Drugs prohibition is a 'policy of mass destruction' and the consultation document is a 'dodgy dossier'

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Drugs prohibition is a “policy of mass destruction” and the consultation document is a “dodgy dossier”

News release
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Date: Monday 22 October 2007

The Government's consultation on the last ten years of its drug strategy and its future, finished last week (Friday 19 October). As part of its submission Transform uses correspondence from officials, previously not in the public domain, to illustrate the Government's knowledge that its support for drugs prohibition creates significant harms. The submission can be read here (pdf)

The submission demonstrates how the Government:

• manipulated the entire consultation to close down genuine debate on drug policy
• set the framework in such a way as to have determined the outcome before the consultation had even finished
• ignored ten years of constant criticism of its drug policy
• hid internal reports critical of prohibition
• treats criticism of drug policy with disdain and contempt
• refuses to evaluate prohibition
• is a hostage to US inspired geopolitical forces
• uses drug policy for electioneering

This is despite the fact that the Government admits that prohibition itself is a significant cause of harm. In a letter to Transform's Director Danny Kushlick in Oct 2005, Foreign Office Minister of State the Rt Dr Hon Kim Howells MP wrote:

“Prohibition of course gives rise to illicit trafficking and use and a range of problems associated with those.”

And in a letter to Dr John Marks from the Home Office Direct Communications Unit in September 2007, they admitted that:

“…it is likely that there would be a reduction in acquisitive crime, if drugs were legalised…”

The implication of which is that the Government admits that prohibition creates acquisitive crime. Home Office estimates suggest that crime costs associated with prohibited drugs are about £15 billion a year.

The letter to Dr Marks goes on to say:

“The Government is aware of the arguments for legalising controlled drugs in a regulated way and has concluded that the disadvantages would outweigh the benefits.”

These deliberations on cost benefit analysis have never been made public and, suggest that “arguments” have taken precedence over evidence.

Transform's submission concludes that political parties will not engage in genuine debate and that it is up to individuals from every walk of life to challenge drug policy spin and debate the issue in their workplaces, professional bodies and social circles to avoid another ten years of self inflicted disaster.

Danny Kushlick, Transform Director, said:

“The consultation should have been a thoroughgoing review of the policy making process and the impact that policy has in the everyday world. In the event, it turned out to be a sham. The consultation document is another dodgy dossier. It contained no proposals, breaking one of the fundamental rules for consultations. The document was the most blatant propaganda we have yet seen to support ten more years of prohibition. During the process Gordon Brown announced that cannabis law would be changed and that drugs will never be decriminalised. Lastly, the Government targets were announced, predetermining that the entire framework for future policy development would be unchanged.

“We have an enormous amount of evidence now to show that the Government is in full possession of the facts that the policy of prohibition of currently illegal drugs is the significant driver for harms associated with their production, supply and use. Prohibition is a policy of mass destruction, from Afghanistan and Colombia to London and Liverpool. Transform's submission contains extracts from previously unreleased correspondence from the Foreign Office and the Home Office demonstrating that both departments admit that prohibition causes great harms but that neither are willing to contemplate change. This intransigence is despicable, given the level of chaos and misery associated with the illegal drug market. The correspondence quoted above demonstrates that Government drug policy is explicitly based upon claims to have won an “argument”, rather than evidence. Whilst Government uses primary school debating society rhetoric to decide its drug policy, huge swathes of the global population die or live in misery and degradation as a result.

“In the absence of political parties' willingness to enter into genuine debate, it falls to institutions and individuals outside of government to throw down the gauntlet. Significantly the press has played an enormously valuable role in raising a debate where Westminster has obstinately refused. We believe that this will remain the case for the foreseeable future, until the counterproductive forces of prohibition bring the criminal justice system to its knees and the general public is in possession of the facts and analysis to see through the propaganda that the Government uses to support the status quo.”

Ends

Notes for Editors

Transform's submission to the consultation

The letter from the Rt Hon Kim Howells MP can be seen here

The letter to Dr John Marks can be seen here

Transform launches our latest publication ‘After the war on drugs – Tools for the debate' at Portcullis House on Wednesday 24 October. For an invite please email jane@tdpf.org.uk or call 0117 941 5810

‘Drug Policy Unspun: Overwhelming failure' is a briefing produced by Transform to counter the propaganda in the Government's consultation document. It can be seen here

Observer: Drugs strategy debate 'is a sham'

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There was an interesting piece in yesterdays Observer newspaper, in which Transform loomed large. The item drew together three separate but related stories; The publication of the report by the Chief Constable of North Wales calling for the legalisation and regulation of drugs; the ending of the drug strategy consultation period and Transform's criticisms of the consultation and review process; and Transform's new publication 'After the War on Drugs, Tools for the Debate' which has its official launch at a Parliamentary reception later this week.

It is a welcome plug for the report and will add pressure on the Government to undertake a more meaningful review of the evidence of the last ten years than the rather preposterous piece of window dressing that we were given in the consultation document. Also look out at the end for a new entry in the all-time top ten stupid Home Office comments on drug policy, wherein we learn that legalisation of drugs can't proceed because it would be against the law. Doh!

