Anti-Smoking poster from 1915

 
There's something charmingly blunt about this anti-smoking poster from 1915. It also contains a number of strangely prescient cues for tobacco policy (and some elements of illegal drug policy) over the following century.

via Joe Bott (full size image here) 
with hat tip to Boing Boing

Our Drugs War : Channel 4 documentary series

On Monday 2 August at 8:00pm the first of a three-part series on Channel 4 'Our Drugs War' will be broadcast.

updated:

Unashamedly anti-prohibitionist in tone, the excellent first part (1 hour) can now be viewed online here.

Here's a link to the article by Angus MacQueen, the series producer in the Observer - 'Why do we so wilfully cover up the failure of the war on drugs?'

This is coverage from the Scottish SUN: 'We will NEVER win the war on drugs'

Great new ICSDP video explaining the costs of the drug war

A video for anyone who wants to better understand the failures of prohibition and learn more about alternatives that have proven to be more cost-effective, safe, and humane.

Brought to you by the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy -- where science, not ideology, drives illicit drug policy.

ONDCP on the defensive as drug war exposed to mainstream media critique

After the publication of a blistering critique of the drug war from Martha Mendoza of Associated Press was published widely across the US, the US Drug Czar’s office - the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has responded on its blog*, highlighting what they felt was left out of the piece. The Mendoza piece, titled 'US drug war has met none of its goals', did not mince its words:

After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.

The failure is then laid out in stark economic terms:

Using Freedom of Information Act requests, archival records, federal budgets and dozens of interviews with leaders and analysts, the AP tracked where that money went, and found that the United States repeatedly increased budgets for programs that did little to stop the flow of drugs. In 40 years, taxpayers spent more than:

• $20 billion to fight the drug gangs in their home countries. In Colombia, for example, the United States spent more than $6 billion, while coca cultivation increased and trafficking moved to Mexico — and the violence along with it.

• $33 billion in marketing "Just Say No"-style messages to America's youth and other prevention programs. High school students report the same rates of illegal drug use as they did in 1970, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says drug overdoses have "risen steadily" since the early 1970s to more than 20,000 last year.

• $49 billion for law enforcement along America's borders to cut off the flow of illegal drugs. This year, 25 million Americans will snort, swallow, inject and smoke illicit drugs, about 10 million more than in 1970, with the bulk of those drugs imported from Mexico.

• $121 billion to arrest more than 37 million nonviolent drug offenders, about 10 million of them for possession of marijuana. Studies show that jail time tends to increase drug abuse.

• $450 billion to lock those people up in federal prisons alone. Last year, half of all federal prisoners in the U.S. were serving sentences for drug offenses.

At the same time, drug abuse is costing the nation in other ways. The Justice Department estimates the consequences of drug abuse — "an overburdened justice system, a strained health care system, lost productivity, and environmental destruction" — cost the United States $215 billion a year. Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron says the only sure thing taxpayers get for more spending on police and soldiers is more homicides. "Current policy is not having an effect of reducing drug use," Miron said, "but it's costing the public a fortune."

The Drug Czar's Office is clearly feeling the heat from all sides - and is on the defensive. Earlier this month the progressive Dennis Kucinich , chair of the Committee of Oversight for ONDCP, called Ethan Nadelmann (director of Drug Policy Alliance),to the Committee. You can read his testimony here, summarising many of the growing public concerns.

The ONDCP response to the AP broadside is worthy of some close scrutiny so I have copied the blog post in full below and annotated it with my thoughts (in bold), with a few graphs thrown in to illustrate the points.

‘ONDCP Agrees: A Balanced Approach is Needed, But Mischaracterizing Our Progress Helps No One’

Last week, the Associated Press ran a story by reporter Martha Mendoza, whose headline read, "US War On Drugs Has Failed to Meet Any of Its Goals." Mendoza's article was prominently labeled as an "AP Impact" story, a designation that Terry Hunt, APs chief Washington correspondent said is meant to signify "something that we think has a 'wow' factor."

This is what we in the UK call a ‘sly dig’; the inference is that the story has been ‘sexed up’.

Immediately after the story ran, a representative from ONDCP's Office of Public Affairs responded to Ms. Menoza regarding the article. In part, we wrote to AP that we were let down by a focus that was so singular – especially since we believe there is good basis to describe President Obama's new national strategy as new and balanced.

The use of the term 'Immediately' demonstrates just how threatening they find this sort of mainstream media critique, and how urgently they felt a response was required. Ethan Nadelmann writing on the Huffington Post has a rather different analysis of the suggestion the new strategy is 'new and balanced'.

The budget piece is fair to focus on, but we told AP that we objected to the article's mischaracterization of current policy. A fairer and more nuanced observation would have been: This does look/sound a lot different, but the budget scenario hasn't changed overnight (it never does, in any realm of government) and it will take some time to test the Administration's commitment to the new approach.

That is an interesting comment. We should certainly test the rhetoric in terms of significant resource reallocation. We genuinely look forward to that, but how long before it happens? We can only judge on actions, not aspirations.

We also mentioned to AP that there were significant things left out of the article which should have been discussed, namely that:

• The emergence of prescription drug abuse has upended many traditional assumptions about drug abuse.

Has it? In what way? Because is doesn't fit neatly in the punitive drug war paradigm?

• The article did not address whether legalizing/decriminalizing drugs, posited in the story as a responsible alternative – works, or why, if it does, more countries haven't taken this approach.

It is ironic for ONDCP to be calling for evidence of whether alternatives ‘work’, when they have systematically failed to comprehensively assess the efficacy of their own enforcement led policy.

See for example ‘What we don’t know keeps hurting us?’ a report produced by the National Academy of Science in 2001 that highlighted precisely this failing, in withering terms:

"It is unconscionable for this country to continue to carry out a public policy of this magnitude and cost without any way of knowing whether, and to what extent, it is having the desired result. Our committee strongly recommends that a substantial, new, and robust research effort be undertaken to examine the various aspects of drug control, so that decision-making on these issues can be better supported by more factual and realistic evidence."

Now, I’m well aware that this is ONDCP rhetoric but let’s, for a moment, treat it as if ONDCP is asking a genuine question. First, what is the evidence that decriminalisation works? Well, there’s plenty of evidence from the many countries/states that have decriminalised cannabis (including 13 US states), as well as many more that have decriminalised possession of all drugs, such as Portugal. Its imperfect data but not insubstantial. Have the ONDCP reviewed or published anything on it? No.

What about legalisation and regulation? Well, we have the legalisation and regulation of alcohol at the end of US alcohol Prohibition 1920-1933 as a useful touchstone here - the 75th anniversary of which was the subject of Congressional celebrations in 2008.

We have extensive experience with quasi-legal cannabis supply in the Netherlands, and indeed in the form of medical supply, in the US (full legalisation and regulation of cannabis being the subject of a Californian ballot this coming November).

We have decades of experience with prescription models for opiates and stimulants (including heroin and amphetamines) for dependent/problematic users. And in the wider public sphere, extensive experience in regulating and controlling a range of potentially risky products and activities. Its what Governments do, its one of their primary responsibilities, and they can be quite effective at it.

But Transform believes we still need more evidence to help the policy making process - we are moving into new territory after all - and that we should conduct Impact Assessments at all levels (local, national and international) to compare and contrast the various policy options; a full scale Drug War, Kerlikowski's re-branded drug war-lite, the various options for decriminalisation, and options for regulated markets. We call on ONDCP and its committee of oversight to conduct just such an exercise in order to assess which is the most effective way forward.

