Suspiciously inflated drug seizure 'street value' estimates (again)

The BBC reports today, in a news piece titled 'Two tonnes of cocaine seized in The Gambia' , that:

 
 'At least two tonnes of cocaine with a street value estimated at $1bn has been seized in The Gambia, bound for Europe.'

Similar reports have run in number of other outlets including AFP (Billion Dollar cocaine seizure in Gambia), Reuters , the Daily Mail, and numerous others. There is a  discrepancy in the reporting in the quantity seized,  which varies from 2 to 2.5 tonnes, but all report the 1 billion dollar street value estimate, with the exception of PA that does not mention any street value figure, and also puts the size of the seizure at 2100 kg.

It is not clear from the piece who made this estimate of street value - whether it was the Gambian authorities, the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency (who were involved in the operation), although the AFP report suggests the latter.

Either way it immediately rang alarm bells; the number not only seems conveniently rounded - one of those dramatic sounding media-friendly numbers that we see so often in drug stories (see here and here for example) - but also it was suspiciously big. 

A couple of quick sums. Two tonnes of cocaine amounts to 2 million grams. To get a street value of $1 billion dollars would mean that each pure gram was selling for $500, or £344 at current exchange rates. That seems somewhat  high - given that UK 2009 cocaine prices are nearer £40 a gram, which would give a total street value of £80 million or $116 million.

But this would not account for the fact that the street drug is heavily cut. If we factor in lower end average purity levels of 25% (itself a SOCA stat) this would give you a figure $464million.

Even if we go with the higher 2.5 tonne figure (the 2.1 seems more likely, but anyway)- this would still take the street value to $580million - which remains some distance from 1 billion. Having exhausted all the available tricks: street value (at least x 10), purity (x4), convert to US dollars - even though its for sale in Europe (x 1.2), I'm still struggling to see how they could push the figure up to a juicy billion. Maybe the fact most 'grams' sold are a little under could nudge it up by 50 million or so, but the only way I can see they could have managed it is to base calculations on  a cherry picked example of fantastically expensive/rubbish cocaine from somewhere in Europe. Who knows? (but we are interested to hear btw, should those concerned care to illuminate us).

These sorts of (all too familiar) boastful statistical shenanigans can be seen to reflect the wider malaise in drug interdiction. In the face of their futile battle against an undefeatable enemy, there is a desperate need for enforcement agencies to demonstrate success, especially when the spending axe is hovering. Even if the street values are shown to be completely correct - there is still the relentless trumpeting of seizures to consider in the light of the rarely mentioned but relentless increases in availability and use that accompany them.

Whilst demand for cocaine remains, and cocaine remains prohibited, organised crime will always find away to exploit the lucrative opportunity that this creates. They are an endlessly flexible, innovative and ruthless enemy. Localised 'success' will only ever shift transit routes elsewhere - as the shift from Caribbean to West African transhipment routes demonstrates. These seizures are Pyrrhic victories; the enforcers are inadvertently part the problem they are simultaneously trying to stamp out.

There is a way to put the criminal drug traffickers out of business for good, but the key players in international drug control don't want to talk about it.

Home Office designates drug posession as 'victimless' crime

It is interesting that the Home Office Statistical Bulletin 'Crime in England and Wales
2008/09, Volume 1: Findings from the British Crime Survey and police recorded crime' published this week, notes (p.33):

"The BCS excludes.... those crimes termed as victimless (e.g. possession of drugs)"

'Victimless' is an interesting phrase, not one used in jurisprudence, that is essentially political - tending to be flagged up as part of moves towards criminal penalties being removed (it rather reminded me of the old 'no victim, no crime' cannabis campaign stickers). Its inclusion here perhaps reflects the wider trend towards acknowledging personal drug use is not rightly the subject of criminal sanction even if it is the subject of social or state disapproval in one form or other. This is more than a purely intellectual trend as actual or de-facto decriminalisation of personal possession and use of drugs taking place in much of Europe and around the world.

Where this leads intellectually is also an interesting question; if possession and consenting adult use is not criminal, what are the implications for commercial drug transactions between consenting adults, that also have no obvious victim? The statistical crime bulletin could very soon be largely just blank pages.

New US cannabis stats undermine drug czar's claims of enforcement success

“When we push back against the drug problem, it gets smaller” John Walters, White House Drug Czar has claimed. Unfortunately for Walter's the latest cannabis stats from the US don't support his rather sweeping drug war hypothesis.

A couple of weeks back federal officials released the 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, conveniently perhaps on the same day as the climax of the republican convention and as a hurricane was battering the hell out of the Deep South, and media attention was elsewhere. The report, for those who did chance upon it, undermines Walters’ claims of success in reducing cannabis use during his tenure, which he likes attribute to his aggressive policies.

The total number of Americans (aged 12 and up) who have used illicit drugs is up from 108 million in 2002, the first full year of Walters’ tenure, to 114 million in 2007. And the number of Americans who’ve used cannabis has passed the 100 million mark for the first time — up from 95 million in 2002.

Its a confusing picture in some ways. In 2002, 46.0 percent of Americans had used an illicit drug at some point in their lives. In 2007 it was 46.1 percent. For cannabis, the rate went from 40.4 percent to 40.6 percent. Whilst only a marginal increase and probably within the limits of sampling error, it certainly does not signal the much heralded fall. Of course it depends on how you measure prevalence and only fair to point out that “current” (past 30 days) use of illicit drugs is down marginally since 2002 – from 8.3 percent to 8.0 percent for all illicit drugs, and the trend for cannabis is similar (although it also depends on the demographic breakdown, with a trend towards falling use for 12 to 17 year olds, more than matched by a perhaps suprising rise in over 50's) . However, on another, arguably even more significant measure, and despite all of Walters’ huffing and puffing, the number of Americans using cannabis for the first time has not budged during his tenure.

So how much harder have they pushed to achieve this apparent non-success on prevalence rates? This week the FBI published its annual report on Crime in the United States 2007. This reveals that,s once again, the number of people in the United States arrested for cannabis has gone up. A staggering 872,721 Americans were arrested for cannabis in 2007, and of those arrests, 89% or 775,138 were arrests for simple possession - not buying, selling, trafficking, or manufacture (growing).

This represents an increase in cannabis arrests of 5.2% from the previous year and the fifth straight year cannabis arrests have increased from the previous year. Now a cannabis user is arrested at the rate of 1 every 37 seconds and almost 100 cannabis arrests per hour. That is some fairly serious pushing one would think - yet the stats suggest the enforcement effort (and the huge financial and human costs it incurs) is, at best, largely irrelevant, or at worst, actively counterproductive.

