Ewan's liberal musings

My speech to the fringe event on cannabis regulation

2011-09-22T12:30:00.003+01:00

This is an edited version of the speech I gave to the fringe event "Legal regulation of the cannabis market: How, why and when" yesterday:

I said in my speech proposing the drug motion on Sunday that the documentary Killer in a Small Town was a major inspiration for me in my drug policy campaigning, but I do also have another personal motivation for my work that stems from my family's experience of insanity. I have a brother with schizophrenia and the effect of that upon my family is a major motivation in my wish that the government control and regulate cannabis. The science suggests that those who smoke cannabis have around a doubled risk of psychosis. There is a lot of debate about whether this link is causal or just correlation. Psychiatrists will tell you it is causal. Users will tell me that it is correlation often combined with some degree of personal abuse in my direction.

My position on the matter is that it is much better to be safe than to be sorry. I have a Masters degree in Neuroscience. I have read the evidence and find the causation explanation both biologically plausible and the best fit to the epidemiological data. If we sold cannabis from pharmacists then, even if it the relationship was mere correlation, an individual with a doubled risk of psychosis would be armed with the knowledge to identify the early warning signs in both themselves and their friends. If customers experienced problems with their use it is my hope they could go back to the pharmacist and be diverted onto other strains or encouraged to abstain if necessary.

I have settled on pharmacists and not coffee shops. The Dutch coffee shop model is absolutely not one we should follow. The continued illegality of the supply chain to these coffee shops means that they are generally controlled by organised crime groups. This is obviously not a satisfactory endpoint for regulation. But even if we regulated all aspects of the trade, if I am slightly offended by the sight of a cannabis outlet in an otherwise charming street in Utrecht, how would the genuinely conservative members of our society respond to it?

Why should cannabis be the first drug for which full legal regulation is proposed? It is pure political expediency. Myself and colleagues commissioned a poll last year which asked 2000 people whether they would prefer a variety of drugs were lightly regulated like alcohol and tobacco, were prohibited as they are now or were strictly controlled and regulated by the government.

The strict control and regulation measures described included things like pharmacy sale, age restrictions and bans on branding and marketing, prices set by an independent panel in order to maximally undermine criminals and yet deter use. Full education on harms given before people are permitted to use for the first time, and manufacturers, distributors and retailers competing for government contracts with profits directed into drugs treatment and education programs.

Cannabis came out very clearly as the currently illegal drug that people wish to be regulated by the government. 33% wanted it lightly regulated. 37% wanted it strictly regulated, making 70% in favour of legal regulation in total. The next most favourable result was Magic Mushrooms with 52%, while ecstasy had only 39% in favour of regulation. A much higher proportion for legal regulation than ever found in traditional polls, but not ready for the next step. The most striking thing in the cannabis figures however was the fact that regulation was appealing to many of the people you would presume would bristle at the thought of legal cannabis. Totals for legal regulation for conservatives were 67%. Daily Mail and Express readers 66%. When you break it down to examine those in favour of strict regulation, it becomes very interesting indeed. 42% of women favoured strict regulation, to only 32% of men.

The newspaper readership group most in favour of strict regulation. Any guesses?... The Daily Mail and Express at 41% support.

The single demographic group most favouring strict regulation... 35-54 year old women. Presumably the group containing the most mothers of teenage children. They understand that prohibition isn't working and strict regulation presents the best opportunity to restrict children's access to the drug. And we should be absolutely determined to do so. While adult risk is doubled if they use cannabis, under 15s who smoke regularly are thought to increase their risk of subsequent psychosis by 5-fold. The benefits of strict regulation don't need to be explained to these women. They can just look at a policy proposal and recognise its potential.

I'd like to pan out slightly at this point and look at the international picture.

The Americans look like they are going to be the first to legalise cannabis, and I really hope they are not. Looking at the Proposition 19 ballot that was narrowly rejected in California, there was nothing in it that suggested health harms should be taken seriously at all. I think this is a grave mistake.

I was talking to some researchers from the American RAND corporation at a conference in the Netherlands this summer, and they were saying that if they legalised cannabis the price would reduce by 80%. This creates some real problems. If they want to tax the drug sufficiently so that the price of it doesn't plummet, creating a presumed increase in use rates, then they risk retaining a massive black market in cannabis. Americans culturally just instinctively don't like strict regulations getting in the way of the market.

In the UK though, I'd hope that we could recognise that this experiment with legal regulation necessitates really strict control. I would be happy to see the state growing the plants, distributing them to pharmacists and using the proceeds for education and drug treatment. I am uncomfortable with there being anyone in the business who has a financial incentive for people to use more cannabis or for young people to start using. If there is that 80% gap in the UK market too, then we could spend an awful lot of money on regulating the market and still raise a fair bit of tax on top before we came close to failing to undercut the criminal dealers.

On the issue of the drug conventions. The more careful we are, the less the UN would be able to object to our measures. If we say that our state is going to grow all these different strains of cannabis securely for restricted sale to only those who are fully educated on health harms, then they might find it hard to say no. We have to go up to the UN and say these conventions are restricting our ability to protect our citizens from harm. As I said last year, the argument “the people of Britain would like to get high” isn't quite so persuasive. There are of course important medical issues to consider, and I would certainly welcome the day when people with serious medical conditions can use cannabis for those reasons.

The control and regulation process could work to get cannabis farms out of suburban houses, stops Chinese and Vietnamese gangs smuggling in child slaves to tend plants, reduce the proceeds for organised crime, and vastly increases public knowledge of the early warning signs of psychosis. If evaluation indicates a relaxation of the strict regulations would better reduce harm then those steps should be taken.

I think the new legal market could compete on price, quality, predictability of dose, choice and ethical considerations. We may have to seriously consider issues of convenience (a pharmacist is often going to be further away than a dealing neighbour or the plants you are growing in your basement), and stigma (do we need to give cannabis users pads of things that look like prescription sheets so that they can hand them over like everyone else does in a pharmacist and receive the drug in a closed bag)?

To finish, I just want to emphasise again that cannabis regulation has to be about reducing harm as far as is practically possible. It would be pure folly to start at the level of regulation we have for tobacco just to see how it goes. How we deal with all of our drugs from alcohol to heroin, to energy drinks that are attractive to children needs to be looked at.

But if the UK could demonstrate it is possible to strictly control and regulate cannabis effectively I think the world could breathe a sigh of relief and reap massive benefits from following our example.

Tackling Corruption in Football has to Start on the Pitch

2011-09-03T19:08:00.003+01:00

I don't like cheating, and like all football watchers I particularly don't like cheating when it happens against my team (like this diving **** in today's European Championship qualifier http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMKnOmJOagg). But what I particularly dislike is the attitude of the game's governing bodies towards cheating, and their failure to punish it in any way, thus sending the message "cheating is fine if you do it well". Instant review systems are employed in a variety of other sports in order for matches to be settled by skill, chance and all those other things that make sport interesting, but not by the mistakes of officials.

In top flight televised matches we could surely have an appeals system for contentious decisions without too much problem, and such a system could have been very useful in the case of the diving **** linked to above. But the system should also be used retrospectively after the end of matches. I propose the use of "Proper Sporting Effort" Commissions (the potential for a suitably stigmatising acronym is of course entirely coincidental) who would be tasked with the review of all tapes after games and the distribution of suitable punishments for A) Simple simulation where no contact has been made B) Going down easy (tested by the simple question "would the person have fallen over there if they were being chased by a hungry bear/zombie/father of a groupie?") C) Making deliberate contact with the tackling player where that contact would not have happened if the suspect had continued running normally or taken appropriate avoiding action. I do hope C) could become known as Lambert's Law because of the grievous assault Paul Lambert was subjected to by Jorg Albertz in a 1999 Old Firm game (video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFimrKcF9dQ medical report here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1999/11/99/battle_of_britain/508731.stm) This particular "dive" left Lambert unconscious and knocked out a tooth or two but of course was punished with the award of a penalty to the offending player (12 years ago now and the memory of the injustice is still fresh).

I leave it up to the authorities to decide what would be appropriate punishment. Admittedly if it were left to me I would probably prescribe something between a year's ban from competitive football and jail time for the afore-mentioned Czech diving ****. And if you'd asked me a few hours ago the sanction could well have been a sight more medieval.

Seriously.

Cheating should not be so handsomely rewarded. It should not be "just part of the game" at any level.

It's time for the UK government to fully review drug policy

2011-08-17T19:45:00.002+01:00

It is possible to access the full text of my BMJ "personal view" article "It's time for the UK government to fully review drug policy" through the link below.

I hope to have further articles in The House magazine and Liberator before conference. If anyone would like me write any other articles then I'd be happy to consider opportunities.

http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/bmj.d5235?ijkey=WQL6MXTLBRdG0OW&keytype=ref

You can also read my views on the association between drug policy and the recent riots and looting here (I didn't approve the title) http://t.co/nzEQx7E

If the No campaign is in the gutter, the Yes campaign has to go for the gut.

2011-04-22T10:11:00.004+01:00

This has been a hugely frustrating campaign for me. I was passionately advocating for AV even before the election last year http://ewansliberalmusings.blogspot.com/2010/02/lib-dems-need-to-embrace-alternative.html and am sorry to say that the Yes campaign has been a great disappointment. The No campaign is trotting out outrageous lies about how much AV will cost, the end to one person one vote and the implication that in a two-person race the loser could win (amongst others. They really have no shame). In response to these false, but highly emotive claims, the Yes campaign has been trotting out wooly assertions that "AV will make your MP work harder" and "AV will mean an end to safe seats", without presenting any great evidence that this will be the case.

If I was to be leading the Yes campaign, I would be trying to engage the voters' guts, to evoke in them an outraged visceral response to injustice. But unlike the No campaign, I think I could do it with the truth.

So what is that truth? The truth is that after First Past the Post elections we don't actually know the population's true political opinion. In 2010, 16% of voters voted for a party or candidate that was not their favourite. How can we call ourselves a democracy if our citizens' votes are disproportionately represented and on top of that our citizens' votes do not even represent their opinions? FPTP encourages the electorate to second guess the behaviour of others and to LIE in the polling booth. If we want a properly functioning democracy, we have to have an electoral system which encourages the citizens to express their true opinions.

Perhaps the Yes campaign have rejected this argument as only 24% of people have ever voted tactically, but surely there is a deeper sense of justice in the country that can be tapped into. Surely people don't want representation born out of their neighbour's deception. It's time everyone came clean, put their political cards on the table and we found out what kind of country or constituency we all want to live in.

An auxiliary argument to this is the fact that FPTP prevents rapid change. The expenses scandal heralded a renewed disgust among the population at the behaviour of their politicians, but FPTP holds us rigidly in a two-party (or three-party) system. Maybe it is time we had new parties or independents with new ideas entering into politics and widening choice and diversity. Consider if, under FPTP, the most wonderful new party that was all things to all men (and women), had all the right policies to make Britain great, and was just plain perfect strode on to the scene. That party would find it extremely difficult to overcome the wasted vote, "they can't win here" effect.

AV allows people to vote honestly for the party of their choice, no matter their electoral history. It allows us to sweep out the old guard and usher in the new. Politics can be fast, and dynamic, and INTERESTING. Single issue parties can arrive on the scene and force politicians to take notice and respond to their concerns. Everyone knows where everyone stands, so politicians can be genuinely responsive to the needs of the people.

In short, AV is democracy. FPTP is not. If the No campaign is in the gutter, the Yes campaign has to go for the gut. If we don't, I fear we lose.

"Overshadowing" Nick Clegg's keynote speech

2011-03-06T14:08:00.003Z

The Scottish Sunday Express this morning reported the Scottish Lib Dems' unanimous backing of the amendment I had written on diamorphine maintenance treatment. http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/232924/Lib-Dems-want-heroin-given-out-free-on-NHS/

Here's the speech I gave in support of the amendment, followed by the letter to the Express in reply to their coverage and the quotes from the other parties:

It is first important to place this motion in its proper context. The UN Office of Drugs and Crime report Scotland as having the highest prevalence of opiate use in Western and Central Europe. Drug related death rates here have doubled since the late 90s and are on a long-term upward trend. Scotland, with one of the worst heroin problems in the world, needs one of the best drug treatment systems in the world in order to combat it.

The persistent offenders project in Glasgow is a great example of police and addiction workers working together to produce positive results. POP identifies those addicts who commit the most crime and takes the time to engage with them and work through their problems. Savings of £14 to society for every £1 spent can not be ignored. In talking to one of the project leaders this week, I was delighted to hear there are plans to extend this outreach service to tackle street prostitution. These young women experience horrendous suffering in their daily routine. A civilised society can not stand back and let them endure it. The police and a drugs project working together managed to eradicate street prostitution in Ipswich after the tragic series of murders that happened in 2006. We have to believe that we can achieve the same in Scotland.

Projects like POP can only go so far though. There will always be a significant group for whom methadone or abstinence will be unattractive or ineffective. Switzerland, Holland, Germany and Denmark have all adopted heroin maintenance clinics in order to target this difficult population. Switzerland adopted the policy in the early 90s. In the referenda that have challenged the policy, the people have consistently backed the policy by large majorities. It is both effective and popular. The UK trial of this system was also a success, with substantial reductions in criminal activity and street heroin use by the participants. This model that is spreading is typically of twice daily supervised consumption on clinic premises, with no risk of the diamorphine that is prescribed getting out on to the streets. The routine of this treatment and its associated psychological, social and employment assistance creates stability in previously chaotic lives and often leads to patients moving on into other treatment options or to abstinence.

We need services that don't allow the most problematic or vulnerable drug users to slip through the cracks. And we need the best evidence-based treatment options so that we have the best chance of helping them to recover. Putting these services in place will save the lives and alleviate the suffering of a great many drug addicts, but also of great importance is that the more heroin users we treat, the less impact they will have upon Scotland's communities. By treating addicts we can reduce the viability of drug-dealing in our communities, we can greatly reduce the acquisitive crime committed to fund drug use, and we can reduce the likelihood of more young people getting drawn into the same mess.

We have a choice. We can spend a relatively small amount in tackling Scotland's drug problem head on. Or we can let addicts steal, prostitute and deal to meet the massively inflated prices of the criminal market. This money lines the pockets of organised criminals and a proportion finds its way to the Taleban, which gets approximately 50% of its income from the heroin trade. 89% of the world's illicit opiates come from Afghanistan.

Please choose the cheaper option and support this motion.

and the letter to the Express:

The statements from the other parties regarding the Lib Dems' plans to
provide diamorphine maintenance clinics demonstrate just how hard it
will be for Scotland to tackle its very serious heroin problem. It is
laughable for the SNP to recommend we "stick to proven methods" when
drug-related deaths have doubled in the last ten years and Scotland
has the 6th worst heroin problem in the world. Labour allege "blanket
provision" and "very limited trials", when in reality this service
would only be available to at most around 10% of the most disruptive
and vulnerable heroin addicts. All the trials of this approach have
shown it much better than methadone in reducing crime and street
heroin use, and the many European countries that have adopted it as
policy have found it both effective and politically popular.
Diamorphine maintenance IS a recovery programme and it frequently
leads to abstinence. I suspect what society wants most is for
politicians to adopt the most effective way to stop heroin users
robbing from the people to give to organised crime and the Taleban.
They want street prostitution eradicated and they want their children
to be safe from pushers. All the evidence suggests that the best
diamorphine maintenance services can help achieve these goals.

If any candidates want to discuss going on the offensive with this, then please let me know.

Can we not have a student premium to go with the pupil one?

2010-12-08T21:33:00.004Z

I'm happy to hear that the threshold for repayment will be rising annually rather than every 5 years. But the other announcement that the government will be paying the first year's fees for every student that received free school meals and that universities will pay for the third has left me rather befuddled. This measure might encourage the school leaver's attendance at university but it will only benefit their situation several years after they leave university if they are working in a well-paid job. This is a benefit tht will essentially be paid to a relatively affluent individual who 10-20 years ago used to be poor as they cease repayment earlier than they would have without the support. It is purely cosmetic and accepting of the ignorance that people have of the repayment plan.

What is worse, the requirement of the university to pay for the 3rd year discourages that university from taking on more disadvantaged students than is absolutely necessary to satisfy government's opaque requirements. Why would they want to take on poor people if they bring in less money? This will put an absolute limit to social mobility rather than encourage it.

The proportion of disadvantaged students going to the most selective universities remains poor http://www.offa.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Sir-Martin-Harris-Fair-Access-report-web-version.pdf (Chapter 2) and government plans are unlikely to significantly address this. One thing they could do is to impose an access levy so that the most selective universities get to keep more of the fee that they charge over £6000 as the average grant received by students at the university increases. Take in more disadvantaged students and you will receive more money. It's a student premium! Much better than the anti-student premium the government is proposing. Students will want to go to universities that keep as much of their fee for teaching as possible, so the economic pressures to admit an increasing number of disadvantaged students will be magnified. And from this research from the Sutton Trust it seems clear that that could be a good thing for the quality of the student intake as well http://www.suttontrust.com/news/news/comprehensive-pupils-outperform/

Dear Lib Dem backbenchers, Tell the truth on fees before anyone else gets hurt.

2010-11-10T20:21:00.004Z

I'm furious.

I'm furious for a variety of reasons relating to the higher education funding debate, but not Millbank-trashing furious. No, if I was to mask up and stick a railing through a window, it'd be the NUS who should be pulling down the shutters (I would never take direct action. I'm just trying to attract attention to the seriousness of this situation).

I'm furious because the backbenchers of my party aren't courageous enough to tell the truth to the public.

I'm furious because various student groups who are receiving generous funding to support themselves through university are telling future applicants they won't be able to attend when government proposals should IMPROVE fair access.

And I'm furious because the Scottish government is clinging on to a funding policy which is pinning both Scottish universities and students in disgraceful poverty.

I was going to call this blog post "Failing to see the wood for the fees". Deferred fees are not the determinant of whether young people can support themselves through university. Maintenance funding determines whether students can feed and house themselves through their studies and maintenance funding will RISE following the implementation of government proposals. MORE students from poorer backgrounds will be able to attend higher education if they aren't in ****ing prison after the latest riot.

The fury really started for me when I read that Lib Dems were lobbying Vince Cable to cap the fees at lower than £7000 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11627039 because when you examine the implications of this you have universities struggling to fund courses and widen access on a lower income than they have at present and for whose benefit? The lowest earning graduates wouldn't be saved any money. The middle half would save a little. The highest earners would save a whole lot more*. When the **** did the Lib Dem back bench become the parliamentary defenders of the marginal financial interests of the wealthiest and most fortunate in society?

Higher deferred fees should only deter those who would not receive net benefit from a university education. Those who aren't academically inclined should look elsewhere. Those who are bright, motivated, highly skilled or entrepreneurial might be able to earn more and be happy without having to struggle through 3 years of academia that doesn't really motivate them. Student groups should be demanding the high quality careers advice that maximises this "good" deterrence and stop driving the "bad" deterrence that comes with poverty and a misunderstanding of the type of debt or costs that studying will bring.

If you really want to fight for the right of the disadvantaged to a top quality education, fight for an access levy so that only those institutions with at least average access to the disadvantaged can keep 100% of their £9000 fee.

But the one thing that made me spitting-mad, grind-your-teeth-while-reading, livid was when I started comparing the maintenance funding available to English and Scottish students and drew up this table: http://bit.ly/cfzp7q (also contains evidence to back up * above) So, in the land of free ****ing tuition, we see fit to let some students try to live on nearly £3000 less than their English counterparts while our universities go to the wall. It's no wonder the disadvantaged kids in Scotland are the least likely to go to university of all the regions of the UK http://bit.ly/ddSEzt Mr Salmond. Mr Russell. You can stick your empty-gesture free tuition up your respective voluminous backsides. I want a quality education for this nation's youth, and I want them to be able to enjoy it without rushing from lectures into a part-time job that they can't support themselves without.

Children. Students. Open your eyes. Aaron Porter doesn't have your interests at heart. Don't buy the lies about your ability to go to uni if your family is poor. Like some on the Lib Dem back benches he took a stance a while back and he's too much of a coward to tell you that stance is no longer correct. Please tell him (in as splenetic terminology as your youth allows) to call off this farce before anyone else gets hurt.

I never thought I'd engage in a near-socialist rant in favour of higher tuition fees and in defence of a Tory minister. But the government is proposing a fairer and better means of funding higher education in this country. Could we please start trying to properly get this message across?