• Legalizing, taxing and regulating tobacco, alcohol, or prescription drugs has been unsuccessful in curbing the public health consequences of the increased use of those drugs.

The inference here is that decrim/legalisation would increase use and create a public health disaster. To really respond to this throw-away line requires a much more detailed analysis (there is some more discussion in Transform's 'Tools for the Debate' p.47) but there are few points to highlight here. Firstly, it is fair to turn it around and ask whether prohibition has been effective at reducing use or creating its goal of a 'drug free world'. The past five decades would suggest unambiguously not. Has the drug war improved public health?

The evidence for a deterrent effect associated with punitive sanctions on drug users is marginal at best (explored in more detail in Transform's 2009 CBA report). If anything, the evidence suggests that the punitive dimension of drug policy is largely irrelevant, and that levels of use and misuse are primarily determined by a complex interplay of social, cultural and economic variables. You can't legislate away drug use, much as Tsars through the decades might wish to.

Public health improves when public health is prioritised in the policy making process. With regard to the US lack of regulation of alcohol, tobacco and prescription drugs, public health has long taken a back seat to unprincipled profit seeking behaviour of Big Pharma/Tobacco/Alcohol - that naturally aims to maximise consumption. Were the priorities to shift, we might begin to see significant reductions in legal drug related public health problems. Witness the achievements of improved tobacco regulation (combined with effective public health education) over the past three decades in the UK - smoking rates have halved, no-one has been criminalised.

• Congressional efforts to reduce the sentencing disparity between crack/powder cocaine – the first concerted effort to reduce any mandatory minimum sentencing provision – have been supported by this Administration, and we are close to a breakthrough.

Yes, credit where due, but this has happened only after years of NGO campaigning (including through previous Democrat administrations) and only following horrific consequences and racial injustice, that can never be undone. It doesn't deserve a medal.

• Not every dollar tagged "law enforcement" is spent on jailing nonviolent drug offenders. The majority of people in drug treatment programs today are there because of a law enforcement intervention, and there are more than 100,000 successful graduates of drug courts – for which there are $56.4 million requested in this Administration's FY2011 budget request.

Not every dollar no, but most of every dollar. And why use the courts to administer ‘treatment’? Is that not a job for doctors? Where is the acknowledgement of prohibition's role in creating the vast illicit trade, and inflated prices, that leads to most of the offending that then results in drug users ending up in court in the first place. Quite a few people ended up in prison too by the way.

• Finally, this Administration's historic passage of health care reform will aid efforts to deal with the disease of addiction, as well as rules that will require insurance companies offering drug treatment coverage to provide parity with coverage for other medical conditions.

It’s a medical condition that appears to affect far more US and UK citizens compared to those from other nation states – See Richard Wilkinson's ‘The Spirit Level - why more equal societies almost always do better’ for a possible explanation of why this might be. Also relevant is Bruce Alexander's ‘Rat Park’ experiment and his epic ‘Globalisation of Addiction - a study in poverty of the spirit’.

Additionally, the article failed to mention that:

• Prevention and treatment have been successful over the past 30 years, and new advancements in both of those areas have reduced drug use among teens and adults by more than one-third since 1979

And the evidence for this is…? I hope this isn't cherry picking historic high and low points on one graph from which spurious generalised conclusions have been drawn, whilst ignoring inconvenient details (like, for example, the crack and meth epidemics).

• We have said time and time again that demand reduction – and supply reduction – strategies can work together in a coordinated fashion to reduce drug use and its consequences.

Saying it doesn't make it so. Even saying it repeatedly. Your own evidence for demand reduction is incredibly poor, and even the UNODC now acknowledge the disastrous unintended consequences of supply side enforcement - which, even according to their own data hasn't prevented drugs from becoming progressively cheaper and more available.

Global advancements in research, led primarily by our National Institute on Drug Abuse, has led to breakthrough addiction treatments and advancements in our understanding of how drugs affect the brain.

NIDA has done some useful work, but the lion's share of its budget has been dedicated to demonstrating how dangerous drug are - in doing so reinforcing the simplistic 'drugs bad, therefore ban them' prohibitionist narrative. Almost no research has been spent on evaluating the efficacy of supply side interventions, and none has been spent on evaluating alternative approaches. A biased research agenda can be just as dangerous and unscientific as biased research.

• The greater use of today's high potency marijuana has probably been a critical factor in the unprecedented surge among those seeking treatment for marijuana and ER mentions.

Firstly the surge in treatment is almost entirely due to criminal justice referrals. Secondly the rise in potency is a result of an unregulated, profit-driven illegal market dynamic - the direct consequence of prohibition. ONDCP is using a failure of prohibition to justify its continuation, which is flat out ridiculous.

• While most people in jail and prisons for drug offenses are not simple possession offenders, ONDCP is leading the criminal justice field by promoting collaborative, evidence-based interventions involving testing and moderate sanctions (e.g. Hawaii's HOPE model) and drug courts.

No, most people are in jail for offending to support an expensive illegal drug habit. How many are in jail for offending to buy alcohol or tobacco?

• This Administration is trailblazing a commitment to strengthened international partnerships - witness the unprecedented global support for US goals at the recent UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs meeting in Vienna, Austria.

The US has been running the show at CND since it began. New, marginally more pragmatic instructions and a less heavy handed approach means that they will have lost fewer friends than under Bush, but this is nothing to be particularly proud of.

Obviously, no one story can cover everything, but we should engage in a new discussion on why drug abuse policy is so important and what evidence-based strategies are at our disposal (there are a lot of them) to reduce its deadly toll.

‘Drug abuse policy’ – there’s a new phrase. According to UNODC, 95% of users are non-problematic, so a ‘drug abuse policy’ should only relate to the 5% with problems. That is not the case. Prohibition criminalises all users, regardless of whether they are users or problematic users. This narrative is intended to characterise all ‘drug’ use as dangerous and abusive. It sits in stark contrast to the public discourse on alcohol, that recognises that most use sensibly with a small minority developing problems.

Overall this is a very defensive response from an agency that is clearly feeling beleaguered. It is finally being called to account for the drug war, from a drug policy reform community growing in size and influence, from Dennis Kucinich's Committee of oversight, and from an increasingly critical mainstream media. This new dynamic provides a huge new opportunity to bring previously excluded narratives into the old story line. As Joseph McNamara, Former Police Chief, Kansas City and San Jose; Fellow, Hoover Institution put it:

“The Drug War cannot stand the light of day. It will collapse as quickly as the Vietnam War, as soon as people find out what’s really going on.”

Thanks to Steve Rolles

See Drug War Rant for the US reformer's view


*not really a blog at all - comments are not welcome.

Mephedrone and the ACMD: lessons from BZP and New Zealand's 'Class D' experiment?

Witnessing the media frenzy around mephedrone yesterday I was struck by the similarities with the situation that emerged around the last legal stimulant to achieve any real youth market penetration, namely BZP. BZP (Benzylpiperazine) was reviewd by the ACMD and, following their recommendation, brought within the Misuse of drugs Act just before last Christmas, but had been effectively removed from the 'legal high' market after the MRHA clarified that it was covered by the Medicines Act in 2007. There was never the level of media frenzy over BZP that we are now witnessing with mephedrone, probably because it was neither as popular nor (from the relatively little we know) as risky, and specifically was not directly linked to any deaths. Some journalists did their best to whisk up some hysteria (check out this joker in the Guardian for example), but it never really got any full blown drug-panic momentum.