Observer: Drugs strategy debate 'is a sham'

Think-tank says prohibition has failed and wants talks on legalisation as Home Office defends ban

Jamie Doward, home affairs editor
Sunday October 21, 2007
The Observer


The government's consultation on a new 10-year drugs strategy is a 'sham', according to one of Britain's leading think-tanks on narcotics, which warns that the current policy is fuelling a crime epidemic.

The Transform Drug Policy Foundation, the only UK organisation of its kind to advise the United Nations on such issues, will this week publish a new report claiming the current strategy has failed. The report, 'After the War on Drugs: Tools for the Debate', claims there is an urgent need for full consultation on allowing the controlled supply of illegal drugs. 'It is clear our drug policy cannot continue down the same failed path forever,' the report states. 'Prohibition's failure is now widely understood and acknowledged among key stakeholders in the debate... the political benefits of pursuing prohibition are now waning and the political costs of its continuation are becoming unsustainable.'

The report claims that drug prohibition has allowed organised crime to control the market and criminalised millions of users, putting a huge strain on the justice system. The Home Office estimates that half of all property crime is linked to fundraising to buy illegal drugs. The police claim that drug markets are the main driver of the UK's burgeoning gun culture. Official figures released last week showed that drug offences recorded by police had risen 14 per cent in April to June of this year, compared with the same period in 2006.

Politicians claim tough anti-drugs laws send clear signals to society. But Transform points to a Home Office survey, commissioned in 2000, which showed the social and economic costs of heroin and cocaine use were between £10.1 and £17.4 billion - the bulk of which were costs to the victims of drug-related crime.

'Over the course of 10 years, a series of different inquiry reports into UK drugs policy all say the same thing: the policy is malfunctioning,' said Steve Rolles, the report's author. 'They've all been blithely ignored by the government, which insists it is making progess.'

Last week, North Wales Police chief constable Richard Brunstrom said he would 'campaign hard' for drugs such as heroin to be legalised. Previously he has said that drugs laws are out of date and that the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 should be replaced by a new 'Substance Misuse Act'.

Transform claims the consultation process, which finished on Friday, was designed to stifle debate on drugs policy. 'The consultation process has been a sham,' Rolles said. 'It hasn't highlighted any policies to consult on. It's becoming very clear the next 10-year strategy is going to be identical to the last one. The whole idea that there is going to be a radical change is just not the case.'

The think-tank has taken the unusual step of writing to the Better Regulation Executive, set up to ensure government runs smoothly, to complain that the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, is already making policy before the consultation process had finished.

The Prime Minister signalled earlier this year that the government would reclassify cannabis. He also recently insisted the government would never decriminalise drugs, something Transform argues makes a mockery of the consultation process.

A spokeswoman for the Home Office said: 'We have undertaken an open consultation and we welcome constructive ideas and views on how we can continue to reduce drug harm. However, the government is emphatically opposed to the legalisation of drugs which would increase drug-related harm and break both international and domestic law.'

Transform in the Guardian's 'comment is free'

Progress prohibited

The government's drug policy over the last decade has comprehensively failed, delivering the exact opposite of its primary aims.

Danny Kushlick

October 18, 2007 2:30 PM

It comes as no surprise that some drug treatment is being administered in an unethical manner, or that government is hyping claims of success for drug treatment. The entire edifice of government drug policy is unethical. It is based upon the lie that criminalisation reduces crime, when, in fact, it creates it. According to its own figures, government-enforced prohibition has resulted in crime costs of over £100bn in the last decade. Prohibition is bound to result in thefts and robberies that arise from the high cost of maintaining an illegal heroin or crack cocaine habit. Rather than the health needs of patients, drug treatment is based on the government's obsession with reducing crime, crime that is created by the official policy of prohibition in the first instance.

As we enter the closing stages of the government's 1998 10-year drug strategy, we had hoped there would be a meaningful review and consultation process, but the document that accompanies the consultation process (which closes on Friday) has spun pernicious failure as overwhelming success. The simple fact is that the UK drug strategy has failed to reduce drug use or drug supply. Class A drug use by young people is at its highest ever level and is the highest in Europe. The use of heroin and cocaine, the drugs identified by the government as causing the most harm, have seen a dramatic rise in use over the last 10 years. At the same time, illegal drugs are cheaper and more available than ever before. The strategy has delivered the exact opposite of its primary aims.

Yet the government, preoccupied with partisan law-and-order posturing, remains committed to a drug policy that maximises the harms associated with drug use, that criminalises the poorest and most disadvantaged in our community, that grants a multibillion-pound monopoly in dangerous drugs to gangsters and that dramatically increases the crime harms suffered by our communities. A genuine consultation process would have enabled a meaningful debate to take place on real policy alternatives to the catastrophic failure of prohibition while an honest review of the last 10 years would have provided the empirical basis for that analysis and debate. Tragically, we have had neither. The fact that the government has chosen to spurn meaningful engagement with any new ideas, and put propaganda in place of a real review, can only perpetuate the failures of the past decade.

Guardian Online version, with comments and debate below

Number 10 website petition to end drug prohibition: the Government responds

The text below was emailed to those who signed the petition, providing a concise summary of the Government's miserably weak intellectual arguments for maintaining prohibition. I have added some commentry (in blue italics to avoid any confusion).

