Drug dealer crackdown's have "no major impact"

Research carried out by the Criminal Policy Research Unit at Southbank University indicates that whilst police offensives against crack dealers netted a large number of arrests, it did little to hinder crime associated with the crack-cocaine market.

‘Mounted in two phases of two and six weeks in the winter of 2000/2001, Operation Crackdown netted over 1600 arrests from concentrated ‘sting’ or ‘test’ purchases and during raids on scores of crack houses and dozens of street drug markets...

A priority was to reduce street crime. Reported robberies and burglaries near the operation sites yielded no indication that this had occurred. Local police agreed, with the exception of areas where street robberies were strongly linked to adult users of crack houses. Where juveniles were the main offenders some police felt that the diversion of officers to Crackdown had allowed an increase in street robberies.’

The study goes on to note that crack users, police and community service staff agreed that the operation did not make buying drugs harder, or increase the prices. There is also evidence that crack houses merely moved to different areas.

Research into a separate crackdown in London’s Kings Cross backs this argument up. Evidence suggests that the impacts of the crackdown were transitory and dealing merely moved to near-by streets. Further studies in Manchester and the US found that drug dealers tend to be some of the most desperate and deprived people, therefore threats of harsh prison sentences have little impact.

The Operation Crackdown study also found that police were concerned that

‘Police said the centrally timetabled crackdown had distorted normal anti-drug enforcement and could only be mounted by drafting in less experienced staff, reducing effectiveness. They also agreed that Crackdown had diverted attention from potentially more effective ways of tackling drug markets. A major limitation in the operation’s ability to dent crack dealing was that most crack purchases are arranged over mobile phones rather than in street markets or crack houses.’

The researchers interviewed a large number of heroin and crack users after Operation Crackdown ended. Almost 1 in 5 said they felt that crack had actually become easier to buy since the start of the operation.

Not explored in the research is that more than just being ineffective (or having marginal/short term impacts), enforcement initiatives can actually make matters worse. New turf wars can be precipitated, and new dealers or gangs that appear to fill a void left from a major crackdown can impose themselves with increased levels of violence to establish their territory. They may well be unknown to user populations and police causing additional difficulties and tensions. Sanho Tree of the Washington-based think tank Institute for Policy Studies has also argued on this blog that enforcement can create a Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ effect, where only the most ruthless, cunning or violent within the criminal market will prosper.

In the UK Government’s recently launched Drugs Strategy much is made of the claim that over 1,000 crack houses have been closed since 2003. However, if as the above mentioned research suggests, those houses have merely moved somewhere else then there's little point bragging about numbers; it is just more of the familiar Home Office misdirection. The fact remains that crack was not a major problem in 1997, and it is now - despite the enourmous policing resources put into attempts to eliminate it.

further reading:

After the War on Drugs, Tools for the Debate (see p.41 Talking about Crack)

Controlling illegal stimulants; a regulated market model Mark Haden in the Harm Reduction Journal

How enforcing prohibition creates street crime

Is three billion a year on enforcement good value for money?

According to the Governments own reviews they have been spending something in the region of 1 to 3 billion a year on drug enforcement (depending on how you measure it) - preventing the supply of drugs - with the express aim increasing the price of drugs as a way of deterring use. Increasing the price of drug may or may not deter use to the degree they suppose but that has been the plan. The particular target has been the two drugs identified by the Government as 'causing the most harm': heroin and cocaine. The big plan back in 1998 was to have reduced availability by 50%. By this week as fate would have it.

It would be easy to be fooled by the statistics put out by the Home Office that this endeavour has been broadly successful. More drugs are being seized we are told, usually in the form of how drugs are being 'prevented from reaching the streets'. We also learn that more drug gangs are being broken up, or 'smashed' as they like to say. Also, more criminal assets are being seized. Excellent. But what's all that got to do with reducing drug supply or availability? Measures that would actually give a real indication of heroin and cocaine availability have been studiously avoided by the Home Office and never seem to crop up in their publications, strategies, or consultation documents. Measures like drug prices, or surveys drug users - asking them highly technical questions like 'how available are heroin and cocaine?'. The Home Office deliberately uses 'availability' targets that are in no way measures of availability. (Call me cynical, but could it be they are trying to, whats the phrase I'm looking for...deceive us?)

Whilst we don't have much decent or consistent trend research in terms of drug user surveys (although we really should) we do have some pretty good drug price data, based on test purchases. This was most recently revealed, again, in a parliamentary answer last week, reproduced below:

Mr. Malins: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the street price of (a) heroin and (b) cocaine was in each of the last 10 years. [178111]

Mr. Coaker: The information requested is shown in the following table.