But at the time the BZP issue was emerging (around 2006), Transform, aware that the drug would soon be under consideration, produced a briefing and submitted it to the ACMD. Central to that briefing was a consideration of New Zealand's policy on BZP, where a unique experiment was underway in which a new piece of legislation had been added to the conventional ABC system, in the form of a new 'restricted list' or  'Class D' as it came to be known, within which drugs would be legal for sale under certain conditions. This was, to our knowledge the first time that a non-medical stimulant drug widely used on the party scene, had been legally regulated for commercial sale anywhere in the world.

Since the briefing was written the situation in New Zealand has changed, and there are also obvious differences between the situation with Mephedrone and BZP. None the less, it was interesting to see David Nutt (who was sitting on the ACMD when we submitted our BZP briefing) suggesting the New Zealand Class D model in the Guardian CiF today. With all this in mind we thought it was worth revisiting the discussion and recommendations from the 2006 BZP briefing, as they seem pertinent to the current debate around mephedrone (not least since the ban on BZP arguably created the space in the market into which mephedrone emerged).

BZP as sold in 2006 

To note - the briefing was produced in October 2006, and some of the information is out of date (more up to date reviews of BZP have emerged). Also, whilst a Class D might be useful as a short term measure it  is not a long term solution and comes with its own problems (potentially further muddying public understanding of drug risks for example). If you want to know what Transform are advocating see here (it isn't prohibition, it isn't a Class D, and it certainly isn't powerful stimulants being sold without any regulation online as plant food).

The full 2006 BZP briefing, with references, is available here, the discussion and recommendations section is copied below:

Discussion:

Piperazines are psychoactive drugs and clearly not without risks. However, the assessments that have been done suggest that the risks are relatively low (see safety appendix), arguably on a par with or less than khat, another legal stimulant (in this case plant based) recently considered by the ACMD  - for which classification under the MDA was not recommended.

Whilst the demographic profile of khat use (largely limited to traditional use amongst the male Somali community) is very different to that of piperazines (mostly used in the party / club / dance music scene) some of the same conclusions apply.

Costs of prohibiting piperazines would include:

• Potential for the creation of an illegal market for drugs that have an established market and level of demand
• Profits being diverted from legitimate, taxed and legally liable producers/retailers into the hands criminal gangs and unregulated dealers
• Increased risks/harm to users from drugs of unknown strength and purity, sold without any health and safety information
• Removal of potential harm reduction gains achieved by diverting recreational users away from more dangerous illegal drugs such as amphetamines (including methamphetamine) and MDMA (ecstasy) and its analogues.
• Criminalisation of users, mostly young people
• An increase in enforcement costs to police, customs, courts, prisons and probation services

Are there potential benefits to prohibiting piperazines?

Benefits of such a move would seem to be primarily political (i.e. demonstrating ‘tough on drugs' credentials).

A deterrent effect from such a prohibition is possible, but doubtful given that there is already an established demand for these drugs, and those deterred would likely substitute back to other illegal equivalents. Such a deterrent effect is poorly supported by evidence. The Science and Technology Select Committee recently concluded that:

“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 on 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 presented no evidence in their response to contradict this position. Piperazines (primarily BZP) have been prohibited in a number of countries including the US and it would be useful to examine what effects this had on patterns of use, and knock on effects on the use of other drugs. Transform is not aware that any such research has been undertaken.

There would be no prospect of reduced crime and social disorder, since there is none currently associated with the use of piperazines. According to the New Zealand EACD:

“ there is no reported criminal behavior associated with the use of BZP & TFMPP, as they are moderately priced and have a lower dependence potential than illicit amphetamine” (page 6)

Can we leave the market to self regulate?

The third alternative is to leave the market as it is. This is clearly not a long term tenable situation, even if producers of UK products (from New Zealand) and UK retailers put in place a voluntary code of practice. Although current UK retailers seem to be acting more responsibly than in the past (with, for example, magic mushrooms), there is no guarantee this will be the case for all retailers, and experience with unregulated ‘legal high' markets in the past does not inspire confidence. The New Zealand EACD report states that:

“Because there are many new substances that could appear on the market in this way, the challenge for public health practitioners and regulators is how to respond to these new substances in a way that promotes the public health while protecting individual rights. They are generally of lower potency and price than of illicit amphetamines and methamphetamine, and they are commercially packaged, labeled with the major ingredients and their strengths. The distributors would argue that this is a responsible approach to a demonstrated demand for the effects given by these substances.

When first distributed, this was an approach that allowed users to exit the illicit market with its inherent risks and the often poor quality drugs. Substitution of illicit with Piperazine is occurring, mostly amongst users who are afraid of the damage to their lives that a conviction would bring and who also wish to normalise the transaction required to purchase their choice of recreational substance. However, being unregulated at this time, they are being promoted within the free market, which has the generation of profit as the driving force. This can as easily lead to market saturation as can the imperatives driving the black market. Unlike either novel foods or new medicines, these products are being marketed without adequate scientific safety assessments because there is no need for the distributor to seek regulatory pre-market approval from a regulatory agency.” (p.8)

What would be the benefits of introducing appropriate regulation of the market and licensing of producers and vendors?

The idea of having a ‘restricted list' separate from, or a ‘Class D' in addition to the main drugs legislation (i.e. the ABC classification system under the MDA 1971) has many advantages over the status quo:

• It would create an enforceable legal structure allowing effective state intervention and control of production, supply (availability), promotion and use. This is not possible under the minimally regulated existing market, any existing regulatory options (medicines Act, food supplement regulations), or under the unregulated criminal market that classification under the MDA would inevitably create.
• It allows for full risk assessment of each drug as the basis for tailored penalties/restrictions rather than as a part of the blunt and malfunctioning instrument that is the ABC classification system.
• This form of legislation is significantly more flexible than current arrangements under the Misuse of Drugs Act and would allow for restrictions to be changed rapidly in light of new research, emerging trends or changing conditions.
• It removes virtually all the risks inherent in criminal markets; separating consumers from the wider criminal market (which in the case of Dutch cannabis policy is suggested to have kept down levels of use of more dangerous drugs) and offering harm reduction benefits from the availability of drugs of known content, strength and purity, and supplied with health and safety information
• Harm reduction through diversion away from use of more dangerous drugs.
• Harm reduction in terms of reducing the risk of young people being branded with the stigma of a criminal record.

The wider debate over classification and prohibition / regulation

Inevitably perhaps, proposals for a ‘restricted list' and or ‘Class D' will be seen by some as a ‘back door to legalisation' of cannabis and perhaps other drugs, a sentiment aired during the policy debate in New Zealand. The NZ legislation passed, however, following an intelligent public and parliamentary debate and engagement with all the relevant parties.

Transform's position on the current prohibition of drugs is well documented. We believe the enforcement led approach has been spectacularly counterproductive – failing to deliver any of its stated policy goals, maximising harms associated with dug use, creating a crisis in the criminal justice system and fuelling crime at all scales, at home and in producer and transit countries. We believe that drug policy should be led by evidence of effectiveness, established harm reduction principles and public health science. This inevitably leads to the conclusion that regulated markets (with different regulatory models depending on the drug) offer better outcomes than absolute prohibitions, on all key policy indicators; crime, social nuisance, public health, welfare of young people and value for money expenditure.

We are not alone in this view of prohibition:

“Prohibition doesn't work, as the US found out many years ago.”

John Reid MP Labour (now Home Secretary in charge of drugs policy):

Jeremy Vine programme, BBC Radio 2, 11.11.04

…"we can prohibit, regulate or leave it to the market. Prohibition does not work - it drives the activity underground…”

“Only ideological extremists favour a free-for-all where only the laws of the market hold sway. So the third option is regulation - and regulation with as much emphasis on the quality of the debate as the policy outcome. 'Better regulation' has to mean government engaging people in the decisions that affect their lives and doing so in new and better ways”.