Drug policy petitions on the Number 10 site are considered in some detail in a previous blog here (the blog is titled 'Number 10 drug policy petitions: a total waste of time?' . Read on to discover the all too predictable answer). For the record this particular petition was set up by the Transform Blog's very own founder, Ali G, for a blog post last year.

16 July 2007

We received a petition asking:

"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to End The Prohibition of Drugs And To Regulate A Safer Marketplace For All Currently Illegal Drugs."

Details of Petition:

"To reduce the criminal and social harms associated with the prohibition of drugs, we the undersigned, petition the Prime Minister to end prohibition and to regulate strictly the sale and marketing of potentially dangerous and currently illegal substances perhaps via licensed pharmacists. The costs of prohibition far outweigh any benefits."

• Read the petition
• Petitions home page

Read the Government's response

Thank you for your petition seeking the legalisation and regulation of all currently illegal drugs.

The Government has no intention of legalising the recreational use of any currently illegal drug. In response to the Home Affairs Committee report on The Government's Drugs Policy: Is It Working? in 2002, we stated that "We do not accept that legalisation and regulation is now, or will be in the future, an acceptable response to the presence of drugs".

You can read this response here, the last time I can remember an official written statement on this issue. Notably the original response to the Committee was a derisory cut and paste job of Government policy, totally failing to answer the questions asked on decriminalisation / legalisation. The rather affronted committee had to then demand answers to the questions asked. There is some discussion of this response in a previous blog titled: 'Classification and Deterrence: where the evidence?'

An end to the prohibition of all currently illegal drugs and their regulation in a managed way, as you would wish, inevitably draws attention to the international dimension of the problem of drug misuse and its legislative control. It is a huge global problem which poses an ongoing threat to people in many countries worldwide, including the United Kingdom.

Completely true. Bravo.

The international community has - since the early 1960s - taken the view that, for protecting public health and welfare, effective measures to restrict the availability of drugs of misuse would require co-ordinated and universal action. The course taken has been that of prohibition, as set out in the three United Nations Conventions on drugs (1961, 1971 and 1988).

It is also true that this has been the view of the international community (or at least its view as translated through the UN drug conventions under the bullying hegemonic dominance of those entities by the overlords of Global Prohibition: the US). The fact that the enforcement of the conventions (and their translation into domestic legislation) has failed in quite spectacular to 'restrict the availability of drugs' (which have incontestably become more available with every passing year) or to protect 'public health and welfare' (which have similarly deteriorated under the drug laws in question) is conveniently overlooked. Effective measures indeed.

Any possible reversal of this position would be likely to require a similar, concerted UN-agreed initiative. As a signatory to the Conventions, the UK will not alter its stance on legalisation without international agreement based on sound reasons for doing so.

Breathtaking abdication of responsibility. If a law or legal framework is demonstrably unjust, ineffective and counterproductive, as is the case with global prohibition ('sound reasons' for changing it), then you fight to change it, if needs be through a 'concerted UN-agreed' initiative. UN conventions can and have been revised, updated, and reformed. Its not easy or quick, but that is not a reason to ignore failed legislation and it is certainly not an argument against the policy in principle. There is a section on precisely this question in Transforms new report After the War on Drugs, Tools for the Debate which will be available online later this month.

The Government's view is that the drugs subject to our misuse of drugs legislation are controlled for good reasons.

But they are N O T C O N T R O L L E D, are they. Control of the £300 billion a year market in dangerous drugs was abdicated to violent gangsters and uncontrolled criminal dealers when we bought into global prohibition back in 1961. (see above). And what are the 'good reasons'?

Many - like heroin and crack cocaine - are clearly addictive and harmful to health.

The fact drugs are harmful is the reason why they need to be properly controlled and regulated within the law, as alluded to in the petition. There are of course a number of legal drugs that are also 'clearly addictive and harmful to health'. The Government's response entirely fails to tackle the screaming contradiction and hypocrisy that exists within it's own policy on 'addictive and harmful drugs'.

Legalisation of currently illegal drugs would run counter to the Government's health and education messages.

In what other area of public health policy is heavy handed enforcement of criminal law used as the primary tool to send out public health messages? Surely the stunning failure of this approach in drug policy (which has witnessed consistent rise in overall drug use, especially of the most dangerous drugs, for two generations) should prompt a pause for thought. Maybe there is a better way to educate the public about the dangers of drugs and encouraging responsible lifestyle choices, through, for example, established public health education channels.

Our educational message - to young people in particular - is that all illegal drugs are harmful and that no one should take them.

Only illegal drugs?

To legalise their supply for personal consumption would send the wrong message to the majority of young people who do not take drugs on a regular basis, if at all, with the potential risk of increased drug use and abuse.

You send whatever message you deem appropriate (e.g. don't do drugs, they are bad for you) using public health education, media campaigns, school education and so on. There all manner of risky consenting adult behaviours that are not subject to legal sanction as a way of discouraging them. Why are (some) drugs different. Can you provide any evidence to show that this unique approach to reducing the harms associated with one specific consenting adult choice is in any way effective? No?

