for debate, many have had the courage to call for reform.

So who should be included under Costa’s ‘pro-drug’ banner?

In the run up to the last UN 10 year drug strategy meeting of this kind in 1998, Rowan Williams (now Arch-Bishop of Canterbury) and Prof. Colin Blakemore, former chief executive of the Medical Research Council, were amongst over 500 prominent academics, scientists, political and religious leaders, including a number of Nobel laureates and former presidents, who signed a letter (1) stating that:

"Persisting in our current policies will only result in more drug abuse, more empowerment of drug markets and criminals, and more disease and suffering. Too often those who call for open debate, rigorous analysis of current policies, and serious consideration of alternatives are accused of "surrendering”. But the true surrender is when fear and inertia combine to shut off debate, suppress critical analysis, and dismiss all alternatives to current policies.”

Adair Turner, Peer and Chairman of the UK Financial Services Authority has said (2):

"And if we want to help sustainable economic development in the drug-ridden states such as Colombia and Afghanistan, we should almost certainly liberalise drugs use in our societies, combating abuse via education, not prohibition, rather than launching unwinnable 'wars on drugs' which simply criminalise whole societies."

David Cameron MP (now leader of the Opposition), Tom Watson MP (now a Cabinet Office Minister), Bridget Prentice MP (now a minister in the Ministry of Justice) when on the Home Affairs Select Committee in 2003, signed up to a report (3) saying:

“We recommend that the Government initiates a discussion within the Commission on Narcotic Drugs of alternative ways—including the possibility of legalisation and regulation—to tackle the global drugs dilemma.”

David Cameron MP also said at that time (3):

“[I]n Holland you can walk into a café and buy cannabis quite openly…I wonder why we should have such a concern if a country like Holland or elsewhere in the world wanted to go a bit further. It is virtually legal in Holland, but if they wanted to go a bit further, why should we be so concerned? We might learn something from a country taking a different and radical approach, and we could see whether it worked or whether it was a disaster.”

“I do not know whether it would be an unfair summary, but … the Government position on the two UN bodies seems to be that they are pretty hopeless talking shops that set very odd targets, that use extraordinary statistics, but we have to take part, we have to be there and try and have an input.”

This week a cross-party group of 26 peers including David Puttnam and Molly Meacher wrote (4):

“What is now needed is an admission that most existing policies have failed and an open debate on what alternative policies should be adopted for the future…To this end we suggest that the UN should now establish an intergovernmental panel charged with the task of examining all possible alternative policies for the control of the drugs trade.”

Recently, because of his concerns about drugs prohibition bankrolling paramilitary gangs (including the Real IRA) in Ireland Denis Bradley (former vice-chair of the police board for the Police Service of Northern Ireland, and Co-Chair of the Consultative Group on the Past) said (5):

“It might be time to legalise drugs. It might be time to create outlets licensed and under government control, to supply drugs to those who are already addicted and to those who wish to dabble. It might be time to cut the gangs off at the knees by making them economically redundant.”

Danny Kushlick of Transform said:

“The last ten years has seen fear and inertia prevail amongst our political leaders, but it has also seen a huge range of serious voices calling for a debate on replacing drugs prohibition with legal regulation and control. All of these calls have been ignored, sidelined or suppressed, and Ministers look set to rubber-stamp another ten-year strategy indistinguishable from the last, with political posturing again winning out.”

“A significant block to debate has been a very active campaign by the executive director of the UNODC to smear and caricature those calling for an exploration of alternatives to global prohibition as being “pro-drug”, in a way that is inaccurate and offensive to a large body of respected thinkers and commentators. Is Mr Costa labeling UK Ministers and the likes of Lord Adair Turner, David Cameron and Rowan Williams as pro-drug?”

"We can bring peace and stability to producer and transit countries, and end much of the harm in consumer countries only by ending the war on drugs and replacing it with an effective, just and humane system of regulation and control. For that to happen, world leaders must stop using the UN to shut down any real debate on alternatives to war, and listen to the voices from across the political spectrum calling for change."

Editors Notes:

1. The full letter to Kofi Annan and signatories

2. Lord Turner quote from speech to the World WWF

3.Home Affairs Select Committee drugs inquiry quotes

• Recommendation 24, paragraph 267
• Cameron quote: Minutes of Evidence Home Affairs Committee 20 March 2003

4. For the 26 peers who signed, and the full text of the letter to the Guardian 09/03/09

5. Denis Bradley quote

For many more significant voices calling for drug law reform see :

http://www.tdpf.org.uk/MediaNews_Reform_supporters.htm

Mexican Drug War – El Paso raises debate on prohibition

As the UN member state delegations gather their forces for the upcoming UN drug strategy review, it is vitally important to recognise the value of local activity in raising the debate on alternatives to global prohibition.