Drugs Harms in the UK: some observations

2010-11-01T09:43:00.002Z

As Mark Easton reports in his blog this morning,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2010/11/drugs_debate_hots_up.html
The Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs has today released an analysis of the relative harms of the drugs that are routinely used in the UK today. The analysis has yielded a quite different result to a previous harm assessment that Nutt and colleagues carried out in the fact that alcohol has come out as a clear "winner" in terms of harm done to others and overall harm, with heroin and crack coming in second and third and the rest trailing some distance behind.

The analysis has been made very accessible and informative through the graphical representation of the different components of the final harm score (available on MArk Easton's blog), thus allowing enthusiasts to pick apart where these harms come from and hypothecate how the graphic might be different were drug policies to change.

I am rather disappointed that medically supervised diamorphine (pharmaceutical heroin) consumption has not been included in the analysis, but we can certainly identify major contributors to heroin's harm score which would be substantially reduced by consumption of a pharmaceutical product in a medically supervised environment. Indeed the three major contributors to heroin harm: drug-specific and drug-related mortality and crime would all be substantially reduced, and the only indicators that I suspect would not be reduced are dependence and drug-specific impairment of mental functioning.

The take-home message we should be going away with from this study is that

A: The misuse of drugs act categorisation of drugs is an absolute joke.
and B: A great many of the harms considered by this study are created or exacerbated by prohibition.

With home office and justice spending being slashed, it's about time we thought about doing things differently.

How crap is the Browne review?

2010-10-13T10:00:00.002+01:00

After a fairly exasperated G(lasgow)U(ni)LD meeting last night I thought I'd get stuck in to the Guardian's two-page spread on the Browne review so that I might better judge whether we're right to be furious. I'm probably not going to read the review itself as I have better things to be getting on with, but there are a few things that jump out at me from the article that I'd like to share. Firstly, the IFS analysis: "lower-earning graduates would pay less and higher-earning graduates would pay more" Surely this is a good thing? Raising the threshhold at which repayments start seems to me to be a progressive step that we should welcome and the 9% rate over £21000 certainly seems a fair and effective option for repaying a debt. It is never good for huge debts to be hanging over graduates, but they're not going to send the bailiffs round and your credit rating won't be affected. Just as household debts are not like the budget deficit, student debts will not be like a massive credit card bill. The differences between these proposals and a graduate tax are actually fairly slight.

The major problem that Browne presents is the notion that the elitism of the top universities would be extended. The suggestion that some of the fees charged above £6000 are recouped by the government seems to be a wasted opportunity. Could we not take half of the portion of each fee over £6000 and put it into a bursary fund lowering the fee to £6000 for every third entrant? If you want to charge higher fees, you have to take in a large proportion of students from low income households (how that is defined can be a matter of debate). The best universities need to be accessible to all. Browne might not achieve this. My proposal might help.

Of course this debt burden on students is only coming about due to the teaching grant reducing from £3.5Bn to £0.7Bn. Maybe they're just softening us up with politically unpalatable cut options before they go "OK, OK, we'll put a penny or two on income tax. Just don't riot!"

One thing I do know is that an acceptance of Browne would put Scottish higher education in a quite horrible position. I presume the grant to Scotland would reduce further as a result of this step and the Scottish government will need to act fast to keep standards from plummeting and respected universities facing genuine peril. There are tough decisions ahead, and with an election coming up you can be fairly sure they won't be made for a while.

All-in-all, it's a tough sell for Vince, but with a few tweaks here and there he might just achieve it. Would I rather the general population paid for universities out of taxation? Yes. Do I think these proposals will put a generation off university education? No I really don't. And if we got our act together and campaigned to build upon some of the progressive aspects of these reforms, then we might even see greater equality of access arising out of these changes rather than less. Students, please choose your battles wisely.

It's Time We Talked About Drug Policy (My speech)

2010-10-01T13:07:00.002+01:00

This is the speech I delivered on Sunday 19th September 2010 to the fringe event "It's Time We Talked About Drug Policy" kindly funded by Transform and Release. I thought it went pretty well. My dig at Melanie Phillips got a laugh again, so I suspect that will become an annual feature. Unless of course she comes to her senses on the issue of drugs policy. Stranger things have happened? I have also submitted the speech I delivered in the conference hall the following morning for consideration for Lib Dem Voice, so hopefully that'll be up in the next few days.

I am now going to describe what I believe to be a joined-up, responsible drug policy that should be effective at protecting vulnerable young people, reducing crime and regenerating struggling communities. It is also a policy that should be very appealing to the people of Britain, our coalition partners and indeed the parties of opposition.

I hope it is also a policy the UK can take the lead with and that the rest of the world will follow.

The first step we have to take is to reject our wishy-washy, soft-on-drugs cannabis policy which tolerates use, social supply and personal cultivation and calls for legalisation only when the UN allows. We don't use it in campaigns anyway, so we might as well just bin it. It is the soft underbelly that prevents us from starting any serious conversations on the issue.

I put it to you that we should replace this policy with a tough-on-drugs commitment to the strict government control and regulation of a legal cannabis market.

Forget about cannabis cafes, drug tourism, suburban greenhouses devoted to the horticultural hobbies of ageing hippies, and circles of teenagers passing around spliffs in the park.

We need instead to be highlighting the potential of strict government control and regulation to restrict the ability of cannabis to inflict harm, especially on children.

Scientific research points to cannabis use increasing risk of schizophrenia and for this risk being greater the earlier use starts in childhood. The economics of prohibition have also pushed the cannabis market towards the most potent skunk strains, elevating still further the risks to the mental health of young users.

At present we don't have the resources of frankly the necessary political support to take the steps necessary to restrict children's access to cannabis using the standard criminal justice and education tools.

Legalising cannabis sale to adults instead means we can greatly reduce the numbers of potential dealers who might try to sell to children. Such a step should also make it easier to stigmatise and apprehend those illegal dealers who remain.

There is still thought to be risk in the consumption of cannabis for those over 18, and so we should aim to provide detailed education on potential social, economic and health implications of use with special focus on how to recognise early warning signs of psychosis before anyone uses for the first time. A licensing scheme for use of the drug might be the best way to ensure delivery of this education, with licenses only available to those who have gone through an education process. Such a requirement firmly establishes this as a policy focused on attempting to protect our citizens from harm.

Wanting to allow your citizens to get high is not good grounds on which to challenge UN conventions.

Stating firmly that the UN conventions severely restrict our ability to protect the health of our citizens I would argue is a very strong starting point in diplomatic negotiations. Negotiations that could hopefully end in states following our experiment with interest rather than queueing up to condemn us.

There may be many of you sitting there thinking “This is never going to happen. We avoid talking about drugs for a reason. All the polls say it's suicide.” Well you're wrong. I'm happy to say with confidence that this policy will go down very well with the British people. The poll that LDDPR commissioned in July found 70% of participants favoured some sort of legal regulation. The poll described 3 regulatory scenarios: Light regulation, strict government control and regulation and prohibition. The groups that found strict control and regulation most tolerable were Daily Mail and Express readers and 36-55 year old females. Total support from Daily Mail and Express readers for some level of legal regulation was 66%, for Conservative voters it was 67%. Maybe we've got the Daily Mail readers all wrong. Maybe they read Melanie Phillips and Peter Hitchens, chuckle to themselves, shake their heads and think “Wow, they're totally crazy” just like we do.

The 36-55 year-old female group, likely to contain the most mothers of teenage children, and therefore the people you would think would be most worried about cannabis use, appear to be the group most supportive of the strict government control and regulation of cannabis. It's quite probable these women want to know that their children are safe from the harms of cannabis, and it is quite clear to them that prohibition is failing to provide that protection.

Proposing the strict control and regulation of cannabis is an action we can take with confidence and pride. It is specifically designed to reduce harms, it is projected to be very popular with the electorate, and, whether through taxes, or through the profits of state-run companies, it can raise considerable funds for other projects.

Such a policy should raise hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of pounds in government income. We could spend that money on reducing the deficit, on protecting services, or we could divert as much of that money as is necessary in order to make our drug treatment services the best in the world.

We have hundreds of thousands of problem drug users in this country and nearly a million unemployed young people. If we get drug policy wrong at this time there is a very real possibility that more and more young unemployed people will join the ranks of problem drug users. We need to find a drug strategy that blocks that path, while also diverting existing drug users back into productive roles in society.

The kind of policies the coalition government are apparently discussing fill me with great concern. Policies like time-limited methadone and withdrawal of benefits from addicts who refuse treatment are the kinds of policies that are likely to make our heroin problem worse not better. They are likely to increase demand for street heroin and increase the amount of crime addicts are compelled to commit to fund their drug habit.

Methadone maintenance treatment is undoubtedly effective at reducing harm to patients, their families, and the communities they live in, but there is now an undeniable body of evidence showing that heroin maintenance is far more effective at retaining individuals in treatment, reducing their use of street drugs and reducing the crime they commit to pay for them.

Lord McNally, our own Liberal Democrat Minister of State for Justice has recently cited cost-effectiveness as a reason why diamorphine maintenance isn't being pursued. The truth is that if the Home Office allowed maintenance treatment clinics to buy tubs of diamorphine powder then the average cost of the diamorphine for a year's treatment would be between 500 and 2000 pounds. This is tiny relative to the £11000 the average problem user spends on street heroin each year and the average £50-60,000 calculated cost to society they represent. At £6.80 per gramme, diamorphine could be made available at less than one fifth of the cost of an equivalent dose of methadone.

If the government removed barriers to the affordable supply of diamorphine then all the UK's dependent heroin users could potentially benefit, and we could make an effort to attract as many problem drug users as possible into top quality treatment services. We cannot afford to leave people parked on methadone. We have to be able to give people the best chance of recovery by finding a treatment regime that works for them, that identifies their problems and seeks to address them.

I believe that treatment services should embrace two very important principles. The first of these is early intervention. We are passionately committed to early intervention in medicine and in social work as a means of limiting harm. I believe we should have the same passion for attracting heroin users into treatment before they prostitute themselves or start habitually committing acquisitive crimes. Their chances of leading a happy, productive life are vastly increased, and the negative impacts of their criminal behaviour upon society can be prevented if we intervene early.

The second principle is prevention. The more heroin addicts are attracted into treatment, the fewer are the points of entry into the lifestyle for vulnerable young people.
The vast majority of local dealers also use the drug. Commonly termed “user-dealers” they are the footsoldiers of the illegal market. Attract them into treatment and they no longer need to deal to raise money, and should stop marketing heroin to others.
A heroin addict's access to heroin is more secure if they are surrounded by friends who are also seeking the drug, and so it makes sense to introduce others to the experience. With genuinely effective and attractive drug treatment services, these circles of friends might instead work together to help each other into treatment and recovery rather than ensuring each other has access to drugs and drawing others into the lifestyle.

Combine all this with intelligent, honest, and well-targeted education provision and it's possible we can vastly reduce recruitment into the lifestyle of a dependent drug user.

The Tory backbenchers and The Daily Mail would probably like to complain about heroin on the NHS and taxpayers' money being spent on irresponsible addicts. That argument doesn't wash if the money being spent is that of other supposedly irresponsible drug users.

So there we have it: Two fairly straightforward drug policies. To control and regulate cannabis and to utilise heroin maintenance treatment as part of a vastly improved drug treatment service funded by the proceeds of the regulated cannabis market.

With these changes we could see the following effects:

Reduced use of both cannabis and heroin by teenagers.

Earlier intervention in psychotic illness and a potential 10% reduction in the rate of schizophrenia.

Reduced incidence of overdose, infection, hepatitis and HIV.

The end of red light districts in our cities and towns.

Drug-related crime going down not up in a time of stretched resources.

And resources diverted from raids on cannabis farms, putting addicts in prison for the umpteenth time, and generally fighting a drugs war in which drugs are giving us a good kicking.

If we present our message as “Drugs are harmful, we need to find a better way to protect people from their harms,” then Keith Vaz will probably still tell everyone we're sending out the wrong message. But those who actually listen will understand us and support us and we will make the breakthrough.

This is a simple message, with obvious benefits and one that we now know the public are ready to embrace.

Last year at a fringe event I called for courage to speak out for reform. But we don't need courage any more. We've established that this proposed policy is now the populist position, so let's get our act together and make it happen.

A version of this blogpost will appear in Liberator issue 342.

It's Time We Talked About Drug Policy (fringe event)

2010-09-17T14:38:00.002+01:00

Here's the text of the flier I have produced for the LDDPR fringe event happening this Sunday in the ACC in Hall 1B at 8pm. Please get in touch if you would like to help distribute fliers in Liverpool.

It's Time We Talked About Drug Policy

A Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform
fringe discussion

With speakers:

Niamh Eastwood of Release
Danny Kushlick of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation
and
Ewan Hoyle of LDDPR
chaired by Julian Huppert MP

A recent poll found 70% of Brits deem the legal regulation of cannabis a more tolerable option than prohibition

Would ideas coming out of the coalition government risk making the UK's drug problem worse?

Can a new, rational drugs policy better protect young people from the dangers of drugs?

Can pharmaceutical heroin be a far more cost-effective tool than methadone in aiding the recovery of addicts?

Can drug policy reform cut crime, safeguard mental health and save expenditure as budgets are slashed?

Come along and join the debate!

ACC Hall 1B
Sunday 8pm-9:15

Growing numbers of respected figures in British society are calling for decriminalisation or legalisation of drugs to be considered as potential solutions to the serious health and social problems that drugs - and arguably prohibition – create. Numerous editorials and commentators have backed these calls in the press. But politicians are still sticking stubbornly to the same tired old script.

The speakers at this event will describe some of the ways in which current policy impacts negatively upon British citizens and other communities around the World. The impact and cost-effectiveness of current British drugs policy has never been formally assessed.

You will also hear a new policy proposal that has been specifically designed to limit the harm that drugs cause and that is likely to be very appealing to the public.

Websites and twitter accounts:
www.tdpf.org.uk @TransformDrugs
www.release.org.uk @Release_Drugs
www.lddpr.org.uk @ewanhoyle

contact ewanhoyle@gmail.com for further info on Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform

Professor Pertwee's pot proposals

2010-09-15T13:26:00.002+01:00

Yesterday brought the news of yet another respected expert calling for a broader drug policy debate, this time with the specific suggestion of licensed cannabis sale: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11287130

I'm grateful to Prof. Pertwee for drawing attention to the cannabis legalisation debate, but would like to examine some of his proposals in more detail and consider what impact they might have relative to alternatives.

The issue of age restrictions is an important one and I would be interested in hearing the Professor's reasoning for settling on 21 as the age at which someone can legally purchase the drug. If taking the cannabis trade out of the hands of criminals is the Prof's goal as he states then I would suspect there would be a vast number of cannabis users between the age of 18 and 21 that could help prop up the illegal market. Setting such an age limit also limits the level of stigma that would be experienced by an illegal cannabis dealer. There is an extent to which dealing to under 21s might be tolerated by society as many would continue to think the law was unreasonable. Lowering the age requirement to 18 firmly casts remaining drug dealers as people who deal to children. There is a greater likelihood such behaviour will be deemed unacceptable to society. Fewer individuals would be able to profit from illegal dealing, tolerate the stigma associated with it, or escape prosecution whilst operating in communities hostile to their activities.

A further argument for a lower age of legality is the ability to deliver targeted education at individuals seeking to use the drug. Professor Pertwee's proposals mention the possibility of licensing, but seemingly only as a means to exclude individuals with mental illness. I would favour the issuing of a license being dependent on receipt of detailed education on the potential harms that may come about as a result of cannabis use, and with special focus on the potential implications for the mental health of the user. Rather than exclude the mentally ill from legal use (also would they not just seek out an illegal supply anyway?) it might be very useful indeed for scientists to use the newly legal cannabis use environment to study the relationship between cannabis and mental health in greater detail. Cannabis is a complex drug, and the effects on the user of the active ingredients THC and cannabidiol (and also nicotine from the commonly co-administered tobacco) are not close to being fully understood. A good scientific relationship between mentally ill users and well-trained pharmacists might allow patients to be guided towards cannabis strains that do not jeopardise their mental health, and indeed might even help them. If Professor Pertwee is as concerned about the mental health implications of cannabis use as I am, I hope he would welcome the massively increased public knowledge of the warning signs of mental ill-health that should come about associated with a licensing regime linked to education rather than to sanity.

Of additional concern are Professor Pertwee's comments about the marketing of cannabis: "We should consider licensing and marketing cannabis and cannabis products just as we do alcohol and tobacco." I am decidedly uncomfortable with this loose talk of marketing cannabis like alcohol and tobacco. Any reform which leads to greater consumption of cannabis will face criticism, and the more marketing and branding we allow, the greater the chances of a rise in consumption. Surely it would be better for the first step in reform to start from a point of zero sanctioned branding or marketing?

Professor Pertwee also makes some assumptions about the manufacture of the drug:
"It depends on a private company being willing to produce a branded product." Does it? Will the public stand for private companies profiting from the manufacture, distribution and sale of recreational drugs? Would they view more favourably a level of state intervention that sees all the profits from the trade being redirected instead into drug treatment services and education? Can the state efficiently run such an enterprise purely for the benefit of public services and society as a whole, or would co-operation between the state and regulated companies yield greater success?

Again, I salute Professor Pertwee for opening up the debate. I don't think he has all the answers just yet, but I do hope the debate progresses as it is vital for our society, public health and economy that we find them soon and can move on, leaving history to judge prohibition of cannabis as it has already judged the prohibition of alcohol.

Winning that 2nd Glasgow list seat

2010-09-07T15:09:00.003+01:00

Warning: This post contains assumptions based on national polling that it is probably not advisable to apply to the Glasgow regional list vote next year.

A poll by YouGov for the Scottish Mail on Sunday published at the weekend put the Scottish parties on the following percentage share for the regional list. Applying that national swing to the Glasgow region we get projected list vote shares of:

National Glasgow

Lab 36 47.4
SNP 26 22.8
Con 15 7.2
Lib 12 7.9
Gre 6 6.2

Assuming Labour win all 10 Glasgow constituency seats (sorry Nicola)... (I'm not sorry), that projection leaves us with 4 SNP MSPs, and 1 each for the Liberals, Conservatives and Greens. If either of Labour or the Lib Dems fancied winning the 4th SNP seat, they would need fairly large vote increases. Labour would need an increase of around 15% to a 63% share (highly unlikely), and the Lib Dems would need an increase of around 3.5% to 11.4%.

So if the Liberal Democrats want 2 Glasgow MSPs we can take them by winning over just 1 in 13 of the projected Labour list supporters. Essentially we have to persuade these people that voting for Labour in the list is almost entirely pointless and you should instead be voting for whether you want an extra SNP or an extra Lib Dem representative. I do hope we could point to our successes in previous coalitions with Labour in an attempt to persuade them that switching their support to the Lib Dems would be a canny move on their part.

Obviously all this skullduggery serves to demonstrate just how ferociously abysmal the Scottish electoral system is, but that is an argument for another day.

Dear Mr Costa, Wise up or shut up.

2010-09-05T12:04:00.002+01:00

In this morning's Observer Antonio Maria Costa, outgoing executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, accuses those who advocate “a radical new approach” as a means to reduce substance abuse of being “deluded” and says “those in favour of legalisation have lost sight of health as their priority.” http://bit.ly/bOcPmo

I'm sorry Antonio, but you either haven't been listening to or you have failed to understand the motivations of the progressive section of reform advocates who favour strict controls. As a member of that group I find your juxtaposition of “those who dream of a world free of drugs and those who hope for a world of free drugs” childish and insulting.

As a non-drug-using reform advocate my motivations stem almost entirely from a desire to reduce health, social, and emotional harms related to drug use and the illegal drug trade, and I believe that strictly controlling a legal market is the best way to bring about that reduction in harm. I read with interest of the Portuguese experience of drug policy reform (http://bit.ly/bB3MOD), and can't help but feel that we can achieve so much more by being ambitious but also appropriately cautious at the same time.

Portugal has done well in recognising that drug use is a social and health problem and not an issue for criminal courts, and the population has benefited from more drug users entering treatment and being able to confront and be open about their problems without risk of criminalisation. But the Portuguese system still relies on referral of drug users following contact with police. This system is grossly inefficient and reactive when considered alongside the potential opportunities for intervention in a situation of strictly regulated legal supply.

It is useful now to take a journey through the time-line of a typical drug user's journey.

In the Portuguese and the prohibition model, first contact with drugs will be with either a friend or an illegal dealer marketing the drug to a young person in the hope of recruiting a regular customer. This first contact is more likely to be initiated by the friend or dealer. The drugs are coming to the individual rather than the individual seeking out the drugs.

