Think-tank says recreational use does no long-term harm
Gaby Hinsliff, chief political correspondent
Sunday March 24, 2002
The Observer
Tony Blair's war on drugs has been a 'resounding failure' and should be scrapped, according to a new report which concluded that recreational drug
use does most people no long term harm.
Anti-drugs education in schools should be abandoned and Police Commander Brian Paddick's experiment with decriminalising cannabis in Lambeth extended, says a controversial paper by the Foreign Policy Centre thinktank. It also backs the creation of licensed 'shooting galleries', where users can legally inject under supervision, and providing kits to test the purity of drugs like ecstasy in nightclubs and all-night petrol stations.
The report - published this week and written by policy expert Rowena Young, partner of Geoff Mulgan, head of Downing Street's delivery unit - will spark major debate. It comes as the Home Office is rewriting the targets set three years ago under its anti-drugs strategy, a review expected to lead to more focus on harm reduction and treatment programmes.
The Foreign Policy Centre report argues that the 'vast majority' of young people who have experimented with drugs - such as weekend clubbers who occasionally take ecstasy, or City traders using cocaine to keep alert - 'are
able to use drugs, even the so-called hard drugs, without long-term damage'. The Government should focus instead on problem users who cannot cope, through treatment programmes tackling underlying causes of addiction such as poverty or family trauma. 'Both here and in the US the war on drugs has been a resounding failure. Rarely in the history of wars have so many achieved so little at such a high cost,' it concludes.
Government policy is hampered by 'an unhealthy cocktail of acute public anxiety, simple nostrums, tabloid bile, vested interests and political opportunism', it adds, calling on Ministers to launch a more honest debate.
The Government strategy is also expected to be heavily criticised in a report from the Commons Home Affairs select committee next month. Despite the tough approach piloted in Labour's first term, heroin deaths in Britain doubled and cocaine deaths quadrupled between 1995 and 2000, the Foreign Policy Centre report notes, while the number of 'problem' users doubles every four years.
Yet the report argues too much attention is wasted on recreational users who still function normally at work and socially, and whose habits are 'generally manageable and fit within a lifestyle of clubbing and friendship networks, which usually prevent over-indulgence'.
Such people often give up by themselves if the habit gets out of hand, according to Young, a development director at the drug treatment agency
Kaleidoscope. 'People who use coke in the City for example, even quite a lot of coke, often manage to stop themselves because when they start to see the cost they will bring it into check - perhaps because their partners are getting fed up with it or they are starting to realise it is affecting their relationship with their kids,' she said.
Young said the hounding of Paddick showed 'how we have seen a number of individuals go by the wayside when they do try to act on the evidence' over recreational drug use.
Education programmes should concentrate on harm re-education, such as using clean needles to inject, the report adds, warning that 'Just Say No'-style classes in schools 'take up a large slice of the drugs budget but with little
or no evidence that it is effective, and strong anecdotal evidence that patients treat it with contempt'.
Rehabilitation treatment, championed by many pro-legalisation campaigners, risks becoming an 'expensive revolving door' with high relapse rates unless social problems driving addiction are tackled alongside chemical dependency. Risk factors likely to make a user slide into danger include past family bereavement, loneliness, lack of hope for the future, poverty and feeling divorced from the mainstream.
The report says decriminalisation is not an easy answer and will call for tougher drugs laws in some areas, including stiffer penalties for adults
supplying children, using drugs in front of children or involving them in dealing.
-------------------------------------------
Note that 'friendship networks' are cited as helping users from becoming abusers. Hey Bluelight could become part of official policy!!
Gaby Hinsliff, chief political correspondent
Sunday March 24, 2002
The Observer
Tony Blair's war on drugs has been a 'resounding failure' and should be scrapped, according to a new report which concluded that recreational drug
use does most people no long term harm.
Anti-drugs education in schools should be abandoned and Police Commander Brian Paddick's experiment with decriminalising cannabis in Lambeth extended, says a controversial paper by the Foreign Policy Centre thinktank. It also backs the creation of licensed 'shooting galleries', where users can legally inject under supervision, and providing kits to test the purity of drugs like ecstasy in nightclubs and all-night petrol stations.
The report - published this week and written by policy expert Rowena Young, partner of Geoff Mulgan, head of Downing Street's delivery unit - will spark major debate. It comes as the Home Office is rewriting the targets set three years ago under its anti-drugs strategy, a review expected to lead to more focus on harm reduction and treatment programmes.
The Foreign Policy Centre report argues that the 'vast majority' of young people who have experimented with drugs - such as weekend clubbers who occasionally take ecstasy, or City traders using cocaine to keep alert - 'are
able to use drugs, even the so-called hard drugs, without long-term damage'. The Government should focus instead on problem users who cannot cope, through treatment programmes tackling underlying causes of addiction such as poverty or family trauma. 'Both here and in the US the war on drugs has been a resounding failure. Rarely in the history of wars have so many achieved so little at such a high cost,' it concludes.
Government policy is hampered by 'an unhealthy cocktail of acute public anxiety, simple nostrums, tabloid bile, vested interests and political opportunism', it adds, calling on Ministers to launch a more honest debate.
The Government strategy is also expected to be heavily criticised in a report from the Commons Home Affairs select committee next month. Despite the tough approach piloted in Labour's first term, heroin deaths in Britain doubled and cocaine deaths quadrupled between 1995 and 2000, the Foreign Policy Centre report notes, while the number of 'problem' users doubles every four years.
Yet the report argues too much attention is wasted on recreational users who still function normally at work and socially, and whose habits are 'generally manageable and fit within a lifestyle of clubbing and friendship networks, which usually prevent over-indulgence'.
Such people often give up by themselves if the habit gets out of hand, according to Young, a development director at the drug treatment agency
Kaleidoscope. 'People who use coke in the City for example, even quite a lot of coke, often manage to stop themselves because when they start to see the cost they will bring it into check - perhaps because their partners are getting fed up with it or they are starting to realise it is affecting their relationship with their kids,' she said.
Young said the hounding of Paddick showed 'how we have seen a number of individuals go by the wayside when they do try to act on the evidence' over recreational drug use.
Education programmes should concentrate on harm re-education, such as using clean needles to inject, the report adds, warning that 'Just Say No'-style classes in schools 'take up a large slice of the drugs budget but with little
or no evidence that it is effective, and strong anecdotal evidence that patients treat it with contempt'.
Rehabilitation treatment, championed by many pro-legalisation campaigners, risks becoming an 'expensive revolving door' with high relapse rates unless social problems driving addiction are tackled alongside chemical dependency. Risk factors likely to make a user slide into danger include past family bereavement, loneliness, lack of hope for the future, poverty and feeling divorced from the mainstream.
The report says decriminalisation is not an easy answer and will call for tougher drugs laws in some areas, including stiffer penalties for adults
supplying children, using drugs in front of children or involving them in dealing.
-------------------------------------------
Note that 'friendship networks' are cited as helping users from becoming abusers. Hey Bluelight could become part of official policy!!