The Government's objective is to reduce the harms caused by use of all illegal drugs substantially, not to encourage increased consumption due to more ready access to increased supply.

Where in the petition does it mention 'encouraging increased consumption' (something, I note, that prohibition seems to have achieved with great success), or indeed 'more ready access to increased supply' (something, I further note, that prohibition seems to have achieved with great success)? If I read the petition correctly it called for the Government to 'regulate a safer market place' (one where the government controlled availability and supply, not the mafia), specifically 'to regulate strictly the sale and marketing of potentially dangerous and currently illegal substances perhaps via licensed pharmacists'. So, just to reiterate, that's strict regulation of dangerous substances, as opposed to violent unregulated street markets and criminal anarchy.

Our existing 10-year Drug Strategy is delivering tangible improvements in communities and reducing the harms caused by illegal drugs. Overall drug use amongst 16-59 year olds has fallen by 16% between 1998 and 2005/06. The Young People and Drugs Programme has been introduced to ensure that a comprehensive range of support is in place for young people. The use of any drug amongst 16-24s has fallen by 21% between 1998 and 2005/06, whilst Class A drug use remains stable.

This statistical tricksyness is dealt with in some detail on the blog here: How to spin prevalence data: a beginners guide

The Government has also achieved huge success in delivering treatment services and a national target of 170,000 people receiving treatment has been exceeded two years earlier than anticipated. More people are also successfully completing treatment programmes or being retained in treatment - 78% of those treated in year in 2005/06.

Throw money at the problem then trumpet lots of impressive sounding process measures. Sadly no mention of treatment outcomes (because they are all rubbish).

Drug-related crime is falling - recorded acquisitive crime (to which drug-related crime makes a significant contribution) has fallen by 20% since the introduction of the innovative Drug Interventions Programme (DIP) in April 2003.

There is absolutely no evidence that the DIPs are responsible for this drop in crime. The Government does not measure what crime is 'drug related' so any conclusions presented is speculation and inference based on secondary data sources. The drop in crime could equally well be related to the failure of supply side interventions that have led to increasing drug availability and significantly: falling price. When dependent drug users can get there drugs cheaper they don't have to nick as much to raise the money to buy them. So failure in one area of UK drug policy is potentially being dressed up as success in another. Needless to say if the drugs in question are made available on prescription, as is the case with heroin to a very limited degree, the need to raise money to buy those drugs disappears entirely. That would be the 'licensed pharmacists' then.

Around 3,500 drug misusing offenders are currently entering treatment each month through DIP. We are on track to achieve an overall target of 1,000 offenders a week into treatment by March 2008.

Process and throughput indicators again. No mention of outcomes (because...etc)

We have also developed better enforcement through an intelligence driven approach to tackling street level dealers and organised trafficking groups at all levels in the supply chain.

No mention of that pesky 'fact' that drugs are cheaper and more available than ever before. Grrr

The Government nevertheless accepts that more needs to be done.

meaningless platitude

In particular, this includes a stronger emphasis on dealing with problematic drug users and the problems they pose, and on reducing the harm from drug misuse to their own well-being and that of others.

....a large part of which is either exacerbated by or a direct result of prohibition and its enforcement.

The existing Drug Strategy ends in March 2008 and we need to build on our achievements so far. Our intention is to commence a consultation on the new strategy over the Summer and consult widely.

...then ignore anyone who suggests we do anything differently, announce a new strategy exactly the same as the last one dressed up with a few headline grabbing spin-itiatives, and launch it in a torrent of tough talking soundbites (with a bit of faux-compassion chucked in for the Guardian readers).

Where is the drug policy reform debate up to today?

Below is an edited section from the introduction to the upcoming Transform publication 'After the War on Drug's - tools for the debate' A guide to making the case for drug policy reform. The Transform blog has secured exclusive serialisation rights for an undisclosed 5-figure sum. The guide will be available in print (and as a free pdf download) in July, but the blog will be serialising key sections over the coming weeks.....

Cover Design (an early draft...)

Where are we up to today?

The cause of drug law reform has been a prolonged struggle that began as soon as drug prohibition in its modern form came into being. Although prohibitions of various drugs stretch back into the 18th century (see Transform’s history of prohibition time line), the modern drug law reform movement began in earnest with the social movements of the 1960s. It was during this decade that the 1961 UN Convention on Drugs enshrined prohibition as a truly global policy, and recreational drug use in the West simultaneously began its dramatic rise toward current levels.

The drugs debate has moved on considerably since that time, with the political, social and cultural landscape shifting and evolving dramatically, both in the UK and in the wider world. All the problems associated with drug prohibition and illegal markets have continued to worsen over the past four decades: the prevalence of illegal drug use has risen steadily despite the many billions spent on enforcing a policy intended to eradicate it. As prohibition’s policy outcomes have deteriorated, the volume of calls for a rethink and serious consideration of alternative policy options has grown. This growth accelerated particularly rapidly during the 1990s as recreational use of illegal drugs became a truly mainstream youth phenomenon, and problematic use (of heroin in particular) ballooned to epidemic proportions. Problematic drug use now causes a level of secondary crime-related harms to wider society that is unprecedented in modern history, and was entirely unanticipated when drugs were prohibited.

