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The case for decriminalising drug use is overwhelming
Martin Wolf
June 23, 2016
We should decriminalise personal possession and use of illegal drugs while continuing to prosecute illegal suppliers. This is the conclusion of a sobering report from the Royal Society for Public Health on the destructive results of our hysteria-driven drugs policies. The case it makes for change is overwhelming.
Decriminalisation is the eye-catching proposal. But it follows logically from the proposition that drugs are not, at bottom, a problem of law and order, except to the extent we have made them so, but rather one of public health. The aim of policy should be the reduction of harms to users and wider society.
For this reason, argues the report, the main responsibility should be transferred from the justice system to the health system and so from the Home Office to the Department of Health. This would allow management of illegal drug use to be aligned with strategies for those dangerous legal drugs: alcohol and tobacco. It would also encourage a focus on treatment. Further proposals are to make evidence-based drugs education mandatory in schools and to replace the present drugs classification with one based on evidence of harm.
All this should be common sense. Use of drugs is a universal feature of human societies. It is also a fact that the widely used legal drugs do immense damage. Alcohol (with 39m regular users in the UK) is the most damaging of all drugs. Smoking of tobacco (with 9m users) “remains the leading cause of preventable illness and early death in the UK, killing more people each year than the next five causes of preventable death combined”. These two drugs also cost society far more than all class A drugs (the most dangerous) together. The categorisation of drugs into legal and illegal is, in terms of harm, arbitrary.
This is not to argue for making alcohol or tobacco illegal. On the contrary, making a substance illegal is harmful in itself: every year, for example, the UK spends upwards of £4bn on law enforcement related to illegal drugs. The biggest damage done by heroin and crack cocaine is via their contribution to crime. That is because they are illegal.
The costs of making drugs illegal go far beyond this. There exists, for example, “an emerging body of evidence that criminal sanctions are not effective” in deterring illegal drug use. The impact of imprisonment on drug users is, however, hugely damaging, particularly on the young. A recent survey concluded that imprisoning the young damages their development, severs their ties with family and community, and brings trauma and exposure to gang violence. There is also disturbing evidence that the application of drug laws is racially biased: illegal drug use is lower among black and minority ethnic groups than the white population, “yet black people are six times more likely to be stopped and searched for drugs”.
Crucially, people are discouraged from seeking help because drug use is illegal: one survey found that “one in five young people would be put off seeking help due to the stigma of having illegal drugs on their record”. In the absence of help, users not only resort to crime but are pushed into prostitution.
The better way is instead to focus on containing harms to users and society. The report notes the example of Portugal, which took the bold decision of removing criminal sanctions on personal possession and focusing on harm-reduction and health promotion in 2001. The consequences included an 80 per cent decline in drug-induced deaths by 2012, a 94 per cent fall in new cases of HIV among those who inject drugs and a decline in cases of hepatitis C and B. Drug use in Portugal is now below the European average and social costs, including costs to health and to the legal system, have fallen significantly.
Under the whip of tabloid hysteria, the UK has gone in the opposite direction. But harm to health caused by drug use is rising, even though illegal drug use itself seems to be falling. That contrast is partly due to rising use of the dangerous drugs. Yet harm matters more than the number of users. Those harms are also concentrated in vulnerable groups. Resources are also wasted on punishment instead of being focused on helping people to “avoid, reduce and recover from drug-related harm”.
cont http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c8dc9546-3877-11e6-9a05-82a9b15a8ee7.html#axzz4CQoF6AZl
Martin Wolf
June 23, 2016
We should decriminalise personal possession and use of illegal drugs while continuing to prosecute illegal suppliers. This is the conclusion of a sobering report from the Royal Society for Public Health on the destructive results of our hysteria-driven drugs policies. The case it makes for change is overwhelming.
Decriminalisation is the eye-catching proposal. But it follows logically from the proposition that drugs are not, at bottom, a problem of law and order, except to the extent we have made them so, but rather one of public health. The aim of policy should be the reduction of harms to users and wider society.
For this reason, argues the report, the main responsibility should be transferred from the justice system to the health system and so from the Home Office to the Department of Health. This would allow management of illegal drug use to be aligned with strategies for those dangerous legal drugs: alcohol and tobacco. It would also encourage a focus on treatment. Further proposals are to make evidence-based drugs education mandatory in schools and to replace the present drugs classification with one based on evidence of harm.
All this should be common sense. Use of drugs is a universal feature of human societies. It is also a fact that the widely used legal drugs do immense damage. Alcohol (with 39m regular users in the UK) is the most damaging of all drugs. Smoking of tobacco (with 9m users) “remains the leading cause of preventable illness and early death in the UK, killing more people each year than the next five causes of preventable death combined”. These two drugs also cost society far more than all class A drugs (the most dangerous) together. The categorisation of drugs into legal and illegal is, in terms of harm, arbitrary.
This is not to argue for making alcohol or tobacco illegal. On the contrary, making a substance illegal is harmful in itself: every year, for example, the UK spends upwards of £4bn on law enforcement related to illegal drugs. The biggest damage done by heroin and crack cocaine is via their contribution to crime. That is because they are illegal.
The costs of making drugs illegal go far beyond this. There exists, for example, “an emerging body of evidence that criminal sanctions are not effective” in deterring illegal drug use. The impact of imprisonment on drug users is, however, hugely damaging, particularly on the young. A recent survey concluded that imprisoning the young damages their development, severs their ties with family and community, and brings trauma and exposure to gang violence. There is also disturbing evidence that the application of drug laws is racially biased: illegal drug use is lower among black and minority ethnic groups than the white population, “yet black people are six times more likely to be stopped and searched for drugs”.
Crucially, people are discouraged from seeking help because drug use is illegal: one survey found that “one in five young people would be put off seeking help due to the stigma of having illegal drugs on their record”. In the absence of help, users not only resort to crime but are pushed into prostitution.
The better way is instead to focus on containing harms to users and society. The report notes the example of Portugal, which took the bold decision of removing criminal sanctions on personal possession and focusing on harm-reduction and health promotion in 2001. The consequences included an 80 per cent decline in drug-induced deaths by 2012, a 94 per cent fall in new cases of HIV among those who inject drugs and a decline in cases of hepatitis C and B. Drug use in Portugal is now below the European average and social costs, including costs to health and to the legal system, have fallen significantly.
Under the whip of tabloid hysteria, the UK has gone in the opposite direction. But harm to health caused by drug use is rising, even though illegal drug use itself seems to be falling. That contrast is partly due to rising use of the dangerous drugs. Yet harm matters more than the number of users. Those harms are also concentrated in vulnerable groups. Resources are also wasted on punishment instead of being focused on helping people to “avoid, reduce and recover from drug-related harm”.
cont http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c8dc9546-3877-11e6-9a05-82a9b15a8ee7.html#axzz4CQoF6AZl
