New report calls for drug-free prisons

A new report released by the Centre of Policy Studies yesterday has strongly criticised the government's approach to drugs in prisons.

The report 'Inside Out: How to get drugs out of prisons' was written by Huseyin Djemil, former Drug Strategy Co-ordinator for seven London Prisons and previously a heroin and crack cocaine addict.

The report's main thrust is that government policy on drugs in prisons is wrong to focus on 'managing the problem [rather] than in eradicating it.'

Whilst some of Djemil's comments are valid, such as his critique of mandatory drugs testing (MDT) orders. He describes them as 'unrealiable and potentially dangerous'. However, his call for prisons to be 'drug-free zones' and that any approach should 'start from the premise that all illicit drugs should be eliminated from prisons' is just not realistic.

Djemil himself argues that, 'The demand for drugs is so great and the system so porous that this [mandatory drug testing, CCTV etc] will only cause minor disruption. Drug dealers in contrast are organised, highly motivated, clearly focused. They build effective alliances for mutual benefit and profit. As their resources grow, so does their buying power – and their capability to corrupt more staff.'

While demand is a factor, the real reason that staff can be corrupted and drug dealers are 'highly motivated' to smuggle drugs into prisons, is that prohibition inflates prices way beyond their true worth.

'Revealed: how drugs trade took hold of British prisons' notes that:

'14 Staff suspended at Pentonville prison in 2006 amid claims of drug and mobile phone smuggling;

68 Staff suspended from the prison service in 2006;

1,000 Prison staff suspected of corruption'

The article also claims that the drugs trade in British prisons is worth an estimated £59 million.

Sentencing Guidelines Panel planning review and consultation on drug offences

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The following correspondence has been forwarded to Transform from Dave Barlow, who represents Casey Hardison, currently in prison for 20 years for the manufacture of 7 grams of LSD. His case has been discussed in more detail elsewhere on this blog. As well as providing a useful commentary on the mis-classification of LSD within the current ABC system, Dave's letter to the Sentencing Guidelines Secretariat (querying Casey's 20 year sentence), prompted an interesting response.

It appears that the Sentencing Guidelines Panel are planning a (long overdue) review of 'issues relating to the sentencing of various offences arising from the supply, manufacture, importation or possession of prohibited drugs' to be undertaken 'over the course of the next year' and that this will 'involve the publication of a consultation paper to which anyone may respond'. (This may be public knowledge but is the first that I have heard of it).

This is good news, and it is hoped that, whilst not challenging the fundamental injustices of Prohibition, there may be some shift in the guidelines that see a non-violent, talented young man producing a few grams of LSD (for recreational use by consenting adults), imprisoned for longer than most terrorists, rapists and murderers.

1 August 2007

Dear Mr McCormac,

I am writing to you as Head of the Sentencing Guidelines Secretariat concerning the 20-year prison sentence imposed on the American chemist Mr Casey Hardison for the manufacture of 7 grams of LSD-25. Despite the fact that the length of sentence was double that recommended in the sentencing guidelines given in R. v. Hurley, Appeal against Sentence was dismissed at the Royal Courts of Justice on 25 May 2006. The background to the case and legal texts are available at www.lsd25.20m.com .

LSD has a similar chemical structure to the psilocybin found in magic mushrooms and produces similar effects - the main difference is the duration of effects (4-5 hours for psilocybin, 8-10 hours for LSD). Both drugs are non-toxic and non-addictive. Yet they are both placed in Class A, the same legal category as heroin!

The government was advised in an independent report by the Police Foundation in March 2000 that LSD should be transferred from Class A to Class B (recommendation 8) . This advice was ignored.

In July 2005 the Government's Strategic Unit Drugs Report, which the Prime Minister refused to publish, was leaked . It contains a number of references to LSD:
Page 5: Dependent Users: LSD, 0.
Page 11: Least potential addictiveness of all drugs: LSD.
Page 12: Total cost (£/week): least expensive, LSD.
Page 15: Deaths per annum: LSD, 0.
Page 19: Damage to health and social functioning: LSD has the same rating as cannabis.
Page 33: "Users of heroin and/or crack cause high levels of every kind of harm".
Page 34: "In comparison, users of other drugs do not cause significant harms"
Cannabis, Ecstasy and LSD have the lowest harms rating.
Page 35: LSD users cause the least harm to self and the least harm to others.