Consider now the ideal situation in a condition of strictly regulated legal supply: Social supply and dealing of drugs remains a criminal offence and dealers will hopefully struggle to compete with the legal market. I would hope the vast majority of first contacts with drugs would occur at the instigation of the potential user. Curiosity about drugs leads them to enter a pharmacist and request the drug they are interested in. Rather than being marketed a product with some lie about the quality accompanied with enthusiastic encouragement, the individual would be provided detailed information on the possible health, social and economic consequences of use, information on points of contact should they wish to receive confidential advice, and would be able to make a truly informed choice on whether to consume the drug in question.

Let's jump to 6 months down the line, the drug of abuse is cannabis, and our drug user is experiencing signs of early psychosis. In the prohibition path, the user has no knowledge of the warning signs of psychosis, their friends don't either, and so there is not an obvious point of intervention to help arrest the decline in their mental health. In our Portuguese model they may have encountered education about the risks of cannabis, but not delivered in a one-to-one setting so the level of attention paid is unpredictable. They are more likely to have been diverted into services by police intervention and through the activity of the panels, but this is entirely dependent upon them being caught in possession of the drug. In conversation with the panel the issue of psychosis might arise and our drug user might discuss some of the issues they are having, consider associating them with their drug use and perhaps cease their use of cannabis.

In the situation of strictly regulated legal supply, our drug user will have been educated about potential links with psychosis immediately before being licensed to use the drug for the first time, they may have recognised feelings of paranoia, delusions or hallucinations, or their friends who have been similarly educated might raise concerns. They have the option of returning to the pharmacy, discussing their experience, and requesting a less potent strain, or they might simply not want to chance it and cease their use altogether. A system of licensing also raises the possibility of levels of drug use being monitored (only accessible to the individual and health professionals with their consent), so heavy users can be discreetly encouraged to consult with their doctor more often than light users, allowing early intervention should issues arise. A further important feature of a legal market specifically relevant to cannabis is the increased availability of strains of various strength and potency. The dominance of potent skunk strains in the UK market would be broken, allowing users to settle on the strain of the drug they most enjoy and that hopefully does not jeopardise their mental health.

Apply this analysis to all drugs and it seems to me quite clear that the regulatory model that would best safeguard health is the one of strict control and regulation of a legal market. Individuals should face less pressure to experiment with drugs in the first place, will be considerably more aware of the health and social implications of drug use, and will find it much easier to confront any health problems that arise.

So Mr. Costa: Health is my priority, and the model of control and regulation I am proposing reflects that. I will concede that such a regulatory model is best implemented in a well-developed economy that has the resources to ensure the system runs smoothly. To discourage a country such as Britain from taking such a step is to condemn the whole world to more of the same, and I for one do not share you positive interpretation of the statistics that show a stubborn lack of progress towards your “world free of drugs” fantasy.

I'm fair wrapped up in Budyko's Blanket

2010-07-07T09:29:00.003+01:00

It's not often you read something that makes you genuinely optimistic about the future of the planet. We're used to regular updates now from panels of climatologists basically telling us we're screwed, and that unscrewing ourselves is going to be a long, economically painful, and fairly masochistic slog. Last night however I had the pleasure of reading the "Superfreakonomics" chapter: "What do Al Gore and Mount Pinatubo have in common?" and it turns out there is a scientifically and economically plausible proposal for reversing (or at least counteracting) global warming. The solution has been estimated to cost just $250M (not billion. Million. I double-checked) and is called "Budyko's blanket" (probably needs a better name if it'g going to win people round). Scientists saw the effect that Mount Pinatubo's stratospheric (to mean into the stratosphere not just "really high") sulphur dioxide emissions produced in cooling the planet, and thought "Hmm, if we could get a hose, pump some SO2 up there, maybe we could reverse global warming." And it turns out the hose doesn't have to be that wide, the volume of SO2 doesn't have to be that great (0.05% of global emissions) and we could probably throw the plan together within a couple of years. Hallefrickinlujah! My children and grandchildren aren't going to live on a planet in climatological chaos with all that entails.

But what would this solution mean politically? Where should CO2 emissions stop if the greenhouse effect isn't a consideration any longer? How much ocean acidification is acceptable if the plant life on land is flourishing? If this system is built in America (and it's American's who are pursuing the idea) how do we stop them creating a green and pleasant land across the American plains to the detriment of the other world ecosystems?

On the domestic front I believe it is a very good thing that fear of climate chaos has caused us to think hard about future sources of energy. I do believe peak oil is just around the corner, and if we are ready to whizz around in electric cars, and are living in properly insulated homes with lifestyles powered by wind and wave, then there might not need to be a dip in the quality of life we experience as we go through the transition to renewables. It would also be nice not to rely on Saudi oil and Russian gas for any longer than is necessary.

In short Budyko's blanket allows us to look to the future with hope. It doesn't mean we can abandon environmental sustainability. Rising CO2 will have more subtle effects on the environment that we still have to deal with. But we perhaps don't have to deny ourselves life's little pleasures with the same degree of enthusiasm as we have been, and we can allow developing nations to develop without telling them how to do so. A few encouraging prods in the direction of renewables might be in both our interests, but now that they're not going to drag us to climate hell, I guess we can but out a little :)

Oh, and I do hope it's as easy as the scientists say it is.

Evidence-based drug policy: Think of the children!

2010-06-22T08:48:00.002+01:00

In the next few days I will be submitting a motion to conference calling for an impact assessment to be carried out on current drugs policy and for expansion of heroin maintenance treatment programmes across the country. The motion calls for current policy to be compared to its alternatives including more stringent prohibition, decriminalisation of possession and use, and strict control and regulation by the government.

There will undoubtedly be some who will seek to present the latter option as "legalisation" and encourage us to "think of the children" as they go on to describe some drug-addled dystopian nightmare scenario. Should I be in attendance when this argument is presented I will likely fix my gaze upon the doubter and say with steely determination "No. You think of the children, for concern for their welfare in central to my argument."

In this country at present the chances of a child being drawn into the lifestyle of a problem drug user are entirely at the mercy of fate. Do they go to the wrong party? Do they fall in with the wrong crowd of friends? Do they fall in love with the wrong boy? At present there are many many thousands of people out there who would profit from luring teenagers into the use of heroin or crack cocaine. They could be dealers who need a new customer to replace the one that died from an overdose, went into prison or somehow got clean. They could be a young man who's never been any good at stealing things but has always been able to get the girl, and who needs a young lady to earn his drugs money in a way that he can't. Or they could just be a desperate soul in need of a friend and who only knows one way to make people hang around. These people are all around us - the unofficial heroin and crack marketing board - unconstrained by ethical guidelines or regulations. Free to ensnare any unsuspecting teenager that comes within reach.

It is absolutely essential that we neutralise this very real threat. With youth unemployment at its highest for many years, too many young people are vulnerable to temptation. If we are to wage a war on drugs it is essential to neutralise the recruiting sergeants. To do this we just have to examine their motivation. The vast majority of low-level dealers are user-dealers. They need money to buy drugs. The boyfriend pimps need money to buy drugs. The desperate friend needs some sympathetic attention. All these motivations can be addressed through better drug treatment services, the best of these - as demonstrated by considerable scientific evidence - being heroin maintenance treatment.

Decades of prohibition have utterly failed to stop this country's children becoming heroin and crack addicts. The vast majority of the street prostitutes that as a society we largely ignore were children to whom the path to addiction was left open. My primary motivation in submitting this motion is to block that path to the present generation, many of whom are no doubt walking down it as I write.

Give the user-dealer heroin and he no longer has to deal. Give enough of his customers heroin and his supplier or his boss can no longer make enough money for drug dealing to be a viable business. Give the street prostitute heroin and they no longer have to work the street. Give their boyfriends heroin and they no longer have to ask them to. Drawing users into heroin maintenance services allows some level of intervention in the problems that represent barriers to a fulfilling life. They won't have to commit crime or prostitute themselves to fund their habit. They could start looking for a job. If they have children, they can hold them as their number one priority.

"Think of the children" is all Barbara Harris ever does, and she really doesn't see this as a problem. Barbara Harris is the head of the "charity" Project Prevention, which is scouring the deprived areas of our nation's cities looking for addicts to sterilise. Her charity will give each sterilised addict £200, which will often be spent on a few days worth of heroin. I could easily criticise Barbara for the fact that her charity is indirectly funding the Taleban, but I'd like to draw her attention to the scale of the problem. There are around 10,000 children of problem drug users in the care system in this country, and many thousands more growing up in households affected by drug use. Is it in the children's interests to regard their parents as lost causes, people who cannot be trusted to turn their lives around and make a success of themselves? Or should we rather treat these people's condition as a medical ailment and treat it with the best treatments available? Rather than putting children into care or preventing their existence, should we not aspire to stabilise their parents lives, give them the assistance they require to make a go of it, and allow the love for their children and the love they receive in return to be a massively positive motivating factor in their reform. Addicts needn't be bad parents. It's just our current approach to drugs makes it very, very difficult for them to be good ones.

Despite the very real dangers of heroin and crack, perhaps the most frequently expressed concern is that cannabis use will suddenly spread like wildfire amongst the nation's children were it to be legalised. If it were just to be legalised then I'm happy to admit this is a possibility, but legalisation is not what is being proposed. What should be proposed is a strictly regulated market. I personally would favour cannabis only being available from licensed pharmacists, with a wide choice of varieties of different strengths and different ratios of active ingredients. One thing that is also essential in regulation is an age restriction. At present teenagers have fairly easy access to cannabis, and seem very eager to experiment. Cannabis strains are stronger now (prohibition always incentivises potency) and the scientific evidence suggests that teenagers are especially vulnerable to effects on brain development that might predispose to psychosis. Ideally, if drugs were to be regulated by the state, then the market for illicit dealers shrinks considerably, and the illicit dealers who would remain would be isolated, hated figures trying to deal to the only remaining illegal market: children. With the prison population dwindling in the aftermath of effective treatment for dependent drug users, there'd be plenty space for people who might try to exploit the nation's youth for profit.

So please, the next time the Daily Mail or a red-faced Conservative backbencher exhorts you to "Think of the children!", politely ask them to do the same.

Heroin prescription can be a vaccine against a broken society

2010-05-30T23:10:00.002+01:00

In the couple of days between the arrest and the charging of Stephen Griffiths this week I made desperate attempts to contact all 3 Bradford MPs, driven by the knowledge that I would struggle to forgive myself if the arrested man was not the killer and if further women were to die.

On reflection I am struggling to convince myself that I'm not partially responsible for their deaths anyway. I've known for over a year now how to prevent young women engaging in street prostitution to fund a drug habit, but in that year I have failed to effect change in our drug policies towards heroin and the poor people who find themselves needing to take it. It's not a happy place to be. But I can't imagine how it must feel to know the solution as I do, have considerably more power to effect the necessary change, but yet choose to say nothing for "political" reasons. Perhaps such people hold the same prejudices that they project onto the population and genuinely see the street prostitutes of the UK as not worth the hassle.

So to the solution. How do we stop young women dependent on heroin from working on the streets to pay for it? It's simple really. We look at the evidence on the most cost-effective way to treat their condition and we apply the solution that we know works. The results of the British trials of maintenance heroin have finally been published and they confirm the results from all of the other trials carried out in the last 10 years. Heroin works. Methadone is a poor second best.

If such disparity was demonstrated between the effectiveness of two drugs for any other medical condition - and the NHS continued to resist offering the more effective option - the sufferers, their families and friends would go nuts. In all likelihood the general population wouldn't be happy either.

Dependent drug users as a group on the other hand might struggle to summon the self-esteem, their families might struggle to break through the stigma and large sections of the population would quite likely express considerable revulsion at "their" taxes being spent on people who have "chosen" to take drugs.

Hang on a minute. If using heroin is a choice is smoking tobacco an innocent mistake? In the interest of consistency should we not cease the treatment of smokers for lung cancer, chronic pulmonary diseases, heart disease, stroke etc? Hmm, how long do we let them burgle, prostitute and generally make a nuisance of themselves to pay for their treatment privately before we decide to give them a chance on the NHS? And smoking is an educated choice. It says it's going to give you cancer on the bloody packet! Surely by Daily Mail comment contributor logic all the smokers visiting GPs saying "I have breathing difficulties" should be greeted with "Well Duh!" and shown the door. No drug dealer is going to last very long in the trade if he passes on similar health warnings to his clients. Imagine "Before you try your first hit I should say that heroin is an extremely physically addictive drug and with your economic and social situation as it is you will likely be considering prostituting yourself to feed your habit within a month." If heroin is a choice, then eating lots and sitting on the couch is a choice. Raising your blood pressure ranting at liberals who want to give junkies heroin on the NHS is a choice. To hate the prospect of heroin on the NHS is to hate the NHS itself and the assistance it gives to all those who need it regardless of colour, creed or the ill-advised choices that cause you to need it.

And it's not just the dependent user who benefits from prescription. Obviously the families of addicts would be saved considerable anguish. The children especially might not be removed by authorities now that the parents have chaotic money and drug-seeking removed from their daily routine. The parents might be able to hold their children as their number one priority.

The communities that dependent users live in might be spared the up to 80% of domestic burglaries that dependent users commit and the over 50% of acquisitive crimes in general. They might be spared the desperate sight of street prostitutes working in their neighbourhood.

Most importantly though, bringing a heroin addict into the care of the state removes a customer for the local dealers. The more problem drug users you treat, the less customers there are for the local dealers and the less viable their occupation. In many cases the dealer will themselves be dealing to fund a habit of their own. Give them prescribed heroin and the need to fund their habit in that way disappears. Give a whole heroin-using community prescribed heroin and the dealers who would seek to expand that community lose their livelihood and need to find something else to do with their time. Effective treatment of heroin addicts can end further recruitment of young people into that lifestyle. The risk of further daughters becoming drug-addicted street prostitutes becomes infinitessimal.

The debate on heroin prescription is currently centred around whether we should make it available as a second-line treatment for people who have failed to cease street heroin use while receiving methadone. The progressive goal here is really uninspiring though. There are tens of thousands of unemployed, vulnerable young people who are at risk of falling into the dependent user lifestyle. I believe we should make a concerted effort to block that path. I believe we should be identifying as many problem drug users as possible and giving them their drug of addiction for free (at least at first). Only then do we have an opportunity to end the culture of street heroin and its capacity to spread into another generation. It is utterly bizzarre that we should tolerate people stealing from us, prostituting themselves and trying to get our children hooked on heroin. We have to consider vaccinating our society to halt the spread of this menace.

We did nothing to improve the way in which we treat addiction after 5 addicts who worked as prostitutes were murdered in Ispwich in 2006. We have done nothing to halt the drug-related death rate doubling in Scotland over the last 10 years. Another 3 addicted women have now been murdered by a serial killer in Bradford. This is not the time to play catch-up with the progressive policies of our European neighbours. It is time to make up for lost time and innumerable lost lives. It is time to treat addicts with humanity, treat addiction as an illness, and credit the British people with the intelligence and the compassion to understand why such action is required.

Protecting Bradford's street prostitutes from a serial killer

2010-05-26T18:49:00.002+01:00

A letter I have just written to David Ward (MP for Bradford East). If you can think of other people who could help with this effort, please forward this to them, link to this or use whatever means of communication you think would work.

Thanks.

Dear Mr. Ward,

As founder of Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform, I am hugely concerned at the unfolding events in your city as reported here on the BBC website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bradford_and_west_yorkshire/10163998.stm and similarities to the serial murders carried out by Steven Wright in Ipswich in 2006.

In 2006 further young women working as prostitutes in the town were murdered after the possibility of there being a serial killer preying on prostitutes was reported in the news. There is a very real possibility that the man being questioned currently is not the murderer. It is therefore important for local police and other services to act quickly to ensure the safety of the women working the streets of Bradford. From the experience in Ipswich in 2006 it is clear that urging women to stay off the streets is not sufficient. I therefore call on you to contact the police in Bradford to propose that they work with health services to make available emergency prescribed maintenance doses of pharmaceutical heroin to any female dependent drug user in the city who is known to have worked the streets or that approaches services seeking help. It is quite possible that rapid action could save lives.

Sincerely,

Ewan Hoyle

Founder of Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform.

My conditions for cooperation. Yes drug policy IS that important.

2010-05-08T14:10:00.004+01:00

These are the conditions I think we should demand be met by a potential coalition partner.

On electoral systems: Each party must guarantee at least a referendum on AV. A 3-option referendum including STV should be acceptable to Labour as I would hope they would be confident of arguing the case for the middle-ground option.
This referendum would of course have to be run using the AV/STV method.

Positions in a coalition cabinet: The one position of greatest importance is Home Secretary. It is the department in which policy has differed greatest between the other two parties and ourselves. It is the department in which Liberal Democrat power could undoubtedly improve our society whilst saving money on things like sentencing policy and effective crime prevention measures.

We should also have as a condition an impact assessment/enquiry into current drug policy. The potential savings to be made from moving to a sensible, evidence based control and regulation approach are immense. Controlling and regulating currently illegal drugs has the potential to save over £10Bn in criminal justice costs while at the same time reducing burglary rates by 80%, street prostitution by over 90% and drastically reducing the prison population. It is the area of policy where huge savings can be made while creating huge benefits to society.

If we are not to go the way of Greece, we need to find the policy options which save money while making people's lives better. Control and regulation of drugs is the most obvious of these.

I would also like to see movement towards our redistributive tax plans.

Ewan Hoyle.

Glasgow South

Founder of Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform
Blogger at: http://ewansliberalmusings.blogspot.com/

To share or to shaft?: The inherent unfairness of the "Big Society"

2010-05-07T21:38:00.003+01:00

Over the last 24 hours or so, in a state of mildly delirious sleep-deprivation, I've been mulling over the implications of a potential conservative government. It has not been enjoyable.

I find myself in a position of being fairly desperate to help create something akin to the Tories' "Big Society" vision. Not because of all the wonderful incentives they might introduce, but because I'm pretty sure if we don't do everything ourselves, their rolling back of the State in our time of greatest need could quickly lead to a dystopian nightmare if we don't pull our sleeves up and get stuck in. Sadly, they would likely try to take the credit for this community co-operation. Maybe it was always their intention to utilise the fear of disaster that is rising in compassionate, liberal minds in bringing about the "Big Society". Why else would George Osbourne still be in line to be Chancellor after all?

I'm also reminded somewhat of the Prisoner's Dilemma psychological experiment:

Robert Kilroy-Silk's interpretation of the famous Prisoner's Dilemma psychological experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shafted.

If we consider the application of the Prisoner's Dilemma to a post-aTorylyptic political environment with a small state and low taxes there are three scenarios that might arise.
The first scenario is that everybody shares. Everybody suddenly becomes voluntary enthusiastic participators in their community and the community benefits enormously.
In the second scenario everybody shafts. Essentially society sits back and expects someone else to do the work. This scenario would go tits-up pretty quickly.
It is the third scenario that is the most interesting however, and it is by far the more likely of the three to become a reality. In this scenario the more compassionate, caring, selfless, generous individuals donate their time and money to causes and services where they feel they can contribute. The other members of society (the lazy, greedy, mean-spirited types) choose not to contribute their time and money, and yet they enjoy all the services the generous citizens help provide, and accumulate greater wealth as a result of the lower taxation.

Low tax, low spend "Big Societies" have inherent within them a financial incentive to be a greedy parasite upon society. If national insurance contributions are a "Jobs Tax" then the Big Society is a tax on generosity, compassion and general goodness. It is grossly unfair.

I wish we could find a way to make the mean-spirited, greedy people pay more, but the more that public services are funded by taxpayers and not charitable individuals, the more we can at least say they are paying their fair share.

Nick Clegg should start asking which party will support him as Prime Minister

2010-04-26T08:55:00.002+01:00

We have to break out of this ever-repeating cycle of boring press conferences where Nick Clegg is asked which of the other parties he'd be prepared to cosy up to in the event of a hung parliament. With our current poll rating and the clear indication in this YouGov poll that a Lib Dem government would be widely tolerated and a Lib-Lab coalition would be the next best thing http://my.yougov.com/commentaries/peter-kellner/could-the-lib-dems-win-outright.aspx Nick Clegg has to start saying he would ask other parties to support him as Prime Minister if he receives a considerable mandate in percentage vote share. People are already fairly resigned to a hung parliament. The way to maximise our vote share in this situation is to establish that more votes for the Lib Dems increases the chances of Nick Clegg being Prime Minister. Not Gordon Brown, not David Cameron, but Nick Clegg. We should be stating that if the Lib Dems win the popular vote, we shall be seeking coalition with a party that would be prepared to support Nick Clegg in the top job. If Labour come a distant third I'm sure they would be happy to have some say in the running of the country. If the Tories come 1st in seats, but the Lib Dems win the vote share, the ball would be in Gordon's court and Nick Clegg should ask to lead a coalition. We desperately need a vote Lib Dem - get Nick Clegg strategy that is plausible to the population. If they think the Lib Dems can lead the country if we win the popular vote, then they might just vote for us.