In response to the Mexican drug war taking place on their border, El Paso City Council, Texas, has taken the courageous step of calling on Congress to discuss drug legalisation as an option for ending the damage caused by prohibition.

Last Tuesday the Council voted 8-0 on a resolution drafted by the city's Border Relations Committee, outlining 11 steps the U.S. and Mexican governments can take to help El Paso's "beleaguered and besieged sister city."

All city representatives also supported an amendment by South-West city Rep. Beto O'Rourke that added a 12th step: the encouragement of the U.S. federal government to start a "serious debate" on the legalization of drugs.

See O'Rourke in action in this video, making a hell of a lot of sense.

Followed by more coverage:here, here, here, and here

Why not send a message of support to the Council.

The El Paso initiative shows how a city-wide initiative can impact internationally. This was the case when London Borough of Camden Council recommended legal regulation to the Home Affairs Select Committee drugs inquiry of 2001:

"Given the failure over several years, and across numerous agencies and countries, to have any significant effect on the supply side of the drug market, we feel it is time to consider seriously the option of undercutting the illicit market with a regulated legal market."

And, given that the drug war is creating havoc everywhere, why not contact your local council representative and try and start something like this near you. Here is one of our trustees, Gary Wallace, doing just that in his local paper: The drugs debate

Camden Council's was one of the submissions (that included Transform's), that influenced the Committee in making its final recommendation, calling for a debate on legalisation and regulation. And is worthy of note in the run up to the UN drug strategy review in March this year.

"We recommend that the Government initiates a discussion within the Commission on Narcotic Drugs of alternative ways—including the possibility of legalisation and regulation—to tackle the global drugs dilemma."

David Cameron, perhaps our next Prime Minister, then a back bench MP, was a member of the committee and voted for this recommendation. You may want to drop him a line too...

The El Paso initiative is in advance of talks that will take place between President-elect Obama and Mexican President Calderon that will focus on the Mexican drug war. For more on the way that the drug war horrors have escalated in Mexico over the last few months see:

• Mexico’s Unsuccessful Drug War, Painfully Preserved and Hidden
• U.S. war on drugs has failed, report says
• Mexico's Violent Drug War Wreaks Havoc on Innocent Lives
• The War Next Door
• The £15bn drugs war that has cost 7,000 lives in 2 years
• Strategies for Mexico's drug war

Experts and public figures in the U.S. and Latin America offer a range of views, from stepped-up policing to legalization. And drug war created havoc continues as the knock on effect takes place:

• Mexico Rejects Guatemala’s proposal on War Against Drugs
• Drug smugglers threaten to destroy democracy in Ghana

And, just to bring the story home to us, here in the US of England, Lily Allen told the Mail: 'Drugs won't kill you', insists Lily Allen ('and yes, I've given up')

"Lily Allen was condemned last night for suggesting that the risks of cocaine are overstated. The 24-year-old singer said: 'The only story is that drugs are bad and they will kill you - you will become a prostitute, a rapist or a dealer. But that's not true. 'I know lots of people that take cocaine three nights a week and get up and go to work everyday, no problem at all."

I was called for a comment on the Lily Allen story. I suggested that the furore was about a culture clash, whereby drug use is normalised in certain subcultures. Whilst, to the outsider this behaviour appears aberrant and worthy only of condemnation. I went on to say that the most important point was to accept the reality that millions use drugs and that the priority was to keep users safe. Predictably they preferred Dominic Grieve of the Tory Party and David Raynes from the National Drug Party Prevention Alliance.

Transform in the Guardian: commentary on the new drug strategy

The following article is in todays Guardian online Comment is Free. Theres an open debate taking place below - the usual CIF knockabout stuff. There was also an abridged 'teaser' version in the Guardian print edition.

Policy Narcosis
The government keeps returning to a punitive-prohibitionist stance on drugs when every informed view, including its own analysts', advises otherwise

Steve Rolles

Despite the headline-grabbing new announcements, the new drug strategy is essentially a restatement of the previous one, and doomed to perpetuate the same disastrous failings, primarily because - as Paul Flynn observes - it remains dogmatically rooted in the outdated principles of a punitive prohibitionist approach. The big new initiatives on seizures of criminal assets, and linking benefits to treatment uptake, will operate at the margins of the strategy and will not have any meaningful impact on overall efficacy.

