On domestic and international fronts, reform calls gather mainstream support

There have been two very positive developments for drug law reform in the last few days: On Sunday, The Observer newspaper ran a series of pro reform news and comment features alongside arguably the most unambiguous call for a debate on alternatives to the drug war, including regulation, yet to emerge from a UK broadsheet. Meanwhile, the previous week witnessed the debate making a significant step forward in Mexico when President Calderon joined calls for a debate on legalisation as a response to the country's growing crisis, followed by a clear call for legalisation and regulation by his presidential predecessor Vincente Fox - both statements receiving massive international media coverage.

• The Observer.

The first piece in the news section united these recent developments. Titled 'War on drugs: why the US and Latin America could be ready to end a fruitless 40-year struggle', with the subheading: 

'Mexico's president Felipe Caldéron is the latest Latin leader to call for a debate on drugs legalisation. And in the US, liberals and right-wing libertarians are pressing for an end to prohibition. Forty years after President Nixon launched the 'war on drugs' there is a growing momentum to abandon the fight' 

The coverage then describes some of the developments in the Americas, from the Mexican president's recent comments through to the growing cannabis law reform activity in California and elsewhere in the US.

A second piece in the Observer is a drug law reform op-ed (also using the Mexican presidential comments as its launch pad) titled 'Drugs: the problem is more than just the substances, it's the prohibition itself' by Maria Lucia Karam, a retired Brazilian judge and board member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). Using examples from Brazil she argues that:

'Prohibition consigns the drug market to criminalised actors not subject to oversight of any kind. Legalisation would mean regulation and regulation is the best way to control the dangers of drug use, while cutting the cartels off at the knees'.

and that:

'Latin America is advancing the debate, but even in the US there are efforts to undo the damage of prohibition, the most prominent being California's effort to legalise marijuana
.
Hopefully, the thousands of Mexicans, Brazilians and people from other parts of the world who have been killed in the insane "war on drugs" will not have died in vain. Their deaths are already showing that it is time to put an end to all the pain and harms caused by drug prohibition; it is time to legalise and regulate the production, the supply and the consumption of all drugs.'

Finally, and most significantly, the sentiments in the two features are endorsed in a powerful leader editorial  titled 'A unique chance to rethink drugs policy' aimed squarely at the UK's coalition government, its subtitle clearly stating that 'Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg are perfectly placed to launch a national debate on whether we should try legalisation'. It begins with a withering critique of the drug war: 

'If the purpose of drug policy is to make toxic substances available to anyone who wants them in a flourishing market economy controlled by murderous criminal gangs, the current arrangements are working well.

If, however, the goal is to reduce the amount of drugs being consumed and limit the harm associated with addiction, it is surely time to tear up the current policy. It has failed.

This is not a partial failure. For as long as courts and jails have been the tools for controlling drugs, their use has increased. Police are powerless to control the flow. One recent estimate calculated that around 1% of the total supply to the UK is intercepted.

Attempts to crack down have little impact, except perhaps in siphoning vulnerable young people into jails where they can mature into hardened villains. When a more heavyweight player is taken out, a gap opens up in the supply chain which is promptly filled by violent competition between or within gangs. Business as usual resumes.


The same story is told around the world, the only difference being in the scale of violence. Writing in today's Observer, retired judge Maria Lucia Karam describes the grim consequences of a failed war on drugs in the cities of Brazil: thousands of young people murdered every year by rival dealers and police.


Few nations are untouched by what is, after all, a multibillion pound global industry. Importing countries, such as Britain, must cope with the social effects of addiction and end up squandering the state's resources on a Sisyphean policing task.


But that suffering is mild compared to the destructive forces unleashed on exporting countries. Mexico, from where cartels supply a range of drugs to lucrative US markets, has paid an extraordinary price for the illicit appetites of its rich neighbour. The border region has become a militarised zone with violence at the level of a guerrilla insurgency.