Tessa Jowell MP Labour: 'Grown up politics for an adult world' The Guardian 21.11.04

The Piperazine issue offers a real opportunity to do the right thing, not necessarily the politically expedient one. These are drugs that have yet to attract the attention of a media hungry for drug scare stories (although the first murmurings are beginning to be heard in Ireland), so currently there is little political capital to be made from a high profile crackdown. There is some breathing room in which to address this issue before it gets out of hand. Intelligently handled this need not be a political minefield, and sold as a pragmatic public health intervention to better control a potentially risky substance and keep criminals away from the trade, regulatory options need not be perceived as ‘soft' either.

Important lessons can be learnt from the recent UK experience with fresh magic mushrooms. Whilst there has been well founded criticism that class A is not the appropriate classification for magic mushrooms (or psychedelics more generally), the situation with magic mushrooms was considerably different from that which we are facing with piperazines. Fresh magic mushrooms were legal because of anomaly in the law, rather than because they were a new ‘legal high'. Furthermore they were potentially creating a new market and demand for psychedelics that did not already exist, whereas piperazines are entering, and potentially displacing, existing demand for illegal stimulants (amphetamines and ecstasy) on the party scene. The ban on fresh mushroom sales has been effective at closing down the retailers and returning the market to its previous position, with lower levels of use and production returning to informal harvesting and small scale illegal sales of naturally growing UK mushrooms, that are rarely prosecuted. If there has been a knock on effect in terms of users moving to other drugs (legal or otherwise) this is impossible to quantify, however likely. This ‘success' (at least from the Home Office's point of view) is far less likely to occur following a similar move with piperazines, as has been discussed above, and as was concluded by the NZ Expert Advisory Council.

Similarly lessons can be learnt form the different approach taken with khat, which was rather more pragmatically left unclassified following a thoughtful and thorough investigation and report from the ACMD (unlike magic mushrooms, where policy alternatives received only the most cursory of consideration).

Piperazines probably lie in a similar risk spectrum to these drugs and if we have a choice between prohibition under the Misuse of Drugs Act (magic mushrooms, ketamine, GHB), and leaving things as they are (khat), surely the option of regulatory models, which have demonstrable advantages over both, must now be seriously considered. This is likely to remain a live issue as new ‘legal' drugs continue to emerge into the recreational market but are not covered by the UN drug conventions (Kratom, Fly-agaric mushrooms, peyote cactus, salvia divinorum and nitrous-oxide all potentially warranting consideration).

The ongoing debate around the ABC drug classification system has been brought into sharp relief by the recent Science and Technology Select Committee report, which concluded there was a poor scientific basis in support of its efficacy as either a public health tool or criminal justice deterrent. Even though the Home Office has now reneged on its promise to have a thorough review of the classification system (despite the fact that this idea was welcomed by everyone in the drugs field including the ACMD, and specifically requested the Science and Technology Select Committee) it is hoped that possibilities for the classification system to include a ‘Class D' - offering the possibility of licensed sales of some lower risk drugs - will feature prominently in this ongoing discourse.

The recent ACMD report ‘Pathways to Problems' has recommended that alcohol and tobacco be specifically brought within the remit of the ACMD. Such a move will raise many difficult questions about the historical legal anomalies between legally regulated and totally prohibited drugs. There may well exist possibilities for including alcohol and tobacco in a new ‘restricted' category (which, in effect, they already inhabit, albeit under separate legislation), and also for moving other misclassified (e.g. some psychedelics) or unclassified drugs (e.g. khat) into the new regulatory system. Transform would welcome a debate on these ideas within the ACMD, given that they have now very publicly opened the door for such a discussion.

Transform welcomes the recent shift in approach to the drugs issue, away from heavy handed enforcement towards public health and harm reduction as the guiding principles, and the development of effective regulatory models for some of the less harmful drugs currently in a legal grey area is inevitably going to be an important part of this process. Piperazines, a fairly marginal issue from Transform's perspective, could offer a useful opportunity to experiment with regulation whilst the stakes remain low, rather than leaving the market to self regulate, or opting for another expensive and counterproductive crackdown.

Recommendations

• Initiate an official consultation as part of a formal engagement between the relevant Government agencies (including the Home Office, the Department of Health and the Treasury and key stakeholders including drug services, police and enforcement, NGOs, user groups, producers and retailers) to consider the three key choices for going forward regarding policy and legislation on recreational piperazines (status quo, regulation, prohibition). The possibility for a ‘Class D' or ‘restricted list' for lower risk drugs along the lines of the New Zealand model should specifically be included in the consultation.
• That the ACMD produce a report that considers the information available on piperazines, clarifies the legal status and knowledge on of the various substances in question, and makes recommendations on ways forward, in line with similar recent reports on cannabis, khat, methamphetamines etc.
• The ACMD should be specifically required to consider the models brought into New Zealand law, and make direct contact with colleagues on the New Zealand EACD, to discuss their findings and recommendations.
• In the short to medium Transform recommends the establishing in of a new ‘Class D' within the MDA to enable the licensed sale of certain drugs under the direction of the ACMD.

David Bratzer and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition Have Fought in the Trenches of the War on Drugs and Want to End It

Great interview with serving Canadian policeman and LEAP member David Bratzer, in this month's Mautime magazine




from the full interview:

"[LEAP] believes that all drugs should be legal and regulated. The argument in favor of regulating these drugs is not that they're harmless, but rather that they're so dangerous they should be controlled by the government. Remember that under prohibition the government has no control. It's the violent drug dealer who decides the price, purity, cutting agents, advertising methods, business location and hours of operation. And these drug dealers certainly are not asking kids for ID, or encouraging their customers to seek addiction treatment. We need to move away from prohibition and begin considering models that give the government control over the market for these drugs.

More information on Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) here

Christmas comes early for gangsters as three more drugs are criminalised

Three drugs were prohibited yesterday; a synthetic cannabinoid often sold as ‘spice’, the synthetic stimulant benzylpiperazine or BZP, and the synthetic sedative gammabutyrolactone or GBL which also happens to be an industrial solvent. All have been brought within the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, GBL and BZP becoming class C drugs (subject to penalties of up to 2 years prison for possession or 14 years in prison for supply) whilst ‘Spice’ becomes a Class B (subject to up to 5 years in prison for possession or 14 years for supply).

legal yesterday, up to 5 years in prison for possession today

There’s a lot one could say about this move, but first it should be made clear that these drugs are clearly not without risks and there is no reason to argue with the harm assessments of them presented by the ACMD to the Government that informed the decisions (although the B decision for spice is distorted by the recent cannabis politics more than relative harm rankings). Legal status does not imply safety and never has, the 'legal highs' alcohol and tobacco highlighting this point very clearly.

However, what can be disputed is whether the move will have any positive impacts. In reality there are three likely outcomes – all of which reflect the fact that changes in legislation do not impact on overall demand for the intoxication/experiences these drugs provide:

1. Users of these formerly ‘legal highs’ will revert to the ‘illegal highs‘ that spice etc provided an alternative or substitute for. So we can reasonably expect a rise in cannabis use (instead of spice) as well as stimulants, including ecstasy, cocaine and amphetamines (instead of BZP and GBL). Whether this substitution has a positive or negative impact on risks and overall health harms is not clear, but the young people involved will certainly face increased risk both from interacting with an illegal market controlled by criminals, and from the law itself: the real risk of a criminal record or spell in prison. Criminal suppliers will be the obvious beneficiaries.
   