The ONDCP officials regularly argue that maintaining criminal penalties for cannabis possession is essential to stopping drug abuse. So what’s happened with a dangerous drug whose possession is legal: cigarettes? The 2007 National Survey conveniently provides figures for past-month cigarette use, and both the number of users and the rate of cigarette use is down markedly. In 2002, 26 percent of Americans were current cigarette smokers; now it’s 24.2 percent, continuing a decades-long decline. And the decline in current cigarette smoking for 12-to-17-year-olds is even more dramatic, from 13 percent to 9.8 percent.

That, of course, is with zero arrests for cigarette possession, compared with, what was it again, 775,138 marijuana possession arrests in 2007.

Maybe, as Transform argued in its recent submission to the DoH consultation on tobacco control, we should be learning the lessons from tobacco successes (effective legal regulation and public health education), rather than cannabis failures (mass criminalisation and unregulated illegal markets). As the UK prepares to 'push back' harder on cannabis possession with the imminent re-reclassification of cannabis and attendant increase in possession penalties from 2 to 5 years (following 7 years of steady decline in use when they actually pushed back a bit less) do not expect any comment on the US stats from the Home Office.

Thanks to NORML and MPP blogs

Loads of people taking drugs shock!

There are two main official UK drug use surveys each year, the British Crime Survey, and the Department of Health drug use school survey, now compiled together by the NHS Information Centre each year published today along with various other data from the DoH, the Home Office, Office for National Statistics, the Health Protection Agency and NTA. Notably (pay attention journalists) 'most of the data contained in the bulletin have been published previously', in fact the only unpublished figures are on drug-related admissions to hospital.

It is now a calendar fixture that each time these surveys are published the media will run 'loads of people taking drugs shock!' stories, demonstrating their goldfish-like ability to forget the 4 monthly repeated fact that, unbelievably, loads of people are in fact taking drugs. As regular as clockwork, this morning sees the Independent lead with one of its tabloid style front page headlines:

None of these facts are new or significantly different from last year, when loads of people were similarly taking drugs. The Home Office, with similar predictability will spin the prevalence figures as best they can, and try and show that drug use is actually falling, when it clearly isn't - especially when you look at the area that matters most - problematic use of heroin and cocaine which remains more or less stable at its historic Euro-league topping high.

The Sun front page has a similar theme:

As does the Daily Mail

If anything this tri-annual media ritual only serves to highlight, yet again, what stunningly poor value for money we are getting from our disastrous drug strategy and just how hollow all that political posturing about 'cracking down', 'getting tough', 'turning the corner' and 'zero tolerance' really is. But nothing it seems will prompt the Government to change course or give alternative approaches even fleeting consideration (even though many evidently think we should in private). Not the relentlessly bad news on drug use, misuse, drug related crime, or the spiralling catastrophes in Afghanistan or Colombia, nor the endless stream of authoritative high level reports spelling it all out in tedious detail. More of the same is all we are promised, with a bit of populist window dressing if you're lucky.

The DoH is quoted in the Independent parroting the usual line that:

"More people than ever before are getting into and staying in treatment, drug-related deaths are down and the level of drug-fuelled crime has fallen substantially."

Scratch beneath the surface and even these claims are either untrue or misleading. They dont measure drug related crime, drug deaths are not down, and even if treatment numbers are up no amount of throwing money at the problem or diddling the stats can hide the fact that treatment outcomes remain obstinately awful.

The Independent at least gives the Transform position a nod in its coverage :

Danny Kushlick, the head of policy at the drugs think-tank Transform, said the Government was burying its head in the sand by refusing to acknowledge that millions of people used drugs safely. "In order to maintain its position on prohibition, the Government has to show that all drug use is dangerous. Politicians find it very difficult to admit that 90 per cent of those who use drugs either have a boring or a fun time. Drug policy is overwhelmingly focused in a very skewed way on problem drug users. We should focus our attention more on managing use rather than mismanaging misuse.

"We need legal control and regulation of drug use. That is how we manage use of alcohol and we need the same for drugs."

UK Drug policy 1997-2007 - The evidence un-spun

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As part of Transform's response to the drug strategy consultation process we have produced a detailed briefing on the evidence of policy effectiveness over the last ten years, featuring, for each of the four key target areas, the Government's claims, followed by a Transform reality check and commentary. There is a great deal wrong with the drug strategy consultation:

• Its content (no policies - and certainly no policy options- are proposed to 'consult' on)
• Its format (not enough room to answer questions, no facility to make external submissions, limited questions etc).
  
• The process by which it is being undertaken (the public are being asked to comment on cannabis reclassification - a scientific harm evaluation that ACMD are resonsible for, responses are being 'collated' in non-transparent ways by a private company).
  

(Note: As well as preparing our own response, Transform have complained about the problems with the consultation to various relevant Government bodies. There is at least one effort underway to have the consultation subject to a Judicial Review. News of these efforts will be posted on the blog)

The consultation document is so bad that various civil servants we have spoken to over the past year had cause to warn us not to get our hopes up. It was suggested that 'Whatever your expectations - lower them'. And, unusually for a Home Office drugs publication, this one didn't dissapoint.

Of the document's many problems, one of the most obvious is the fact that it presents an absurdly positive view of the past ten years 'success', as viewed through the rose tinted spectacles of Home Office spin, cherry picking, and statistical sleight of hand. At the end of its forensic deconstruction of the Government claims the briefing concludes:

"It is imperative that the debate on the future of UK drug policy not be clouded by statistical misrepresentations and spin that dresses up failure as success. This is in no one's interest and will lead to the perpetuation of failure rather than meaningful engagement with evidence of what works and a rational and honest debate about the future direction of UK drug policy."

Prohibitionist rant trashed in the FT Economists' forum (with some help from Transform)

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It is gratifying to see that the absurd prohibitionist rant from Joseph Califano that appeared in last week's Financial Times ( 'Drug legalisation is playing Russian roulette' ) has been thoroughly trashed in the FT Economists' forum as part of the paper's ongoing high profile debate on drug legalisation and regulation.

The Califano piece followed two pro-reform op-eds that had appeared earlier, all three of which are covered in last weeks blog , including a point by point critique of Califano's statistical and analytical crimes against reality. It is of course appropriate that the FT allows the different points of view in this debate to be aired, but equally correct that statements made by either side are held up to critical scrutiny. This is precisely what the Economists' forum (for the 'world's top economists') -and indeed the FT's public forums- are for, and is one of the joys of the internet.

I was pleased to see that a comment from myself was included in the Economists' forum. I make no claim to be one of 'the world's top economists', my economics A-level doesn't really qualify me, even with a grade A, FROM BACK WHEN IT MEANT SOMETHING! I do, however, have some knowledge of drug policy, and the forum occassionally accepts guest comments 'on merit' or by invitation. My first comment concerned misunderstandings about the term 'legalisation' but, mercifcully I thought, left the published Califano piece unscathed.