If the Lib Dems win the popular vote Nick Clegg should seek to govern. This tactic should discourage any Lib Dem supporter thinking of voting tactically. If we set an achievable target in winning the popular vote, people will want to give Nick the moral authority to govern and watch the other parties squirm.

A letter to the Herald on Glasgow's heroin problem and it's ties to prostitution.

2010-04-25T20:08:00.000+01:00

David Pratt asks in Friday's Herald "How can we stem the tide of heroin flooding our streets?" He also seeks to "starve the Taliban of their financial lifeblood." Up to 50% of Taliban income comes from the opium trade, and Western governments can most easily end this funding by making heroin available for supervised consumption in clinics as is being done in a growing number of European states. All the evidence from overseas and from UK pilot studies suggests that this course of action will reduce the acquisitive crime, drug dealing and prostitution that addicts engage in to fund their drug use and reduce the number of young people encountering - and becoming addicted to - heroin.

Provision of pharmaceutical heroin to addicts would also clear the way for the criminalisation of those men who choose to pay for sex. In Thursday's Herald Anne Johnstone called for the Scottish Parliament to follow the lead taken by Norway and Sweden on this issue. Her assertion that "Demand dictates Supply" is sadly a dangerous oversimplification. As I expect the coming Five Daughters drama will show, heroin addicts who choose to engage in prostitution do so because they need to find hundreds of pounds each week to hold off the intolerable pain of withdrawal. Reducing demand for their services won't suddenly make withdrawal more tolerable. Rather those who persist in trying to fund their heroin habit through prostitution will likely have to lower prices, seek more customers, and - perhaps most importantly - be less choosy and more hasty when negotiating with clients. Combined with the likelihood of persisting clients being at the end of the character spectrum that has least respect for the law, I can only foresee addicted prostitutes being at greater risk of meeting the same fate as the Five Daughters whose stories will be told on our screens in the coming days.

Should women cease trying to fund their drug use through prostitution as I presume Anne Johnstone would welcome, they may in desperation turn to acquisitive crime or dealing, which arguably have even greater negative impacts upon our society.

With problem drug users making up approximately 95% of street prostitutes, the prescribed heroin solution has the potential to allow the vast majority of street prostitutes to leave prostitution and crime behind them and try to get their lives back on track. If we want to eliminate street prostitution from our towns and cities then we would do better to tackle supply of prostitutes rather than further endanger these desperate young women by an albeit well-meaning attack on demand.

It's unclear which of Clegg and Cameron most supports drug policy reform.

2010-04-25T11:53:00.006+01:00

The Telegraph has uncovered Nick Clegg's past support for drug policy reform http://bit.ly/bxJNC2, but has it uncovered David Cameron's http://bit.ly/c8a9ee

The party leaders are both very sensible on the issue of course... at least they were before they had an election to fight.

I suppose the Telegraph was intending to put Clegg on the back foot with this. He should express no regret. Rather he should ask why David Cameron expressed similar opinions in the past and has chosen to retreat back to the supposedly populist standard political position.

Only the liberal democrats are willing to consider evidence on drugs policy. Gordon Brown has stated clearly that considering evidence is not something he is interested in (http://bit.ly/8UfYgK). And the conservatives remain committed to fanciful notions of enforcement-led intervention and abstinence-based Drug Rehabilitation Orders.

The Telegraph may also kick themselves when they realise they have timed their article (I presume unintentionally) to coincide with a dramatisation of the lives of the five young women murdered by Steven Wright in Ipswich in 2006.

Five Daughters will start tonight at 9pm on BBC1 and its relevance to drug policy is highlighted by executive producer Susan Hogg's words on BBC Breakfast earlier in the week explaining why she wanted to make the film:

"Paula Clennell (one of the murder victims) gave an interview where she talked about having to go out on the streets because she needed the money and I suddenly realised that this was about drugs and not about these girls being on the street. Up until that point everyone had talked about them being prostitutes... there was nothing to do with who they were and I really felt I wanted to explore the victims and who these young women were and particularly because i knew it was about drug addiction and that was really really important."

A TV writer who has seen it already has confirmed to me that the film could have a really big impact on people's prejudices about drug abuse and street prostitution. The Telegraph has handily highlighted Nick Clegg's support for heroin to be made available under medical supervision. I hope many voters will recognise that the best way to ensure more daughters do not end up addicted to heroin and funding their habit through street prostitution is to implement that very policy.

Ken Clarke's remarks are an open goal to ambitious Lib Dems.

2010-04-21T23:31:00.002+01:00

Lets presume for a minute that Ken Clarke is right to say that a hung parliament would be a potential economic disaster. Lets say he's right that the country needs a party with a clear majority running the country. Which party is now positioned to provide that strong majority? Labour can be ruled out. The conservatives following the Liberal Democrat poll surge are realistically not going to become the consensus choice for change. They weren't even high enough in the polls to achieve a majority before people realised this was a three-party race.

From this analysis of some YouGov polling http://www.today.yougov.co.uk/commentaries/peter-kellner/could-lib-dems-win-outright it seems quite clear that the Lib Dems can achieve a strong majority if the 49% of people who would vote for them if they thought they could win actually began to believe they could win. Only 21% of those polled would be dismayed at a Lib Dem majority. If either of the other parties are introduced into a potential outcome dismay in the outcome soars, with the least dismal being a labour-liberal coalition at 39% dismayed.

The only party that can achieve a strong majority government now is the Lib Dems. Ken Clarke says a majority is needed for us to avoid economic meltdown...

Also, how would the markets respond to George Osborne loose in the treasury relative to Vince Cable taking his seat at the money table? Vince has set out in some detail his plans for reducing the deficit and been honest about tough times ahead. George has plucked a £6bn tax cut out of thin air at the last minute in a desperate attempt to win votes.

I'm presuming of course that George is the Conservative choice to be chancellor, but given the rolling out of Ken to deliver the horrific IMF news, maybe there's been a change of plan...

The need for a Project "Project Prevention" Prevention

2010-04-13T20:08:00.002+01:00

There have been a couple of articles in the Herald newspaper recently on the "Project Prevention" charity, most recently this morning under the headline "Social workers urged to refer addicts for sterilisation." http://www.heraldscotland.com/life-style/real-lives/social-workers-urged-to-refer-addicts-for-sterilisation-1.1020204

Barbara Harris, the Founder of the project - which hopes to pay addicts £200 each to go through a sterilisation procedure - appears to be motivated by a genuine concern for the wellbeing of children born with the same addiction as their mother and/or subjected to neglect and other abuse over the course of their childhood.

On the face of it sterilisation would achieve some positive outcomes: Fewer babies born with serious addictions and needing considerable hospital treatment, and fewer babies born into households where the parents' primary motivation is drug-seeking rather than their child's welfare. Many people will find the proposal morally abhorrent. But is this a morally dubious proposal that might just be an answer to some of our society's problems? Could projects such as these produce knock-on effects similar to those highlighted in the book "Freakonomics" following the legalisation of abortion in the US? The economist responsible for the research found that the considerable drop in crime in the US in the early 1990s could be almost entirely explained by the nationwide legalisation of abortion following the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court ruling in 1973. The implication was that lower numbers of unwanted children being born led to lower numbers of people being brought up in an environment that fostered criminality. Could sterilising addicts not only prevent child suffering, but prevent the future crime that these damaged children might commit?

What then are the objections to this plan that could have such potential benefits? We could liken the procedure to the selling of a kidney in that you would be reducing your fitness for the benefit of others and for financial gain. But with Project Prevention's proposals the "client" might not only be motivated by poverty, but also by the physical pain of withdrawal. Were the procedure to be offered without financial incentive, judgement might still be clouded by the feelings of worthlessness and general low self-esteem that so often occur alongside addiction problems. For these reasons I am not confident that addicts are in a position to make a rational decision on their future suitability or desire to become a parent. This has both moral and legal implications, with it being unclear whether it is possible for informed consent to be given for a sterilisation procedure in the circumstances in which Project Prevention seeks to operate.

The word "eugenics" has been used to describe Project Prevention, but as a man who studied evolution with great interest at undergrad level, I am uncomfortable with this description. The term implies that drug addiction is a genetic trait which can be eliminated from the gene pool. While it is true that there may be a genetic predisposition to addiction and risk-taking behaviours, drug addiction is far more environmental in nature. Perhaps we could invent the term "euenvics" to describe the prevention of reproduction of individuals who would likely provide a poor environment for their children and thus risk those children becoming a greater burden to society than the average child.

Unlike genetic traits, drug addiction is something which need not be permanent. With the right intervention in addicts' lives, it is very possible for them to end their drug use and to become capable of parenting that need not lead to their child's suffering and/or criminality. The thought of sterilising addicts strikes me as jumping straight to plan Z following the failure of plan A.

I would suggest we should try to find a morally, economically and politically viable plan B instead. I believe this should be a plan that recognises that addicts should be able to seek treatment without fear of criminalisation or the removal of their children into care. For there to be positive outcomes for mother and child, the mother needs to feel she can trust the police, social services and health services to be doing everything they can to help her:
a) stabilise her lifestyle without the need to commit acquisitive crime, prostitute herself or deal in drugs to fund her addiction.
b) (if she wishes to have a family) come off drugs in a controlled fashion whilst using contraception that she is comfortable with.
c) raise the child in an environment conducive to a happy, healthy life.

I believe passionately that such conditions are more likely to come about if drug use is decriminalised and addicts have the option of stabilising on prescribed heroin.

To instead pay these women to be sterilised is to reinforce their feelings of worthlessness and low self-esteem and to demonstrate we have given up hope that they can turn their lives around. Sterilisation also deprives these women of a great life-changing event and the responsibility to stay clean not only for their own benefit, but for the benefit of a child that they love dearly and that would be utterly reliant upon their care.

We should be seeking to minimise the number of babies born to addicted mothers. An addicted baby goes through excruciating pain and requires considerable medical attention as they go through withdrawal. But the most humane way to achieve this is to treat addicts as just another patient group with a treatable medical condition. If we fail to assist women to cease drug use, then we need to recognise that addicts can hold down jobs and raise families just as well as the rest of us if they know when and where to get their next fix and they don't have to pay massively inflated prices for an illegal supply.

A facebook group has been started to resist "Project Prevention" in the UK.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/No-to-eugenics-in-the-UK-Keep-Project-Prevention-Out-of-the-Country/100654733311568?ref=ts

And if you agree with me that we need to try a Plan B then why not join Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform at http://act.libdems.org.uk/group/liberaldemocratsfordrugpolicyreform

If the Lib Dems want power we can't let the Tories win.

2010-04-09T09:26:00.003+01:00

So the wash-up has been concluded and has left the AV referendum proposals washed-up on the rocky shore of Conservative self-interest. Gordon Brown has since come out with re-affirmed plans to hold an AV referendum early in the next parliament though. It is absolutely imperative that we emerge from this election with the possibility of these plans being put into action. If the conservatives get a majority, electoral reform will not be on the agenda and there's a real risk that Labour will not be so keen for reform next time around when they look to capitalise on the failures of Cameron and co.

It is quite possible that this election will be the best possibility for meaningful electoral reform in a generation, so all Lib Dems should be doing our utmost to ensure it happens. What should this mean on the ground? Sadly it means abandoning our principles in the Labour/Tory marginals and voting with our brains and not our hearts. A vote for the Liberal Democrats where we have no chance of winning and where the race could be tight IS a wasted vote that risks consigning our party to a fringe role for many years to come. A tactical vote for the Labour party in such seats increases the possibility of a hung parliament, gives the AV referendum proposal a real chance of becoming reality, and gives the Lib Dems a genuine chance at meaningful power at the next election. The end of tactical voting could give the Lib Dems a majority at Westminster within a couple of years if we cooperate to achieve the AV reforms and then stand well back as the Labour government fails to get to grips with the deficit to the population's satisfaction.

We also need to get the message out to genuine supporters of fringe parties that they should be supporting the Lib Dems in every seat we have any chance of winning. For The Greens, UKIP, and even the BNP the wise vote is for the party that has a commitment to proportional representation. Of course I have no expectation that many BNP supporters will be able to cast a "wise vote" but one has to try.

So Nick. Please ease off on Labour a little and please come up with better ammunition against the Tories than your not-very-credible VAT bombshell. We need to use our brains in this election so that the population can vote (for us) with their conscience in the future.

The greatest misuse of mephedrone: Using it as bath salts.

2010-04-02T20:27:00.007+01:00

It certainly appears that the ACMD's terms of reference below have been overlooked in the hasty manner in which mephedrone's prohibition has come about.

The terms of reference of the Advisory Council are set out in section 1 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971(the Act) and are as follows:

It shall be the duty of the Advisory Council to keep under review the situation in the United Kingdom with respect to drugs which are being or appear to them likely to be misused and of which the misuse is having or appears to them capable of having harmful effects sufficient to constitute a social problem, and to give to any one or more of the Ministers, where either Council consider it expedient to do so or they are consulted by the Minister or Ministers in question, advice on measures (whether or not involving alteration of the law) which in the opinion of the Council ought to be taken for preventing the misuse of such drugs or dealing with social problems connected with their misuse, and in particular on measures which in the opinion of the Council, ought to be taken.

It is quite clear that the "misuse" (definition: noun: wrong or improper use; misapplication.) of mephedrone is promoted by both it's current legal status and its soon-to-be prohibited status. The ACMD set out quite clearly in their report (though whose report is it really if the members of the committee didn't see the final draft?) that mephedrone is manufactured purely for human consumption as a stimulating intoxicant. Using mephedrone as plant food or as bath salts is clearly to "misuse" mephedrone. Of greater concern of course is the fact that no advice can currently be given by vendors on the drug's safe consumption. It is clear therefore that current regulations prohibiting its sale for human consumption promote its continued misuse.

Consider now the situation after the drug's prohibition. Optimal use of mephedrone could surely be best described as the use of mephedrone which gives the user the most pleasurable experience with the minimum of unwanted side effects. Passing the manufacture, distribution and sale of mephedrone into the hands of criminals will lead to inconsistent purity and a lack of standardised, good-quality advice on safe consumption and optimal recovery. Surely it is clear then that prohibition promotes continued misuse of mephedrone?

What measures could reduce the "misuse" of mephedrone? Sale from licensed pharmacists with age restrictions; full education on health, social, and economic consequences of use before users are licensed to purchase the drug; and education programmes which encourage abstinence but yet at all times try to ensure young people are as safe as they can be no matter what choice they make.

That is the recommendation which would best satisfy the ACMD's terms of reference. If the terms of reference had been rewritten as "to quickly suggest incorporation of any emerging psychoactive drug into the existing classification scheme alongside drugs of similar effect" then the ACMD would have done well this week. This has not happened and the ACMD has failed miserably.

Not only has it failed on the action to be taken on mephedrone, but it has also identified the next potential legal drug of abuse in naphyrone or "NRG-1" as it is more commonly known. They may as well have distributed a press release stating:
"NRG-1 has potential to be the next big thing in legal highs. We know very little about it so it will remain legal for the time being. Anyone wishing to make a lot of money fast would be wise to buy lots of NRG-1 and sell it on for considerable profit."

It is utterly irresponsible to identify this drug in their report before they have detailed an appropriate response to the conveyor belt of legal highs that are passing into commmon usage in the UK. I can only hope that a "Class D" recommendation happens before we have a massively damaging public health emergency on our hands.

For more on Class D:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/17/mephedrone-class-d-solution-criminalise

“What are the alternatives? One approach would be a new class in the Misuse of Drugs Act – the class D model, adopted in New Zealand to deal with BZP. This is a holding category where drugs can be put before they are well understood: sales are limited to over-18s; the product is quality-controlled so users know what they are getting, at doses limited as far as possible to safe levels; and it comes with health education messages. Society can limit sales and collect data on use.

Manufacturers and shops that disobey these regulations are punished, and the young are protected, but not criminalised. Last summer the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, when under my chairmanship, suggested this approach in response to the growing use of spice and BZP. It was rejected, they were both made class C, and possibly as a consequence young people began to turn to mephedrone.”

Small credit where it's due on mephedrone, but should we not have a public inquiry

2010-03-30T16:10:00.004+01:00

Okay, let's be clear. I am not a fan of the government's drug policy. I believe Gordon Brown's refusal to consider other regulatory approaches endangers this nation's health, our security, our economy and any ambitions he might have for a better society.

But I do think that some of my drug policy reform colleagues have misjudged both public opinion and the interests of public safety on the mephedrone issue. I have no reason to assume that Alan Johnson has done anything but follow the advice given to him by Les Iversen, the current chair of the ACMD. Teenagers have been taking mephedrone in alarming numbers. Whether this is due to misplaced confidence in the drug's safety due to its legality, or whether they were excited about the prospect of doing something they knew to be bad with no risk of punishment, it was essential for the government to intervene to restrict access and take action that they hope will cause these teenagers to return to drug-free lives.

And the government has got many aspects of the action right. The action to ensure destruction of any detected mephedrone imports is a strong signal that importation is now no longer viable. While traders may object on the grounds that it was legal when they ordered it, I am in no doubt that their contentment with their requirement to sell the drug without any health advice to buyers of any age could in no way be regarded as ethical. Had they been able to provide health and consumption advice and been able to do all they could to ensure their customers' safety then their trade could very well have been considered ethical. But the lack of such safety advice meant the dealers were ethically no better than the illegal dealers dealing similar illegal drugs. I would be delighted to see the expression on the faces of the dealers trying to stockpile as much mephedrone as possible before its prohibition when they learn of the destruction of their newly priceless shipment.

The government has also taken the right action (once prohibition was the decision) in banning all cathinones. Just banning mephedrone would quickly have resulted in the market shifting to any of a large number of other cathinones with a myriad of unknown effects to investigate and for society to deal with. I am unsure where drugs like butylone and the cathinone-containing plant "khat" are left by this action, but the blanket ban on cathinones seems like a wise decision at this stage.

Having said all this, I have great concern about the role the ACMD has played in this decision. The ACMD made the extremely sensible "Class D" recommendation when it was asked for advice on BZP and Spice. A "D" class would have allowed legal, regulated sale of the drug to over 18s and with the best advice available on safe use while the effects of the drug were investigated thoroughly. The recommendation was rejected for BZP and Spice. Was it offered as a solution to the mephedrone situation? If it was not then I would assert that the ACMD has lost its spine and can no longer be relied upon to stick to its guns on these important issues in the interests of public safety. To not offer the "Class D" solution is to pass responsibility for mephedrone from unregulated legal dealers to unregulated illegal dealers. Any teenager who still fancies getting hold of the mephedrone they have developed a taste for, will now have to find an illegal dealer. That dealer might just have a financial interest in introducing them to heroin or crack.

This entire episode which may become known as "the mephedrone bubble" should be seen as a disastrous warning on the failings of the Labour party's "head-in-the-sand" approach to drugs policy. All the illegal drugs consumed in this country are being consumed in an environment of government-mandated ignorance. Any new legal highs which emerge will - like mephedrone - again have to be consumed from bags marked "not for human consumption". It is time the politicians and the media in this country grew up and realised that it is ignorance and lack of regulation that makes drugs dangerous. We need to take this opportunity to learn from the mephedrone bubble and look again at what can be done to safeguard our population from the harms of drugs.

Surely it would be appropriate to call for a broad-ranging public inquiry into the drug policy disaster that is "the mephedrone bubble".

Cable's mental health commitments say a lot about us as a party.

2010-03-30T14:10:00.003+01:00

Watching the "Ask the Chancellors" debate on channel 4 last night I once again heard Vince Cable commit to increased spending on mental health services:
"If we save money on NHS admin it should first go to neglected areas like mental health."

Mental health is not a fashionable area of service provision but I have heard Vince work this commitment into interviews on television before and I have to say it fills me with pride every time it happens.

Mental health services are not something that will come up in focus groups. Nor are they something that focus will be drawn to by the lobbying efforts of wealthy charities. There is still a considerable stigma attached to mental illness which restricts the public's ability to speak out about the failings of our current system. It is to Vince Cable and Norman Lamb's enormous credit that they have stated their first-hand family experience of mental illness. I only wish more people could find the courage to do the same.

My own first-hand experience of mental illness started as I was finishing school and going to university while living at home with my family in Glasgow. My brother had entered the same university the year before to study Scottish history and politics, was in his first real relationship, and was training several times a week for his career as an international volleyball player. He always tended towards over-analysing things, but this analysis started to make less and less sense. At first I put the fact I couldn't understand him anymore down to the fact that he was doing arts and I was going to do sciences like my parents, but I eventually received a lecture in my 1st year Psychology course that suggested something else might be going on.