The editorial shows an unusual level of insight for a media discourse more often preoccupied with populist parochial concerns:

'Prohibition entails a double dishonesty. First, there is the pretence that the supply and demand can be managed by force. But anyone who has experienced addiction knows that banning a substance restricts neither access nor desire. Usually, it makes matters worse, bringing otherwise law-abiding people into contact with professional criminals. Most addicts, meanwhile, say their problems start with the need to annihilate feelings of despair or memories of trauma. Prosecuting them for those problems solves nothing.


The second pretence of prohibition is that drugs can be addressed within single national jurisdictions. Plainly, they cannot. The UK hosts a retail market for products that are cultivated and processed around the world. Around 90% of the heroin on British streets starts out as poppies in Afghanistan. So revenue from UK drug use funds corrupt officials, warlords and the Taliban, undermining Nato's military operation. Rarely is the connection made in public.'

before ending with a direct appeal to the UKs new leaders:

'By its very nature as a coalition, encompassing a broad spectrum of political views, the new government is well placed to inaugurate a free-thinking national debate on an issue that has been constrained by policy blinkers.


Neither David Cameron nor Nick Clegg seems much in awe of political taboos. Both men, in fact, seem to take pleasure in breaking them. But their ability to do so with impunity lasts for as long as there is goodwill towards their project.


This is a moment in which a political leader could steer the drugs debate out of its current dead-end track and towards something more meaningful and more likely to deliver what the public ultimately wants: safer, healthier, happier communities.


It is far from certain that decriminalisation, regulation or legalisation would work. But they should be examined as options, for it is absolutely certain that prohibition has failed'.

The position is a useful and pragmatic one, acknowledging the failure of the current policy and inviting an evidence based debate on alternatives, much as the IDPC  call for Impact Assessments of drug policy supported by Transform, has done over the past year.  David Cameron, it is worth repeating, made a not dissimilar call in 2001 when on the Home Affairs Select Committee he supported the recommendation 'that the Government initiates a discussion within the [UN] Commission on Narcotic Drugs of alternative ways—including the possibility of legalisation and regulation—to tackle the global drugs dilemma'. Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats have long been far more pragmatic and forward looking on drug policy. So as the Observer editorial notes 'The unthinkable is creeping into the realm of the plausible', continuing;

 'American society is slowly coming to terms with the fact that drugs are part of its everyday reality and that control might be more effective if use was allowed within the law, not forced outside it. That debate must be opened in Britain and the recent change of government provides a rare opportunity.'

We should perhaps not hold our breaths, but the mere fact that such a discourse is taking place in the mainstream media, with language and analysis now routinely being deployed that would have been seen as extreme and radical only a few years ago, shows how far we have moved.

• Mexico

The statement by president Calderon is particularly significant. Whilst he has distanced himself from actually supporting legalisation and regulation (unlike his predecessor), the fact he called for a debate is still critically important - he simply would not have done this were it not a real option."It is a fundamental debate," he said, adding that  "You have to analyse carefully the pros and cons and key arguments on both sides."  (This is, of course, precisely what an Impact Assessment approach would deliver). Bear in mind that this statement comes from a Mexican president receiving 100s of millions in US military and financial assistance to fight the cartels (albeit alongside the drug-money-funded river of illegal small arms flowing South across the.border that are fuelling it).Tragically it has taken  the catastrophic failure of his flagship policy to spur him to this latest concession, all visualized in horrific detail in this excellent blog post by Diego Valle

Sources: Homicide data from INEGI, population data from CONAPO.
2009 estimate based on execution rates

Even Calderon's qualifying comments that followed the initial statement days later are revealing. He stated that "If they [drugs] are not legalised in the world, or at least the United States, it's absurd because the price of drugs is not determined by Mexicans, it's determined by consumers in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago or Texas,".

This is a long way from saying that legalisation and regulation  is absurd in principle. Rather he is qualifying the call by saying, rightly, it would be problematic to move unilaterally given the centrality of the US market to Mexico's illicit trade. This very clearly leaves the option open regards bilateral reform with the US - something no longer a complete fantasy given the movement towards cannabis law reform in much of the US, particularly California, which holds a referendum on legalisation and regulation of non-medical cannabis this November.