Subsequently, however, Califano posted his entire published FT op-ed (unedited) in the Economists' forum, rather than respond specifically to any of the posts that had been made previously, apparently misunderstanding the the 'discussion' part of 'discussion forum'. This prompted a robust response from Professor William Buiter, author of the pro-legalisation piece that had provoked Califano in the first place. Buiter notes, amongst other useful observations, that:

"I don’t really know how to respond to the long contribution by Joseph Califano, which is more of a rant than a logical and fact-based argument. The non-sequiturs in the way he jumps from the experience of localised liberalisation (in the Netherlands, Zurich and Italy), to the likely impact of global liberalisation are almost painful to behold. Righteous anger is no substitute for reason."

The FT's Martin Wolf then suggested I provide a forum response to Califano's post, specifically its dubious factual content. Since I had already blogged along these lines I posted an edited version of that critique, which was also published. Wolf then notes:

"I want to thank Steve Rolles, in particular, for destroying the factual basis of Joseph Califano's shocking intervention. It is depressing that this combination of hysteria, misrepresentation, intellectual confusion and mindless moralism continues to foist upon our countries a policy with such catastrophic consequences.

Like the Bourbons, Mr Califano has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. He seems totally incapable of distinguishing the consequences of drugs from the consequences of prohibiting them. Tragically, the attitudes he displays continue to sustain a policy that is destroying millions and millions of lives around the globe.

I am encouraged, however, by some of the other comments here, which suggest that people are relearning the good old principle that when in a hole one should first stop digging.

There's not really much to add to that except a general observation that giving hard core prohibitionists a platform seems, increasingly, a good thing, since they do such a splendid job of making themselves look stupid and undermining their own position - especially when exposed to rational debate and intelligent informed scrutiny. Thank you then, the Financial Times.

Drug testing company welcomes expansion of drug testing - shock

In an altogether unsurprising development the drug testing company Cozart, that produces the saliva drug testing equipment and kits used in the Home Office's flagship Drug Intervention Programme (DIP) , has welcomed the Government's drug strategy consultation, with a particular emphasis on the drug testing bit.

In a press release issued today Cozart claim that:

"Testing technology helps reduce drug-related crime by 20 percent"

"With the help of innovative drug testing technology from Cozart, the Home Office's national Drug Interventions Programme (DIP) is already enjoying unprecedented success."

"Police across Nottingham, West Midlands , Greater Manchester and South & West Yorkshire have adopted the technology across their entire forces. While drugs-related crime has fallen by up to a fifth in these areas since the introduction of the DIP, recent statistics from the latest British Crime Survey show an overall 10 percent rise in police-recorded drug offences nationwide."

Cozart rapiscan - detects 'drugs of abuse' (but only illegal ones) in spit

This is all very confusing. According to the British Crime Survey (which for all its faults is the best we have) there has indeed been a drop in property crime since the DIP were introduced.

However it needs to be pointed out that:


1. 'drug related crime' is not a recorded statistic.

There are crimes like possession and supply that are recorded, and there are crimes like shoplifting, robbery and burglary, many of which are committed to raise money to feed an illegal drug habit. However the the proportion of the latter that are 'drug related' is pure guess work and inference based on some drug testing on arrest studies. The methodology is riddled with holes and it's all very unreliable data to start with. We do not have a measure of drug related crime, and specifically do not have year on year data to make comparisons or show trends. In the unlikely event that you don't believe me, here are a few recent Parliamentary questions and ministerial answers:

Mr. Jeremy Browne : To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many incidents of robbery reported to the police in 2006 were classified as drug-related crime. [PQ No. 117790]

Mr. Coaker : Data on offences of robbery recorded by the police are available from the recorded crime statistics. However, it is not possible to determine those that are drug-related as no information is collected on the circumstances surrounding the offences.

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David Davis: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate he has made of the average annual illegal income of arrested (a) heroin and (b) crack users. [PQ No. 47717]

Mr. Charles Clarke: We do not have the information requested.

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Mike Penning: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what assessment his Department has made of the proportion of crime undertaken as a direct consequence of drug addiction; and if he will make a statement. [16701]

Paul Goggins: Crime statistics used for monitoring overall crime trends, such as recorded crime and the British Crime Survey, do not contain information about the drug habits of individual offenders or their motivation for offending. It is therefore not possible to provide firm estimates of the total amount of crime undertaken as a direct consequence of addiction.

2. Even if we did have a measure of 'drug related crime' there would be no way of relating the recent crime fall to DIPs

This link has been made again and again by the Home Office, on its website, in promotional literature and in almost every pronouncement made by drugs minister Vernon Coaker - all part of the increasingly desperate attempt to dress up the shocking failure of the 10 year strategy as success (discussed at length elswhere in the blog, here for example). Yet the obvious implication of the statement, that DIPs are responsible for the drop in crime is entirely un-evidenced. DIPs have been implemented in different ways, with different resources, in different areas. Can a statistically significant link be demonstrated between the degree of DIP roll out in a given area and the extent of the fall in crime? I don't know, and nor does the Home Office because that work has not been done. What about using areas that didn't have DIPs at all as a control to test the assertion? After all, if we are going to throw stats around, shouldn't we at least attempt to adhere to basic scientific good practice? But again, the work simply hasn't been done, or if it has, it has produced politically unpalatable conclusions and has been suppressed.

It is likely that DIPs have had some effect on crime levels, but at present this is entirely unquantified and could account for anywhere between 'none' and 'all' of the 20% fall. Yet in the absence of any actual research to back up or refute the Home Office's claim they continue to very publicly (and I would suggest shamelessly) take credit for the crime fall, without having the faintest idea if it is deserved or not.

An alternative theory is that due to the spectacular failure of the billions squandered on Government attempts to stifle the availability of heroin and cocaine -which are now more available and much cheaper, around 20% cheaper, than they were in 2003 - dependent users have to steal less. About 20% less. So maybe, in fact, the 20% crime fall is due to the failure of the Government's supply interventions and not the success of DIPs. This seems like a plausible theory to me, but unlike the Home Office, I hold my hands up and say that it is just a theory and I don't have any evidence to back it up. I also don't have an army of civil servants and researchers at my disposal who could easily gather that evidence.

Meanwhile the drug testing companies who are, I believe the technical term is 'absolutely minting it', from the DIP roll out are more than happy to parrot Home Office propaganda and welcome the consultation, safe in the knowledge that the next strategy has already been largely determined and will most certainly involve lots and lots of drug testing. Calls for less testing will be ignored and evidence of its effectiveness will be found, whether it exists or not.