UK Average Drug Prices 1997-2007
£
As at December:	Cocaine (per gram)	Heroin (per gram)
1997	71	74
1998	77	74
1999	75	65
2000	65	70
2001	60	63
2002	56	61
2003	55	62
2004	51	55
2005	49	54
2006	49	50-55
2007	45	40-50

So heroin and cocaine prices have almost halved - having spent 20 billion of so on attempts to increase them. During the same period of time the UK has achieved the dubious position of number one in Europe for both heroin and cocaine use, the latter of which has doubled, the former plateauing at a historic highpoint since 2001. Oh, and we have a disaterous crack epidemic which we didn't have back in 97.

Bargain.

Miserable news indeed. Not that you will hear the Home Office talking about it next week; it is unlikely to feature high in their press releases for next week's big new strategy launch, which will be awash with the familiar propaganda about how great its all gone and some earnest talk about not resting on laurels and needing to do more.

Interestingly this price drop means that the country's growing population of problematic heroin and cocaine users (who are, thanks to the illegal market distribution networks, largely superimposed) don't now have to commit quite so much crime to buy their drugs. As a result drug related crime may have fallen slightly. We cant be sure about this since 'drug related crime' isn't actually measured, as a number of other parliamentary answers have made very clear (more discussion here). We will, however, hear a lot about this (unmeasured) fall in 'drug related crime' this week from the Home Office, credit for which will be give to the Government's new drug treatment programmes even though there is no evidence to suggest this is the real reason - the evidence of treatment outcomes is actually pretty terrible, with over 80% re-offending within two years. But the drop in crime is much more likely to be a fortunate side effect of the utter failure of that cheeky 20 billion or so in supply side spending to increase drug prices.

Cheaper drugs mean less crime committed by dependent users. Take this to its logical conclusion and you get; free drugs means no crime committed by dependent users (well, not to buy drugs anyway). Even though prices have been falling let us not forget that prices of heroin and cocaine are still inflated by over 3000% because of prohibition - turning low value processed agricultural products into criminal commodities literally worth more than their weight in gold. Still, given that 30,000 or so high harm causing dependent users are responsible for over half of all property crime, accruing something in the region of 16 billion a year in crime costs the idea of expanding the facility for controlled maintenance prescribing starts to become rather more appealing.

Spending 3 billion a year to create a further 16 billion in crime costs just doesn't seem like great value for money.

Maybe we should be having a serious debate about the policy alternatives instead of the sham policy consultation we were subjected to last year. Maybe if we invested that 3 billion in evidence based public health interventions: prevention and education, treatment, helping people rebuild their lives, addressing the social deprivation that underlies most problematic use and so on - then the number of problem users might actually start to fall, and if we took the illegal market out of the hands of gangsters and street dealers and brought it within the law then some of the terrible harms it creates might be reduced. How bad does it have to get before we have a serious debate on policy alternatives?

A good to start would have been for the Home Office to tell the truth about what's working and what isn't. But don't hold your breath during the new strategy launch this week. It will be a miserable stage-managed regurgitation of the old failed strategy with a bit of cosmetic window dressing. No debate, no new ideas, no change, no hope.

How enforcing prohibition creates street crime

Researchers at the University of British Columbia have made a compelling case that drug prohibition and backwards welfare rules increase criminal activity.

A team led by Kora DeBeck and Thomas Kerr surveyed injection drug users in the Vancouver area. They asked, "If you didn't need the money to pay for your drug use, are there any sources of income in the last 30 days that you would eliminate?"

In that study, 62 percent of sex workers and 41 percent of drug dealers said that they would cease their criminal activities if they did not need the extra income for drugs.

It may seem obvious that streetwalkers don't like their jobs. However, a scientific study like this is exactly the sort of evidence that is necessary to change public policy. The researchers were able to eloquently use their findings to highlight the shortcomings of Canadian laws and social services. That critique, and the results of their survey, will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence .

DeBeck and Kerr began with a simple argument; seizures and arrests by law enforcement agencies raise drug prices. This makes it hard for serious addicts to afford their habits without resorting to prostitution, drug dealing, panhandling, binning, and other illegal activities.

By disrupting drug markets and increasing risks involved in producing and distributing illegal substances, prohibition-based drug enforcement policies play a role in inflating drug prices, which in turn induces active IDU (injection drug users) with high intensity addictions to engage in prohibited income generating behavior to finance their drug use. While the ultimate objective of inducing high drug prices is to deter drug use, this analysis and a growing body of research indicates that the unintended consequences of these enforcement-based policies produce significant harm for drug using individuals and broader society.