Asset seizures are nothing new and the move to seizures on arrest, as opposed to charge or prosecution, is quite simply illegal and unlikely ever to happen. The strategy's target is to raise asset seizures to £350m a year - a minor tax on the £7bn a year UK illegal market's turnover, even in the doubtful event of it being achieved. Notwithstanding the fact that it is the prohibition that creates the assets in the first instance, there is no evidence that asset seizures are a significant deterrent to the violent gangsters who control the trade (although the US experience demonstrates how linking seized funds to policing budgets or service provision can corrupt and distort policing priorities).

Linking benefits to uptake of treatment provision similarly bears the hallmarks of populist posturing. The reality is that, in any one year, the vast majority of problematic users are not ready or willing to stop. Coercing the least able or willing is offensive to most people's definition of treatment (despite the treatment industry's collusion with it), and its results no better than non-coerced interventions. Obvious concerns arise that the policy might lead to the withdrawal of benefits from some of the most desperate and needy members of society, most of whom already suffer multiple problems with mental health, housing and employment. The negative consequences could be serious: increased offending, increased social exclusion and decreased likelihood of engagement with treatment and support services.

The new strategy restates a series of highly misleading claims for the success of the previous one, based on misrepresented and cherry-picked statistics, or process successes that have no bearing on policy outcomes. The inability of the Home Office to tell the truth about what has worked, and what has not, is at the heart of the problem with the new strategy; there has been no critical analysis of past failings and no serious engagement with any new policy ideas or alternative approaches. Indeed, no policies were presented during last year's consultation on which to consult, certainly not the headline initiatives announced today. Forget the mature debate about legalisation and regulation that the Home Affairs Select Committee (including David Cameron) called for back in 2002. Nowhere in the consultation was there even any mention of the less contentious incremental reforms that have an extensive evidence base from around the world such as moves to civil, rather than criminal, penalties for drug possession, or proven harm-reduction measures such as supervised injecting rooms.

The strategy's most alarming failings are in the arena of supply-side drug control, where the Home Office claims of success have been the most outrageously misleading and the restatement of previous policy in the new strategy the most alarming. As Transform has repeatedly highlighted, a number of high-level internal documents, along with a whole series of authoritative parliamentary, academic and independent NGO analyses have demonstrated that not only are supply-side interventions hugely expensive (£3bn a year) and ineffective (drugs are substantially cheaper and more available than ever before), they are actively counterproductive - creating £16bn a year in crime costs. Assuming government maintains its commitment to prohibition, crime costs could approach £200bn over the next decade.

Can we assume ignorance on the government's part with regard to the counterproductive nature of their policy at home and abroad? Absolutely not. In June of 2003, the cabinet was presented with the PM's Strategy Unit drugs report, which informed them in devastating detail that supply-side enforcement was the major cause of drug-related harm, not only in the UK, but in Afghanistan and Colombia, too. The new strategy demonstrates, yet again, how evidence and sound analysis have become the latest casualties in the ongoing war on drugs and drug users.

note: this version is an edited version of what I submitted. The title and subheading are by the Guardian editor.

Also in CIF today:

Duped on dope

Amid all the hype about the government's new 10-year drug strategy, does anyone remember that the last one failed?

from Drug law reform legend Paul Flynn MP

Tory Social Justice Policy Group on Addictions: first thoughts

The Conservative's Social Justice Policy Group report on Addictions is finally published today (full report, exec summary) after a two year gestation. It forms part of the Group's Breakthrough Britain report that, under the guidance of former party leader Iain Duncan Smith, is attempting to update and recast Tory social policy more generally. Whilst it is unclear at this stage how much of the addictions report will make the Tory manifesto, party leader David Cameron has given a strong indication today that he is taking it very seriously. There is a real possibility that Cameron may be forming the next government so we should take it seriously too.

Consequently Transform have made an effort to engage with the development of the document. We made a written submission, gave a presentation to the working group and had meetings with the authors, as well as attending various public discussion events during the document's development. I had a chat with IDS, and he seemed like a reasonable chap.

So, anyway, here it is, all 428 pages of it which I have dutifully ploughed through today so you don't have to. It's all very confused and disappointingly the same as previous Tory policy, with some islands of sensible analysis swimming in an all too predictable sea of misunderstanding, incomprehension, and politically blinkered ideology. Harm reduction, as they define it, comes in for a particular kicking (weirdly, given that the Tories were responsible for introducing it in the UK), as does any treatment intervention that is not resolutely abstinence based from the outset. They are OBSESSED with cannabis classification without any sensible explanation why, and have totally failed to understand the broader critique of prohibition or the inevitable failure of a punitive / enforcement led approach to dealing with the public health and social problems associated with drugs. There's a lot in here which will warrant closer consideration and discussion in the blog, but for now here's some first thoughts and a couple of things to highlight.