Kerching!

New Transform guide to illegal drug price data

As part of the ongoing development of the Transform Fact Research Guide, we have added a new section on drug prices in the UK. Here you will find the most recent drug price data from the main independent and official sources, along with some commentary and analysis.

The Fact Research Guide also contains headline data, links to key data sources, commentary and analysis on the following subjects:

• Size of the drug market
• Drug seizures
• Enforcement expenditure
• Drug usage levels
• Social and economic costs of drug use in the UK
• Drug related deaths
• Public opinion on drugs and drug policy
• Drugs offenders, drugs related offending and the prison population

The White House and Cocaine

In 2005 the White House Drugs Czar, John Walters, claimed success in the ‘War on Drugs’, on the basis that cocaine prices were increasing and quality falling - clear indicators of a reduction in supply. A reduction in supply can be caused by a number of factors, but the Drugs Czar claimed it as an enforcement success, perhaps foolishly in retrospect, given that any change in fortune might correspondingly be held up as a failure.

As Transform point out in their soon to be published handbook “After the War on drugs, Tools for the Debate”:

‘never let anyone claim that supply side enforcement is effective without a very robust challenge – the evidence against this assertion is clear, overwhelming and acknowledged by all credible sources, official and independent’.

Apparent short-term successes often mask longer-term trends. They can also be due to (non-policy related) external factors, changes in statistical collection or methodology, and sometimes a marginal change can be within statistical error parameters. This sort of cherry picking can be countered by bringing the focus back to the bigger picture statistics on the failure of the policy nationally and internationally (be careful to make sure the blame is on the policy makers, not those who are implementing policy– the police do their job as best they can, it just happens to be an impossible one). Also remind policy makers that it is the policy of prohibition that created the crime and illegal markets in the first place’.

In a recent report, The Washington Office of Latin America demonstrates that the ‘gains’ of 2005 were short-lived. They say “preliminary U.S. government data, quietly disclosed by ONDCP, indicate that cocaine’s price per pure gram on U.S. streets fell in 2006, while its purity increased”. They also note that this is the continuation of a 25-year trend:

This graph, starkly revealing the true and shocking failure of cocaine interdiction over the past three decades, will seem eerily familiar to beady-eyed drug policy nerds in the UK. The exact same graph appeared in the report commissioned by Tony Blair in 2003 from the No10 Strategy Unit:

Not that UK policy makers will broadcast the fact or publicly admit that international supply side drug enforcement has been an abject and total failure. Indeed the Strategy Unit report, repleat with inconvenient truths, remained resolutely unpublished until partially released under FOI pressure in 2005 and then leaked in full to the Guardian the following day.

You would also be hard pushed to appreciate the scale of the failure from the laughably misleading cherry-picked propaganda that the Home Office publishes under its list of drug strategy 'successes' on drug supply and availability (in which the above graph most certainly does not appear). It’s all somewhat at odds with the Prime Minister's 2003 report that concluded unambiguously that

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

As we approach a key juncture in UK drug policy with the new drug strategy being formulated, this sort of spin and misleading data does no one in domestic or international policy making any favours. Running away from the truth because it is politically risky will only lead to the further entrenchment of failed and counterproductive policy, and a supply side drug strategy as expensive and disastrous as all the previous ones.

How to spin drug prevalence data: a beginners guide

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Today sees the release of the annual drug use statistics bonanza that is the excitingly titled 'Statistics on drug misuse: England 2007'. For drug policy nerds the report is a treasure trove of information containing a detailed breakdown of prevalence data by age group, region, drug, and a range of other criteria. There is a veritable avalanche of data. This is both good: we need to know this detail because making policy is a complicated business that has to respond in different ways to different populations and patterns of use, and bad: because, if you were, just hypothetically, a politician or civil servant wanting to portray your drug policy in a positive light – you can easily hunt down and cherry pick some data to support your given position. The flip side of course is that if you were an opposition politician, newspaper journalist or crazed blogger wanting to paint a different picture, a less flattering one perhaps, it would be equally easy.

Here’s how it’s done. But lest we forget the backdrop to it all:

Policy maker's bizarre obsession with prevalence measures:
UK signs up to the UN-DPC's 1998 pledge for drug free world by 2008

Reductions in prevalence of drug use are the holy grail of UK drug policy with its rather strange ideological commitment to creating a 'drug free world'. Transform have argued that prevalence is only one of number of indicators for measuring drug policy success, and not an especially useful one at that (problematic use is evidently more useful for starters). But that is another issue, and since the Government have chosen prevalence as one of the key measures for judging the success of drug policy lets have a look. Regards targets the bar has been moved a number of occasions during the lifetime of the 10 year strategy drug strategy. At its launch in 98 the targets were to 'reduce the proportion of people under the age of 25 reporting the use of Class A drugs by 25% by March 2005, and to reduce the proportion of people under the age of 25 reporting the use of Class A drugs by 50% March 2008'. For the 2002 revised strategy these very specific numerical targets had been replaced with the more vague aspirations to 'Reduce the use of Class A drugs and the frequent use of any illicit drug among all young people under the age of 25, especially by the most vulnerable young people'.

Checking in on the Home Office drugs website facts page we see a range of the latest claims for success on various prevalence measures. Aside from the somewhat underwhelming headline:

Class A drug-use among young people is stable, with some significant reductions

There are a number of more specific claims:

• the proportion reporting that they have ever taken any drug has fallen by 16%;
  
  
• the proportion reporting that they have ever taken Class A drugs has fallen by 18%;
  
  
• the proportion reporting the use of any drug in the past year has fallen by 21%;
  
  
• the proportion reporting the use of class A drugs in the past year is stable; and
  
  
• the proportion reporting the use of cannabis in the past year has fallen by 24%

It’s a bit confusing as it’s not immediately clear from the page what 'the proportion' is of, or since when these changes have occurred. Luckily I have in front of me the January Drug Strategy update leaflet containing the same claims, which it turns out relate to changes amongst 16-24 year olds since 1998 as reported in the British Crime Survey. There are two further claims of success, based on data from the Department of Health surveys of 11-15 year olds:

• Use of any drug had decreased: 19% of pupils had taken drugs in 2005, compared to 21% in 2003.
  
  
• Cannabis use had decreased: 12% of pupils had used cannabis in 2005, down from 13% in 2003, 2002 and 2001.

WOW: Impressive. With the exception of class A drug use (the drugs that cause the most harm, you remember; the ones the drug strategy set specific targets to reduce by 50% by next March) which has 'remained stable' (at the highest level in history and the highest amongst any European country), the drug strategy seems to be really delivering.