After some further reading, and on a family holiday that was basically an escape from my brother's increasingly erratic behaviour, I suggested to my parents that my brother might be schizophrenic as we walked down a quiet country lane. None of us really knew what it meant at that time. But we had an extremely difficult time of it learning what it meant over the next few years as we struggled to get my brother treatment against a GP who thought my brother "seemed fine", and then struggled to keep ourselves mentally healthy through visits to the psychiatric ward, depressing periods in which my brother's body (not his soul) was released back into the family home, and then frightening periods in which it was quite clear that the family home was not the best place for him to be.

It was during this traumatic time that I first became politically active, joining up with a group of mothers of schizophrenics who regularly attended the cross party groups on mental illness at the Scottish Parliament. I had taken from my experience a determination that what had happened to me should happen to as few further people as was possible.

I thought at the time and still think now that teenagers should not have to rely on lectures they receive in university courses for their education on mental health. Early intervention is vital in minimising mental illnesses' effects on families and improving outcomes for the patient. The best way to facilitate early intervention in mental illness is to ensure that the population has the means to identify early warning signs, and for primary care services to be sufficiently trained in mental health issues for them to be able to act appropriately when concerns are raised. It is time for the British stiff upper lip to be allowed the luxury of movement and for comprehensive mental health and relationships education to be rolled out across all schools. If a politician's job is not to safeguard the happiness of the citizens then what exactly is it they are supposed to be doing?

There are millions of voters out there who will have been similarly pleased to hear a politician announce further investment in mental health services. I hope it continues to be something which appears in our pre-election message, though perhaps with further commitments to mental health education alongside the much-needed health service investment. Identifying policies that speak to the silent majority who do not shout and stamp their feet about issues seems to me to be a very sensible way of approaching a general election campaign. Long may it continue.

For the sake of the Camspawn don't vote conservative.

2010-03-23T09:58:00.004Z

It's always nice to be able to cite scholarly articles I may have encountered in my past life as a neuroscience student in calling for voters to abandon the conservatives in droves.

http://bit.ly/a2kEcb

If the Camerons want a healthy, happy, well-adjusted child then they should be hoping for a crushing defeat in the coming election. No need to move house (one of the most stressful life events we go through as humans apparently), and no insane media circus following your every move. Samantha Cameron could just relax, eat well and look forward to a happy life with a laid-back, chilled-out, back-bench MP.

Stress during pregnancy can have considerable effects upon foetal brain development and future behavioural problems. So, for the sake of #Camspawn and its Camhost, don't vote Conservative.

Mephedrones will keep happening until we wake up to our drug policy failings.

2010-03-17T22:13:00.004Z

It was only a matter of time before mephedrone hit the headlines associated with the death of a healthy young teenager, and we sadly learned today of two teenage friends in Scunthorpe who have died after taking the drug. We also learned - but only if we read further into the various news articles - that the boys are thought to have been drinking, and also to have taken the class A drug methadone (commonly used as a heroin substitute in treating heroin dependency). While mephedrone may have been a contributory factor in their death, perhaps the sober piece of advice to be issuing at this stage would be for individuals not to mix alcohol, mephedrone and methadone over the course of an evening.

That said, I have considerable sympathy with calls for an immediate ban. Many of the testimonies I have heard or read speak of teenagers trying the drug thinking "it's okay because it's legal". All the evidence meanwhile points to mephedrone having similar effects and harms to drugs like cocaine and amphetamines. Were mephedrone to be brought into the current classification system it seems likely that it would be a class A drug with all the criminal penalties for possession and supply that go with that. We are hearing about mephedrone use becoming extremely widespread amongst young people and we have to ask ourselves whether we really want to criminalise these people if they wish to continue use after the drug becomes prohibited.

For me the greatest concern is the drug's availability. I have just googled mephedrone and found the 3rd listed website is offering half a kilo of the drug for just under £2000 (1st: compilation of news links reporting deaths attributed to the drug, 2nd: the drug's Wikipedia entry). There is apparently nothing to stop anyone with a debit card purchasing their choice of quantity from a gram (£13) upwards.

So what should be done about the situation? Sadly the ACMD still hasn't recovered sufficiently in numbers from the Nutt sacking affair for it to be able to make a formal recommendation. But can we wait for it to retain its competency?

I personally found my ease of access to the drug quite chilling, and given the press coverage today and again tomorrow: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article7066299.ece we can only expect further curious individuals to check out the website and have a dabble themselves. Surely urgent action is required, and probably the most sensible course would be to adopt the "Class D" approach that has been used in New Zealand. Here's David Nutt on Class D from tomorrow's Guardian:

"One approach would be a new class in the Misuse of Drugs Act – the class D model, adopted in New Zealand to deal with BZP. This is a holding category where drugs can be put before they are well understood: sales are limited to over-18s; the product is quality-controlled so users know what they are getting, at doses limited as far as possible to safe levels; and it comes with health education messages. Society can limit sales and collect data on use.
Manufacturers and shops that disobey these regulations are punished, and the young are protected, but not criminalised. Last summer the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, when under my chairmanship, suggested this approach in response to the growing use of spice and BZP. It was rejected, they were both made class C, and possibly as a consequence young people began to turn to mephedrone."

When the government instead prohibits sale and places the drug in class A a few months in the future, some unintended (but to be expected) consequences will arise. Anyone with half a brain will know that prohibition will lead to an increase in price. Those with less than half their scruples might seek to stockpile the drug in anticipation of prohibition and profit greatly from distribution to the existing customer base. Secondly: those who were previously enjoying the drug's legality would be committing a criminal offence after prohibition with all the risks that holds for their liberty and future employability. Thirdly: the trade would likely quickly be taken over by the dealers who currently market illegal drugs and these people would likely employ the same profit-maximisation practices of cutting and aggressive marketing that they currently employ for their cocaine and heroin. Fourthly: people who might never have tried class A drugs were it not for mephedrone's legality and availability might be tempted to try the other class A drugs it will be classified alongside. Fifthly: unscrupulous chemists will rush to discover the "next mephedrone" with which to make a quick buck at the unpredictable expense on the health of the nation.

The government should quickly act to create a Class D. We don't need any more young people being criminalised for what they consume in the hope of having a fun time (often misplaced from what I can tell). One thing the government cannot afford to do though is wait. The mistaken consideration of this drug's legality being indicative of its safety is risking the futures of too many children for inactivity to be an option.

If the government is to get it wrong in prohibiting mephedrone then I hope they do so soon. The experience with mephedrone must then be seen as further stark demonstration that current drug policy is not working. If the government plays it right they can use mephedrone as an excuse to review their drugs policy in the face of tabloid outrage. If we continue as we are, all the drugs that Britons use will continue to constitute a greater health, social and economic burden than they need to. And if we continue as we are, there will doubtless be many more drugs that will add to that burden in the same way mephedrone is doing now.

Urgent support required for emergency anthrax-contaminated heroin motion

2010-03-10T10:50:00.001Z

I have a very short amount of time to gather 10 supporting reps for this anthrax-contaminated heroin motion for conference:
Once you have read it, approve of its content and wish to support it as an elected rep, please call me on 07817536149 to give me your backing. It needs to happen before noon I'm afraid. :(
The last minute nature of this is not my fault.

Conference notes with concern:
i) That at least 26 injecting heroin users have contracted anthrax infections from contaminated heroin in the UK since December last year, with 11 of these infections proving fatal.
ii) Research commissioned by the Scottish government suggests that the average problem drug user costs society over £60,000 each year through the costs of crime, criminal justice costs, health service demands and other factors.
Conference further notes
iii) That experience from a growing number of European states and from pilot trials in the UK shows that prescribing heroin to treatment-resistant heroin addicts for supervised consumption in clinics is considerably more effective than methadone in improving patient and societal outcomes.
Conference believes:
a) That Health Protection Agency advice is unlikely to change the behaviour of people addicted to heroin.
b) That current provision of treatment services for heroin addicts is inadequate
c) That provision of alternative pharmaceutical sources of heroin to injecting heroin users could not only protect the users from the risk of anthrax infection, but protect the communities in which they live from the criminality drug addicts are often compelled to engage in to service their addiction.
Conference therefore calls for:
1) The United Kingdom and Scottish authorities to consider taking significant action to safeguard the health of heroin addicts, especially in the regions affected by the unfolding anthrax crisis.
2) The relevant authorities to learn from the experience of our European neighbours in considering the nature of this action, including consideration of the prescription of pharmaceutical heroin for supervised consumption.

The Robin Hood Tax: The Good, The Bad, and the really quite complicated

2010-03-08T11:43:00.003Z

I'm just back from Scottish Liberal Democrat conference. A highly enjoyable weekend (except Friday night's comedy debating difficulties), with one especially stimulating meeting organised by Oxfam on the subject of the "Robin Hood Tax". The Robin Hood Tax is essentially a rebranding of the Tobin tax, and is a proposed tax on financial transactions that Oxfam are supporting as a way of raising about $200-700 billion to tackle many difficult issues. They propose that 50% of the money would be spent in the country where the tax is raised, 25% would be spent on helping poor countries to adapt to climate change, and 25% to tackle international poverty in general.

I went into the meeting broadly in favour of the tax. We need to raise some money to tackle the very serious problems we face. The bankers seem to have a whole bunch of money to spare. Why not skim a little money off every transaction and use it for the common good? I was however fairly concerned about Oxfam's marketing strategy "Join us in the world's biggest bank job" or words to that effect. It doesn't strike me as a sober, rational attempt to build consensus on how best to tackle the world's problems, rather an opportunistic and brazenly populist attempt to capitalise on the bankers current unpopularity and just stick the boot in while they're vulnerable.

I was given further cause for concern when a former banker in the audience stood up and railed against the idea, stating that while the tax appears tiny at 0.05%, this is the level that financial trading operates at these days. There is so much competition that dealing is happening to squeeze the smallest of profits out of the market. He said that this tax would push bankers towards more risky trades with higher margins and we don't want bankers making risky trades. The figures that Oxfam and others hope to raise represent approximately half of the profits of the world's banks. It is not a tiny tax. It is a massive tax.

So I piped up at the end of the discussion to say that surely we have to ensure that this tax helps curtail the risky banking behaviour, we shouldn't be jumping on Richard Curtis' populist kneejerk 0.05% tax if we're not sure it will achieve that. But I also said such a tax would be an excellent opportunity for global co-operative taxation, thinking that a global tax would eliminate the anti-taxation arguments of international competitiveness, brain-drain etc.

I made a point of attracting the former city worker's attention at the end of the event and he said a whole bunch of stuff about margins and competition that I was just about following. I then asked him where the money actually comes from. Are they actually creating wealth or just taking it from somewhere else? He explained that banks raised this money and used it to support individuals and businesses and shareholder value etc. I then asked something along the lines of "But if one bank wasn't making all this money, surely all the other banks would be doing exactly the same. What difference does trading really make?" He didn't have an answer.

So does all this money just slosh around the financial markets interminably, being rebranded as it goes into triple-A rated derivatives and the like for no great purpose? At the moment that's the impression I'm getting. I have a picture in my mind of hundreds of people on trading floors just doing some properly sissy-boy flappy fighting with everyone around them. There may be the occasional minor scratch or broken nail inflicted, but ultimately the whole endeavour is utterly pointless. And they just flap away every day until the day when a door opens in a corner of the room and releases a menagerie of wild, carnivorous animals and the whole flapping thing goes to shit and men are holding other men between themselves and hungry velociraptors, lions, bears and the like. Turns out that it all wasn't real though. Some benevolent Demi-God known as Darling just pushed the reset button, they all had brief, "I'm alive! Everything from now on is going to have meaning and be useful!" moments and then presumably figured that flappy-fighting was more fun and got right back on board.

So what then could the "Robin Hood tax" achieve? It should reduce trading, reduce the number of people employed in the business and reduce the profits to be made from the business. If it reduces the number of companies engaging in trading then there will be fewer people who'd want to poach your best staff. So where would be the point in giving them enormous bonuses if there are few other places for them to go? Bonuses should surely fall, the gross inequalities in our nation should diminish and everything would get better (I'm reading "The Spirit Level" at the moment).

I don't know enough about risky trading to know how this tax will affect it. The former banker I was talking too explained that banking often comes up with new products as soon as people realise how to trade in the last one and margins diminish. I suppose it might be possible that this tax would accelerate the creation of new products with higher margins and increase the possibility of disastrous cock-ups but then I am writing this paragraph purely with my logical brain and not through any actual knowledge of the subject. Maybe some bankers could enlighten me?

So to sum up, I think it is a great idea, but the difference between 0.05% and 0.01% should probably be seen in the same way as ordinary citizens would consider the difference between 10 and 50% income tax. We have to be careful and ensure we get that number right and properly study the potential ramifications. I feel it's imperative that we split the high street banks from their speculative arms before we conduct this experiment. Either that or ease the tax in gently over time.

Hopefully I'll have time to read into this properly and get back to you all.

An emergency motion on anthrax-contaminated heroin and draft supporting speech

2010-02-18T14:22:00.004Z

Conference notes with concern:

That 21 injecting heroin users have contracted anthrax infections from contaminated heroin in Britain since December last year, with 10 of these infections proving fatal.

That the Health Protection Agency advice issued in response to this developing crisis is unlikely to reach injecting heroin users and unlikely to significantly change their behaviour, and that treatment service availability is often insufficient if users do seek help.

Conference further notes:

A growing number of European states are providing treatment-resistant heroin addicts with pharmaceutical heroin for supervised consumption and have observed considerable benefits both to the patient and to the wider community as a result of this practice.

That experience from these countries and from trials in the UK show heroin to be considerably more effective than methadone in improving patient and societal outcomes.

Conference believes:

The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.

Provision of alternative pharmaceutical sources of heroin to injecting heroin users in the geographical areas affected would not only protect them from the risk of anthrax infection, but protect the communities in which they live from the criminality they are often compelled to engage in to service their addiction.

Conference therefore calls for:

The United Kingdom authorities to expand provision of clinics where addicts can use pharmaceutical heroin under medical supervision, with urgent priority given to regions affected by anthrax-contaminated heroin.

Potential speech:

The killer stalking heroin addicts in Britain today is the same killer that provoked me to found Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform last year. There are eerie parallels between the health authority's current pleas to heroin addicts to stop taking heroin and the police pleas in 2006 asking girls working on the streets of Ipswich to “look out for each other”. Both are utterly inadequate in the face of an unfolding tragedy.

The final victim of Steven Wright gave an interview with ITV news 5 days before she disappeared. When Paula Clenell was asked “Despite the dangers, why have you chosen to come out tonight?” she replied “Because I need the money. I need the money.” When someone is a heroin addict, and knows they run a high risk of being murdered if they continue to try to fund their habit, but they work the streets anyway... surely we can learn from this that heroin addiction isn't something you can just stop.

So what is the killer stalking heroin addicts today? Is it incompetence in the relevant government authority? Or is it public indifference failing to demand that action is taken? How much do we really care when a prostitute goes missing or a heroin addict dies? I know I cared a great deal more after watching a documentary that profiled the young women who died in Ipswich. They were just ordinary girls living ordinary lives who made one mistake in taking heroin and couldn't escape its clutches. Heroin addicts aren't feral animals, they are people's sons and daughters, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers and friends. Their mistake in taking heroin does not exclude them from their right to health laid down in the constitution of the World Health Organisation and restated in the body of this emergency motion.

In order to illustrate what prescribed heroin might bring to our communities I shall now read an excerpt from a journalistic piece written in 1995 by Mike Gray about the closure of a clinic in Widnes. Heroin prescription used to be widespread in the UK, but had been scaled back under diplomatic pressure from the US.

“In March of last year I visited the Chapel Street Clinic and met with several of the patients. I sat in on a group session where eight heroin users discussed their lives and problems with a counselor before picking up their prescriptions for pharmaceutical heroin. Unlike the junkies we are used to seeing, this group was virtually indistinguishable from any other bunch of young adults on the streets of Liverpool. They were well dressed, talkative, energetic -- they had jobs -- and they used heroin daily.

One was a young woman named Juliette who had been an addict for 13 years. She came from a middle-class background, married a rich kid who got her into heroin, then left her with two kids and no money. She tried desperately to kick but couldn't make it. Somehow for ten years she managed to stay afloat through petty theft and prostitution, with the authorities breathing down her neck. Finally, terrified that they were about to take her kids away, she happened to find the right doctor and he sent her to John Marks. Marks gave her a check-up, satisfied himself that she was indeed a heroin addict, and wrote her a prescription.

"For the first time in ten years," she said, "I had spare time. I didn't have to worry that my dealer wouldn't show -- I didn't have to worry about the price or where to steal the money. So for the first time in ten years, I had a minute to look in the mirror. I looked and I said, `Oh, my God.' Then I looked at the kids, and I said, `What have I done?' All these middle-class values came flooding back in on me.

" Today Juliette has a job, a house, and a mortgage. The kids are in school and doing well. Everybody's in excellent health. And once a week she comes to Chapel Street for her prescription. I asked John Marks what will happen to Juliette on April 1 (when the clinic closes). He said, "Well, she'll go down the tubes."

This isn't going to be an easy process. Each addict will suddenly have free time to reflect on the shameful things they have done over the course of their addiction. But tens of thousands of families can be reunited with loved ones they may have thought lost forever.

I suspect there are very few of these people in the audience today (this is a Liberal Democrat conference after all), but if you are ruled by your wallet and not your compassion, then the cost of providing safe heroin to addicts is tiny relative to the estimated £60,000 yearly cost to society that the average problem drug user constitutes at present. They don't want to die a slow, painful death from an anthrax infection. I'm fairly sure they don't want to be stealing, dealing and prostituting themselves either. Provision of safe heroin under medical supervision means they really don't have to.

Lib Dems need to embrace the Alternative Vote while they can.

2010-02-08T12:09:00.003Z

There has been much pillorying of Gordon Brown's Alternative Vote proposals on the Lib Dem blogosphere of late. On some counts the detractors are pretty much spot on. Gordon Brown is probably doing this as a desperate attempt to win over some tactical voting Lib Dems at the next election. Yes, STV would be more proportional and yes, AV could create "Anyone but X" backlashes against an incumbent government that could bring about large swings of power. The argument that AV could bring about less proportional representation than First Past the Post isn't really valid though. As soon as voters are asked to rank candidates in order of preference you can't judge proportionality by the relationship between a parties 1st preference vote share and their seat share. One of AV's strengths is that is asks more than the FPTP question: "which of the candidates that have a realistic chance of winning would you rather represented you in parliament?" It asks "How would you honestly rank the candidates in order of preference if you knew that supporting your favourite candidate over your tolerated candidate will not benefit a candidate you emphatically do not wish to represent you?" An AV result might not more proportionally represent people's first preferences, but it will certainly more accurately represent their stated preferences.

Also, we need to ask how proportional the STV - the liberal's favoured system - would be and would we really want greater proportionality. STV is not a system of proportional representation. Electoral systems do become more proportional the greater the number of representatives there are representing each seat, but where would it be proper to stop? One representative per seat is on the same continuum as 10 representatives per seat. If we don't go far enough, people will complain about their views not being represented. If we go too far we risk opening parliament up to fascists, communists, anarchists, religious fundamentalists and - if we get it properly wrong - monster raving loonys and Melanie Phillips. Do we want a dozen or so BNP MPs in parliament? Is there a point in proportionally representative democracy where people's opinions become better represented than their best interests?

How would STV work for geographically remote constituencies? Would the Western Isles remain represented by one MP while areas of London get 10? How fair would it be for the people of the Shetlands to be not only competing for their MPs' time with people on the Orkney Islands, but people on the Mainland 200 miles away?

Also, what makes you so sure the people would vote for STV? Are you certain that the voters aren't rather fond of the constituency link? The last referendum on replacing FPTP with STV was in May last year in British Colombia and was voted down by 61.3% to 38.7%. If AV were to become a reality I suspect pushing STV would be even harder and AV would not be a stepping stone to STV, but an end in itself. I think all Liberal Democrats should be happy with that.