Here is the biggest policy dilemma: people that receive financial assistance from the government will lose their support if they earn more than a minuscule amount from legitimate sources. This standard, intended to keep checks out of the hands of people that don't need them, may also strongly discourage the rightful recipients from pursuing normal work. Since there are no records of the illegal transactions, the drug dealers and sex workers can have their cake and eat it too.

Furthermore, the current structure of social assistance in Canada is such that recipients will lose their income benefits if they begin to earn above $400 per month through legitimate work, leaving this population with limited income generating options beyond resorting to prohibited sources.

At the end of their report, the scholars offered several more ways to keep problematic dependent users out of trouble: increase the availability of low-end jobs, make heroin available by prescription, and offer methadone or stimulant substitutes for free.

One method of trying to reduce engagement in prohibited income generation among drug user populations with severe addictions is to expand their economic opportunities. This would involve supporting the development of legitimate means of earning income through various low threshold employment opportunities and skill building measures. A recent intervention designed to economically empower drug addicted sex trade workers to develop alternative legitimate sources of income has been shown to have a positive influence on reducing involvement in the sex trade industry. Alternatively, policy makers could intervene by providing addiction prescription and substitution therapies to individuals with markers of serious addiction to decrease their reliance on, and subsequent need to purchase, street drugs. This could be achieved in part through heroin prescription programs and by expanding substitution therapies including methadone maintenance.

this is an edited version of guest article on Respectacle by Aaron Rowe

Spin tries to hide the £100 billion crime cost of the UK drug strategy

Transform News Release. 25 July 2007

Spin tries to hide the £100 billion crime cost of the UK drug strategy

Today (Wed 25 July) the Government has published its long awaited consultation paper on the future of its drug strategy. Transform, the UK’s leading centre of expertise on drug policy reform argue that it uses spin and rhetoric in an attempt to dress up failure as success, and fails victims by refusing to tackle the causes of drug crime.

Danny Kushlick, Transform Director said:

“Government drug policy has resulted in crime costs of over £100 billion in the last decade. Organised crime make billions every year from a totally unregulated and untaxed illegal drug trade. The government appears committed to continuing the nightmare for victims of crime who will continue to experience the chaos of violent unregulated street markets, and the thefts and robberies that result from the high cost of maintaining an illegal heroin or crack cocaine habit.

“The Government is spinning failure as success. The simple fact is that the UK drug strategy has failed to reduce drug use and failed to reduce drug supply. Class A drug use by young people, whilst stable, is at its highest ever level and is the highest in Europe. It is the use of heroin and cocaine, the drugs identified by the Government as causing the most harm, that have seen the most dramatic rise in use over the last 10 years. They have cherry picked and misrepresented statistics to try and demonstrate success when the general pattern has be rising use and rising harm, especially amongst the most vulnerable groups”.

“Cannabis reclassification is a red herring. On 6 June Gordon Brown was asked during Labour Party Leadership hustings if he would be reviewing cannabis classification. He answered, no. On 18 July he told Parliament that he would be referring cannabis back to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. All that had happened in the intervening period was the publication of the Tory policy paper on drugs that had called for cannabis to be reclassified back to Class B. The announcement was all about politics and nothing to do with science.”

“Drugs are dangerous and do cause real harm. However, the Government appears committed to a drug policy that criminalises the poorest and most disadvantaged in our community, grants a multi-billion pound monopoly to organised crime and dramatically increases the harms suffered by our communities. Through spin Gordon Brown’s government has failed the hundreds of thousand of victims of drug related crime. Transform and other organisations will use the consultation period to highlight policy options to reduce drug harm. We hope the Government will listen. If not they will be responsible for the ‘violence, disruption, harassment and intimidation’ they admit blight many communities under the current drug policy.”

ENDS

Notes for editors:

A detailed critique of how Government spins its drugs figures


Transform press release on the recent cannabis classification announcement

Transform fact research guide with headline figures, links to key data sources official and Independent, and comment and analysis.

US: mayor of Newark speaks out against the drug war destroying his city

From the spiritual home of the war on drugs, a political leader with the intelligence to see what is going on, the courage to speak out, and the sense to try and do something constructive about it.

Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark

from

Booker redirects his anger at the war on drugs
(after page one click 'outside the US' to read the remainder of the article)

He is an angrier man now. And the focus of that anger is a public policy that he believes is ruining his city and threatening his hopes to change it.

The problem, he says, is New Jersey's tough tactics in the drug war. We are heavy on jail time and unforgiving even when prisoners finish their terms. At a time when even states like Texas are changing course, we are sticking with our failed strategy.