But let’s delve deep into the bowels of today's report, beyond the rose tinted exec summary and see what we can learn. One of the things you soon spot is that prevalence stats change depending on how you measure them, which populations you look at and also whether you are looking at use in the month, last year, or 'ever used'. You can also present percentages in different ways with quite startlingly different effects.

So from the top of the Home Office prevalence achievements list. From the report we learn that reported life time use of any drug amongst 16-24 year olds has fallen from 53.7 in 1998 to 45.1 in 2005/6. So that 16% fall is actually just over 8%, but it is 16% of the original 53.7 total. Clever.

Similarly, next on down the bullet list, that '18%' fall in reported lifetime use of class A's describes a fall from 20.5 to 16.9 . So that's actually a fall 3.6% (which is 18% of 20.5).

Simlarly, next, the 21% drop in reporting any drug used in past year, turns out to be a drop of 6.4% (31.8 to 25.2). And the 24% drop in last year cannabis use, actually 4.8% (26.2 to 21.4).

Lets be clear: they are not technically lying here, but I feel it's a bit sneaky in that it makes the reported falls in reported drug use (which the Home Office is welcome to celebrate) rather more dramatic sounding than they really are. When i was discussing this with a home affairs journalistrecently he laughed about 'the old percentages of percentages trick'. It rather reminds me of the time last March when the Times, under the ridiculously overdramatic front page headline 'Cocaine Floods the Playground' deployed the same trick to the extreme (but in the opposite direction) when they reported that "Use of the addictive drug by children doubles in a year". It turned out that this doubling – in Home Office statistics: 100% increase in cocaine use - was actually a rise from 1% to 2%. When examined a bit more closely, looking at the non rounded up data revealed the rise was actually from 1.4% to 1.9%. So with a quick wave of the statistical wand the 100% rise becomes a 0.5% rise (which could have been down to sampling error anyway). This particular statistical travesty was covered by Ben Goldacre in the Guardian’s unfailingly excellent Bad Science column here (and now a year has passed and he’s picked up an award for that particular effort I think it’s fair to take my credit for drawing his attention to the story in the first place *takes bow*)

Moving on. If we were to look at some of the other charts in the new publication it would be very easy to show a far less positive picture. Consider for example the equivalent tables from the BCS that look at the broader adult population, from ages 16-59. These show that reported lifetime use of every drug has gone up since 1996 (with the exception of tranquilisers and steroids which fell, and heroin which remained the same - but as we note later the BCS is rubbish at measuring heroin use). This is demonstrated below with the addition (thankyou photoshop) of some colour coded arrows. Look: cocaine use has gone up by 130%!! (well 4.2% anyway).

Personally I think that 'lifetime use' is a particularly un-useful prevalence indicator (although, as we've seen, the Home Office seem happy to chuck it around when it suits them), but actually the 16-59 tables for last year and last month use demonstrate very similar patterns. But you might argue, reasonably, that young people were the primary concern. In that case, to be really alarmist, I might draw your attention to this table based on surveys of drug use of 11-15 year olds (p.43) that I challenge any Home Office wonk to spin into looking even remotely positive:

Nowhere on the Home Office prevalence achievements have I seen the fact that:

The proportion of 11 year olds reporting ever using drugs has risen by 1400% since the start of the drug strategy.

Even though the way they measure this apparently changed in 2001 (with unpspecified effects) its not exactly cause to crack out the champagne is it. Now, returning to the Home Office achievements list again. That stat about pupils reported use of any drug dropping from 21% in 2003 to 19% in 2005. This table would suggest it is true...but not quite the whole story:

If you run from 1998, like they did with all those other stats, the proportion of pupils who have used drugs in the last year has actually increased by 8%, or using the Home Office website percentages technique: 80%. What they have done is compare the 2005 figure to the highest recorded one in the set – blatant cherry picking and potentially very misleading.

The final Home Office stat about cannabis use amongst pupils falling. Well that, I am pleased to say appears to be both correct and properly reported (albeit rounded up/down). In fact in 2006 cannabis use fell again to nearer 10%. Bravo - thats a result (perhaps they should consider reducing penalties on some other drugs?).

So what can we learn from all this.

That drug stats generally are a minefield to be approached with extreme caution, especially when translated through the prism of political spin or lazy journalism. They aren’t that accurate at the best of times – the BCS is perfectly open in conceding it is an underestimate of true drug use because it is a household survey it misses key marginalised populations (where problematic use of heroin for exapmple, is often highest) including those with no fixed address, as well other groups including students living in halls of residence. Add to that the changing statistical methodologies, and the yawning holes in the data collection (illegal activity is generally hard to measure) and the picture, despite the reems of tables, is actually very threadbare.

Still, there is sufficient data that it isn’t too hard to find figures or trends that, with a bit of massaging, show drug use is going up or down, depending on how you want to spin it. Various people, most obviously the custodians of the drug strategy, obviously want to present policy outcomes in best possible light so their ‘best of’ highlights should be taken with a hefty pinch of salt. And to be fair, so should the opposition’s ‘worst of’ lowlights. Look for an independent academic review of the stats like this one, or read them yourself.

Patterns of drug use fluctuate up and down, apparently oblivious to the interventions of Government and enforcement agencies - it is increasingly clear that the key determinants of drug use and misuse (this new document fails to make this important distinction) are socio-economic and cultural ones.

Total Class A drug use appears stable because the fashions for ecstasy and LSD have moved on. But these according to most analyses are two of the least harmful Class A drugs - probably mis-classified by a couple of alphabetic increments. The two drugs the Government has repeatedly said it is most concerned about are heroin and cocaine, because they are responsible for the lion’s share of secondary crime harms – that £16 billion a year in crime costs the Home Office keep mentioning. This is where the real enforcement push has gone, but these are also the two drugs where policy has fared the worst: having risen steadily and dramatically in the case of cocaine, or in the case of heroin, risen up until 2001/2 and then stayed about the same since. There is no good way to spin this – a dramatic rise or stabilisation at a perilous and unprecedented high is NOT a policy success, especially when the key strategc goal of ten years ago – which literally billions of pounds has been thrown at - was a significant reduction. It really doesn’t matter how you dress it up. All the other ‘successes’, the marginal falls in ecstasy, amphetamine, LSD, cannabis use and so on, pale into insignificance next to this monumental disaster where it really matters.

The Lancet and drug harms: missing the bigger picture

The Lancet this week published the long awaited paper on drug classification: ‘Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse’ by David Nutt, Leslie A King, William Saulsbury, Colin Blakemore. Whilst the Lancet publishers will make you register to read it, those nice folks over at MAP have been good enough to put the complete text on their website for your reading pleasure.