It is now clear that our drug policy cannot continue down the same failed path forever. Prohibition’s failure is now widely understood and acknowledged among key stakeholders in the debate. Although politicians have thus far been the primary beneficiaries of the policy (the other beneficiaries being the mafia), the political benefits of pursuing prohibition are now waning and the political costs of its continuation are becoming unsustainable. The intellectual and political consensus supporting a ‘War on Drugs’ is crumbling rapidly, and calls for ‘more of the same’, or ever tougher enforcement responses, no longer go unchallenged. Since the 1990s, a vigorous network of domestic and international NGOs have been making the case for substantive pragmatic reform to drug policy and law.

However, although the failure of the current policy is now widely accepted, even within government, there is less consensus on 'so, where now?'. Those in a state of denial over the failure of the drug war typically argue that policy can be tweaked within the prohibitionist framework to make it more effective. This usually means directing more resources into treatment and harm reduction, and perhaps being more tolerant of low level drug users. There is considerable room for manoeuvre within UK and international law for policies that could improve the current situation and indeed many such changes are already underway. In recent years we have seen cannabis reclassification, the expansion of heroin and methadone prescribing, harm reduction programs such as the needle exchanges and ‘injecting kits’, and increased investment in drug treatment.

Internationally, reforms have gone much further. A number of countries have progressed to de facto decriminalision of personal possession of all drugs, including Russia, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and Holland. Harm reduction measures have been widely adopted, including maintenance prescribing of heroin (and increasingly of stimulants), supervised drug consumption rooms, and even tolerance of low level ‘grey market’ sales of some drugs, such as the cannabis ‘coffee shop’ system in Holland.

The problem is that, for the most part, these reforms are merely reducing harms created by illegal markets and harshly enforced prohibition in the first place. They never address its fundamental problems: the creation of crime and illegal markets and the injustice of criminalising drug users. Tinkering with domestic policy under strict international prohibition is not a long term solution. It is an attempt to minimise harms within a legal framework that maximises them, and thus its successes will always be marginal ones.

By contrast, the truth that underlies the drug reform movement - that a punitive enforcement approach is actively counter-productive – is far harder to address directly. This prevents it being followed to its obvious logical conclusion: decriminalising consenting adult drug use and moving towards the legal regulation and control of some or all drug production and supply.

Yet this last taboo is now also crumbling, as Transform’s collection of quotes from supporters of reform so resoundingly demonstrates. The Transform quote archive also reveals that there have been strong arguments in favour of drug law reform in media as diverse as the Mirror, the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, the Times, the Economist, The New Statesman and many others besides. You really do not have to wait for the reform position to gain mainstream traction – it already has it.

Whilst it remains important to support and encourage the process of incremental change away from harshly enforced prohibition towards a new evidence-based public health approach, there are already many groups dedicated to doing this and much change is already happening in this direction. The specific task of Transform and the movement for longer term reform is to make the case and campaign for a repeal of the absolute drug prohibition currently enshrined in domestic and international law. It is only this fundamental step that will make it possible to end the criminal free-for-all of the illegal drugs market by replacing it with appropriately regulated drug production and supply. That is what will lead to a real transformation of society, both for those who use drugs and those who don’t; and that is what the 'Tools for Debate' guide is all about.

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Police Want Government Rethink on Drugs

A senior policeman has called for drugs policy to be treated predominantly as a medical issue. In this article from the Guardian, the police force's assistant commissioner, John Yates, has backed a report which calls for a different approach to drug treatment so that drug treatment programmes are no longer aimed primarily at those who have committed crimes but rather at those ready to seek treatment. The report also argues for drugs to be classified according to the harm they produce rather than their perceived strength. This laudable effort is the result of commission chaired by the politics professor Anthony King and launched by the Royal Society of Arts, due for publication on March 8th.

Tony's drug policy map for Gordon

In an interesting development the Sunday Times reports on a 'confidential' memo written by David Bennett, the head of the No 10 policy directorate, in advance of a policy summit held at Chequers last Friday.

The memo, according to the Times, 'outlines the prime minister’s “emerging ideas” for his last months in office which he hopes will be so far advanced when his successor takes over that Brown will have to follow them.'

It apparently "brings together suggestions from policy groups set up by Blair in the wake of last autumn’s botched “coup” attempt by Brownites. Their job was to study ideas for Britain’s long-term future."

Internal Labour political shenanigans aside there was an interesting inclusion in the list of emerging ideas:

"Prescribing addictive drugs in a bid to help tackle drug-related crime."

Now obviously this isnt a new idea. The UK has been prescribing heroin for decades (even though it is limited to a couple of hundred recipients today) and also widely prescribes the synthetic opiate methadone as well as some various other drugs to long term addicts, including amphetamines. However, despite promises made by David Blunkett to expand prescribing (back when he was Home Secretary - to the Home Affairs Select Committee on drugs in 2002) and some promising pilot projects like the Swiss-style heroin prescribing drop in centre in London, the pace of change has been glacially slow.