   
2. Some users of these formerly ‘legal highs’, assuming they are preferred to the illegal alternatives, will continue to use them but now obtain them by via illegal sources that will inevitably emerge to meet any remaining demand if the profit opportunity presents itself. It is hard to gauge to what degree this will occur (probably not at all with spice/cannabis but reasonably likely to some extent with BZP/GBL), and it is worth noting that the use of ketamine has increased since 2006 when it was prohibited and its status changed from ‘legal high’ to ‘controlled drug’. Again criminal suppliers are the obvious beneficiaries, not young people, who in this case are indisputably worse off.
   
   
3. A void will be created in the market that will be potentially filled by new drugs brought to market by the same back street chemists and largely unregulated business interests responsible for bringing us GBL, BZP, Spice etc. Of course it is the absence of legal regulated supply of cannabis, ecstasy etc. that created the market opportunity for these (formerly) 'legal highs' to emerge in the first place, and this latest ban will just repeat the dynamic. The inevitable next generation of ‘legal highs’ (including mephedrone for example) may or may not be less risky than their predecessors and we will certainly know even less about their risks - the young people consuming them without any useful risk information eventually providing the risk data for the ACMD to make their next assessment (assuming it is ever quorate again).

The experience with GBL illustrates this last point well, having only emerged following the prohibition of GHB in 2003. GBL and GBH are effectively the same drug (GBL rapidly turning into GBH in the body within minutes of consumption) the difference being that GBL is an industrial solvent (also widely available as a cleaning product) and almost certainly more risky (as well as being widely available - so hard to see how it can practically be restricted, although this is a separate issue).

Looking at the bigger picture then it is clear that prohibition created the problem with these ‘legal highs’ in the first place, and prohibiting them now is highly unlikely to deliver public health benefits (demand being met through other channels or substitute drugs) but will potentially create increased risks and overall social and health harms. The primary beneficiaries are the criminal suppliers who will see their markets expand as supply shifts from legal to illicit sources, and the Home Secretary and Government who get a few 'get tough' headlines from their 'crackdown'.

It is notable that at no point was legally regulating the market in these or any other drugs rationally explored at Government level. The Impact Assessments that went along with the consultations for GBL and BZP only looked at prohibiting them under the MDA or leaving them in the admittedly unsatisfactory unregulated market niche they occupied until yesterday. Neither is a good option – but the third and obviously sensible choice of strict legal regulation was never even considered. This was for transparently political rather than rational or pragmatic reasons.

This failing is particularly striking in the case of BZP as New Zealand had previously established a legal regulatory model (a ‘Class D’ appended to their A-B-C classification system) for the legally regulated supply of BZP. Transform had alerted the ACMD and Home Office to this system in 2006 when the BZP issue first rose to prominence – and whilst the ACMD apparently held meetings with their New Zealand counterparts no suggestion was made for it to be implemented (although former ACMD chair David Nutt has subsequently suggested a exploration of such a system for legal regulation of cannabis availability would be sensible). We expect politicized drug war myopia from the Home Office, but The ACMD – nominally a non-political and independent scientific entity - have no such excuse and must take some responsibility for the negative policy outcomes of their classification recommendations with these drugs. Good science in harm evaluations becomes largely meaningless when it translates into criminal justice policy and a hierarchy of prison sentences, the impacts of which go entirely un-evaluated.

Transform have proposed clear and detailed models for regulating different types of drugs that we hope will feature in future discussions, as a first step they must be an essential element of Impact Assessments when such decisions are being made.

The heroin and cocaine trade: clear on the problem - unclear on the solution

Foreign Policy magazine have produced an excellent graphic/schematic , by Beau Kilmer and Peter Reuter, showing the inflationary price effects of the illicit market as heroin and cocaine transit through the criminal chain from producers to users in the West (the first page is below - the full article with references is here).

What is lacking, however, is any comment or analysis of the fact that it is very specifically prohibitionist policies (combined with high, and growing, demand) that fuel this extraordinary price inflation. There is also no mention of the fact that there are parallel legal markets in both coca/cocaine and opium/heroin (for medical and other legal uses) that do not demonstrate this same dynamic, and do not feature any criminal activity whatsoever, at any point in the production and supply chain. These existing legal markets are described in some detail in Transform's latest publication 'After the War on Drugs; Blueprint for Regulation'

Unlike the analysis in the Foreign Policy piece that argues, rather lamely, that 'Answers are hard to come by in the quest to fight drugs' , the existing and functioning legal markets for heroin and cocaine, combined with the regulatory models for opiates and coca products discussed in Blueprint, do offer a basis for serioous discussions on ways to effectively combat the illicit trade and its associated problems - and also provide a sound foundation for addressing the longer term public health challenges of problematic use.

Calls for reform grow

This month we have seen a plethora or articles in UK newspapers calling for an end to prohibition. There have been so many we thought we’d bring you the best of them in one blog.

The articles are written by a variety of people including a former chief constable, a well-known British philosopher and the former President of Brazil not to mention a number of journalists.

This increase in the number of articles in the British press reflects a change that is going on globally. As a number of Latin American countries move towards decriminalisation, it is sad that the UK government is so far behind in its thinking.

First up was Simon Jenkins in the Guardian who argued that the War on Drugs was ‘moral idiocy’ and praised the Latin American governments for their courage in admitting that current policy has failed.

He said,

‘The underlying concept of the war on drugs, initiated by Richard Nixon in the 1970s, is that demand can be curbed by eliminating supply. It has been enunciated by every US president and every British prime minister. Tony Blair thought that by occupying Afghanistan he could rid the streets of Britain of heroin. He told Clare Short to do it. Gordon Brown believes it to this day.

This concept marries intellectual idiocy – that supply leads demand – with practical impossibility. But it is golden politics. For 30 years it has allowed western politicians to shift blame for not regulating drug abuse at home on to the shoulders of poor countries abroad. It is gloriously, crashingly immoral.’

Days later in The Observer, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former President of Brazil, summarised the report he and the former presidents of Colombia and Mexico co-authored.

‘It is time to admit the obvious. The "war on drugs" has failed, at least in the way it has been waged so far. In Latin America, the "unintended" consequences have been disastrous. Thousands of people have lost their lives in drug-associated violence. Drug lords have taken over entire communities. Misery has spread. Corruption is undermining fragile democracies…

‘The core conclusion of the statement is that a paradigm shift is required away from repression of drug users and towards treatment and prevention. The challenge is to reduce drastically the harm caused by illegal narcotics to people, societies and public institutions.’

British philosopher John Gray got in on the act in The Guardian a few days later arguing that ‘the case for legalising all drugs is unanswerable.’

He wrote,

‘A decade or so ago, it could be argued that the evidence was not yet in on drugs. No one has ever believed illegal drug use could be eliminated, but there was a defensible view that prohibition could prevent more harm than it caused. Drug use is not a private act without consequences for others; even when legal, it incurs medical and other costs to society. A society that adopted an attitude of laissez-faire towards the drug habits of its citizens could find itself with higher numbers of users. There could be a risk of social abandonment, with those in poor communities being left to their fates.

‘These dangers have not disappeared, but the fact is that the costs of drug prohibition now far outweigh any possible benefits the policy may bring. It is time for a radical shift in policy. Full-scale legalisation, with the state intervening chiefly to regulate quality and provide education on the risks of drug use and care for those who have problems with the drugs they use, should now shape the agenda of drug law reform.’