In March 2007, Professor Nutt of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs published Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse in the Lancet (attached). In Figure 1 (P. 1050) each substance is given a mean score by independent experts. Both alcohol and tobacco are in the top 10 of harm causing substances while LSD is rated as 14th out of 20, three places lower than cannabis.

"Our findings raise questions about the validity of the current Misuse of Drugs Act classification, despite the fact that it is nominally based on an assessment of risk to users and society. The discrepancies between our findings and current classifications are especially striking in relation to psychedelic-type drugs."

I would be most grateful if you could raise this matter at the next meeting of the Sentencing Advisory Panel as I do not feel that a 20-year prison sentence is appropriate for a non-violent offender for manufacturing a non-toxic, non-addictive drug which bears a close similarity to ones found in nature.

Yours sincerely,
David Barlow

Dear Mr. Barlow,

Thank you very much for this e-mail and for the hard copy letter sent to the Chairman and members of the Sentencing Advisory Panel.

The Chairman of the Panel, Professor Andrew Ashworth, has asked me to reply on the Panel's behalf.

The Panel does not comment on the decisions in individual cases and so cannot respond to the issue that you raise in relation to this particular sentence.

However, it is likely that the Panel will be considering issues relating to the sentencing of various offences arising from the supply, manufacture, importation or possession of prohibited drugs over the course of the next year. This consideration will involve the publication of a consultation paper to which anyone may respond and any comments that you have will be gratefully received.

As with all papers issued by the Sentencing Advisory Panel or the Sentencing Guidelines Council, this consultation paper will appear on our website - www.sentencing-guidelines.gov.uk

Yours sincerely,
Kevin McCormac
Head of Sentencing Guidelines Secretariat,

4th Floor,
8-10 Great George Street,
London
SW1P 3AE
020 7084 8130

Transform briefing on drug classification

Drug Discrimination and the case against Casey Hardison

The following article was sent to the Transform blog for publication on behalf of the the freecasey.org campaign, which we have reproduced un-edited. It raises a series of important issues about the interface between personal freedoms and heavy handed enforcement of the prohibition of some drugs, specifically the inconsistent and hypocritical ways in which government and law deal with the difficult questions this debate throws up. For certain individuals such as Casey Hardison, the failure of law makers to grapple with these issues has tragic consequences. Murderers and rapists are often getting sentences of under ten years, yet, in the shadow of an unprecedented overcrowding crisis Casey now faces his entire adult life behind bars at taxpayers expense.

Drug Discrimination: An End to the War on Drugs?

The Government will shortly commence the consultation for its post 2008 'New Drug Strategy', so it is perhaps timely to consider those who are suffering from the effects of the last 10-year strategy. British prisons are full of non-violent drug offenders – some of whom describe themselves as POWd's (Prisoners of the War on Drugs). The British Government now refrains from openly using the term 'war on drugs', but this lack of political rhetoric does not mask the very real casualties that continue to mount in this battle for the moral majority.

On April 22nd 2005, a British court sentenced Casey Hardison to imprisonment for making MDMA and LSD. A forensic chemist from the Forensic Science Service described Hardison's DIY lab 'as the most complex he had ever encountered'. Hardison however has consistently argued that he is the victim of one of the biggest injustices of the 21 st century – despite openly admitting he made numerous illegal psychotropic drugs.

The same week as Hardison received his 20-year sentence, Islamic extremist Kamel Bourgass, previously convicted of murdering a policeman, was sentenced to just 17 years for attempting to make deadly poisons to carry out terror attacks in the UK.

Making a Hash of It

In the light of these contrasting punishments, the Government may be wise during its consultation to consider the string of recent reports by Select Committees and respected independent think tanks on UK drug policy. Many of these reports heavily criticise the UK's 'ABC' drug classification system. According to the Government, a drug is labelled Class A, B or C to reflect it's harmfulness. Each Class of drug has corresponding levels of punishment associated with its possession or supply – up to life in prison for supplying Class A drugs.