In those countries that actually have STV already there's certainly not a consensus that it is the best political system around. Last week Mick Fealty of the Slugger O'Toole blog was a guest on the House of Comments podcast discussing electoral reform with Mark Thompson (Mark Reckons): http://houseofcomments.com/ (Feb 3 about 30 minutes in). His contribution was really rather critical of STV in Ireland, stating that it "favours the interests of the parish over the state" and that STV had created a parliament of social workers rather than a parliament of legislators. Having multiple candidates from each party running for election from each constituency often means representatives have to be slavishly attentive to their constituents and especially their local party members if they wish to gain the necessary support to be re-elected. Do we want our MPs to be spending time fussing over an unsteady constituency wall or a badly written policing bill? Are safe seats actually a good thing for democracy? How much time do MPs in marginal seats spend seeking out and grinning at fairly meaningless photo opportunities?

So STV is far from perfect, but what of AV, the electoral system that is actually on offer? Firstly, I should explain that the polls you see in the media on voting intention aren't opinion polls. They are likely behaviour polls. Every election carried out under FPTP* does not encourage the public to vote honestly for the candidate they favour. AV would grant us the right to vote for the party whose policies we genuinely support without fear of "letting the wrong one in". I for one will support honest representation whenever it is offered to me and I ask all Lib Dem MPs to do the same.

If you see safe seats as bad for democracy then you can build mechanisms into the system to combat this. By way of example, compelling two-term incumbents with substantial majorities to to go up against an alternative candidate from within their party should keep them honest whilst not harming the chances of that party being represented.

Negative campaigning could damage a party's chances of gaining second preference votes from supporters of the candidate they have attacked. Might AV bring about positive, policy-focussed campaigning?

Perhaps the most striking and important example of how AV could have changed history can be found in the American presidential elections (From Wikipedia): "In the 2000 presidential election in Florida, George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by 537 votes. Ralph Nader received 97,421 votes, which led to claims that he was responsible for Gore's defeat. Nader, both in his book Crashing the Party and on his website, states: "In the year 2000, exit polls reported that 25% of my voters would have voted for Bush, 38% would have voted for Gore and the rest would not have voted at all." " Had Nader's supporters been able to express a second preference, it seems likely that George W. Bush would not have been President of the United States of America.

First Past the Post prevents any minor party becoming a major party as in their infancy a vote in their favour will always be regarded as a wasted vote (Most dramatically demonstrated in the US). This is fundamentally undemocratic. It discourages those whose views are similar to an existing candidate's from standing as they might reduce that candidate's chances of victory. That is also fundamentally undemocratic. Should a single issue candidate wish to stand under AV they would be able to point to voters honestly voting for them as a true demonstration that the issue is important to the electorate. Under FPTP, even if people share their views, they will not be able to support them without "wasting" their vote and losing their say in the battle for first place. This is also fundamentally undemocratic.

I hope the amendment tabled by the Lib Dems to ensure that the next government is compelled to return to parliament should they wish the referendum to be shelved is passed. This bill may be the desperate act of a Prime Minister trying to cling to power, but that is no reason to vote against the greatest opportunity Britain has ever had for a better democracy.

Honest representation is essential for this country to move towards genuinely progressive politics and I will tactically vote Labour at the next election if this bill passes and I believe it will help eliminate the tactical vote from all the elections that follow. I will do the very thing I despise to hasten its demise.

We should not support this bill because it will benefit the Lib Dems, but I shall leave you with John Cleese and the thought that AV might free the voters who believe in Liberal Democrat policies to actually vote for Liberal Democrat candidates: http://bit.ly/c1o7M2

*A misnomer as their is no vote share "post" in each constituency which you need to pass. Theoretically the BNP could win a 5-way marginal with 21% of the vote. AV would be more fittingly called First Past the Post as the first person gaining more than 50% of the vote is elected.

Considering people's second preferences could win the Lib Dems 35 extra seats!!!!

2010-02-02T13:33:00.005Z

It looks like the Lib Dems are gearing up for perhaps the stupidest piece of political foot-shootery ever carried out by human beings. The AV referendum bill is going to be voted on next week and it seems likely that many Labour backbenchers will refuse to back it. It it does not pass because of lack of Lib Dem support then it will have been the single most selfless (and astonishingly stupid) political decision ever made. I have written previously on the benefits of the AV system:

http://ewansliberalmusings.blogspot.com/2010/01/labour-gave-lib-dems-two-open-goals.html

but have now considered the polling results contained within this document: http://populuslimited.com/uploads/download_pdf-130909-The-Times-The-Times-Poll---September.pdf (pages 8&9) that indicate a massive preference for the Lib Dems as a second preference from supporters of both Labour and the Tories. I have gone through all the Liberal Democrat target seats in which we came in second, studied 2005 results (and notional results) and added 86% of Tory votes when they came in 3rd and 66% of Labour votes when they came in 3rd to the Lib Dem vote tally. Presuming minor party votes are shared equally between the Lib Dems and their competitor, and excluding the consideration that Lib Dem candidates would benefit from reduced tactical voting and increased engagement in our policies, AV would have given us about 35 extra seats, 98 in total.

This is just an estimate based on a poll and some crude (but appropriate) analysis, but it demonstrates quite clearly to me that any Lib Dem MP thinking of voting against this bill needs a good slap. Seriously people, sort yourselves out.

The question is "how?" not "whether?" on cannabis legalisation

2010-01-18T15:13:00.002Z

This is a copy of a contribution I have just made to a discussion on the LDDPR group on Lib Dem Act. I'm not sure if I have properly set out my stall on this before so thought it important to put it out there to give an impression on the kind of thing I think LDDPR and eventually the Lib Dems should be advocating.

Original source here: http://act.libdems.org.uk/group/liberaldemocratsfordrugpolicyreform/forum/topics/cannabis-legalisation-here-and

"My position on this issue is very much one of "better safe than sorry". It is glaringly obvious that the classification of cannabis at Class B or Class C does nothing to increase public safety. The economics and practicalities of the illegal trade in cannabis incentivises the distribution of stronger "skunk" varieties at the expense of the milder, more traditional varieties. This phenomenon arises for the same reason as the expansion of hard liquor in America under alcohol prohibition. It might be debated by some in the drug policy reform movement, but I believe it quite reasonable to assume from the evidence available that skunk brings a higher risk of mental illness than traditional strains (remember it is better to be safe than sorry). Ensuring milder strains are available for sale, and ensuring professional advice is available to guide choices made, should reduce consumption of "skunk" and reduce mental health risks.

More important evidence to consider is the evidence suggesting that there is a sensitive period of brain development in which risk of later psychosis is dramatically increased by cannabis use. If risk of psychosis is massively increased if you are exposed to cannabis regularly before you are 15 and only slightly increased if you smoke before 18, then surely we need to identify ways of restricting cannabis consumption in young teenagers. Currently cannabis use is totally unregulated and rife in teenage culture. Under a controlled and regulated market it would be possible to restrict access to cannabis to those over 18 (or other specified age), and to introduce licensing and taggant technology to improve our ability to deter provision of drugs to children and prosecute those who defy the law.

I have serious concerns about the lack of awareness about the links between cannabis and mental illness in America and other countries where legalisation is being considered. I am keen for any moves in this direction in the UK to reject the Dutch coffee-shop model in favour of strictly regulated sales from pharmacists. I am also hopeful that a licensing scheme could be adopted that would necessitate customers receive drug-specific education on mental health, general health, financial, behavioural and other issues that may arise as a result of drug use. Education on the early warning signs of psychosis in particular would not only allow early intervention in cannabis-induced psychosis, but would increase public knowledge of the condition and allow early intervention in cases of psychosis not related to drug use. Schizophrenia is a cause of not only massive suffering for patients and families, but massive economic costs to the country as a whole. Properly controlling illegal drugs presents an excellent opportunity to alleviate future suffering and reduce these costs.

The great danger in the use of any drug is ignorance, and I hope that a commitment to tackle ignorance will reduce both use of drugs and the harms that drug use and the prohibition of that use currently causes."

paraphrasing Gordon Brown "Evidence. Pah! We will never follow evidence!"

2010-01-14T12:11:00.003Z

So the second of the open goals for the Liberal Democrats provided yesterday was contained within a letter Gordon Brown wrote to the Transform Drug Policy Foundation (reproduced in full here: http://transform-drugs.blogspot.com/2010/01/gordon-brown-responds-to-transforms.html )

The key paragraph is this:

"We do not intend to undertake an impact assessment comparing the costs and benefits of different legislative options for domestic drug policy. We see no merit in embarking upon such an undertaking in view of our longstanding position that we do not accept that legalisation and regulation are now, or will be in the future, an acceptable response to the presence of drugs."

Meanwhile, the people of Scotland are dying drug-related deaths at twice the rate of a decade ago and the people of Switzerland and Portugal are dying drug-related deaths at around half the rate they were before the countries addressed their drug problems and enacted progressive reforms in response.

Along with 10 other elected reps, I submitted a policy motion yesterday calling for government to control and regulate psychoactive drugs. While I would love the conference committee to accept the motion for debate, this is not necessary for the lib dems to establish clear water between themselves and Labour on the issue. All we need to do is state a commitment to evidence-based drugs policy. The voters were rightly enthusiastic about our response to the sacking of David Nutt. We should now stand up and announce that we will examine all options for drug policy. Rather than commit ourselves to everlasting head-in-the-sand dogmatism, we should say that drugs are a massive problem in our nation's communities. Current policies have failed to address these problems. The Lib Dems want to explore how we can keep drugs out of the hands of children and vulnerable young people, how to reduce the crime committed by drug addicts, how to turn around the lives of street prostitutes and how to tackle the vicious organised criminals that run this nation's drugs trade. If the evidence points to tougher policing, that is the path we should take. If the evidence suggests international conventions are the source of much of the suffering associated with drugs, then we should challenge them.

Drugs policy, like all policy, should follow the evidence. This is not so much to ask.

Labour gave the Lib Dems two open goals yesterday. Did you miss them?

2010-01-14T11:10:00.005Z

There were two news stories yesterday that were absolutely vital to the future of our country. Both granted the Lib Dems the opportunity to make considerable political capital at Labour's expense. And it appears both opportunities have yet to be seized. I shall come to Gordon Brown's dogmatic, blinkered position on drug policy later. I do go on about drug policy a bit so felt I should first raise the Labour party's inner turmoil on the AV referendum (as highlighted by Michael Crick http://tinyurl.com/ye3a8oq).

The Liberal Democrats have remained stubbornly silent on this issue for many months now despite the fact that we are the most passionate supporters of electoral reform. Below is a letter I wrote to Chris Huhne on the subject in September. The phrase "We want democracy now! Labour won't give it to you, the Tories never will!" can still be employed in pressuring Labour to go through with their plans.

"28th September 2009

Dear Mr. Huhne.

I spoke to you briefly at the Vote for Change electoral reform rally last Sunday lunchtime on the subject of a concurrent referendum (for immediate application) on the alternative vote electoral system. I would now like to lay out in greater detail why I believe the Liberal Democrats should pursue this possibility.

“We want democracy now. Labour won't give it to you. The Conservatives never will.”

It's a fine soundbite, and one I believe we should employ. STV is not on the table. AV is. It is a vast improvement on our current system and we should give it our whole-hearted support. Even if there is only a very minimal chance of an immediately applied concurrent referendum being technically or legally achievable, we should definitely push for it for the political reasons I shall now lay out.

An end to tactical voting.

How could constituents not support a system that allows them to vote for who they want to win rather than compromise and support the more acceptable of the two front-runners? Gone will be the days when people only vote for us when they think we can win. For this reason our vote share should rise significantly.

Increased engagement in politics.

This proposal should increase engagement in politics, as people seek to learn more about the different parties that would make up their list order, rather than just vote for the party they have always backed. I believe anything that increases the chances of people finding out what the liberal democrats stand for should also increase our vote share.

Putting Labour on the back foot

Labour have been umming and ahing on this issue for months now. Some polls suggest more people would vote for them if they put forward an electoral reform referendum. If we get in there first saying “put up or shut up”, then we can be seen as the party taking the initiative on the issue. If they chicken out, fearing massive losses under an AV system applied to this coming election, we can gain considerable political capital from this. If they plump for an AV referendum at the next election, but which can only be applied to subsequent elections, we can say that we demanded democracy now and the Labour party abandoned their principles for political gain.
If we do manage to achieve the concurrent, immediately applied referendum, we can take all the credit for the idea, achieve a massive increase in seats, hopefully prevent a tory majority, be seen to be crediting the electorate with the intelligence to cope with a rapid change in electoral system, and can use AV as a stepping stone to STV if we so wish. I personally think we are more likely to achieve power on our own under AV than under STV, but am happy to listen to other views on the matter.

In my opinion there would be very little damage to our chances of taking labour target seats. While Labour might get a small boost from promoting a referendum, I believe this effect would be massively swamped by the support we would gain for the reasons I have presented above. There would also be little need to campaign “alongside” labour for the AV system. A simple consideration of the fact that people only marking one preference risk being disenfranchised if AV is favoured, should persuade them to support AV and vote using the system. Given the choice of voting for who they genuinely would like to win and voting tactically for a less preferable candidate, they would be massively foolish not to support reform.

I beg you to take this proposal seriously. I am terrified of what another tory government will do to our country and am deeply concerned about the possibility of Scottish independence becoming a reality if the tories win power.

I truly believe this is one of the rare times in politics when you are presented with a win-win-win situation. I read a poll today that had the Liberal Democrats and Labour neck and neck on 23%. Upon inputting the poll numbers into UK Polling Report's Swing Calculator I found this result projected to produce 200 Labour seats and only 70 Liberal Democrat seats at the next election. We must act to prevent such laughably undemocratic projections becoming reality. Despite our political position being far from clearly central between the other two parties anymore, it is still fairly clear that supporters of Labour and the Conservatives will back the Liberal Democrats against the other main party at least 6 times more often than they would back Labour or the Tories against the Lib Dems http://populuslimited.com/uploads/download_pdf-130909-The-Times-The-Times-Poll---September.pdf (see pages 8&9). The Liberal Democrats would gather honest, non-tactical votes; votes from people newly aware of our policies; and the vast majority of second preferences from the other main parties under AV. The party should be pulling out all the stops to make it happen as soon as possible.

Sincerely,

Ewan Hoyle.

For those of you about to argue "But AV can be less proportional". AV is only less proportional because that is the way the voters wish it. It reflects the nuances of public opinion rather than forcing people to take sides. If 45% of people in a constituency want a Tory MP, they would not get one under AV if 51% of the voters wanted someone else and voted accordingly. That is good democracy. We'd also get strong governments and retain the constituency link. Some people have strong views on whether these are good things. I take the view that AV is on offer, and it's a hell of a lot better than FPTP.

A new blog post for the Gordon Brown drugs position I think.

Why should environmentally minded Lib Dems support control and regulation of drugs?

2010-01-10T12:35:00.001Z

The “War on Drugs” as it is being currently fought has massive unintended consequences for the environment. As over 40% of the estimated global cocaine trade is being intercepted, with little effect on prices to the consumer, it can therefore be logically argued that 67% more coca bush is being cultivated than is necessary to meet demand. Coca is being cultivated in some of the most biodiverse countries in the world. Colombia especially is concerned about the loss of valuable rainforest habitat. The policy of burning intercepted drugs only drives this destruction further, as does the US policy: Plan Colombia. This policy involves the aerial spraying of coca plantations with herbicide, a policy that requires farmers move elsewhere and destroy more rainforest if they are to make a living, and has the obvious environmental implications of widespread herbicide administration to a remarkably biodiverse rainforest.

Further reading:http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/25/colombia-endangered-species-cocaine http://www.earthjustice.org/library/features/plan-colombia.html

The fact that the coca trade is illegal creates other serious consequences. Cocaine factories in the rainforest use many toxic chemicals that they are not bound by environmental law to dispose of responsibly. As with cultivation, the destruction of these factories by law enforcement requires that they move elsewhere and affect yet another ecosystem.

In the short term, I would suggest that intercepted drugs shipments should not be burnt, driving the need to grow more coca and manufacture more cocaine. Rather these seizures should be used in treatment programmes in the UK. Not so long ago, general practitioners were routinely prescribing heroin and cocaine to the addicts who needed it. We should return to this model, or something similar, undercutting the criminal market with the very drugs they planned to sell in our country. Not only would this course of action reduce the environmental impacts of the drugs trade in the South American rainforest, it would represent a serious economic blow to the drugs cartels and reduce the viability of Britain as a market for their criminal activity, while also engaging addicts in treatment services in the hope that they can reduce or even terminate their consumption.

The cocaine trade effects are the most obvious example of the impacts prohibition is having on the environment. The vast amounts of energy consumed by illegal cannabis factories are a concern, as are any organisation's activities when using chemicals in a manufacturing process untouched by the concerns of environmental regulations.

The “War on Drugs” is having massive unintended (but to be expected) consequences upon the environment. If Britain could lead the way in reducing these consequences by growing and manufacturing our own drugs, then hopefully the rest of the world will recognise the success of our policy in vastly improving the lives of many of our citizens, and will move towards more sensible drugs policies that safeguard our environment for the enjoyment of subsequent generations.

The motion can be found here along with instructions on how to add your support: http://act.libdems.org.uk/group/liberaldemocratsfordrugpolicyreform/forum/topics/urgent-final-draft-ready-for

Why should Lib Dem MPs and PPCs support the motion to control and regulate drugs?

2010-01-09T14:23:00.003Z

Why might Liberal Democrat PPCs and MPs be interested in supporting a motion to control and regulate the manufacture, distribution and sale of drugs?

In 2005 we had the Iraq War to distinguish us from the other political parties. The population respected our taking a stand. We risk going into the next general election with no stand-up-and-take-notice policy that will attract attention to our existing policies which deserve to be taken seriously by the voters.

This is an excerpt from the speech I gave to the LDDPR fringe event at Autumn conference:

“I truly believe we can win this argument. This is what politicians are for: Presenting policies that will improve people's lives and persuading people to vote in their best interests. In a time when faith in politics is all but lost, this is a policy that could certainly not be described as cynical populism. It appeals to the best in people. It asks them to think and to empathise with the people whose lives prohibition is ruining. Yes, some will be scared by it, but others will be so enthused by it that they will join the party and enthusiastically campaign on our behalf. So long as we get our message straight, this policy can reinvigorate interest in all of our policies and allow us that chance of a genuine breakthrough.

I'd like you to imagine standing on a constituent's doorstep presenting a policy that is likely to do the following:

Reduce acquisitive crime by over 50% and domestic burglaries by around 80%. Constituents will like the nice reduction in their insurance premiums that should result.

Allow around two thirds of street prostitutes to leave prostitution, free of the need to fund their drug habit. I should point out that prostitutes suffer post-traumatic stress disorder at 5 times the rate of soldiers returning from Iraq. We can and should save them from their horrific routine.

Reduce overcrowding in existing prisons and save the £2-3bn planned to be spent on building new ones.

Free up tens of thousands of police for community policing and other priorities.

Substantially increase the respect for the police among our nation's youth.

Remove a major criminal career path as an option for these youth's future.

Deprive organised criminals of over £5bn in income.

Increase stability in Latin America and Afghanistan by cutting a considerable source of income from organised criminal gangs and the Taliban.

Allow us to ensure that all people thinking about taking drugs are aware of all the potential health, social and economic consequences of their use.

And virtually eliminate the chances of our young people encountering pushers of hard drugs.

If the constituent's response is “Wow, but how are you paying for all this.” you can say. “Well actually, this policy is projected to save at least £10bn each year.”

I'd now like to present some arguments for the media debate I hope will occur:

Every time a drug trafficking operation is disrupted there may be a temporary reduction in purity and increase in price. This increases the health risks and the criminal activity needed to maintain a habit. Every time a sex trafficking operation is disrupted, you are freeing women from sex slavery. I'd like to ask the moral absolutist prohibitionists where they'd rather their taxes were spent.

While the tories/labour/the daily mail may not intentionally be representing the interests of organised crime and the Taleban, they should understand that the gangsters and terrorists of the world will be hoping and praying that it is the tories/labour/the daily mail and not us that win the argument.

David Cameron has expressed strongly pro-reform views as a backbencher based on the evidence he heard on the Home Affairs Select Committee. Will he now support a policy he believes will effectively tackle many of society's problems, or will he accept the advice of his political advisers and let the people of this nation continue to suffer in the interests of gaining power?

We have the evidence.

We have the weapons and skills to win the arguments.

But does this party have the courage and confidence to stand up and lead?

If, like me, you fear where a conservative government will take our country, I'd suggest we find that courage and find it fast.

There is no great ideological chasm to cross. Rather, the voters are divided into the well-informed, the yet to be well-informed and Melanie Phillips.”

Since I delivered this speech in September, Transform Drug Policy Foundation have released “After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation”, which, in addition to their earlier publication “After the War on Drugs: Tools for the Debate” gives the party a wide array of arguments with which to defend a policy of strictly regulated control, and many tools that will be useful in actively promoting this course of action to the voters.