It is also worth bearing in mind that despite contradictory noises from the new New US administration (progressive on public health in some respects, but still hawkish on supply side enforcement) Obama is on the record saying that 'the War on Drugs has been an utter failure'. 


The endorsement of legalisation and regulation by Calderon's predecessor Vincente Fox has only added further weight to the calls for a debate. He says (as reported by Reuters):

"Legalization does not mean that drugs are good ... but we have to see (legalization of the production, sale and distribution of drugs) as a strategy to weaken and break the economic system that allows cartels to earn huge profits,"

"Radical prohibition strategies have never worked."

 Vincente Fox

Read the whole thing - in Spanish - on his blog. Again it is welcome to see prohibition rightly being positioned as the radical solution, and the term 'legalisation' being associated with regulation. Interestingly, these comments are not dissimilar to ones he made in 2001 whilst president, although like Calderon he caveated his analysis by highlighting the difficulties of a unilateral move.

This is about more than the growing line of ex-presidents though - Cameron, Clegg, Obama, Calderon; all give a clear sense that the intellectual journey, accepting the failure of the drug war and need for reform, has been travelled - the concerns are political ones rather than practical or philosophical ones. As the environment becomes increasingly hostile to  profligate and counterproductive drug war expenditure, and the case for reform gains increasing mainstream traction perhaps the political climate will soon allow for real change to happen, and the Observer is right that we really do have a unique chance to rethink drug policy.


 It has also been welcome to see Transform's 'After the War on Drugs, Blueprint for Regulation' getting extensive and positive coverage in one of Mexico's leading newspapers El Universal; see here in original Spanish, and (not brilliant) Google translated English version.  Transform were also invited to contribute a comment piece on Blueprint to one of Mexico's most influential Policy Magaznes, Nexos, earlier this year.

ACMD attacks drugs strategy consultation

As reported in the Observer today: "The government was at loggerheads with its own advisers last night over its new drugs policy."

It continued:

"An influential Home Office-backed committee raised serious doubts about the consultation process behind the 10-year strategy which will be unveiled in April. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) described the process as 'self-congratulatory and generally disappointing' and questioned the credibility of much of the evidence presented to government."

The castigation appears in the Overall Comments (p3) to the ACMD's submission to Government on its strategy review. It is a withering attack in an otherwise fairly innocuous document.

There has been widespread condemnation from across drugs field of the strategy consultation p since it made its appearance in July this year. However, the significance of the Advisory Council reiterating this condemnation will not be lost on the Government.

This is a crucial time for the Advisory Council as it flexes its muscles in the upcoming review of cannabis reclassification in February next year. More importantly though the Council loses its incumbent Chair Sir Michael Rawlins next year and takes on six new members in the next few months (currently being appointed).

The Council's remit is to advise ministers on drug policy and law and specifically on the operation of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (MDA). The ACMD's position was undermined in 2006 when the Science and Technology Select Committee called into question the entire scientific evidence base for the drug classification system, in their report 'Making a Hash of it'. Initially the Council acted as if they had given it a clean bill of health, but do now appear to be taking at least some of the criticisms on board.

Transform has been calling on ACMD for years to evaluate both the classification system and the operation of the entire MDA and indeed prohibition itself. As ACMD suggests in its comments, an adequate definition of 'harm' is required in order to develop an effective drug strategy. At the least the ACMD needs to publicly state which harms are caused by drugs and which are caused or exacerbated by the enforcement of the MDA.

If the Council is to reassert itself as the much needed bastion of evidence and rationality within Government, it will need to step up a gear and proactively begin its own work of exposing the MDA to scientific evaluation (if necessary demanding the required resources and capacity from the Home office). If it fails to do this then agencies in the NGO sector - including Transform - will need to step in to do their job for them.

Observer: Drugs strategy debate 'is a sham'

.

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.'