Just days later, the Executive Director of the UNODC wrote an article in the Observer disputing these arguments. He initially focussed on the claim made by John Gray and many others including Transform, that the costs of prohibition outweigh the benefits.

Costa wrote,

‘Some even say that the costs of prohibition far outweigh the benefits (although there is no body count of people who haven't died thanks to drug control versus those who have been killed in the crossfire).’

He then went on to argue that,

‘Maybe western governments could absorb the health costs of increased drug use [that he assumes would occur once drugs were legalized], if that's how taxpayers want their money to be spent.

‘But what about the developing world? Why unleash an epidemic of addiction in parts of the world that already face misery, and do not have the health and social systems to cope with a drug tsunami?

‘Critics point out that vulnerable countries are the hardest hit by the crime associated with drug trafficking. Fair enough. But these countries would also be the hardest hit by an epidemic of drug use, and all the health and social costs that come with it. This is immoral and irresponsible.’

A few months ago we had a comment posted on the Transform blog refuting this argument.

‘Was it just me or did someone else pick up the massive contradiction underlying the WDR's main argument for continued prohibition? In section 2.1 of the report, the UNODC crowd pretty much concedes that a legalize-tax-and-regulate framework would work...but only in developed countries. Developing countries are thought unable to impose meaningful taxes and regulations on a legal drug industry, and therefore, would see their consumption levels explode. Thus, global prohibition must continue for the sake of poor countries (the condescension is almost unbearable).

‘Yet those same developing countries are expected to, simultaneously,: a) successfully interdict supply; b) reform police forces and judicial systems; c) fight corruption in the face of massive illegal profits; d) address the problem of slums and dereliction in cities; e) close open drug-markets; f) provide universal access to drug treatment; etc. etc. If the governments of developing countries are considered too weak to tax and regulate small national drug markets, why would anyone think them capable of performing that daunting list of tasks? The contradiction is so glaring that my eyes hurt.’

On the same day, and in the same newspaper, that Costa, wrote his piece, Tom Lloyd, a former chief constable, argued that the War on Drugs was a ‘not only very expensive and misdirected activity, but counterproductive and harmful’.

‘More recently, I have been working abroad and the problems that exist worldwide are recognised at the highest levels, with most acknowledging the harmful unintended consequences [including Costa himself] of the current approach. A huge criminal market (with enormous financial incentives) has been created using corruption and violence to make its huge profits.

‘Efforts to destroy crops only destroy peasant farmers' livelihoods and the environment, while the poppy fields and coca plants spring up elsewhere, with producers adapting to meet the demand. Growing other crops is futile if the demand for drugs remains.

‘Our limited resources are directed towards this futile "war" while public health, which is clearly the first principle of drug control, remains an impoverished baby brother.’

He went on to call on

‘police leaders throughout the world to challenge the status quo and focus resources on serious, organised criminals, not blighted users, and to focus on harm reduction not some pie-in-the-sky dream of a drug-free society. Where they lead, politicians will follow.’

In the same edition of The Observer there was a leader article calling for ‘a new drugs policy’ and arguing for an honest evaluation of the current drugs laws.

‘The entire framework of the debate must change. In Britain, we operate with laws that start from the premise that drug use is inherently morally wrong, and then seek ways to stop it. Instead we must start by evaluating the harm that drug use does, and then look for the best ways to alleviate it; and we must have the courage to follow that logic wherever it leads.’

This has been Transform’s position from the start. Now is the time to assess the impacts of the current policy and look to a future where drug use is not a moral issue but a public health issue where drugs are controlled and regulated by governments not gangsters.

Baltimore police call for an end to the drug war

This is a short clip from MSNBC news, featuring interviews with the authors of a recent Washington Post article 'It's time to legalise drugs'; Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the author of "Cop in the Hood", and Neill Franklin, a 32-year law enforcement veteran. Both served as Baltimore City police officers (home of 'The Wire') and are members of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.




from the Washington Post piece:

"Only after years of witnessing the ineffectiveness of drug policies -- and the disproportionate impact the drug war has on young black men -- have we and other police officers begun to question the system.

Cities and states license beer and tobacco sellers to control where, when and to whom drugs are sold. Ending Prohibition saved lives because it took gangsters out of the game. Regulated alcohol doesn't work perfectly, but it works well enough. Prescription drugs are regulated, and while there is a huge problem with abuse, at least a system of distribution involving doctors and pharmacists works without violence and high-volume incarceration. Regulating drugs would work similarly: not a cure-all, but a vast improvement on the status quo.

Legalization would not create a drug free-for-all. In fact, regulation reins in the mess we already have. If prohibition decreased drug use and drug arrests acted as a deterrent, America would not lead the world in illegal drug use and incarceration for drug crimes.

Drug manufacturing and distribution is too dangerous to remain in the hands of unregulated criminals. Drug distribution needs to be the combined responsibility of doctors, the government, and a legal and regulated free market. This simple step would quickly eliminate the greatest threat of violence: street-corner drug dealing.

We simply urge the federal government to retreat. Let cities and states (and, while we're at it, other countries) decide their own drug policies. Many would continue prohibition, but some would try something new. California and its medical marijuana dispensaries provide a good working example, warts and all, that legalized drug distribution does not cause the sky to fall.

Having fought the war on drugs, we know that ending the drug war is the right thing to do -- for all of us, especially taxpayers. While the financial benefits of drug legalization are not our main concern, they are substantial. In a July referendum, Oakland, Calif., voted to tax drug sales by a 4-to-1 margin. Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron estimates that ending the drug war would save $44 billion annually, with taxes bringing in an additional $33 billion.

Without the drug war, America's most decimated neighborhoods would have a chance to recover. Working people could sit on stoops, misguided youths wouldn't look up to criminals as role models, our overflowing prisons could hold real criminals, and -- most important to us -- more police officers wouldn't have to die."

Prohibition doesn't work, so lets have more prohibition!

Kathy Gyngell, author of a new Centre for Policy Studies report - 'The phoney war on drugs', is wrong to say we are losing the ‘war on drugs’; it is a rhetorical war that could never be won. And in (somewhat reluctant) defence of the UK Government, they have been distancing themselves from the terminology 'war on drugs' for some years, even the US is now moving away from the term. On that basis it is a somewhat strange rhetorical point to take issue with.

In some respects her critique, at least, is correct - current policy has indeed been an expensive failure (see Transform's cost-benefit analysis). The problem with Kathy's analysis is that whilst much of the problems are identified correctly, she misunderstands the causes and so her proposed solutions inevitably miss the mark - just as the 2007 Centre for Social justice Breakdown Britain report did (which Kathy co-authored, and of which her pamphlet is essentially a slimmed down polemic retread)

Drug misuse is largely a reflection of broader socio-economic and cultural trends and has little to do with drug policy, either public health or enforcement. High levels of misuse are most closely correlated with high levels of inequality and low levels of wellbeing and have nothing to do with how liberal a countries regime is.

Kathy claims, ‘The UK has one of the most liberal drug policies in Europe. Both Sweden and the Netherlands (despite popular misconceptions) have a more rigorous approach.’

This comparison is disingenuous. Kathy argues that Sweden’s low levels of use result from high enforcement spending, yet next door Norway has a far more liberal regime, and similar levels of use. Greece has one fiftieth of the enforcement spend and the lowest level of drug use in Europe. Oddly, entwined with the condemnation of of the UK's (now reversed) 'declassification' (sic) of cannabis she also cites the Netherlands as an example of the way forward despite it offering a legally regulated supply of heroin for addicts, supervised injecting rooms, and de-facto legal supply of cannabis (yet still having lower levels of cannabis use than neighbouring countries, including the UK). Internationally - as Transform have pointed out to Kathy (see comments here for example)- there is no correlation between intensity of enforcement and levels of use, as a major WHO study made clear in its headline conclusion last year.