A few bits of the report are downright strange. It includes three of the written submissions complete and apparently unedited. There are two on alcohol policy from the Institute for Alcohol Studies, and Alcohol Concern; all sensible stuff about better regulation of alcohol which has clearly informed some of the reports more sensible recommendations about alcohol pricing. But then there is the bizarre inclusion of a rambling, ranting submission from Mary Brett, a former headmistress from the evangelical prevention school of drug policy thinking. Brett's submission, which essentially marks a range of UK drug organisations (and publications) according to their adherence to her particular preoccupations with prevention, abstinence and cannabis (sounding familiar?) totals over 130 pages, yes, that's 130 PAGES, incredibly making up about a third of the bulk of the complete 428 page report.

Whilst I was unable to find a list of submissions that were made, there is one I do know of that didn't warrant inclusion: Ours. So for the record I will be putting it online. It was essentially a series of discussion points to try and make the groups think outside of the narrow confines of more mainstream Tory drug policy thinking (weighing in at a relatively lightweight 5 pages). This they have singly failed to do. They casually dismiss the law reform analysis thus:

"Concern for a stigmatised and untreated population of addicts in the 1970 and 80s – then considered a deviant fringe of society - also resulted in the emergence of a ‘street agency’ voluntary sector. Interlinked with addicts’ equal rights to receive health care alongside other members of the population grew another assertion: the right to use drugs and the right not to be criminalised. From this developed a lobby which today argues for acceptance of the reality of widespread ‘harmless use’ of drugs in the population. The logical corollary of this argument is that it is the prohibition of drugs that is the problem, not drug use itself. They argue that prohibition drives highly profitable and uncontrollable crime thereby exploiting and corrupting socially vulnerable communities, both criminalising individuals and infringing their human rights. (23) In the brave new world of legalised drugs the optimistic scenario projected is one in which ‘harmless’ drug use would go up, while ‘harmful’ drug use would go down – a projection which flies in the face of all that is known about rising parallel trends in alcohol use and harms."

Much of this quote appears as an either ignorant or a willfully confused misrepresentation of the reform position, as anyone who had read our literature would clearly understand. Worse, the reference (23) is given as 'Transform Drug Policy Foundation'. To my knowledge Transform have never used the phrase 'harmless use', in fact in our written submission, which didn't make the report, we say on the first page:

All drugs carry risk and cause harm. However, we need to make very clear distinctions between harms caused by drug use and misuse and harms created or exacerbated by policy - in this case, enforcement of prohibitionist legislation. The principle of policy implementation must be: First do no harm.

The Transform submission does, however, make a distinction between non-problematic or recreational use, and problematic use - suggesting, logically enough given that they are different, that different policy responses are required for each. The SJPG is apparently incapable of engaging with this (really quite low) level of policy sophistication. I understand that the 'harmless use' reference has been mis-attributed to Transform, having been confused with the RSA report (which to note, pointedly stopped shy of recommending legalisation and regulation). For the record we contacted Kathy Gyngell, who apologised for the mistake and offered to make a clarification at Thursday's press conference.

That said, the mostly excellent RSA report itself is also rather grotesquely misunderstood and misrepresented by Duncan Smith and the new report. On the 'harmless use' front, the RSA report actually says this:

The use of illegal drugs is by no means always harmful any more than alcohol use is always harmful. The evidence suggests that a majority of people who use drugs are able to use them without harming themselves or others. They are able, in that sense, to ‘manage’ their drug use. They are breaking the law in possessing illegal drugs, but they are not breaking the law in any other way. The effects that drugs have depend to a large extent on the individuals who use them, the drugs that they use, the ways in which they use them and the social context in which they use them. The harmless use of illegal drugs is thus possible, indeed common. Nevertheless, all illegal drugs, like all other psychoactive substances including alcohol and tobacco, carry risks. Some people die as a result of their misuse of drugs, many more are made ill, some of them very ill, and drug use can compound, as well as be caused by, problems of mental health. Drug use and crime are closely associated. The cumulative costs to society, including in purely monetary terms, are enormous.

I might not have used the term 'harmless use', but in context this RSA comment seems pretty reasonable to me, and is based, as they note, on evidence. The fact that drugs have risks doesn't mean that those risks are realised in every user every time a drug is used. Risk refers to a probability of something happening, and regards drugs and harm that probability is demonstrably not 100%. If you cant get to grip with this, as Duncan Smith seems incapable of doing with his outright condemnation of the RSA report as 'irresponsible', it suggests that you have approached the issue as an idealogue not a scientist, and that your mind was already made up.