Experts however say the Government has failed to produce any evidence to justify why particular drugs are in a particular Class, asking for example; why did this Government classify magic mushrooms as a Class A drug alongside crack cocaine and heroin? Something that until July 2005 was available to buy legally in Covent Garden could suddenly earn the seller a lifetime behind bars. Those who have tried magic mushrooms find it hard to understand why such draconian measures were needed, except perhaps for the most Machiavellian of political reasons.

Casey Hardison appealed against his 20-year sentence, defending himself on human rights grounds. He argued, among other things, that prohibiting certain drugs violated his right to equal treatment before the law. Why is it, he asked, that those who produce alcohol and tobacco get the Queen's Award for Enterprise, while those caught producing ecstasy and LSD are punished so harshly? Indeed respected academics recently published research in the Lancet, ranking each drug by harmfulness according to the evidence. The research shows that the drugs produced by Hardison rank far below both alcohol and tobacco. But the law is blind so they say.

The Government itself, in it's response to a recent Select Committee report on drugs, admits that the harmfulness of a drug, to either individuals or society, is not the only factor in determining the criminal penalties linked to it. The Government also relies on 'historical and cultural precedents' (civil servant speak for 'good old fashioned majoritarian, media-driven prejudice') to decide how to treat those associated with a particular drug.

To people like Hardison and others, who consider their drugs of choice to have been unfairly singled out, such distinctions matter. If those who use and supply certain drugs are treated differently on the basis of prejudice, as opposed to objective factual evidence, they are the victims of heinous discrimination.

Hardison and his supporters believe that such 'drug discrimination' should be treated in much the same way as sexual or racial discrimination is today. They hope that the minority who currently use low-risk illegal drugs will one day have a legal right to be treated equally alongside the majority's comparatively more risky consumption of alcohol and tobacco.

Food For Thought

Hardison's use of a rights-based defence against a drug conviction is not as far fetched as it may first appear. Since 1993, Native Americans have been permitted by US legislation to ingest the powerfully hallucinogenic peyote cactus in their religious ceremonies. Similarly, last year the US Supreme Court granted the União do Vegetal, a New Mexico based religious group, the right to use certain illegal hallucinogenic drugs. The Court held that banning the use of the hallucinogenic tea, drunk by the group during worship to alter consciousness, would excessively infringe on their religious freedom.

Protecting human rights and preventing the use and traffic of controlled drugs are both long-standing international policy goals. The global drug prohibition regime is built upon three international United Nations conventions to which almost all states have agreed. International human rights law is based on three even older UN treaties, signed up to by an almost equal number of nations. Could it be that these two giant cornerstones of international law have conflicting interests - one intent on protecting personal freedom and equality and the other on restricting it?

Global drug prohibition is a fixed ideology based on the premise that all controlled drugs are an 'evil' for both the individual and society; therefore they must be prohibited - even at great cost. The number of lives lost and billions spent fighting drug wars that rage around the world, from Columbia to Afghanistan, are testimony to this cost and to the value that many politicians place on fighting this war.

Perpetual War

As George Orwell once wrote in '1984', his prophetic novel on social control, 'since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist…' Often, the so-called 'war on drugs' is a war waged against our friends, families and neighbours; as individual freedoms are sacrificed to ever-growing surveillance and ever-tougher laws. Still the war on drugs goes on, seemingly without end, as illegal drug production and use rises year after year.

Why fight this war to begin with? Since the early 20th Century, misguided moral panics around drugs have been the driving force behind the creation of drug laws; spurred on by racial prejudice, ambitious bureaucrats involved in the prohibition enforcement regime, and films such as 'Reefer Madness'.

Politicians knew they were onto a winner; as a political smokescreen, the 'war on drugs' is perhaps only surpassed by the 'war on terror'. Drugs, the insidious enemy within, can be conveniently blamed for a wide range of incurable social ills at home; from the break up of the family to rising crime rates. In an age of moral pluralism, those in power may be running short of moral values they can be seen to support, but tough anti-drug statements by politicians are as popular as ever.