The result is to turn thousands of young men into economic cripples and to give the crime wave in Newark a flood of fresh recruits. Booker describes it as almost an economic genocide against African-American men in his city.

And if it doesn't change, he says, he's ready to go to jail in protest, in the tradition of the civil rights movement.

"I'm going to battle on this," the mayor says. "We're going to start doing it the gentlemanly way. And then we're going to do the civil disobedience way. Because this is absurd.

"I'm talking about marches. I'm talking about sit-ins at the state capitol. I'm talking about whatever it takes."

......

He wants to reserve prison cells for those who do violence and divert the nonviolent drug offenders into treatment programs and halfway houses.

......

"The drug war is causing crime," Booker says. "It is just chewing up young black men. And it's killing Newark." [...]

He knows it'll be tough. But when he talks about it, the political smile disappears and he wears the expression of a man preparing to smash his head into a brick wall if that's what it takes.

Lucky thing. Because that wall is sturdy. And it's way past time that someone knocked it down.

Some more quotes on drug law reform from US politicians in the Transform supprters of reform archive

thanks to Drug War Rant

Drugs and Health Alliance: Launches Today

Our criminal justice approach to drugs has failed. The priority is public health, says new alliance of drug charities

A new Alliance of drug charities launches today in London, calling on the Government to put public health, harm reduction and tackling poverty and exclusion at the heart of UK drug policy.

The Drugs and Health Alliance (DHA) is a group of organisations and individuals who support an evidence-based, public health-led approach to dealing with illegal drugs. An overwhelming body of evidence shows that the criminal justice-led approach to illicit drugs at home and abroad increases harms associated with their production, supply and use, whilst public health-led approaches consistently reduce harm. For many years there has been reluctance from the voluntary sector to criticise policy, because of their reliance on government funding; problems that are perpetuated by the Government’s failure to conduct an evidence-based review of the progress of the UK drug strategy and its failure to consult with informed public opinion.

In 2007, the UK ten-year drug strategy comes to an end and a window of opportunity opens. DHA supporters want to be included in the policy development process to assist in putting in place an effective strategy for the next decade.

Where:
Romney Room
Royal Society of Arts (RSA)
8 John Adam Street
London WC2N 6EZ

When:
Thursday 3 May, 11:00 am

To attend:
contact 0117 9415810

Danny Kushlick (Director, Transform Drug Policy Foundation) spokesperson for DHA said:

“Ten years ago the Government brought in an ex police officer (Keith Hellawell) as drug czar, to head up the UK drug strategy. A decade down the line, the evidence of the failure of our enforcement-led approach is all too apparent. In no other area of policy-making would we dream of criminalising recreation on the one hand and disadvantage and distress on the other. DHA is calling for the upcoming drug strategy to reallocate resources away from enforcement and towards a public health approach to drugs. It is truly criminal that the Government has not seen fit to publicly audit the enforcement approach to drugs and compare it with health interventions.”

Professor Gerry Stimson (Executive Director of IHRA) said:

"This government's first war was a war on drugs – one that rumbles on with a growing role call of casualties. The mistake was to move responsibility for drugs policy to the Home Office rather than the appropriate health agency, and to downgrade health targets whilst focussing almost exclusively on crime reduction. It's time to refocus drugs policy, and get back to dealing with the evidence of what works at reducing harm for users and the wider community."

David Liddell (Scottish Drugs Forum) said:

“The UK has one of the highest drug problems per head of population in Europe. It’s therefore crucially important that any new strategy recognises the causal factors of poverty and exclusion as an integral aspect that we must address if we are to make a substantial impact on the problem in the years ahead.”

Martin Blakeborough (Director Kaleidoscope Project and member of the Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs) said:

“Kaleidoscope believes the health of drug users must be the priority and therefore welcomes the launch of DHA. It is clear that in the past ten years the priority has been community safety at the expense of the basic health care and human rights of illicit drug users. The upcoming review of UK strategy provides the opportunity to change this.”

Sebastian Saville (Executive Director Release) said:

“It is becoming increasingly apparent that more and more mainstream groups now readily accept that many of the harms associated with illicit drug use are in fact caused or exacerbated by the present legal system, rather than the drugs themselves. The ‘crime reduction agenda’ has meant that civil liberties and public health have increasingly taken a back seat in drug policy. It is time for a change.”