This is the abstract:

Drug misuse and abuse are major health problems. Harmful drugs are regulated according to classification systems that purport to relate to the harms and risks of each drug. However, the methodology and processes underlying classification systems are generally neither specified nor transparent, which reduces confidence in their accuracy and undermines health education messages. We developed and explored the feasibility of the use of a nine-category matrix of harm, with an expert delphic procedure, to assess the harms of a range of illicit drugs in an evidence-based fashion. We also included five legal drugs of misuse (alcohol, khat, solvents, alkyl nitrites, and tobacco) and one that has since been classified (ketamine) for reference. The process proved practicable, and yielded roughly similar scores and rankings of drug harm when used by two separate groups of experts. The ranking of drugs produced by our assessment of harm differed from those used by current regulatory systems. Our methodology offers a systematic framework and process that could be used by national and international regulatory bodies to assess the harm of current and future drugs of abuse.

and this is the graph of harm rankings for the drugs they have considered:




The paper has had loads of media coverage focusing on the graph above (rather than the more interesting material about how they came up with it), mostly along the lines of 'alcohol more dangerous than ecstasy', or variations thereof. This minor media furore (‘Alcohol worse than ecstasy on shock new drug list’ blurted the Guardian on its front page) is a bit odd because it must be one of the most heavily trailed Lancet papers in history. Not only were the draft contents discussed in detail by the Science and Technology Select Committee drug classification inquiry report (see page 70), and ‘the graph’ published by them, but ‘the graph' has actually appeared as one of those jazzy front page tabloid splashes in the Independent. Last year. If you missed all that the Lancet paper was also discussed - in even greater detail - by the more recent RSA report which includes an entire section on ‘the Blakemore / Nutt hierarchy of harm’ (not sure what King and Salusbury think about that), and ‘the graph’, around which much of the recommendations are built. Some journalists either have short memories or they are banking on us having short memories - if you can get a 'shock' twice with the same story, why the hell not eh?

Anyway, the finished paper is undoubtedly a fine piece of work. It has very usefully put legal and illegal drugs on the same harm continuum (obvious really, but good to see it being said in the Lancet) and in doing so exposing the contradictions, lack of logic, and false assumption that underpin much drug policy thinking here and around the world. The matrix system they propose for ranking drug harms is definitely a good start. Clearly any system of regulation, be it sensibly based on established legal controls and public health principles, and stupidly based on criminal penalties and prohibitionist ideology, will require some sort of ranking system to make distinctions and policy decisions for different drugs.

I actually think it’s too simplistic, although to be fair, the authors do not claim it as the be all and end all. As discussed in more detail in the Transform briefing on drug classification:

Drug harms are mediated by the nature of the user, the dose of drug consumed and the method of consumption – making a system based upon broad sweep single classifications for each drug fundamentally unscientific, and meaningless in most practical terms.

So the whole idea that drug x is ‘more dangerous’ than drug y is only useful in the broadest population analysis. For an individual it’s fairly meaningless because, obviously, it depends how much of given drug you use, how often you use it, how you use it, whether you have a heart problem or mental health issues, and so on. There are still some oddities in the ranking (solvents, for example, seem too low to me), but it’s a massive leap forward from what we have at the moment which the authors politely describe as having ‘evolved in an unsystematic way from somewhat arbitrary foundations with seemingly little scientific basis’. If they were writing in a blog, not the Lancet, I suspect they would have said: 'it's a total joke'.

However, I take more substantive issue with the paper, not for what they covered, but for what they left out:

Firstly, the harms of a given drug will depend upon its legal status. The best way to demonstrate this point is with heroin, which is placed at the top of the Lancet-scale as the most harmful of all drugs. For street heroin this may well be the appropriate placing, but, if we are being scientific here, it is imperative to separate out the harms that follow from use of the drug per se, and the health and social harms exacerbated or created specifically by the drug's use within an illegal market. These, lets call them 'prohibition harms', include:

• Contaminated/cut product (poisoning, infection risks)
• Dirty/shared needles (Hep C / HIV risk)
• Vast quantities of low level acquisitive property crime to support a habit: illegal markets inflate the cost of an essentially worthless agricultural product to one that is worth more than its weight in gold. People on prescriptions don't have to nick stuff.
  
• Street prostitution (see above)
• Street dealing, drug-gang violence and turf wars
• Drug litter (needles in the gutter etc)

More useful would have been to rank both illegal street heroin, associated with the above harms which aren't going to help its ranking much, and prescribed pharmaceutical heroin, associated with none of the above harms. The latter would certainly be considerably further down the scale. Luckily, we can theoretically do this with heroin as both legal and illegal markets exist simultaneously in the UK, although the number of prescribed users (approx 400) is rather eclipsed by the number of illicit users (approx 250,000+). It’s a great shame the authors of this study failed to make that comparison (we do, confusingly, get 'street methadone' in the ranking, but not the prescription variety). It would have helped policy makers untangle the harms created by drug misuse from the harms created specifically by prohibition and had far wider implications for the future of the dominant criminal justice paradigm.

Some policy makers are wise to this legality/harm equation. During the Science and Technology Committee inquiry evidence sessions there is a revealing section where they are discussing the harm matrix with Proffessor Nutt and Sir Micheal Rawlins, Chair of the ACMD (at this point, 2006, it is still unpublished and available only in draft). Dr Harris MP raises the point that the classification a drug is given will impact on the level of social harms it is associated with:

Q188 Dr Harris: In this matrix you include under “social harms” intoxication, health care costs, and other social harms. Included under “other social harms” do you include the harm that stems from criminalisation itself?

Professor Sir Michael Rawlins: Yes.

Q189 Dr Harris: You do not spell that out but that is understood?

Professor Sir Michael Rawlins: Yes and whether it leads to acquisitive crime.

A couple of questions later…

Q 195 Dr Harris: Your recommendation recommending classification into a particular class creates social effects, does it not?

Professor Nutt: Indeed it does.

Q196 Dr Harris: Because obviously it brings criminal justice along with it and that affects the price and availability and so forth. Do you recognize that? Your own actions impact on the evidence. Did you feed that back in before you made the recommendation?

Professor Nutt: We know it might happen but you can never be sure how big an effect that might have.

When translated through the prism of the Misuse of Drugs Act the harm rankings become, to a significant degree, strangely self-fulfilling, as is evident in the case with heroin: The more you criminalise the drug (by moving it up the rankings) the more risky you make its use and more social harms you create associated with its illegal supply. Given there is no evidence that these increased harms are offset by any deterrent effect associated with classification the whole system seems even more bizarrely unscientific and unsustainable.