'Globally, drug use is not distributed evenly and is not simply related to drug policy, since countries with stringent user-level illegal drug policies did not have lower levels of use than countries with liberal ones.'

For every cherry-picked example of success another confounding example could be found. It is particularly striking that the US - the spiritual home of the drug war which spends a monumental $40 billion on enforcement yet is arguably the country with the worst drug problem in the developed world - is not mentioned in her report.

She also says, ‘The election of the Labour Government in 1997 marked a new direction for drug policy. It developed a “harm reduction” strategy which aimed to reduce the cost of problem drug use… This harm-reduction approach has failed. It has entrapped 147,000 people in state-sponsored addiction. Despite the £10 billion spent on the War on Drugs, the numbers emerging from government treatment programmes are at the same level as if there had been no treatment programme at all.’

Ignoring the fact that the harm reduction approach was pioneered by the Tories as a response the HIV epidemic, of course there are massive problems with the NTA and treatment system - the crime reduction agenda muscling out best practice in public health, an over-reliance on certain treatment modalities and so on, but to then conclude that 'harm reduction must be abandoned' is a dangerous case of throwing the baby out with the bath water. The almost evangelical commitment to abstinence based rehab - apparently at the exclusion of all else, and that being 'drug free' is the only measure of treatment/recovery success also feels ideologically rather than pragmatically driven. Unfortunately most health-led drug initiatives, be they prevention, treatment or education - only have fairly marginal impacts, even when they are done well (rare in the current political climate) - whilst supply side enforcement has decades of history of being actively counterproductive - worsening the problems it is designed to reduce.

In the long term if we want to reduce problematic drug use we will need to address its underlying social causes - poverty, inequality, and low levels of wellbeing. 'Prohibition doesn't work, so lets have more prohibition' is not a serious basis for moving forward, nor is replacing one form of politically skewed policy with another, (and reconsidering prohibition more widely and addressing inequality are not approaches that the Centre for Policy Studies is likely to get to excited about - regardless of evidence).

A principle error made by by advocates of prohibition is a failure to distinguish the harms caused by drug use from those caused or exacerbated by our attempts to stamp out their use. These policy harms, lets call them prohibition harms, include the creation of a vast global market controlled by criminal profiteers, the distortion of public health priorities, the diversion of resources away public health and investment in social capital into futile and counterproductive enforcement, and the maximisation of the health harms associated with drug use. The causes of the problems we face are rather more complicated than too much methadone and harm reduction, and not enough rehab, prevention, and enforcement.

US drug debate continues apace: Four letters in the Wall Street Journal

More evidence that the US drug policy debate has moving decisively towards both mainstream and the pro-reform agenda came from the recent engagement of the Wall Street Journal, that ran pro-legalisation piece (mostly focusing on cannabis) by Yale Law professor Steven Duke, and an anti-legalisation piece by former US drug Tsar John Walters. Reading the comments sections (compare and contrast) gives an indication of where the public debate is now up to in the States, reflected in the selection of four letters published today, copied below:

Thank you for presenting the prohibitionist view offered by John P. Walters, a man of significant experience and stature ("Drugs: To Legalize or Not," Weekend Journal, April 25). If the defense of the indefensible had been presented by an individual of lesser accomplishments you could be justifiably accused of bias in favor of the opposing argument presented by Steven B. Duke. To my knowledge no other national newspaper has undertaken this third-rail issue.

Mr. Duke's reference to the undeniably successful eight-year-old Portuguese experiment would be immediately comprehensible to my 12-year-old granddaughter, though perhaps not to her five-year-old sister or to those Americans who steadfastly cling to the notion of the perfectibility of human nature.

As Mr. Walters points out, repealing prohibition didn't end crime, but it removed the glamour and money from bootlegging. The real victims of repeal were among the small criminal element of police, politicians and judges. What has reduced the drug, alcohol and tobacco-abusing segments to today's levels is not, as Mr. Walters would have us believe, an expensive war on drugs, but widespread and successful education efforts by health professionals and governments.

Twenty-first century repeal would cut the ground out from under the wealthy and corrupting Latin American drug syndicates, as well as the Taliban and other beneficiaries of our current drug policy. We could call a halt to the incarceration of minority drug users now subject to discriminatory drug prosecutions, close half our prisons, and divert precious resources now wasted on our war on drugs to constructive uses.

Jon Somer, Oldwick, N.J.

*********

Over many decades, my drug of choice has been alcohol, unlike Mr. Walters, the former drug czar, who seems to be fatally addicted to the drug of power, an addiction that leads to the fatal delusion that we can win a century-long battle that began with the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914. My only direct contact with the drug war was a half-century ago, when I found myself for almost a year on a federal grand jury whose main function was to indict dozens of street-level marijuana dealers.

But over many decades I have watched, incredulous, as the drug war helped expand drug usage at ever cheaper prices, all the while funneling generations of blacks and other minorities into the civilized world's largest prison system. Nobel laureate Milton Friedman contributed to our understanding with several Wall Street Journal op-ed pieces, one in 1972, when we were deluged by heroin imports from Marseille, and another in 1989, when the problem was cocaine imports from Colombia. In his 1989 article, an open letter to drug czar Bill Bennett, Mr. Walters' predecessor, Friedman wrote: "The very measures you favor are a major source of the evils you deplore. Of course the problem is demand, but it is demand that must operate through repressed and illegal channels.

Illegality creates obscene profits that finance the murderous tactics of the drug lords; illegality leads to the corruption of law-enforcement officials; illegality monopolizes the efforts of honest law forces to that they are starved for resources to fight the simpler crimes of robbery, theft and assault."

William M. Burke

San Francisco

*********

I resent the myth fostered by the pro-legalization organizations that minimize the dangers of marijuana. Not only is it addictive, but it is also harmful with serious long-term effects. It is a gateway drug all too often as well. Mankind is cursed with many ills, but giving up on the cures by pretending there is no evil is superficial, cowardly and immoral.

Lorrin Peterson

Kerrville, Texas

*********

Mr. Duke's column on the necessity of legalizing drugs is spot-on, outside of its glaring omission of the primary reason for legalizing drugs: Human beings have a natural right as rational animals to ingest anything they wish. All of us who do or did drugs (as I did as a youth) know that you can acquire any drug any time, usually within minutes or hours of the desire. The only thing that ever changes is price, which, like all commodities, depends upon availability and demand. Each and every American knows somebody in his or her circle f friends who sells at least small amounts of drugs, whether they know it or not.

Let's bring it above ground to the light of day and stop burying police officers and others below ground in a futile attempt at regulating human behavior. I commend the Journal for having the courage to bring this subject up in a major, public way. Now, let's start talking rationally.

David Elmore

Roswell, Ga.

*********

New York City Bar Association: 'A Wiser Course; Ending Drug Prohibition'

From a statement issued this week by the New York Bar Association

Introduction

In 1994, the New York City Bar Association’s Committee on Drugs and the Law concluded that the societal costs of drug prohibition are too high to justify it as a policy and called for a national dialogue on alternatives. Fifteen years later, that dialogue has not occurred, we are no closer to a drug-free society, and the problems associated with the illegal drug trade are worse than ever.

The starting point for a critical inquiry into U.S. drug control policy is the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. The legal profession, in partnership with medical professionals and other stakeholders, should study the CSA and propose improvements to it where necessary.