Daren Garratt (The Alliance) said:

“The Alliance is proud to be a partner, supporter and contributing member of the Drugs and Health Alliance. The Government's 10-Year Drug Strategy and its continued focus on the target-driven criminalisation of drug use and drug users, has only proved to increase the harm, stigma and alienation experienced by one of the most marginalised sectors of our communities. We welcome the work of the DHA and call for a pragmatic, non-discriminatory, evidence based drug policy that reestablishes the holistic health and social needs of the individual drug user as its core objective.”

Paul Crawford Walker (SHA) said:

“As a public health practitioner the launch of DHA is very welcome as the public health community has long realised that the only sensible approach to drug misuse policy is one which involves a public health perspective and framework rather than a repressive criminal justice one. I am confident that the Alliance will make a real difference to how drug misuse is regarded and dealt with in this country."

Debra Lapthorne, Director of Public Health, Plymouth said:

“Plymouth Public Health Development Unit is pleased to be contributing to the DHA. We welcome the inclusive approach the DHA represents and look forward to a time when some of the most marginalised and stigmatized groups in our communities can enjoy sustainable well being. The Public Health approach which the DHA embodies gives a real opportunity to deliver drug policy based on sound evidence rather than fear and prejudice.”

Neil Hunt (UKHRA) said:

“The 10 year strategy has brought important improvements but leaves much undone. For a supposedly 'evidence-based' drug strategy we have a dearth of evidence. There is an urgent need to examine and evaluate more progressive approaches to preventing drug problems that move beyond the current, crude enforcement approach. At the same time, we need to strengthen and refine the assorted harm reduction-based treatment approaches that have been shown to work."

Notes to editors

Media contact: Danny Kushlick 07970 174747

For further info: www.drugshealthalliance.net

Member organisations:
The Alliance, the Beckley Foundation, the International Harm Reduction Association, the Kaleidoscope Project, Release, Transform Drug Policy Foundation, the Socialist Health Alliance, Plymouth Public Health Development Unit and the UK Harm Reduction Alliance.

Individuals:
Dr Brian Iddon MP, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Drugs Misuse Group and a member of the Science and Technology Select Committee.

Drugs and Health Alliance Consensus Statement

The Drugs and Health Alliance is a group of organisations and individuals who support an evidence-based, public health-led approach to dealing with illegal drugs. An overwhelming body of evidence shows that the criminal justice-led approach to illicit drugs at home and abroad increases harms associated with their production, supply and use, whilst public health-led approaches consistently reduce harm.

For many years there has been reluctance from the voluntary sector to criticise policy, because of their reliance on government funding; problems that are perpetuated by the Government's failure to conduct an evidence based review of the progress of the UK drug strategy and its failure to consult with informed public opinion.

In 2007, the UK ten-year drug strategy comes to an end and a window of opportunity opens. DHA supporters want to be included in the policy development process to assist in putting in place an effective strategy for the next decade.

1998-2007 An overwhelming criminal justice approach:

• Prioritisation of crime reduction over harm reduction
• Over-reliance on enforcement as a route of entry into treatment has operated to the detriment of many problematic users
• Enactment of Drugs Act 2005 and Serious and Organised Crime Act 2005
• Commitment to inflexible and outdated UN Conventions on Drugs and harshly enforced domestic drug laws has created and exacerbated harm
• The consequence of which is punishment and stigmatisation of some of the most vulnerable and excluded members of society

2008-2017 Putting health first:

Drugs are a complex international, social issue that demand a strategic management approach, not a blunt criminal justice one. We believe that a comprehensive, joined up approach to drug policy development and implementation can only be realised if the drugs brief is taken out of its almost exclusive position in the Home Office, enabling us to develop a policy that is truly cross-departmental and placed within a public health framework. This shift would:

• Put public health and harm reduction at the heart of UK drug policy
• Facilitate the development and implementation of evidence based strategies that are more effective at reducing harm
• Deliver improved value for money on drug strategy budgets, as measured against key public health and criminal justice indicators
• Enable more effective cross departmental planning, less shaped by emotive, politicised criminal justice agendas (including health bodies sharing crime reduction performance targets with criminal justice bodies)
• Reduce health inequalities and, by extension, reduce deprivation, improve life chances and reduce offending (all of which are Home Office objectives)
• Reduce some of the counterproductive effects of the international and domestic drugs enforcement strategy

This would, in turn:

• Improve public health outcomes and protect the human rights of drug users
• Enable us to better address the social issues that underlie most problematic use
• Encourage effective efforts to reduce the progression from use to problematic use
• Direct resources into helping some of the most vulnerable and excluded members of society
  

DHA is calling on Government to;

• Prioritise public health goals
• Implement a truly cross-departmental, public health-led strategy and place the lead role in the relevant health agencies
• Commission an independent audit of outcomes against expenditure comparing public health with criminal justice approaches
• Hold an official cross-departmental consultation on the efficacy of criminal justice and public health approaches
• Reallocate drug strategy expenditure from criminal justice to public health

DHA also calls for:

A quadripartite select committee to be convened to conduct an enquiry into UK and international drug policy, the National Audit Office to conduct a value for money study of enforcement outcomes and the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs to review the drug strategy and suggest reforms.