Colin Blakemore, one of the authors and chief executive of the Medical Research Council is quoted in the guardian saying:

"We face a huge problem. Drugs ... have never been more easily available, have never been cheaper, never been more potent and never been more widely used".

"The policies we have had for the last 40 years ... clearly have not worked in terms of reducing drug use. So I think it does deserve a fresh look”

This leads us to the second, arguably more serious problem with the paper. The rankings of drugs, with the anomalous exceptions of alcohol and tobacco, are defined within the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and primarily intended to determine the accompanying hierarchy of criminal penalties, and not to provide public health information to potential drug users.

The evident problem is that there is no meaningful evaluation of the outcomes of this unique criminal justice approach to public health regulation. We can have excellent science ranking drugs public health harms, as this paper presents, but then no science at all regards the outcomes of these rankings when they are implemented as criminal policy. As the authors have noted, the use and availability of illegal drugs has risen steadily under the current system. A more scientific ranking of harm is not enough: the whole prohibitionist legal framework needs to be reassessed as well. To immodestly quote myself in the oral evidence I gave to the Sci-tech Committee:

"I have been trying to think of a metaphor for this and the best one I can come up with is that it is like arguing over what colour to paint a square wheel. Even if all the experts agree it should be blue it does not matter because that wheel does not turn. The classification system does not do what it is supposed to do, it does not reduce harm, it does not reduce misuse, it does not reduce mental health problems. In fact it seems to do the exact opposite so the whole thing is an exercise in distraction"

In the short term I despair that anything at all will happen. The Government give the pretence of supporting evidence based policy on drugs, but when it clashes with their ‘political judgements’ or 'beliefs' that all goes straight out of the window.

In a follow up oral evidence session to the publication of the Science and Technology Select Committee’s devastating 2006 critique of the classification system, the committee re-interviewed Sir Micheal Rawlins, Proffessor Nutt, and the minister with responsibility for drugs, Vernon Coaker.

It’s a truly remarkable interrogation, with the Minister not having a leg to stand on when he is repeatedly challenged on the lack of evidence base for the classification system's effectiveness, or the justification for certain howling anomalies within the system. He falls back on evasion, changing the subject or the excuse of decisions being ‘political judgements’ , or worse, merely that it is his ‘belief’ that the system works. There is not even the pretence that the system is evidence based. I recommend you read it all (or look forward to other choice quotes popping up on the blog in the future), but for the time being here are some low-lights, just so you know what you're up against.

First is a section about the reclassification of ecstasy:

Q109 Mr Newmark: If the ACMD discovered new evidence when it undertook the review, would you consider reclassifying ecstasy?

Mr Coaker: We would consider their evidence. As I say, we have no plans to reclassify ecstasy. The ACMD is independent of government, we obviously respect what they say, and they will bring their report forward, but the Government has no plans and no intention of reclassifying ecstasy.

Q110 Dr Harris: You say that you do not propose to move ecstasy and it will remain a Class A drug. Is that an evidence-based policy?

Mr Coaker: That is a judgment the Government makes on the basis of what we believe to be something that is in the interests of the public at large to keep ecstasy as a Class A drug.

Q111 Dr Harris: Is it an evidence-based view?

Mr Coaker: It is a judgment that we make based on all the evidence we have had no recommendation from anybody to reclassify ecstasy from an A to a B. We think it is a drug which is harmful. There is no safe dose of it. We were talking about alcohol earlier on and one of the problems you have with alcohol is there probably is a safe dose. Like many here, I have a drink now and again, but there is no safe dose of ecstasy, we think it would send out totally the wrong messages and, as I say, we have no intention of reclassifying ecstasy.

Q112 Mr Newmark: Because it kills unpredictably?

Mr Coaker: As I say, there is no safe dose. This is the point, just half a minute—

Q113 Dr Harris: There is no safe dose of tobacco.

Mr Coaker: It just does make the point very well, the exchange that we have just had between two members of the Committee, quite rightly, about the difficulties that there are in this area and the different views and opinions that people have. I think what we all wrestle with is using evidence and using science and also trying to think about it from a non-scientific point of view in the social judgments and the individual judgments and the community judgments that we make. We wrestle with that and, as I say, as a Government we have no intention of doing anything with respect to ecstasy because we do not believe there is a safe dose, it is harmful, it kills unpredictably, as Brooks has said, and we just think that it is a very important way to use the classification system.

Q114 Dr Harris: If the ACMD reviewed the evidence and that review made recommendations to you, are you saying now it is not worth them doing it because your decision on this will not be evidence based, it will just be a reassertion of your "no intention to reclassify ecstasy"? Even if they said there will be fewer deaths, for whatever reason, if it is reclassified, are you saying that you will never consider an evidence-based decision on this drug?

Mr Coaker: I am not saying that at all. What I am saying is the ACMD, of course, can conduct research and look at whatever they wish to with respect to drugs and make recommendations to the Government. What I am saying quite clearly is that we have no intention of reclassifying ecstasy.

Q115 Dr Harris: I am keen to pursue this one. I understand you have no intention and I assume that is current because I do not think you could bind your successors if the evidence changed. Is it your view that all drugs for which there is no safe dose should be in Class A or is there something special about ecstasy which means it is one of the drugs for which you say there is no safe dose which means it must be in A?

Mr Coaker: In talking about ecstasy, it kills unpredictably, we do not believe that there is a safe dose; we will not reclassify ecstasy.

Q116 Dr Harris: Does that apply to all drugs that meet those criteria?

Mr Coaker: What we try to do where we have evidence and where people come to us with recommendations is make individual judgments, as we will do whenever people come to us. All I am saying with respect to ecstasy is that we have no plans and no intention of doing so.

Q117 Dr Harris: So do you think you are wasting your time, Professor Rawlins, if you end up doing a review in this area?

Professor Sir Michael Rawlins: No, I think we will give advice on whatever we feel is appropriate but perhaps in a way more importantly we will also be able to, I hope, give better advice on harm reduction, which is actually rather important, and on what further research is needed in order to understand the dangers of it.

Q118 Dr Harris: Will the fact that the Minister has said quite categorically that he is not going to change the classification have any bearing on whether you follow through and do a report?

Professor Sir Michael Rawlins: None at all because we are going to do it.

Now here is a second section from slightly earlier in the session. Creationism gets a mention in reference to the Minister's scientific discourse; it seems an appropriate comparison (and couldn't help but remind me of this).

Q45 Chairman: Vernon, in response to us, you said that the Government "fundamentally believes that illegality is an important factor when people are considering engaging in risk-taking behaviour . . . It believes that the illegality of certain drugs, and by association their classification, will impact on drug-use choices". Where is the evidence for that?

