UK - Home office admits it has no idea if War on Drugs is working.

[opi8]

'They're pouring money down the drain and they've got nothing to show for it'

The Home Office report is called 'Drug Strategy 2010 Evaluation Framework – evaluating costs and benefits'. It is not the sort of title which seduces the attention, but inside you can find a fascinating, topsy-turvy, down-the-looking-glass world of hopeless causes.

Imagine any other area of life – in public service or the free market - where you were spending billions a year and were unable to show any evidence of achieving your objective.

When Transform tried to gets its hands on the Home Office's value for money study in 2010, officials discussed keeping it out the public eye because it would help those campaigning to end prohibition.

Luckily - and with the Home Office's usual capacity for incompetence – they accidentally sent the internal memo to BBC’s Martin Rosenbaum. It read:

The release of the report entails the risk of Transform, or other supporters of legalisation, using information from the report to criticise the government's drug policy, or to support their call for the legalisation of drugs and the introduction of a regulated system of supply. These risks should be considered in reaching a decision on whether to release the report, as recommended.

Why isn't the Home Office interested in it? Probably because it found that criminal penalties did not decrease the availability of illegal drugs, or the number of current users, or the number of new users. There was no improvement in 'negative health consequences' or 'social costs' and the policy was economically loss-making.

http://politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2014/01/10/comment-hidden-in-a-strategy-document-the-home-office-admits

 

[poledriver]

With comments -

Dave Neal · King Edward's School
if you cant successfully keep drugs out of locked prisons (and they cant) how the fuck do you expect prohibition to work in an open society?
it's time for people to puke up all this bullshit they've been fed, get over the bad taste, and start thinking about productive solutions. if people want something to put in their own body, they will get it. and if you criminalise them for it, all that happens is people start losing respect for the law and question the intentions of those who write it.

is it really that embarrassing for them to admit that some of the government traditions were wrong? have we really got such a pack of cowards running this country that no one can step up and make amends to all this unnecessary incarceration?
WE ARE LOCKING HUMAN BEINGS IN CAGES FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER
just imagine being locked inside a metal cage because you decided to put a substance in your own body.
and to think we HIRE these people for our own protection...

it's like a bodyguard knocking a cheeseburger out of your hand, chasing you down the road, smashing your face into the ground with an arm behind your back, and then locking you away because "burgers will make you fat, sir"
Reply · 2 · Like · Follow Post · 7 hours ago

 

[TheRapperGoneBad]

I think its more than obvious that the war on drugs is the biggest fail in the history of mankind.

All of the points in the above post are great examples as to why.

 

[_DankOpiAmp_]

It blows my mind that the alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical industries can have their fists so far up the governments asses. They have literally got them to rape billions from us with their protection racket (police) in taxes just to viciously attack anyone who threatens their profits by using alternative drugs. A monster proportion of the Gross Domestic Product is wasted simply protecting the profits of legal drug industries. It contrives half of all crime, god damn. Joe retard plebeian is still willing to fork over his cash because of idiotic doomsday professes about how people will somehow use more drugs than they do now if they are legal as if people don't just do what they want now.

 

[bukweat]

Well said.

 

[dopemegently]

When you think about the sheer costs involved in a "war against drugs", billions upon billions, it seems so fucking absurd. A lot of that funding could be used to improve living standards, (housing is very short in the UK) education, easing modern-day poverty...but they throw money at stopping something that can't realistically be stopped. And now they're finally admitting how clueless they really are. Not that anything will really come of it IMHO.

 

[poledriver]

^ Yeah if you look at it that way it does seem absurd, and it seems a much better approach would be to invest LOADS of money into rehabs/detoxs and education campaigns and advertising, not shit reefer madness or faces of meth style ads, but real stuff, with real people, about addiction and disease and wasting money and opportunities etc.

 

[dopemegently]

Exactly. I hate the way the only drug education people get is scare campaigns, and then everybody's shocked and outraged because somebody's done a stupid amount of x drug and died because they didn't know any better, which leads to harsher legislation, more arrests more money thrown at the problem;it's like some fucked up spiral that never seems to end.