What we plan to do:

The DHA will produce briefings and discussion documents, hold seminars and brief policy makers, press and voluntary sector organisations on the benefits of an evidence-based, public health-led approach to dealing with drugs.

What you can do:

• Join the DHA by signing up your organisation to thegrowing list of members - This can be done by contacting the DHA Secretariat on (0117) 941 5810.
• Become active within your field by campaigning for, and promoting the work and goals of the DHA.

.

Unhappy birthday for SOCA

SOCA's annus horriblis must be even more dispiriting for all concerned given that the agency is only 1 year old. They really have had a shoca.

In January the blog discussed how the historic failure of supply side drug inteventions combined with populist 'get-tough' law and order politics provided the backdrop for the emergence of the the new Serious Organised Crime Agency - and also suggested why it was reportedly running into problems. A recent report in the Guardian to mark the agencies 1st birthday details the ongoing problems.

To the good folks at SOCA, just so you in the future you don't say we didn't warn you, to spell it out again: supply side drug control is doomed to fail because of high demand for drugs combined with the brutal economics of unregulated markets run by criminal profiteers (aka prohibition). No10 knows it, The Home Office knows it, in fact anyone who has even glanced at the evidence (that would be the trillions of pounds/dollars spent on interdiction whilst drug production, supply and availablity have increased consistently for 40 years) know it too. Its OBVIOUS: really, theres no more evidence required.

see also Massive drug seizures solve world crisis
.

Playing SOCA with drug policy?

SOCA, the new Serious Organised Crime Agency, launched by Tony Blair with some considerable fanfare in April last year seems to be running into problems even before it's first year is up. At the launch The prime minister told us that from now on life would be "hell" for "criminal Mr Bigs", and the previous Home Secretary announced that he was “sending the organised criminal underworld a clear message: be afraid". (Telegraph comment piece)

Blair launches SOCA, promising 'Hell' for 'Mr Big'

But two reports on Channel Four News last week suggested that any honeymoon period is well and truly over, and that Mr Big may not be quite as afraid as was hoped. So what's it all about and why have things apparently gone pear shaped so quickly? The news reports, which included interviews with disgruntled SOCA staff and various leaked emails, suggested bureaucracy and management issues, low morale and 'loopholes' that meant large numbers of drug seizures were not being followed up, attracting the ire of Police Federation amongst others.

But the problem with SOCA (I am only talking about the drugs side of their work here) is not primarily and internal one of incompetence or organisational strategy. The real problem is because of the terrible truth: the better SOCA do their job, the worse things will get. Supply side drug controls do not and cannot prevent drugs from reaching markets where sufficient demand exists. The best they can achieve is to further inflate drug prices, driving low income problematic users into ever larger volumes of offending to support their habits and attracting ever more violent criminals to control the profits offered up by prohbition. As we shall see, this is no secret to ministers.

SOCA was established last April following a merger of the National Crime Squad, the National Criminal Intelligence Service, and sections of HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and the Immigration Service. The new entity has a £400+ million a year budget, and organised crime involvement with the drugs is the most significant focus of their work. According the SOCA website:

Trafficking in heroin and cocaine, particularly crack cocaine, poses the greatest single threat to the UK in terms of the scale of serious organised criminal involvement, the illegal proceeds secured and the overall harm caused.

Home Office estimates put the harm caused by Class A drugs at around £13bn a year. This largely arises from the profits from sales, the crimes addicts commit to fund their habit, and the damage caused to family life and communities, as well as from costs to addicts' health.

As a brief aside, the above isn't a summary of the information of the SOCA's drug related activities on their website – that's all of it.

Anyway, if the organisation seems to be running into trouble this certainly isn't the fault of its core staff – many of whom, according to the Times, are apparently now trying to leave because of the organisational malaise and a desire to do some real hands on police work. I have met SOCA staff at various conferences and seminars and their professionalism and commitment to tackling organised crime isn't in question.