Chris Huhne recently argued that there are massive problems with reform because of the UN conventions. The Liberal Democrats are famously internationalist. We are firm friends of the EU and the UN. Sometimes a friend has to say “I'm sorry but you are wrong. You're hurting people. We're not going to go along with this anymore.”

With dramatic recent rises in youth unemployment, it is vital that we act soon to prevent another generation getting caught up in the misery of prohibited addiction. Important allies are experiencing similar economic hardship and are being led by relatively liberal governments, a situation that may not be present at an election 5 years from now. There are no other policies that could reduce spending while improving public health, reducing crime, creating jobs, increasing freedom and undermining international criminal gangs and terrorists.

We don't have to fear a political backlash on this issue. Any argument against us would be founded on ignorance or prejudice, and the politician or commentator could be quickly made to look foolish. What we do have to fear is the act of going into a general election campaign with no one policy that neatly sums up our guiding principles. We need to draw a line in the sand. The old politics of Labour and the Conservatives with their focus groups and grasping populism, or the new politics of a Liberal Democrat party having the courage to lead the world in standing up against the criminals sucking the life out of our communities. If we do the right thing, and pronounce this policy with confidence with the supporting evidence presented clearly for all to see, we will gain considerable admiration amongst the population here and abroad, and (perhaps most importantly) we will gain a considerable number of seats.

The motion can be found here along with instructions on how to add your support: http://act.libdems.org.uk/group/liberaldemocratsfordrugpolicyreform/forum/topics/urgent-final-draft-ready-for

Why should Women Liberal Democrats support a motion calling for control and regulation of drugs?

2010-01-08T14:39:00.003Z

The stories of how prohibition affects women give the drug policy reform movement the strongest arguments we have. The one experience more than any other that motivated me to campaign for drug policy reform was watching the documentary film: "Killer in a Small Town" The film tackled the story of the 5 young women who were murdered by Steve Wright in Ipswich in 2006. The film-maker spoke to their families and friends and attracted attention to the fact that these young women were seemingly ordinary girls from ordinary families who had apparently just made a few bad decisions in their life and found themselves addicted to heroin and selling sex on the streets. It struck me at the time that any unhappy or rebellious girl making a few mistakes could quickly find themselves in a similar situation, a thought that sickened me.

One of the most distressing scenes of the film was the playing of footage from the ITV news showing a journalist talking to a young woman after it was apparent a serial killer was preying on prostitutes in the town. The interviewer asked "Despite the dangers, why have you chosen to come out tonight?" to which she replied "Because I need the money. I need the money." The young woman interviewed was Paula Clennell, who was to become Wright's fifth victim.

Around 95% of street prostitutes in the UK are considered to be problem drug addicts according to Home Office estimates, and nearly two thirds cite funding drug use as their primary motivation, suggesting that the vast majority could leave prostitution if they could obtain their drug of addiction at an affordable price. Having recently met some former prostitutes at a conference and witnessed them struggle to confront their past and the effect it has had on their lives, I would say that our humanity compels us to do everything we can to ensure few others have to go through similar experiences. I certainly don't want to hear anyone else standing in front of me saying "I was lucky... I was only raped once."

Were the majority of street prostitutes to leave sex work, basic economics dictate that conditions for remaining prostitutes should improve. Sex workers should be able to increase prices, work less hours and be more choosy about the clients they take business from if "supply" of sex workers doesn't meet "demand" from punters. Some of the tens of thousands of police freed up by the massive reduction in acquisitive crime rates that should accompany controlled, regulated drug supply could be diverted into shutting down exploitative brothels, and ensuring demand is not met by trafficking from overseas.

The sad truth is that there are male heroin and crack addicts out there who are identifying vulnerable teenagers, seducing them, offering them drugs and sending them out on the streets to raise money to fund both their habits. I would much prefer any decision to take hard drugs to be based upon education provided by a trained pharmacist or counsellor rather than the extent of your education being contained in the phrase "Try some of this, it's awesome." spoken by the first man you think you love.

It is also true that many of the currently illegal drugs have the potential to cause great distress to families. They can bring about changes in personality and values that create awful dilemmas in mothers and other family members, torn between the pain of holding a drug-affected family member close and the pain of pushing them away. A system combining licensing and drug tagging might be very effective in restricting provision of drugs to children in the first place and the absence of criminal sanctions for use should make it much easier to seek and receive help, as has been the case in Portugal, where drugs have been decriminalised since 2001. In Portugal prevalence rates of use of all the major drugs by 13-18 year olds reduced between 2001 and 2006.

Another tragic feature of the relationship between women and drugs is the routine removal of the children of drug addicts. There are around 10,000 children of heroin addicts in care in the UK and addicted mothers who are having serious problems are resisting seeking treatment in the fear that their children will be taken from them. Current prohibitionist policy just increases harms for both the mother and the child. Removing the chaos from addicts lives by ensuring they don't have to be constantly chasing money to fund their habit can allow them to hold their children as their number one priority. What chance does a woman have of escaping the spiral of despair and addiction if she is living in constant fear of losing her kids?

The passage below is taken from a piece written in 1995 by Mike Gray about the closure of a clinic in Widnes. Heroin prescription used to be widespread in the UK, but had been scaled back under diplomatic pressure from the US.

"In March of last year I visited the Chapel Street Clinic and met with several of the patients. I sat in on a group session where eight heroin users discussed their lives and problems with a counselor before picking up their weekly prescriptions for pharmaceutical heroin. Unlike the junkies we are used to seeing, this group was virtually indistinguishable from any other bunch of young adults on the streets of Liverpool. They were well dressed, talkative, energetic -- they had jobs -- and they used heroin daily.
One of the most attractive was a young woman named Juliette who had been an addict for 13 years. She came from a middle-class background, married a rich kid who got her into heroin, then left her with two kids and no money. She tried desperately to kick but couldn't make it. Somehow for ten years she managed to stay afloat through petty theft and prostitution, with the authorities breathing down her neck. Finally, terrified that they were about to take her kids away, she happened to find the right doctor and he sent her to John Marks. Marks gave her a check-up, satisfied himself that she was indeed a heroin addict, and wrote her a prescription for a week's supply.
"For the first time in ten years," she said, "I had spare time. I didn't have to worry that my dealer wouldn't show -- I didn't have to worry about the price or where to steal the money. So for the first time in ten years, I had a minute to look in the mirror. I looked and I said, `Oh, my God.' Then I looked at the kids, and I said, `What have I done?' All these middle-class values came flooding back in on me.
" Today Juliette has a job, a house, and a mortgage. The kids are in school and doing well. Everybody's in excellent health. And once a week she comes to Chapel Street for her prescription. I asked John Marks what will happen to Juliette on April 1 (when the clinic closes). He said, "Well, she'll go down the tubes."

Many of the young women who get involved with drugs have had difficult lives and can only find comfort in drugs, despite what their addiction makes them do. We have turned our backs on their plight for too long. Regulating and controlling drugs sensibly can take the chaos from these young women's lives and allow us to offer them comfort that will not damage them. Careful pricing has the potential to put drug dealers out of business, removing the pushers that try to recruit children as customers. Control and regulation is not throwing in the towel in the "War on Drugs", it is moving the war onto ground that we understand and can control in order to limit the damage drugs can do to our society. Supporting the Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform motion for Spring conference could help the Liberal Democrats take a massive step forward in tackling the terrible effects of prohibition in the UK and beyond.

If you are a rep for your local party and would like to support the motion (found at http://lddpr.blogspot.com) please get in touch with me at ewanhoyle@gmail.com

Prohibition is a cowardly, immoral idiocy that we can not afford

2010-01-05T09:43:00.003Z

It's motion submission season for the Spring conferences and this year the conference committee will have the opportunity to allow conference to debate drug policy reform for the first time since 2002.

In the last decade the drug-related death rate has doubled in Scotland, while in countries like Switzerland and Portugal death rates have fallen by half since they had the bravery to adopt heroin prescription and decriminalisation policies respectively. It is perfectly reasonable to conclude that British reluctance to engage with drug policy has caused hundreds of the most vulnerable, desperate Scots to die.

A great many more Britons will have encountered illegal crack and heroin dealers, developed a habit, and descended into shameful lives of theft, prostitution or be dealing drugs themselves, creating more desperate addicts to steal from us and fill our prisons.

We can stop these people piling misery upon our communities. Were the government to control and regulate the production, distribution and sale of drugs, existing addicts could be managed in such a way that theft, prostitution and dealing would be entirely unnecessary. If problem drug users were treated medically rather than abandoned to wreak havoc, we could potentially reduce domestic burglary by 80% and virtually eliminate street prostitution. A well controlled market could come close to eliminating the illegal market for all drugs, greatly diminishing the chances of children and teenagers encountering anyone who might seek to profit from luring them into that lifestyle.

Far from "people who have kids going "Oh God no, anything but that" " (an assumption of Anita Anand on the daily politics), they should recognise that control and regulation is the best way to keep drugs out of the hands of children. Illegal dealers don't ask for proof of age. Control and regulation might require everyone buying drugs to have a licence to buy that drug and might allow systems to be put in place that allow drugs found in the possession of children to be traced back to their purchaser to aid in prosecution. In Switzerland heroin prescription has been credited with giving heroin the status of "loser drug". Controlling and regulating drugs should not be seen as consumption being approved. Rather legalising should hopefully remove the rebellion from drug use and establish it as a behaviour that responds to medical treatment, a behaviour which occurs as a result of unhappiness and is a symptom of failure.

It is true that control and regulation cannot happen until reform or rejection of the UN drugs conventions. This should not mean that we should not hold it as our aspiration. Decriminalisation may encourage people to seek treatment and may vastly reduce unsafe drug use and drug-related death in Portugal, but in Mexico, Colombia, the Caribbean and many other regions people are dying in their thousands because of the billions of pounds to be made from trafficking from and through these countries to meet Western demand. The only way to eliminate the illegal market is for states to control and regulate legal markets. Britain can be the first to announce this as their intention, and the Liberal Democrats can be the first party to gain considerable electoral success from holding it as policy.

If we do nothing to hasten reform, we are morally responsible for all the crimes and the prostitution that drug users engage in to fund their habits and all the distress that criminality causes in our communities. We need to take responsibility for the millions of pounds the Taliban are raising from the opium trade, money they are spending on the bullets and bombs that murder our troops and the innocent civilians of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Britain can grow our own poppies. We don't need to allow our addicts to be funding Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. We don't need our "recreational drug users" to be funding the criminal drug gangs that terrorise our own streets either.

There are no other policies that will reduce spending while improving public health, reducing crime, creating jobs, increasing freedom and undermining international criminal gangs and terrorists.

This is a stunningly beautiful policy flower breaking through the snow, patiently waiting for the party smart enough to pick it and present it to the people.

The nearly final draft of the motion can be found on the Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform blog: http://lddpr.blogspot.com/ If you are an elected rep and wish to support the motion's submission or you wish to propose the motion to your local party or SAO, please e-mail me at ewanhoyle@gmail.com

Can we also learn from this poor man's death by confronting our national ignorance of serious mental illness?

2009-12-29T09:39:00.004Z

While Akmal Shaikh's execution by the Chinese authorities was vicious, barbaric and medieval in nature, we do need to confront the failures in our own country that allowed this tragedy to happen.

I am not fully up to date with the extent of education on mental illness in schools or the level of support teachers and other professionals in contact with young people have so that they might intervene in the course of someone's mental illness. I do however know that 12 years ago when my brother was behaving strangely, my family was absolutely failed by the education system (my parents were both secondary school teachers), the primary care system, and our own ignorance of mental illness. I was only able to suggest schizophrenia to my parents after a lecture about mental illnesses in my first year Psychology class at university. From what I recall, my suggestion didn't do us much good as my family's GP at the time expressed the opinion that he "seemed fine the last time I saw him". My brother went on to have three serious psychotic episodes involving hospitalisation in the next five years, attempted suicide on at least one occasion, and is now living alone with his delusions and no ambitions for employment some 12 years later.

In cold economic terms, my brother should be an asset not a burden to society. He was an international volleyball player when he became ill, and later achieved a 1st part-time at Glasgow University. I can't know for certain that early intervention in his illness would have allowed him to achieve the level of success he was destined for, but I'm sure a compassionate ear such as is presented by the early intervention programme presented in the link below, would have done wonders for the whole family in limiting the distress his illness caused.

Akmal Shaikh was well into middle-age when his symptoms first became apparent, so I can only blame our national collective ignorance of mental illness in granting the Chinese the ability to state that he had "no previous medical record" of mental illness. That is of course no excuse for the act of the Chinese in executing this man, but we need to take away much more from this sorry episode than writing another dark chapter in China's book of human rights abuses.

The job of a politician should not be to win votes, to make people richer, or pander to tabloid journalists. The job of a politician is to create and safeguard happiness, and I believe programmes such as this one in Maine can contribute immensely to that:

Early intervention in all illnesses can save lives. From personal experience, early intervention in mental illness has the potential to prevent emotional distress of the highest order.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9016369953011097217#docid=6843164730105390546

Can the slaughter of a grieving Mexican family be the final straw?

2009-12-24T09:42:00.003Z

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/22/melquisedet-angulo-gunmen_n_400846.html

Melquisedet Angulo was the only marine who died in a military operation in which one of Mexico's most notorious drug barons was killed last week. In an apparent revenge attack, his mother, aunt, brother and sister have been slaughtered only hours after his funeral.

This is just the latest chapter in a shocking era of drug-fuelled terror that the Mexican government is clearly failing to contain. We need to ask ourselves what is the best way to help the Mexican people end this war. And from where I'm sitting the answer is fairly simple. The only way to prevent the drug users of the world enriching these savage terrorist cartels is to withdraw our support for the documents that grant them their power. The UN drugs conventions allow us to decriminalise drugs (as Portugal has done to great success), they allow us to prescribe heroin to desperate addicts (a model spreading across Europe following Switzerland's lead), but yet they leave the one step that will deprive the true evil-doers in the trade billions of pounds as unthinkable.

When the Portuguese Commission for a National Anti-Drug Strategy considered their options in tackling their nation's rapidly increasing drugs problem, they "concluded that legalisation was not a viable option due, in large part, to the fact that numerous international treaties impose the "obligation to establish in domestic law a prohibition" on drug use" (Quote from http://www.cato.org/pubs/wtpapers/greenwald_whitepaper.pdf). To not consider control and regulation of a legal market for drugs that takes away the billions of pounds of revenue from the cartels that are growing in power and influence in Latin America and West Africa is to offer a shrug of indifference to what remains of Melquisedet Angulo's family and to the families of the 15,000 other victims of the Mexican drug war since 2006. The UN drugs conventions are, in effect, contracts granting opportunistic and phenomenally violent criminals the rights to a drugs market worth hundreds of billions of pounds each year.

This is where the Liberal Democrats come in. As founder of Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform, I have prepared a motion for Spring conference calling for the control and regulation of all currently illegal drugs. The current draft makes no reference to the UN drugs conventions, but following concerns raised I have proposed adding the following:

"It is precisely because of the Liberal Democrats full support for the excellent work of the UN in promoting liberty, health, human rights, peace and security across the globe that we should withdraw our support for the drugs conventions which are clearly creating quite opposite effects."

It is out of respect for the true aims of the UN that we should withdraw from the conventions which stand in their way.

If the Liberal Democrats were to adopt control and regulation as policy and achieve an unprecedented electoral boost as a result (and I genuinely believe this would occur), then we could be the instigators of a chain reaction that might spread across the world consigning prohibition to its historical status as the biggest, stupidest elephant to have stood in the world's most venerable debating chambers. And Melquisedet Angulo's family would not have died in vain.

Read the arguments I have prepared in support of my motion at http://lddpr.blogspot.com/ and join the debate on Lib Dem Act http://act.libdems.org.uk/group/liberaldemocratsfordrugpolicyreform

And Merry Christmas to one and all.

Are overseas call centres making us all a little more racist?

2009-12-15T12:54:00.004Z

I've spent a fair bit of time on the phone to customer services departments over the last few days having just moved house from Inverness to Glasgow, and my heart sinks every time I hear an Asian accent asking "Mr Howel?" Immediately when I hear them murder my name (which incidentally is Hoyle, and is pronounced as read) I know that they are unlikely to understand what I am asking for, will repeatedly say the same things over and over again no matter my request, and will find me getting ruder and more impatient on the other end of the phone. I just signed off a particularly fruitless conversation with a young man from HSBC with "You're not answering my question! You're idiots! F*** off!" I did intend to hang up before I said the f word in frustration but am not entirely sure I made it in time. I am not the kind of man who is rude to anyone in any circumstances, so I can only imagine the kind of conversations these telephone operators are having with the more impolite of British citizens.

When I'm talking to a call centre in Cumbernauld or Clydebank, I'll cough (bad cold) and they'll say "Oh, have you got the cold that's going about, you're not sounding so good?" and I'll reply "Yeah, sorry for all the disgusting noises." We are able to have a conversation based on shared experience, culture and language which flows naturally based upon a level of empathetic understanding. When someone in India asks "Can I call you Ewan (NOT pronounced as read)" and I say simply "No" then we're immediately cast in my mind as the poorly trained performing monkey and the grumpy old man.

Having to have these conversations over the phone further establishes our alienation. They can't pick up the look of dismay on my face as they get my name wrong, I can't pick up the blank affect that they have learned to adopt as protection against British bile. What is worse is the fact that the relationship is likely to be creating considerable prejudice in both nations. We think they're idiots, they think we're angry, impolite racists. I wouldn't be surprised if tourism from India has taken a nosedive since the foreign call centre became commonplace. Anyone thinking of a visit will be told by all call-centre staff "Oh no, don't go there, they're all arseholes. I was just doing my job today, telling this guy "Ewan" - what kind of stupid name is that? - what he asked (yeah right) and he says "You're idiots, f*** off" No manners"

As soon as I've paid off my overdraft I'm finding a bank with no overseas call centres to do my bit for British-Indian relations. I never again want to tell a call-centre worker who I'm sure was trying his hardest to "f*** off".

Police spending cuts don't have to hurt

2009-12-02T14:41:00.003Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8389844.stm

The government have just asked police forces to find more than £500 million in savings each year up until 2014. Suggested solutions include cutting overtime and making officers patrol alone "to make them more accessible"

There is another option for saving money, a policy that could reduce acquisitive crime by over 50% and domestic burglaries by around 80%, thus freeing up tens of thousands of police for joint patrols or other priorities. Bringing drugs under the control and strict regulation of government gives us an opportunity to make heroin and crack users able to feed their habit without having to commit crime or prostitute themselves to fund it. The vast majority of addicts arrested for these crimes get released a few months later and then are back inside not long after that. The whole debacle reminds me of the You've Been Framed classic in which a small child keeps picking up a fish and putting it in a bucket of water only for it to jump right out again seconds later.

Surely the police force will be far better placed to keep communities safe while enduring these cuts if we removed the burden created by stubborn, cowardly and utterly self-defeating drugs policy.

Is this the book to save us from the Tory Menace?

2009-11-13T12:04:00.005Z

Transform yesterday launched "After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation" at the House of Commons. Having read most of it, I am confident it can be employed to great effect in backing up a Liberal Democrat policy of strictly regulating a legal trade in drugs.

This document is undoubtedly tough on drugs and I will be writing to Nick Clegg to inform him of this and to encourage him to act in the strongest possible terms. This book, to be blunt "covers our ass" on the issue with its sober, rational examination of the options for leading the world into a post-prohibition reality. It is now time to take off our gloves and mercilessly attack the prohibitionist policy that sacrifices untold numbers of children at the altar of the UN narcotics conventions and the dangerous, hysterical rantings of wrong-headed Daily Mail columnists. I will not stand by as prohibition pushes our desperate, vulnerable youth into the arms of the pushers, pimps and the vicious criminal profiteers who currently terrorise our communities. Far from creating drug-ridden anarchy, this book allows us to see that a legal drugs market can help create a better, safer world, where children and young people are protected from harm, and ignorance of the risks of drug consumption can no longer ruin lives.

These are genuinely exciting times in British politics. The Lib Dems have an opportunity to restore faith in politics by presenting a policy that will save billions of wasted pounds and create a paradigm shift in society that again casts the police as servants, not persecutors of the people and can allow previously cowering communities to escape the dispiriting influence of drugs and crime.
We now have all the tools necessary to build the Britain we want to live in, and perhaps the most finely crafted can be found here: www.tdpf.org.uk/blueprint%20download.htm

How do we open up a home front against the Taliban?

