Banning legal highs is not the answer
By Richard Branson
@richardbranson
8 June 2015
For a good number of years now, I’ve been criss-crossing the planet – as member of the Global Commision on Drug Policy – trying to make the case that the war on drugs has been a massive failure. It’s an argument that increasingly resonates with policy makers, law enforcement personnel, public health experts, and the wider public.
Image by Rebecca Bowring
Prohibition isn’t working, and we’ve been throwing billions in taxpayer funds at a futile effort to control the global drug market. The result: supply and demand for drugs are going as strong as ever, the trade is firmly in the hands of criminal organisations (including terrorists), and prison populations in many countries are ballooning as non-violent drug offenders are needlessly criminalised and thrown in jail – not to forget the hundreds that are still executed around the world for drug offences.
While some countries have been bold in shifting drug policy from law enforcement to public health and from criminalisation to regulation, others continue with business as usual. Unfortunately, that includes the UK. An astonishing example of the continued madness of the drug wars is the New Psychoactive Substances Bill to be debated in the House of Lords tomorrow.
Image from gettyimages
The bill purports to tackle the rapidly growing market for so-called “legal highs”, substances like synthetic cannabis, bath salts and even laughing gas that are readily available across the UK, with new varieties emerging every week. In remarkable vagueness, the law bans “any substance intended for human consumption that is capable of producing a psychoactive effect.” As the small print doesn’t really define consumption, some observers have noted that selling a fresh bouquet of roses could soon send you to the clink.
Notably, the law does create exemptions for alcohol and tobacco, among others – precisely those substances that kill upwards of 100,000 people in the UK every year. But my point is not that these exemptions should be removed. Alcohol and Tobacco are highly regulated substances, whose production and distribution follows clear rules. The sale of these products generates tax revenues, which in turn can be invested in health education, prevention and treatment.
Image from gettyimages
In my book, this type of transparent, open approach to regulation is still our best option to take control of these substances. In the case of tobacco, adult smoking in the UK has gone down from 45 percent in 1974 to about 19 percent in 2013. Conversely, during alcohol prohibition in the US in the 1920s and 1930s, per capita alcohol consumption increased after an initial drop, fuelled by a vast illegal market run by organised crime.
But perhaps the most relevant lesson from that failed experiment is what has been labelled “the iron law of prohibition”: where prohibition reigns, drugs will become stronger, and contain more unknown substances, as producers operating in the shadows aim for cheaper production and higher yields. If our goal is to keep our children out of harm’s way, the Psychoactive Substances Bill will achieve the opposite effect.
Image by Gareth Davies
Interestingly, the new bill does not criminalise the possession of legal highs for personal use, shifting the government’s focus from users to suppliers. If this is reflective of an international trend, it does raise the more fundamental question why possession of other drugs like cannabis continues to be illegal.
Ultimately, the world needs evidence-based policies, not drug warrior posturing.
The Psychoactive Substances Bill contains too much of the latter. It will be a colossal waste of taxpayer money and government resources.