No, if there is a problem it is primarily the politics behind the organisation, that casts a shadow over everything it does. The backdrop to the establishment of SOCA is a 10 year drug strategy that, as it approaches its end, has failed in quite spectacular style to achieve its targets on reducing Class A drug supply and use (remember that 50% reduction in class A drug use/availability by 2008?). This failure is combined with a political climate of macho law and order posturing and one-up-manship between the major political parties, characterised by tough talking rhetoric that is heavily dictated by a tabloid agenda.

Drug policy under this Government (and to be fair, previous ones aswell) has been dominated by politics, remaining, for the most part, resolutely un-bothered by rational evidence based policy making. As drug supply, drug use, drug crime, and overall drug harm have continued to rise, the Government, rather than consider a change of approach or progressive policy alternatives, has defaulted to tough talking spin and bluster:

'Tough' new targets are announced as the old ones are missed and quietly retired, usually made as part of an updated strategy, from a newly re-named Drug Strategy Unit/Directorate/Wotsit, after a relocation to a new ministry, or by a tough new 'bruiser' Home Secretary – because obviously that's going to make a massive difference.

'Tough' new legislation is passed, like 2005's ill-thought out Drugs Act, which no-one in the drugs field wanted or asked for (the only welcome clause being the repeal of reforms to section 8 of the MDA, from the Government's previous ill thought out get-tough (sp)initiative). Much of it – like clause 2 of the Drugs Act – is never likely to be commenced because it is frankly a load of rubbish. I use the term advisedly as the biggest Drugs Act nerd on the planet outside of the poor unfortunates at the Home Office who had to draft it.

'Tough' announcements that grab a few headlines but never actually come to fruition because they are impractical, unethical, or occasionally illegal. Consider for example random drug testing in schools (announced in a Tony Blair exclusive interview in the News of the World), or the equally idiotic drugs sniffer dogs in schools, both going the same way (nowhere) as mandatory minimums, three strikes you're out, and all that other disastrous US-style 'war on drugs' nonsense.

'Tough' new appointments are made – The Drug Czar, a tough cop who looks a bit like Jack Palance, modelled on his ass-kickin' US counterpart, who is then unceremoniously dumped a couple of years later - a straw man for a doomed enforcement-led drug strategy he had no hope of salvaging.

And on and on it goes. There's a pattern here. Drug policy has been all about the big announcements, the new stuff – the process. Its all about the future, about turning the corner, about the upcoming breakthrough, about being tough. Its never about the outcomes.

For the simple reason – obvious to anyone not in a sensory deprivation tank for the past decade - that the outcomes are all dreadful.

Worse than dreadful – they are the opposite of what they were supposed to be. Class A drug use, (in particular the problematic kind that we should genuinely be concerned about), has gone up since 1997. A lot – including the crack 'epidemic' that all that toughness manifestly failed to prevent. Drugs are cheaper and more available than they have ever been. By a considerable margin. Attempts to control drug supply are a joke, and a pretty poor return on the £20 billion or so that has been hosed into drug policy enforcement over the past decade. And let us not forget that of the £13 billion a year of drug related harm that SOCA mentions on its otherwise totally un-infomative website, 88% of which is crime costs, and 95% of that being crime committed by addicts to support their habits. ie created by enforcement. ie costs of prohibition.

So come 2002 and Tony Blair is looking down the barrel of a drug policy disaster, a ten year strategy dramatically not doing what is was supposed to, and various groups including the Police Foundation and the Home Affairs Select Committee pointing out this fact very eloquently and publicly. At this point he called upon the top boys from his personal policy think tank – the Number Ten Strategy Unit – and they produced a devastating 114 page analysis of UK drug policy that shows with crystal clarity that supply side enforcement cannot ever work and actually creates huge collateral damage in the form of that £13billion or so a year in crime costs (they actually put it at £16 billion).

The No 10 report (presented to ministers and then supressed until FOI pressure and leaks brought it into the public domain) notes that:

“UK importers and suppliers make enough profit to absorb the modest cost of drug seizures” (p.82)

“The long term decline in the real price of drugs, against a backdrop of rising consumption, indicates that an ample supply of heroin and cocaine has been reaching the UK market”(p.80)

“Despite seizures, real prices for heroin and cocaine in the UK have halved over the last ten years”(p.91)

“Over the past 10-15 years, despite interventions at every point in the supply chain, cocaine and heroin consumption has been rising, prices falling and drugs have continued to reach users. Government interventions against the drug business are a cost of business, rather than a substantive threat to the industry's viability.” (p.94)

The report goes on to demonstrate how this crime will always be created by the underlying economics of the completely deregulated illegal drug market. When increasing numbers of users have to pay street prices grossly inflated by prohibition, the exploding levels of crime described in the report are inevitable:

“The high profitability of the drugs business is derived from a premium for taking on risk, as well as from the willingness of drug users to pay high prices” (p.66)

“profit margins for traffickers can be even higher than those of luxury goods companies” – (cites Gucci as an example) (p.69)

The report then shows that even if supply side interventions (exactly what SOCA are now involved in) were more successful, the result would be increased prices that could force addicts to commit more crime to support their habits.