Mr Coaker: That is the belief and the judgment that the Government have.

Q46 Chairman: I did not ask you that. People believe in creationism and they are entitled to do that, though I do not agree with that, but I am asking you, where is the evidence?

Mr Coaker: To be fair to the response that we tried to make in response to the Committee where the Committee has challenged us, we have ourselves said that we need to do more research into the deterrent effect, that we need to establish a better evidence and research base for that, so we have accepted the point of the need to actually do something about it, but we do believe, and strongly believe, that the classification of drugs in the current system, A, B and C, with respect to Class A does act as a deterrent system. That is a judgment we make, it is a belief that we have and we have accepted that there is more to do with respect to that.

Q47 Adam Afriyie: If when you carry out and conduct this research the evidence shows that you are completely mistaken in that view, will change your view?

Mr Coaker: I cannot prejudge what any research is going to tell us. Clearly you make judgments about the research that you receive and that is obviously the point.

Q48 Chairman: Vernon, you have not commissioned any research and nor have the ACMD.

Mr Coaker: No, but what we have said in response to where the Committee challenged us and said, "Where is your evidence base for that?", as we have done with a number of other things, we said that we understand that point, we accept that point and we need to look at establishing a better evidence base for that, but it does not alter the fact or change the fact that the Government believes that the tripartite system, the classification system, does send out a strong message and does impact on, and affect, behaviour.

Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and 'Prohibition Works!'

Those attempting to defend the status quo to the media, usually those working in government or enforcement, frequently quote statistics that give the misleading impression that prohibition is working – when the exact opposite is true.

It is hard to think of another area of social policy where the waters are so muddied by statistical chicanery. This sort of misleading evidence, attempting to dress up failure as success, usually comes in one of five varieties. Below is Transform's handy pocket guide to identifying and challenging them:

1. Localised success – (cherry-picking part 1)

Example: “cocaine/heroin production in Colombia/ Afghanistan has fallen this year.”

These stats may well be true (they may not, but let’s assume they are). However, crucially, local production is irrelevant in a global market, as falls in production in one region will quickly be made up by rises in another. This pattern has been observed repeatedly in regional shifts in production of coca, opium and cannabis – so frequently that it has become known in official shorthand as ‘the balloon effect’ (if you squeeze a balloon on one side, it expands on the other). The key point here is that the trend in global production has always kept pace with global demand, which has risen steadily over the past 4 decades (see: why prohibition can never work p….). Illegal drug markets are not confined by geographical boundaries, and localised successes should not be allowed to disguise larger scale systematic failure to control global production. This is the worst form of cherry-picking. Keep the focus on the bigger picture – using official national and international statistics that are not in dispute .

2. Short term success – (cherry-picking part 2)

Example: “street drug dealing fell by 10% in the last 6 months in Birmingham”.

Again this may well be true – but short-term changes often mask longer-term trends. They can also be due to (non-policy related) external factors, changes in statistical collection or methodology, and sometimes a marginal change can be within statistical error parameters. This sort of cherry picking can also be countered by bringing the focus back to the bigger picture statistics on the failure of the policy nationally and internationally (be careful to make sure the blame is on the policy makers, not those who are implementing it – the police do their job as best they can, it just happens to be an impossible one). Also remind policy makers that it is the policy of prohibition that created the crime and illegal markets in the first place.

3. Process success

Examples: “We have set up a new agency, appointed a new Tsar, instigated a partnership project with Jamaican police, invested millions in a, b and c, announced ambitious new targets on x, y and z” etc. etc

These are an age-old exercise in distraction. Policy must be judged on outcomes, not inputs or process indicators. Challenge policy makers on their record: the outcomes of the policies they are supporting. Don’t let them get away with announcing yet more headline-grabbing new (sp)initiatives. Have the new changes made any difference to the bigger picture on supply, availability, crime, problematic use? The problems with prohibition are fundamental and cannot be solved with superficial tweaks to policy which at best will marginally reduce the harms created by the policy in the first place, and more likely will cost government and taxpayers more money for no results. This policy is essentially unchanged for two generations.

4. Success relative to previous disasters

Example: “crack use has fallen since last year”

When compared to a policy as disastrous as heavy-handed enforcement and large-scale incarceration, almost any change in intervention will start to look like progress. A good example is the improved outcomes from coercing drug-using offenders into abstinence-based ‘treatment’ as opposed to sending them to jail. The point here is that imprisonment is so expensive and counterproductive that literally any alternative would produce better results – burning the money, giving offenders juggling lessons, ANYTHING.

The crack example can also illustrate the important point that drugs come in and out of fashion largely independently of policy and law. Prevalence of one drug may fall after an epidemic (crack use in the US being a recent example) whilst another simultaneously rises (in the US this has been methamphetamine). Again the way to avoid this is to focus on the longer-term bigger picture –overall drug use has risen steadily for decades – especially of the most problematic drugs. If a ‘stabilisation’ has been ‘achieved’, this may be sold as a success but most likely simply reflects a saturated market demand. The UK government has, for example, been claiming success in the stabilisation of heroin use in the UK over the past 4 or 5 years – It needs to be pointed out that it has stabilised at the highest level in UK history, the highest level in Europe, and a level approximately 1000% higher than in 1971.

5. Success on completely meaningless indicators

Examples: ‘volume of drug seizures is up’, ‘number of dealers jailed has increased!’, ‘ we have ‘smashed’ record numbers of drug gangs’ etc.

These are measures that reflect the level of expenditure on enforcement and the size of the illegal market. They rarely, if ever, translate into the policy outputs that prohibition is striving for – i.e. reduced drug production, supply and use (let alone reduced harm). They sound great in the media; catching baddies, intercepting nasty drugs etc – but it gives the misleading impression of success when in reality the opposite is true. Again, challenge people using these sorts of statistics to show what impact they are having on meaningful indicators and keep to the bigger picture. Do not let statements from officials such as talking about ‘x quantities of drugs prevented from reaching the streets’ go unchallenged when they fully aware that such seizures have no impact on overall supply and that drugs are cheaper and more available than ever - a fact not disputed by the Home Office.

This guide is an extract from Transform's forthcoming guide: 'After the War on Drugs, Tools for the Debate'

For some further discussion on the dubious science of prohibition see Ben Goldacre's bad science Guardian column on Prohibition vs the Gold Standard :

Why are drugs such a bad science magnet? Partly, of course, it’s the moral panic. But more than that, sat squarely at the heart of our discourse on drugs, is one fabulously reductionist notion: it is the idea that a complex web of social, moral, criminal, health, and political problems can be simplified to, blamed on, or treated via a molecule or a plant. You’d have a job keeping that idea afloat.