The obstacle has been primarily a political one - both in Government and within the medical establishment. Politicians have been reluctant to be seen putting money into providing drugs to addicts - since whilst it makes all sorts of sense on any rational cost benefit analysis (using public health or criminal justice measures) it makes potentially terrible headlines in the Daily Mail and other papers who have it in for the Government (as being 'soft' of drugs and crime etc). That said, the idea has had personal and editorial endorsements from a range of unlikely individuals and publications, including many in the media who the Government are most afraid of. This Government PR problem has been compounded by politics in the medical establishment who are also notoriously reluctant to embrace substiutute prescribing, for different but equally lame reasons.

But then here it is on Tony's menu of legacy policy ideas. The idea actually was put to the Prime Minister, a second time, by 'blue skies adviser' John Birt's half of the Number 10 Strategy unit report back in 2003 but failed to have real traction (the report being supressed) and the alternative option of a massive increase in CJS administered coerced treatment apparently being more politically palatable. But now, third time lucky, Blair's advisors have once again alighted on the fact that prescribing to dependent users can potentially deliver excellent health and criminal justice outcomes (something UK drug policy has not seen alot of recently, or if we are being honest, ever).

The danger is that, as the Times suggests "the chancellor’s allies have indicated that Brown will make a decisive break from Blair’s legacy when he enters Downing Street by refusing to keep to the 10-year policy review" and that the drug prescribing idea will fall by the wayside with the rest of them, ironically for a different set of political reasons. The hope is that this innovation may survive the 'break' from Blair's legacy, given that it's impossible for Blair to be associated with any such progressive reforms of drug policy during his time as boss. Maybe Brown will be the pragmatist on drug policy that Blair has failed to be - he's from the Treasury after all and does, one hopes, understand the concept of cost/benefit analysis, as well as the need to appease the tabloids.

Everyone is talking about heroin and cocaine again

It’s been a busy old week for drugs stories. First Howard Roberts, the deputy chief constable of Nottinghamshire, starts a media firestorm with his comments in favour of heroin prescribing, and then a report from the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction starts another one, when it reports that the UK has Europe’s highest cocaine consumption.

No bad thing – both these stories have fuelled important and in many ways positive debate, firstly about heroin prescribing and secondly about the striking failure of UK drug policy regards cocaine. Neither actually ‘news’ as such but we can’t complain, even if some of the coverage doesn’t reflect particularly well on some of the media outlets.

Heroin prescribing is nothing new, and nor is senior police calling for it. Former Chief Constable Francis Wilkinson wrote a book about it and got almost identical headlines more than five years ago, whilst North Wale’s serving Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom has been saying the same thing, and getting the same headlines for years. There are plenty of others. The more annoying thing about this weeks reporting is that, in the quest for a juicy headline, it has suggested that heroin somehow needs to be legalised or that prescribing it is a new idea. Obviously heroin has been a legal licensed medicine since it was invented over a century ago, has been prescribed to addicts as far back as the first world war, and still is.

And its not even as if the Government needs that much persuading – David Blunkett announced an expansion of the existing heroin prescribing service back in 2002, and the Government authorised a number of pilot Swiss-style prescribing drop in centers ages ago, which have been operating over the last few years. The Times tried to make this non news into a scoop under the headline ‘Hardened addicts given free heroin in secret NHS trial’ – when clearly it was neither secret nor a new idea. They also note in a facts section at the end titled ‘ the price of addiction’:

£15,000 a year needed to fund an addiction
£45,000 The cost of the crimes committed each year by a heroin addict

This 45K figure was very naughty: rich heroin users don’t have to commit any crime to support their habits, and nor do those on prescriptions.

For some decent information on Heroin prescribing there was a useful review of the evidence from around the world produced recently by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and there is a good essay by Dr Ben Goldacre from 1998 that has recently re-emerged online that’s well worth a look.

As for the cocaine story, this was just a rehash of the ‘loads of people taking cocaine shock’ news that journalists, with quite amazing regularity, wheel out each year when the annual reports are published by the British Crime Survey and EMCDDA that just confirm what they said last year. In the intervening months we can usually rely on sporadic ‘loads of people taking cocaine shock’ stories hung on either a ‘celeb/model takes cocaine shock’ exposé, or the investigative journalist (with nothing better to do) favorite ‘cocaine traces found in bar/ school/ parliament/ convent /*insert unlikely place* toilets’. Broadsheet journalists in particular love the ‘cocaine shock’ stories because it gives them a chance to sneak some celebrity tat into their news pages, basically offering a free ticket to hurtle down market and appeal to Heat readers - The Independent on Sunday’s non-news cover story last Sunday being a case in point.

Still, at least the media arent talking about cannabis for a change, and these stories do give critics of the UK Drug Strategy – that in 1998 pledged to reduce the use and availability of Class A drugs by 50% by 2008 – a great opportunity to point out that it is doing the exact opposite of what it was supposed to (ie cocaine is cheaper, more available and loads of people are using it) despite the billions of pounds still being thrown at it. Assuming Gordon Brown is the next PM – you have to hope he’s paying attention.

Classification and Deterrence - where's the evidence?

