UK - Hypothesising an alternative: Applying the scientific process to drug policy

[edgarshade]

David Nutt's blog

June 29, 2012

With reader comments

As you may know, earlier this month I gave evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee’s (HASC) current inquiry into drugs. We had a wide-ranging discussion across many aspects of alcohol and drug harms particularly in relation to the value of drug law reform and decriminalisation. (You can watch the session, including the interesting evidence of the subsequent witnesses online). I strongly believe that we should focus on public health approaches to the drug problem, and decriminalise the possession of drugs for personal use, for the following simple reason;- If users are addicted then they are ill, and criminal sanctions are an inappropriate way to deal with an illness. If they are not addicted then criminalisation will almost always lead to greater harms to the user than the effects of the drug. For example, it can severely limit career options in public service and prevent travel to some countries particularly the USA.

There is evidence that the legalization of medical cannabis in some states of the USA has been associated with a considerable reduction in fatal road traffic accidents, comparable with the benefits of laws requiring seatbelts.　This, the authors of the study show, is mostly due to the large drop in the number of fatal crashes involving alcohol as people appear to substitute cannabis for drinking.

The Netherlands is now in the process of restricting tourists’ access, on a city by city basis, to coffeeshops, making them primarily for Dutch residents. As drug tourism was never the aim of the coffeeshop policy, this change is not without logic, however, given that there is already a mature market for cannabis that may now be pushed into the illicit market with a correlating effect on street disorder and crime, as has already been seen in Maastricht.

Approaches to dealing with addicted users which swap punishment for healthcare have been successful. In 1994, despite strong resistance from the UN, Switzerland began a program which allowed long-term treatment-resistant addicts to take clean pharmaceutical heroin under medical supervision. This has been criticized for maintaining rather than ending addictions, but it has stabilised chaotic lives, allowing users to be socially reintegrated, getting homes and sometimes jobs, and as well as removing the health harms associated with polluted, inconsistent street drugs. Addicts in this treatment get fitter, they virtually never overdose, and very few die.

More...
http://profdavidnutt.wordpress.com/...plying-the-scientific-process-to-drug-policy/

 

[slimvictor]

What an amazingly cool post.
Dr. Nutt, my hat is off to you.