A more systematic critique to follow......

Censored comments from BBC online drug debates

There is a simple but rather clever website called News Sniffer that monitors the BBC online 'have your say' discussions, logging all the comments that are subsequently removed (it also monitors news feeds from the Guardian, BBC and independent websites and shows how stories are frequently reshaped and edited over time).

It's interesting to look through some of the recent discussions on drug policy issues and see what was not considered, for whatever reason, fit for public consumption. Many of the remarks contain offensive comments (so at this point I should say: *warning: possible offensive comments*), or are just nasty, but others seem largely reasonable, or just stupid (not actively offensive) and the reasons for their removal remain somewhat mysterious. It may be because site users request removal using the 'alert a moderator' button - but this still requires BBC staff to make a judgement on a removal. I'm not suggesting there's anything sinister or big-brother like going on here, but its an interesting peek behind the curtain at how our biggest media outlet subtly shapes the debate.



Below I've linked a few of the recent BBC discussions so you can see the comments that made the cut, and then provided links to the News Sniffer listings of those comments that got the chop:

Should heroin be given on the the NHS?
BBC online link - removed comments

Should addicts get vouchers for staying clean ?
BBC online link - removed comments

Do drug laws need a major overhaul?
BBC online link - removed comments

Do you care about Cameron's past?
BBC online link - removed comments

Can alcopop tax tackle binge drinking?
BBC online link - removed comments

Are drugs a problem in your area?
BBC online link - removed comments

Should cannabis be legal for medicinal use?
BBC online link - removed comments

Cameron sends out the right message to young people

David Cameron’s admission that he smoked cannabis as a teenager puts him in the forty percent of the population who have too. Not much of a story there then, except that he’s the leader of the Tory party. And apart from the media no one gives a fig.

The interesting thing about this is the way that illegal drug use has become normalised to the extent that the Tory party leader can admit to toking in his youth and it doesn’t affect his career prospects. This tolerance of behaviour that would previously have been seen as too deviant for him to continue, should be seen as a prelude to progressive policy reform and ultimately legalisation and regulation.

His statement of remorse in the Telegraph is a little less easy to stomach. ‘It's against the law, it's wrong.’ He is reported saying. Is that because it’s against the law David? Or is it wrong like smoking tobacco or drinking alcohol is wrong?

The fact that he was on a tour of Sweden at the time may have something to do with it. The Swedes have the toughest drug laws in Europe and were probably threatening to string him up if he didn’t publicly state what a huge mistake he’d made.

Added to which Cameron supported a call for the UK government to debate legalisation of drugsat UN level when he sat on the Home Affairs Select Committee as a backbencher:

I hope it isn't headlines that made him change his tune....

After all that an unintended consequence of his admission is the likelihood that many young people may now stop smoking in order to distance themselves from fickle senior politicians. Sales of Converse sneakers took a nosedive after Cameron was pictured wearing them. The same happened apparently to 501s after Tony Blair was filmed sporting the once cool apparel.

If only he’d admit to smoking crack. We’d probably see it all but disappear from the UK…

Tory party presses for licensed Afghan opium

This article, published on the 24th July 2006 in the Guardian, reports that Conservative party members are encouraging David Cameron, their leader, to push for the licensing of Afghan opium. They are arguing that the current coalition's attempts to eradicate the crop are a threat to both coalition troops and to the people of Afghanistan who rely on the crop as nearly their sole means of income. Given the worldwide paucity of opiate based medicines such as morphine, licensing opium would provide Afghan farmers with a legal and secure income whilst reducing the black market in heroin. A similar scheme was successfully undertaken in Turkey in the 1970s although at the time the US Drug Enforcement Administration was bitterly opposed. Ironically Turkey is now the main supplier of opiate based medicine to the US.

Australian Green Party to allow heroin prescription

This article, posted on the 18th July 2006 in the Age, reveals that the Victorian Green party would prescribe heroin to long-term addicts, would abolish criminal penalties for illicit drug use and would test heroin injecting-rooms across the state. All these policies would be undertaken under trial conditions to monitor their effectiveness in terms of harm reduction. The trafficking of illegal drugs would continue to face criminal sanctions.

TV Presenter, Jonathan Ross calls on Tory leader to support legalization

This video clip on the BBC search site shows Jonathan Ross interviewing David Cameron, the Tory leader. Towards the end of the clip Ross tries to persuade Cameron on the merits of legalizing drugs such as that of curbing the power of criminals. Cameron concedes only that a different approach to the drug problem such as more treatment would be an improvement in policy.