In the first of series of blog posts considering the Government's response to the The Science and Technology Select Committee's report 'Drug Classification; Making a Hash of it?' we consider what is arguably the most significant finding of the Select Committee and the most stunningly inadequate of the Government’s responses.

The Science and Technology Select Committee report 'Drug Classification: Making a Hash of it?' conclusion/recommendation 34:

"We have found no solid evidence to support the existence of a deterrent effect, despite the fact that it appears to underpin the Government’s policy on classification. In view of the importance of drugs policy and the amount spent in enforcing the penalties associated with the classification system, it is highly unsatisfactory that there is so little knowledge about the system’s effectiveness".

The Government’s response, in full:

“Reject in Principle

The Government fundamentally believes that illegality is an important factor when people are considering engaging in risk-taking behaviour. The exposure to criminal sanction, in particular through sentencing, influences perceptions and behaviours. It believes that the illegality of certain drugs, and by association their classification, will impact on drug use choices, by informing the decisions of dealers and users. Imposing penalties on the offence of possession is intended to deter use, particularly experimentation by young people. Whilst the Government accepts that there is an absence of conclusive evidence in relation to the deterrent effect of the existing classification structure, there is some evidence from the Offending, Crime and Justice Survey that the deterrent effect of harsher sentencing was greater among those admitting to the supply of a Class A drug, compared with other offences.The Government will consider ways in which the evidence base in the context of the deterrent effect can be strengthened.”

Comment:

Perhaps the best place to start is to note that whether the Government ‘fundamentally believes’ that ‘illegality is an important factor when people are considering engaging in risk-taking behaviour’ is not the point. This is not about ‘belief’, however fundamental it may be. This is an issue of sound science and evidence based policy. The Select Committee very clearly points out: ‘we have found no solid evidence to support the existence of a deterrent effect’. The Government produce nothing to challenge this beyond their ‘belief’ in the existence of such an effect and yet they reject the conclusion regardless. This deserves some more detailed attention.

With apologies for some trumpet blowing here, Transform’s evidence to the Select Committee was quoted directly in their final report:

Transform Drug Policy Foundation asserted that the ABC classification system was "based upon the false assumptions underlying historical prohibition of specific drugs". Steve Rolles, information officer for Transform, also told us: "there is no research at all—not a single piece of research ever done by the Home Office that I am aware of—into the effectiveness of the classification system as a deterrent and the independent research that we do have—what little there is—suggests that at best it is a marginal impact on drug taking decisions". The Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker was unable to provide us with any specific evidence to the contrary.

The Government’s written response (see above) does not offer any new evidence to the contrary either, even though they have had several months to find some since Vernon Coaker was unable to do so earlier in the year. They merely restate that the Government ‘believes’ illegality will ‘impact on drug user choices’. There is a vague reference to ‘some evidence from the Offending, Crime and Justice Survey’ but no details are given, and they are clear that ‘there is an absence of conclusive evidence in relation to the deterrent effect of the existing classification structure’.

This is a very long way from an adequate response to the Committee’s conclusion and is frankly insulting as a basis for rejecting it.

It is important to be clear what we are talking about here. The deterrent effect is the absolute cornerstone of the classification system and indeed the entire criminal justice based policy we have in the UK - the policy of prohibition - on which billions of pounds are spent each year. The concept of enforcement / penalty related deterrence is precisely why we have a hierarchy of penalties superimposed on the hierarchy of harms (the ABC classification system), and why drug policy is run by the Home Office and not by the Department of Health (which runs policy for alcohol and other legal drugs). That the Science and Technology Select committee was unable to find any evidence of a deterrent effect is remarkable enough. That the Government – challenged by the Committee – were then unable to produce any credible evidence - not a shred - of a deterrent effect is quite simply astonishing. It can only call into question the entire classification system and indeed the enforcement focus and punitive nature of UK drug policy generally.

This is not even the first time that the issue of deterrence relating to criminal penalties has been raised by a Select Committee. The Home Affairs Select Committee were concerned enough about the issue to raise it back in 2001 in their report; ‘The UK’s Drug Policy: Is It Working?’ (to which, incidentally, they concluded: no). The Committee specifically asked for a response to the question ‘what would the effect of decriminalisation be on the demand for drugs?’. Whilst Transform might have phrased the question a little more precisely, the initial Home Office submission ignored it completely and just trotted out current Government policy, failing to address the question in any way. The Committee, somewhat affronted, demanded an answer to the question it had actually asked. They received the following short response:

“As some people would seem to be attracted to experiment with controlled drugs because of their illegality (e.g. "forbidden fruits"), the evidence suggests that a great many are deterred by the law. Nineteen per cent of children and 30 per cent of adults surveyed by MORI on behalf of the recent Police Foundation Inquiry, mentioned the law as the reason for not taking drugs. And the respective prevalence rates for controlled drugs and alcohol and tobacco are also illustrative.”

The relevant section of the Police Foundation Inquiry report that the Home Office are quoting, actually says this:

“The most frequent reasons given by both children and adults for people not taking drugs were 'health reason' (33% and 51%) and 'just don't want to take drugs’ (27% and 56%). By comparison only 19% of children and 30% of adults mentioned 'illegality' and 12% of children and 17% of adults cited 'fear of being caught by the police'.”