Rights Evolution

Modern democracies however, are not simply a dictatorship of the majority, leaving minorities to be sacrificed at the whim of every moral panic and media scare. In a modern democracy, laws made by our elected representatives are constrained by either a constitution or legislation such as the British Human Rights Act. Such human rights protection, inspired by centuries of struggle and the murder of millions during World War II, ensures that the few are not sacrificed for the 'good' of the many. Today, it is generally accepted that even murderous would-be terrorists like Kamel Bourgass are entitled to have their rights respected and to receive a fair trial.

Unlike the rigid laws governing drug prohibition, human rights law evolves over time with new case law. Homosexuality, to give an example, was considered highly immoral and criminalized in many European countries at the time the European Convention on Human Rights was drafted. Half a century later, morality has changed enough to permit the Convention to be used to prevent discrimination against homosexuals and a range of other 'deviant' minorities. In much the same way, it is possible that human rights law could continue to evolve to eventually protect certain types of non-medical drug use currently deemed illegal.

A number of legal cases have arisen in various countries questioning whether laws prohibiting non-medical drug use violate certain constitutional or human rights. In South Africa, for example, a Rastafarian law graduate was barred from continuing his legal career because of his religious use of cannabis ( Prince v President of the Law Society). The South African Supreme Court agreed with the argument that cannabis is genuinely used by Rastafarians in a religious context, but failed to grant the man the rights-based protection he sought. The court argued that allowing cannabis use for Rastafarians would be impractical when trying to enforce a complete ban on cannabis use for the rest of the country.

In the UK, a similar case involving a Rastafarian (Taylor, R. v [2001] EWCA Crim 2263 ) was struck down because, amongst other reasons, Britain has international treaty obligations to make cannabis illegal for all those within its jurisdiction. Such arguments were not however strong enough to defeat the religious group in the União do Vegetal case, recently decided in the US Supreme Court.

Cognitive Liberty

Generally, governments must show that they have a very good reason, or 'compelling state interest', for violating a fundamental right such as freedom of religion or the right to equality before the law. In the União do Vegetal case, the Government was unable to prove that allowing the group to drink their hallucinogenic tea would result in any significant harm. Conversely, the group was able to prove that banning their consciousness-altering tea parties was a severe restriction of their religious freedom. The Federal Court Judge in the case rightly concluded that if there is 'a proven interest of high order on one side, and mere uncertainty, or 'equipoise', on the other, the balance of equities is plainly in the plaintiff's favour.' The Government therefore had no legal justification to prevent the groups' drug use.

The Bush administration was concerned by the outcome of the União do Vegetal case; for if this logic can be applied to one drug in one circumstance, it may also be applied to others. To those hard-line opponents of non-medical drug use, this could be viewed as a slippery slope towards liberalization of the drug laws. To those who are in favour of drug policy reform, it is a welcome step towards evidence-based policy making and the protection of individual liberty.

Moral Dilemma

Why is it important to base drug policy reform on the moral values enshrined in human rights law, as opposed to merely presenting factual information about the ineffectiveness of drug prohibition? The answer is that to many people, drug prohibition itself enshrines a set of moral values, such as the ideal that 'all drugs are bad' and 'sobriety is good'. To usurp international drug control conventions, that have been in place for almost a century and are tinged with moral assumptions about good and evil, takes more than an academic study or two.

In other words, presenting an evidence base that seeks to undermine the assumed foundations of international drug prohibition will not, on its own, be enough to effect a profound change in drug policy. Moral, or 'normative' claims can only be effectively challenged by other moral claims. In this case, moral arguments based on international human rights law, supported by the growing evidence base against the effectiveness of global drug prohibition, are best suited to challenging the current orthodoxy.

The media, the courts, politicians and non-governmental organisations can all play a role in shaping the protection human rights law can offer to individuals. Giving new meanings to established rights has never been an easy task, but rights discourse can act as a lens, focusing small shifts in public morality to burn through the most obstinate policy roadblocks.

On May 25th 2006, Casey Hardison lost his final appeal. He now faces 20 years without freedom as a result of basing his defence on arguments he believed would allow greater freedom for everyone. Three years after Kamel Bourgass has been set free, Casey Hardison may still be in prison wondering what the right to freedom from discrimination actually means and why we as a society consider his crime so heinous.

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.