A Call for Dialogue Fifteen Years Ago

On June 10, 1994, the Committee on Drugs and the Law (the “Committee”) of the New York City Bar Association released a report (the “Report”) entitled “A Wiser Course: Ending Drug Prohibition.”

It is available at http://www.nycbar.org/pdf/report/94087WiserCourse.pdf

The Report argued in detail, inter alia, that drug prohibition strains the judicial system with no apparent diminution in drug trade or drug use, fills prisons at great expense to the taxpayers, disproportionately punishes racial minorities, corrupts police and erodes constitutional rights, subsidizes organized crime, drafts poor children into the drug trade, causes violence by engendering competition over the lucrative illegal drug market, fails to decrease demand for drugs, facilitates the spread of disease and impairs the health of drug users, and diverts resources from prevention and treatment to law enforcement.

In short, the Report argued that U.S. drug control policy is the cause of, rather than the solution for, many social problems associated with drugs, and it identified several alternatives to prohibition proposed by members of the federal judiciary (including repeal of all federal laws banning drug sales and possession in favor of state-level drug control, a policy of reduced arrests, and sale of drugs through state stores) without advocating any specific policy. (The Report also stated that any post-Prohibition regime should leave state and local governments able to apply penal sanctions when drug use results in harm to others, e.g. causing injury while using a motor vehicle under the influence of drugs and to address quality of life issues related to drugs. Report at 81-82.)

The 1994 Report closed with the Committee’s recommendation for “a public dialog regarding new approaches to drug policy, including legalization and regulation.” (Report at 83). Since the Report was issued, there has been a dramatic increase in the influence of drug policy reform advocacy organizations working around the United States on issues such as needle exchange, repeal of mandatory minimums, re-entry of drug law offenders into society, substance abuse treatment, and access to marijuana for medical purposes, but there has been no engaged, systematic evaluation of the rationale of United States drug control policy outside the reform community.

Today the Committee makes a renewed call for a serious discussion of U.S. drug policy through a focus on the medical paradigm and the Controlled Substances Act."

Event announcement:

On April 29th, the Committee is presenting a forum titled "Pleasure, Pain, Physicians and Police: The Law of Controlled Substances and the Practice of Medicine." Experts in law, medicine and history will discuss the CSA and its relationship to science, medical practice and the Commerce Clause.

Speakers:

• Marcus Reidenberg, MD, FACP, Professor of Pharmacology, Medicine, and Public Health, Head, Division of Clinical Pharmacology, Weill Cornell Medical College;
• Joseph Spillane, PhD, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of History, University of Florida;
• Buford Terrell, JD, LLM, Professor of Law (ret.), South Texas College of Law.

When: Wednesday, April 29, 2009, 6:30 p.m.
Where: New York City Bar, 42 West 44th St., New York NY 10036

About the Association

The New York City Bar Association (www.nycbar.org), since its founding in 1870, has been dedicated to maintaining the high ethical standards of the profession, promoting reform of the law and providing service to the profession and the public. The Association continues to work for political, legal and social reform while implementing innovative means to help the disadvantaged. Protecting the public's welfare remains one of the Association's highest priorities.




See also:

King County Bar Association Drug Policy Project and the report: Effective Drug Control:Toward A New Legal Framework' (2005)

Transform publishes comparative cost-effectiveness study of prohibition / regulation

Transform's latest report is published today:

A Comparison of the Cost-effectiveness of the Prohibition and Regulation of Drugs

media coverage listing below

Summary

‘The benefits of… [legalisation/regulation] – such as taxation, quality control and a reduction in the pressures on the criminal justice system – are far outweighed by the costs and for this reason, it is one that this Government will not pursue either domestically or internationally.”

Home Office Briefing, 2008

• Despite the billions spent each year on proactive and reactive drug law enforcement, the punitive prohibitionist approach has consistently delivered the opposite of its stated goals. The Government’s own data clearly demonstrates drug supply and availability increasing; use of drugs that cause the most harm increasing; health harms increasing; massive levels of crime created at all scales leading to a crisis in the criminal justice system; and illicit drug profits enriching criminals, fuelling conflict and destabilising producer and transit countries from Mexico to Afghanistan. This is an expensive policy that, in the words of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, has also created a raft of negative ‘unintended consequences’.
  
  
• The UK Government specifically claims the benefits of any move away from prohibition towards legal regulation of drug markets would be outweighed by the costs. No such cost-benefit analysis, or even a proper Impact Assessment of existing enforcement policy and legislation has ever been carried out here or anywhere else in the world. Yet there are clear Government guidelines that an Impact Assessment should be triggered by amongst other things, a policy going out to public consultation or when ‘unintended consequences’ are identified, both of which have happened with drug policy in recent years.
  
  
• Alternative approaches - involving established regulatory models of controlling drug production, supply and use - have not been considered or costed. The limited cost effectiveness analysis of current policy that has been undertaken has frequently been suppressed. In terms of scrutinizing major public policy and spending initiatives, current drug policy is unique in this regard.
  
  
• The generalisations being used to defend continuation of an expensive and systematically failing policy of drugs prohibition, and close down a mature and rational exploration of alternative approaches, are demonstrably based on un-evidenced assumptions.
  
  
• This paper is an attempt to begin to redress these failings by comparing the costs and benefits of the current policy of drug prohibition, with those of a proposed model for the legal regulation of drugs in the UK. We also identify areas of further research, and steps to ensure future drugs policy is genuinely based on evidence of what works.
  
  
• This initial analysis demonstrates that a move to legally regulated drug supply would deliver substantial benefits to the Treasury and wider community, even in the highly unlikely event of a substantial increase in use.

Media Coverage:

BBC radio 4: The Today Programme:

• Home affairs correspondent Mark Easton Could we save money by legalising drugs? ( 0.53-0.57)
• Transform's Steve Rolles Drug policy "not cost-effective"

BBC Mark Easton's Blog: Could we save billions by legalising drugs?

BBC R4 'More or Less': the price of prohibition (podcast or listen again)

Guardian news: Legalisation of drugs could save UK £14bn, says study

Guardian Comment piece by Danny Kushlick: Immunised from scrutiny

Telegraph: Illegal drugs cost the country £16bn a year, says charity Transform

Financial Times: Call to review drugs legalisation

Mirror: Legalise drugs to halve crime

Metro: Halve drug deaths by making heroin and cocaine legal (Plus the Metro Poll)

The London Paper: legalising heroin and cocaine could halve drug deaths report says

The Herald: Call for heroin and cocaine to be legalised in bid to halve deaths

ePolitix: Legalising heroin and cocaine could save £10 bn

BMJ medical ethics blog: Drug Policy Transformed

The Register: Legalising drugs would save UK plc a packet. Common sense doomed by Guardian/Daily mail axis

New Statesman: Limping Along on the Left

Politics.co.uk: the cost of drug wars: £16 billion

Hungarian news portal:no translation available


not all the print coverage was positive / straight reportage:

South Wales Evening Post: legalising drugs would lead to chaos

Daily Mail: Peter Hitchens: Eliot Ness couldn't stop booze, but he would win today's war on drugs ("Another parcel of garbage from the pro-drug lobby")


Other broadcast interviews included :

Radio:

• BBC Five Live drive-time
  
• BBC radio Wales
  
• BBC radio London
• Talk Sport radio
  
• LBC radio
  
• Liverpool city talk radio
• SFM (South Africa national radio station)
  

TV

• South Africa Broadcasting corporation TV news
  
• BBC news channel
  
• Channel five - The Wright Stuff (discussion of report not featuring Transform staff)