National policies need to be about reducing the impact of illegal drugs on Scotland, not initiatives that could result in their wider use, writes Neil McKeganey
IN MONDAY’S report from the Westminster’s all-parliamentary group on drug policy reform, we have what has become the latest in a long line of calls for the legalisation of illegal drugs. For the advocates of drugs legalisation, the arguments seem disarmingly familiar and persuasive: our drug laws have failed to stem the flow of illegal drug use; many of those substances that are currently illegal are less harmful than tobacco or alcohol and, therefore, we should pursue an approach that legalises these and other forms of drug use.
The trouble with this view is that it is almost entirely based on the premise that drug use under a legalised or regulated regime would not significantly increase. That is a bold assumption and one for which there is little evidence. The supporters of legalisation cite Portugal, where all drugs for personal use were decriminalised in 2001. Troublingly, however, while some positive benefit has flowed from that policy change, drug use among young people in Portugal has increased rather than decreased and there remains a stubborn black market in drug supply within the country. Drugs decriminalisation does not appear to have been quite the rosy road of unbroken success that many might have wished and others have promoted.
But even if a plausible case can be made for the benefits of drugs decriminalisation, the timing now for such a bold policy change in the UK seems wrong. Most recent data from the UK is showing a marked reduction in almost all forms of illegal drugs use, with the exception of cocaine, which is rising.