“There is no evidence to suggest that law enforcement can create such droughts” (p.102)

[but even if they could…..]

“price increases may even increase overall harm, as determined users commit more crime to fund their habit and more than offset the reduction in crime from lapsed users”(p.99)

John Birt, 'blue skies' thinker and drug policy non-expert, then took that analysis and, in phase two of the Strategy Unit report, tried to come up with some sensible policy responses. Ignoring the analysis that enforcement was counter-productive and creating many of the very problems it was intended to eliminate (presumably because to not ignore it took policy in a direction he found politically unpalatable), he instead devised a repressive programme for shovelling ever greater numbers of drug using offenders into enforced abstinence-based 'treatment' as a way of reducing drug related crime (which formed the basis of the non-sensible Drugs Act 2005).

But no one really thought this was going to be the magic bullet, not even Birt, and besides, treatment isn't much of political crowd pleaser. And so it seemed the stage was set for some more tough new initiatives – yet more process announcements that would delay the reckoning a bit longer. This time though they needed something really big and seriously tough: we obviously needed our very own FBI. And that was what we got, £400million a year's worth, complete with its own futuristic new logo, featuring a big scary cat with mean looking claws striding the globe.

SOCA logo

The Eye of Thundera - Thundercats insignia

So whether SOCA is functioning better or worse than the various agencies it replaces isn't really the point (that really is just a process consideration). If anything the worse they perform the better. But even if SOCA was running like a well oiled military machine, arresting baddies like there was no tommorow (and the 'Mr Bigs' thought the daft thundercats logo was really intimidating), it still wouldn't save them from inevitable failure because however you dress it up, supply enforcement doesn't work, it just makes things worse. Drug seizures, however dramatic, don't stop drugs reaching their markets and arresting violent drug dealing hoodlums and smashing drug crime syndicates just creates a vacancy for the next generation of gangsters, all to keen to make a killing from prohibition. SOCA is an organisation whose drugs brief is set up to fail, and that must be pretty demoralising.

Home Office split: - dibs on who gets drugs

The media is full of reports that the Home Office could be split in two. Despite the fact that the idea was rejected by Blair when Charles Clarke was Home Secretary, it is apparently now back on the cards after another high profile Home Office debacle, this time to do with records of overseas offences not being recorded in the UK database.


The idea, apparently, is that the Home Office will be split into a ministry of justice and a ministry of security. Quite aside from the fight over which one gets the shiney new £700 million Home Office building (photographed below by my own fair hand), there will no doubt be an equally energetic scuffle over who doesn't get to keep the drug policy brief. Obviously the international illegal drugs trade is contributing to all sorts of security issues, fuelling conflict around the world and funding terrorism and violent organised crimainl networks. Its also causing havoc throughout the domestic criminal justice system. So with the drug strategy consistently undermining both security and justice, the new ministry's will be fighting to be rid of it. Its probably a safe bet that either camp would rather go back to their previous home in that nasty 70s tower block than take on the poinsoned chalice of enforcing prohibition.


One of the problems plaguing the Home Office is ofcourse the prison's overcrowding crisis, which is in large part the fault of the the UKs disaterous drug policy - as developed and implemented by the Home Office. Not only are 17% of inmates drug offenders of various kinds, mostly non violent, but probably at least half of the remainder are inside for drug-related offending - mostly aquisitive property crime to support a heroin and/or crack habit. The Home Office's own research, backed up by the Prime Ministers Strategy Unit Report on drugs, suggests that crime committed to support an illegal habit is valued at £11-16 billion a year. By coincidence the Home Office's entire budget is also £16 billion a year.


The Home Office also estimates that it spends £2 to £3.5 billion a year(of £16 billion a year total) enforcing the drug laws and dealing with all this drug and drug realeted crime (policing, courts, prison, probabtion etc), the vast majority of which is a direct result of the futile but dogged enforcement of prohibition.


If the Home Office wanted to dramatically reduce crime at all scales, reduce the prison population, and free up huge resources for dealing with all that tricky paperwork and pesky real-criminals, then considering some cautious phased drug policy and law reform might seem a sensible place to start. Then they wouldnt have to decide who carried the drug policy brief because they could hand it over to the Department of Health where it belongs.