So even five years ago, the only research evidence that the Home Office could scrape together to support the contention that illegality deterred use was a poll from the Police Foundation Inquiry report that showed less than a fifth of children mentioned the law as a reason for not taking drugs, less than one in eight children or one in six adults mentioned ‘fear of being caught by the police’, and there were two other reasons given, health concerns and lack of interest, that scored much higher as reasons for not taking drugs. Bear in mind also that the Police Foundation Inquiry that commissioned the quoted survey was, at the time, not only the most critical report ever produced of UK drug policy, but also one that concluded;

"such evidence as we have assembled about the current situation and the changes that have taken place in the last 30 years all point to the conclusion that the deterrent effect of the law has been very limited".

Furthermore we hear the Home Office suggest that in fact ‘some people would seem to be attracted to experiment with controlled drugs because of their illegality’. This clearly suggests the opposite of what they are nominally arguing for although, to be fair, they do not provide any evidence for this point either. The evidence they cite regarding alcohol (use of which is rising) and tobacco (use of which is falling) does not illuminate anything much. These are drugs that have been with us for Millennia and Centuries respectively and have had the best part of a hundred years of largely unregulated aggressive commercial marketing behind them. It is also faintly amusing to read the phrase 'controlled drugs and alcohol and tobacco' given that it is actually alcohol and tobacco that are controlled and illegal drugs that have no controls at all - we abdicated control to gangsters and street dealers when we the decision was made to prohibit them.

The significant point here is that this has been a live issue for a number of years and in that time the Government has been able to assemble precisely zero credible evidence that lends support to the deterrent effect, and has undertaken or produced precisely zero published research to try and rectify this.

As Transform pointed out in its written submission to the Committee:

‘The [classification] system is based on the un-evidenced assumption that criminal penalties are an effective deterrent and that stronger penalties are a stronger deterrent’

There was no evidence to support this basic assumption when the policy was put in place 35 years ago and the Government's response to the Committee demonstrates that none has emerged subsequently. Transform further noted in its written submission to the Committee:

“There is also no evidence to show that key target groups understand or pay any attention to the classification system or related announcements from the home secretary when making drug taking decisions. It can only be assumed that no research is commissioned on these key topics as it would expose policy failings.
The little independent research that has been done in this area suggests that the law and enforcement are, at best, marginal factors in drug taking decisions - especially for the most excluded groups; young people, those with mental health problems and those from socially deprived communities – who are most vulnerable to problematic use. Studies in Australia and the US have compared levels of cannabis use between different states with different enforcement regimes for cannabis offences (from harsh penalties to effective decriminalisation) and found no causal link between penalties and incidence of use.”

The fact that the massed ranks of Home Office civil servants and researchers can’t find any evidence from 35 years of data collection to show that the classification system works might suggest that, well, there isn’t any. Moreover, this striking lack of any evidence to show the classification system is effective is not deemed by the Government sufficient reason to even have a consultation on, or review of the the classification system, as recommended by the Select Committee. Not a change in policy – just a consultation. Just an open dialogue with independent experts who might be able to shed some light on this vexing lack of evidence. Maybe a little bit like the consultation on the classification system that the Home Secretary promised to the House of Commons in January this year.

But the Government has now reneged on this promised consultation, because it now ‘believes that the classification system discharges its function fully and effectively and has stood the test of time’. (they even underlined the 'has' to emphasise the point). Maybe Transform, Drugscope, The Police Foundation, The Home Affairs Select Committee and the Science and Technology Select Committee are missing something here, but ‘scientists’ or ‘statisticians’ might argue that the fact that trends in use of almost every major drug covered under the Misuse of Drugs Act have risen consistently since 1971, and the fact that drugs have become progressively cheaper and more available over the same period was not actually evidence of the classification system discharging its function fully and standing the test of time, but was actually evidence of the exact opposite. So can we have a consultation on this please? Maybe even the one that was fully drafted and ready to be sent out to experts across the country days before a new Home Secretary was appointed and apparently thought better of it? Apparently not.

Finally we are given a hint about how the Government intends to proceed on this thorny question, with its suggestion to the Science and Technology Committee that they ‘will consider ways in which the evidence base in the context of the deterrent effect can be strengthened’. This is a troubling turn of phrase. The Government should be doing objective research to see whether or not there is a deterrent effect, how it works, how strong it is, whom it effects and whether it justifies spending billions a year on criminalising and imprisoning lots of people - not seeking evidence to strengthen a pre-held ‘belief’ in such an effect. Call it cherry-picking, call it faith-based policy making, call it bad science; whichever way you look at it this is a course of action that would seem to jettison even the pretence of scientific method altogether and take the Government unambiguously into the realms of ideological propagandising, a place many would argue UK drug policy already inhabits.

The Science and Technology Committee asked for some evidence and received none. Transform have been asking for the same evidence for nearly ten years and still have yet to see any. Belief must be based on evidence, and if the Government can’t produce that evidence and then flatly refuses to engage in a dialogue on it, they shouldn’t be surprised when people stop believing them.

next ... Drug classification and 'sending out messages'