2009-11-08T10:31:00.002Z

In World War II it seemed the whole of society was mobilised to support the war effort around the world. As we remember today the men and women who have fallen in all the wars this nation has fought, it is time to ask whether we are doing all we can to support our effort in Afghanistan.

The uncomfortable truth is that there are around 250,000 of us who are actively undermining that effort. People who, when combined with their fellows around the world, provide around 50% of the Taliban's funding. For the vast majority it is not their intention to fund the insurgency of religious fundamentalists, and even if you told them they were funding the Taliban, they would struggle to stop. These people are heroin addicts. 92% of the world's heroin originates in Afghanistan, and the Taliban's taxes on the trade and heroin stockpiles are what accounts for around 50% of their income.

So what is the best way of breaking this link between British heroin addicts and the Taliban?

We have tried eradicating poppies in Afghanistan, an act which unfortunately has much the same impact as disrupting trafficking in and around the UK. Namely, the price for the remaining heroin goes up and the Taliban makes the same amount or more money. Indeed the Taliban themselves suppressed opium growing in Afghanistan in 2000 and apparently reaped great financial reward from their efforts "The total farm-gate value of opium rose from US$56 million in 2001 to US$1,200 million in 2002" (UNODC (2004), ‘Presentation to the International Crisis Group on Afghanistan’, Brussels, 5/VII/2004). http://bit.ly/19OsRn

Efforts to get addicts off heroin have been successful up to a point, but methadone is a more harmful drug to an addict's health, and is often ineffective in reducing demand for street heroin. Prison is an ineffective deterrent, and rehab is expensive and often unsuccessful.

There is one option available to us that we have yet to try on any great scale. Opium poppies are already being grown in Britain to provide medical opiates in the treatment of our sick. If we were to expand the growing of opium poppies and treat our addicts medically with prescribed heroin, and if other countries were to do the same, we could remove the demand for Afghan opium, and so remove half of the Taliban's current funding, reducing their ability to buys guns, explosives and bullets with which to resist democratic reform and attack British soldiers trying to help Afghanistan rebuild after Taliban rule.

It is the government's short-sighted drugs policy that is funding the Taliban, not the hapless drug-addicted wretches in our cities and towns.

Good luck to the 500,000 turfed off incapacity

2009-11-03T21:15:00.002Z

I have just been through a very unpleasant experience. In February of this year I attended a medical assessment in order that a doctor could assess my ability to work. I have chronic fatigue, was feeling particularly unwell at the time and was examined by an unsympathetic doctor who put me through all the physical tests despite my explaining that I would be able to perform them now but they would likely lead to fatigue later. In April, I was surprised by a letter through the door from the DWP explaining that I had not scored enough incapacity points and so my incapacity benefit was being stopped. Thanks a bunch. There followed several phone calls to the DWP and visits to CAB (where I had fortunately been volunteering when in ok health) asking for advice on what to claim. After being told 3 different things by the DWP, I was eventually advised to claim Employment Support Allowance and so had to fill out yet another form (less insensitive to the symptoms of chronic fatigue this time, but that's not saying much) and attend another medical (still haven't got the results of that one after several months). My benefit had dropped from £102.25 to £64.30 a week and I was leaking money fast.

I appealed against the decision with the help of Inverness CAB (Thanks Iain) and was told to expect about a six month wait. My tribunal happened on Monday and lasted all of one minute. The judge (put up in the nicest hotel in Inverness the night before) stated that I should have scored at least 3 extra points in various categories and so was approving my appeal. So off I trot to await the £1200 in arrears that have accumulated over the last 7 months.

I was lucky. Had I been on ESA when I was judged fit for work I would have had to claim Jobseeker's Allowance whilst knowing that I was incapable of work. It can't be fun having to apply for jobs you know you will not be able to carry out adequately.

Labour and the Conservatives both want to get 500,000 supposedly fit IB and ESA claimants onto Jobseeker's Allowance, saving £25 a week. I'm sure there are many people out there who are capable of work, but I would much prefer they used the carrot rather than the stick. Both the personal advisors that have been assigned to me have been lovely people who helped me try permitted work last year for a few months to build my confidence. My health didn't last, but the experience was vital in demonstrating to me that there is a path out of incapacity benefit when the time is right.

Over two fifths of IB claimants in Scotland have mental or behavioural disorders such as depression or anxiety. The volunteering and permitted work options could be vitally reassuring in their return to employment, or an effective way to trial various types of work to gauge their suitability. Removing such people abruptly from Incapacity Benefit risks making these stress-related conditions considerably worse and might place additional burden on the health service.

Forcibly moving people off IB adds to the workload of the DWP in processing appeals, costs about £300 a time for each tribunal (at a rate of £300 a minute for mine), and around 45% of appeals are successful. This rate rises to nearer 60% when the appellant has representation. My representative was a welfare rights worker at the Citizen's Advice Bureau (a service already overstretched by the demands of the recession). If someone could let me know how many incapacity benefit recipients appeal removal of benefit (Table IB1.10 I don't have Excel) http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd1/ib_sda/ib_sda_nov03.asp I might be able to show that the savings the Tories are projecting are insanely optimistic.

Anyway, my chronic fatigue is back again and I'm wilting and ready for bed so this blog post is just going to fade out with this highly unsatisfactory closing sentence.

The Liberal Democrats need to position themselves as the party that will listen to scientific advice

2009-11-02T11:25:00.003Z

Professor David Nutt was a frustrated man whose recommendations (backed up by scientific evidence) were being ignored by a series of non-scientific Labour politicians. He was making statements that undermined government policy and it is understandable that he has irritated Alan Johnson to the point where he has fired him. Professor Nutt was not some loose cannon though. He was the chair of an indepedent advisory council that was almost entirely supportive of his views. They voted 20 to 3 to keep cannabis as class C and now appear to be ready to resign en masse in protest at his dismissal.

I am heartened by the responses coming from prominent Liberal Democrats on this issue but, with the Tories stating they would have sacked him sooner, we have a fantastic opportunity to establish clear water between ourselves and the other parties on this. We can be the party that listens to evidence presented to us by experts, and the party that formulates policy based upon expert advice. Now is the time to ask scientists, sociologists and economists the bigger question in drug policy:

Does prohibition actually work in reducing the harms drugs cause to individuals and society?

On the 12th of November the Transform Drugs Policy Foundation will be in the Grand Committee Room of the House of Commons launching their publication "After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation" I hope to hear the Liberal Democrats welcome these proposals and to see evidence that they are re-examining their rather confused drugs policy as a result. As the founder of the Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform, I will be attending the launch of the Blueprint for Regulation and hope to use it as a starting point from which to push for an examination of current Liberal Democrat policy, the discussion of other policy options and the production of a motion proposing more sensible policy for consideration by party members at Spring conference.

If you wish to join the drug policy debate within the party, please contribute your thoughts at www.lddpr.org .uk

Belittling the link between cannabis and schizophrenia should come second to ensuring education at point of sale.

2009-10-29T15:23:00.006Z

I was disappointed to read the following in Mark Easton's blog today, especially having witnessed at first hand what schizophrenia can do to a family.

"Professor Nutt accepts there is a link between cannabis and mental ill-health. He cites research suggesting that "smokers of cannabis are about 2.6 times more likely to have a psychotic-like experience than non-smokers".
But he points out that "you are 20 times more likely to get lung cancer if you smoke tobacco than if you don't." In other words, he says, "(T)here is a relatively small risk for smoking cannabis and psychotic illness compared with quite a substantial risk for smoking tobacco and lung cancer". "

Given that risk of schizophrenia for a sibling of a schizophrenic is around 10%, I would have been very grateful for the information that joining my friends in smoking cannabis as a teenager might have increased my risk of psychosis to around 1 in 4. Very grateful indeed. Schizophrenia isn't comparable with lung cancer. Lung cancer generally affects people in old age (though of course you can get it younger if you smoke), schizophrenia generally strikes in your late teens or your early twenties and is very capable of radically altering your personality to one that your friends and family find bewildering and frightening. It can lead to a lifetime of exclusion, torn between the drugs that numb your emotions and the exciting delusions that keep your mind busy, but that can severely impair your social functioning.

I wrote the above earlier, and now that I've just finished watching question time, I'm dismayed by the pride in stupidity that Jacqui Smith, the tory, the Plaid guy and John Sergeant displayed. If cannabis is so very dangerous then you need to educate people about the dangers and be in a position to help them if they get into trouble. Making it more illegal doesn't have any effect on levels of use and will only make them less likely to seek help if they get into difficulty. What is perhaps more important, is that their friends, who are probably in the best position to guage their changes in personality, are going to be less likely to seek help on their behalf if they witness problems emerging. The best way to keep our young people safe is to ensure that education on risks is provided every time a purchase is made (as is the case currently with tobacco, a more addictive drug, so presumably a less effective deterrent than would be the case with cannabis. The cannabis education should be more extensive than "You'll Go Mad" on the side of the packet though). The pharmacist, the doctor, the police and the family need to be seen as friends and allies in this, not the enemy to be avoided and deceived.

I have seen what happens when schizophrenia is not caught early, and I would not wish it on my worst enemy, not even Jacqui Smith. The enemy in all this is ignorance, and the best way to combat it is to seize the market from organised crime, and ensure the strictly regulated trade in cannabis has education at point of sale at its core.

My maiden speech to conference... that I didn't end up making

2009-10-20T19:16:00.003+01:00

I had submitted this for the Highland Liberal Democrat News (or whatever it's called), but it's twice as long as it should be so I'll have to do some editing. You lucky bloggers get to read the full 700-odd words.

My conference experience can be rather neatly summated by relating to you my maiden conference speech that I sadly didn't get to deliver in response to the motion “A Fresh Start for Britain: Choosing a Different, Better Future.”

Good morning conference. In 1997, when Labour were elected, I was skipping joyfully down the streeet arm in arm with friends in the early hours of the morning. I was 17 years old, jubilant, and full of hope. You can probably tell by my standing on this stage (This never happened -ed) that I have since found that hope to have been misplaced and have found the need to find a new home for my hopes for social justice, my commitment to compassionate, evidence-based policy, and my rejection of knee-jerk populism.
I joined the Liberal Democrats about 18 months ago for something to do. I suffer from chronic fatigue and was spending my days playing monotonous computer games and watching DVDs. The Inverness Thursday club envelope stuffing and blue envelope writing sessions quickly became a highlight of my week, but they weren't exactly forums of cutting edge political debate. So earlier this year I sent letters to my local MP, Danny Alexander on the subject of drug policy and electoral reform, and while Danny didn't agree with all I wrote, he welcomed my thought-provoking contribution and encouraged me to attend conference. There are no words for the gratitude I feel towards Danny for doing this. This policy motion neatly summarises everything I have loved about my experience this week. Everyone I have talked to has been highly intelligent and open to any ideas that can improve the lives of British citizens. This party is a party committed to rational policy making, not cynical populism, and this policy motion reflects this.
I'd now like to address the massive number of young people watching this on BBC Parliament (3 can be a massive number if you project it onto the side of a building... pause for laughter... (carry on regardless -ed) ) What are you doing joining radical charities and going on marches when you could be joining a political party and changing politics from the inside (I have plans to submit a motion on drug policy and prostitution for spring conference and given this party's commitment to rational, evidence based policy I hope it will be accepted). If you are thinking of taking your passion for politics to either of the other parties, well anyone describing the Tories or Labour as progressive has lost the plot...

And that's where my “speech” fades out, hastily scrawled in my stewards chair when I should have been listening intently to the motion on rail franchises. At conference I contributed to a policy consultation on mental health, drugs policy and electoral reform. I made my feelings known to an electoral reform rally on the urgent support I feel there should be for the Alternative Vote. I sneaked into various events I shouldn't have been at and saw Nick Clegg speak very well four times to various audiences. I hatched a plan with a prostitution advocacy charity to help women off the street and out of brothels. And I addressed a packed fringe event on drug policy reform and gained a near unanimous mandate to produce a motion for Spring conference advocating bringing all aspects of the drugs trade under strict regulatory control. There is one thing about the experience that I do regret though, and that's shouting “I'm voting Tory!” at Nick Clegg after he made a bad joke at glee club. Nobody laughed at his joke or mine. That would have been the fifth time I'd heard him speak well, but sadly he's no comedian.

If you're wondering about my health, it appears the latest herbal remedy is working well, or maybe I just needed my body to start feeling proud of what my brain was doing with its days again. Whatever the reason, it appears my chronic fatigue is on the back foot and I now find myself eyeing up an application pack for becoming a PPC for the coming election. I hope you'll understand now why I seized the opportunity to write this piece. Attending conference might have radically changed my life.

You cannot change demand for prostitution without first tackling supply

2009-10-14T13:05:00.003+01:00

Below is an edited e-mail I have just sent to someone organising the Demand Change campaign: http://www.demandchange.org.uk/ Their calls to criminalise paying for sex, while well-intentioned, would make life more dangerous for many prostitutes. Only by tackling supply of prostitutes by strictly regulating legal supply of heroin and cocaine - and removing the need to prostitute to fund a drug habit - can we produce an environment in which the most horrific instances of sexual exploitation can be effectively tackled.

"Having read further on the issue of prostitution, I also have to say that I cannot support the Demand Change position any longer. Reducing demand without reducing supply has apparently led in Sweden to prostitutes accepting customers they previously would not, lowering prices and generally feeling more at risk. Although I respect greatly the work of Eaves and have been defending you vigorously on the online Lib Dem Voice forum, I cannot support a blanket ban on paying for sex.

I have however settled upon a compromise solution that I hope you will consider. I believe it might be more effective than clause 13 in tackling trafficking and pimping, and it also might be acceptable to those few prostitutes who make considerable money from prostitution and assert they have a right to sell sex.

The starting point of the plan would be to bring about a strictly regulated legal drugs market that would alleviate the need to find considerable amounts of money for drugs that motivates the vast majority of street prostitution. There would also be a considerable reduction in acquisitive crime that would in turn free up many thousands of police for other priorities. I feel strongly that one of these should be a concerted effort to raid and close brothels, providing support to those women and girls who are freed and making Britain a very unwelcoming destination for sex traffickers. This effort could be supported by a toughening of clause 13 to make it illegal for anyone to pay for sexual services in a brothel.

I would hope this plan would reduce the number of street prostitutes, so allowing any remaining to be more careful when accepting clients and to charge higher prices. I suspect though, that many established red-light districts would simply collapse if the number of prostitutes went below a certain level.

I also hope it would be effective in tackling brothel-keepers and pimps whose activites are currently illegal but bizzarrely appear to be being tolerated by the authorities. While street prostitution is dangerous, the worst-case brothel is the site at which the most horrific abuse is being perpetrated and I hope you would agree it should be the focus of our attentions.

This all leaves the problem of where the demand goes for sexual services and whether lone working prostitutes can keep safe. To improve the safety of independent prostitutes I believe the law should specifically allow two women to work from the same premises, ideally with extensive support from social and emergency services. Keeping the number to two I believe should minimise the opportunity for control to be exerted and should allow for clear distinction between a working partnership and a brothel in the eyes of the law.

I hope you'll understand that I deeply respect the work that Eaves does, and that this proposal is a genuine attempt to come up with a plan that will maximise the safety of prostitutes who want to work, while doing all we can to save others from suffering further horrific abuse.

Thanks and best wishes,

Ewan Hoyle.

Practicing running rings around Melanie Phillips' drugs arguments

2009-10-13T18:29:00.004+01:00

As I gear up to bring the Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform website online, I thought I'd practice ripping apart the arguments for retaining prohibition. Here's one from Melanie Phillips:

The pimp state
Daily Mail, 18 December 2006
"The idea that legalising drugs would get rid of crime is simply risible. Legal drugs would always be undercut — both by lower prices and higher strengths — by a black market. The only way to eradicate such an illegal trade would be to supply unlimited quantities of all drugs totally free of charge."

If this paragraph contains Melanie's argument for prohibition then I do believe we've won. All the commonly abused but illegal drugs except cannabis would I presume be manufactured pharmaceutically were they to be legal and regulated. They would therefore be required to be without contaminants and essentially be as pure as is possible. I would be very impressed if the illegal market could produce product stronger than pure so as to draw customers away from the state. I can envisage a few desperate street pushers trying to market "110% heroin", but I doubt they would last very long.

In the case of cannabis, I would hope that pharmacies would stock a range of strengths and active ingredient ratios to suit every taste. While some customers might enjoy the lucky dip aspect of their dealer telling them "this is the good shit right here", I feel most would find their favourite legal strain and stick to it for the most part, maybe changing up for special occasions.

On the price point Melanie makes, we have to examine what motivates the drug dealer. Melanie may think they are hell bent on destroying the British way of life through any means, but the reality is that they are motivated by profit. The state on the other hand is free to set prices at whatever level they see fit. They need not necessarily profit, although it would be a lot easier to do so without the risk premium that is integral to the illegal trade. They could appoint an independent body to monitor levels of use and the level of illicit trade and to set prices designed to restrict growth of both of these factors.

I'll admit eradicating illegal trade completely might be tricky, but there aren't many people pushing alcohol on the streets of our cities, perhaps because people can be fairly sure off-licence bought booze is only going to contain the poison they enjoy and isn't going to be fortified with meths and other nastiness.

Tomorrow I plan to critique a conservative home submission by a barrister, former chief of staff to David Cameron and "World Universities Debating Champion". He'll be well used to putting together persuasive arguments that are wrong then.

Where is the junkie rights movement?

2009-09-28T20:49:00.003+01:00

I've just finished watching the movie "Milk" and I'm wondering where the junkie rights movement is. Addicts don't choose to be addicts. They are just people who were sad, bored or ignorant at one point in their lives, made a really bad decision and found themselves imprisoned in an addiction from which they find it impossible to escape. Homosexuality is nothing to be ashamed of, but addiction is. There's no way you can imagine a crowd marching down the street singing "Say it loud, I'm a junkie and I'm proud." Heroin and crack are illegal for starters, but I suspect it's not the addiction that is the source of shame. Prohibition is compelling these people to go against their moral values and break social taboos by stealing and prostituting every day of their lives. How could they not feel shame? How would you feel if you had to steal or sell your body every day of your life to fend off great physical or emotional pain? Addicts are living that life every day. No wonder they seek escape in their next fix. If I were living like that every minute of sobriety would gnaw away at my conscience.

We now know that they don't have to live this life of shame. Prescribing heroin (and/or cocaine) can break the cycle of chaos and allow them to reflect on their lives with the knowledge that they need not go back to stealing and/or prostituting themselves. But yet we hesitate to embrace this new initiative. In the Daily Mail the Taxpayers Alliance states:

"Many taxpayers will have a massive problem paying for addicts’ heroin, particularly at a time when the NHS is unable to provide them with doctor’s appointments or life-saving cancer drugs."

But the Taxpayer's Alliance fails to recognise that in the status quo everyone continues to unwittingly play the "victims of crime" lottery.

Release the balls please.

And the first ball out is BURGLARY! Yes, Janet from Wokingham, you'll go home to find your new flatscreen TV, your Wii, and all your heirloom jewellery gone and your house in a bit of a state. There hasn't been a day when Burglary hasn't been drawn, and 80% of domestic burglaries are motivated by drug use. Hard luck Janet.

Next ball is MUGGING! Angela from Poole, it appears your husband has been stabbed by a drug addict because he wouldn't give up his watch and wallet. Ooh, it says here he's in intensive care so yes Angela, you are excused.

And the third ball out is PROSTITUTION! You won't like this Dave from Milton Keynes. That new boyfriend your 14 year old daughter mentioned just happens to be a drug addict, has your daughter hooked on drugs and she won't be home tonight because she's working the streets in your wife's favourite minidress to fund their addiction. Woah, hard luck Dave...

...you get the idea...

So commiserations to our losers and we'll see you in about 5 minutes time when we start all over again. We're here 24/7 year after year until the Daily Mail , the Taxpayer's Alliance and the rest of the country's prejudiced individuals remove their blinkers and realise what's really going on.

So, back to my point. The addicts may be too ashamed to fight for their own rights so we should fight for them. And frankly, I think we have a right to live in neighbourhoods with vastly reduced levels of burglary, mugging and prostitution do we not? Also, a (few years old now) leaked Downing Street strategy unit report found a yearly £16bn cost of crime committed by addicts to fund drug use. We could really be doing with that money right now.

Addicts' rights to live a life free of shame allow the rest of us to live a life free of fear. Please support the prescription of hard drugs whenever and wherever you can.

Er, we could do with that cocaine over here thanks.

2009-09-28T16:24:00.004+01:00

So the British navy have just intercepted a fishing vessel carrying £240m worth of cocaine and have handed the stash over to the US http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8277483.stm

Woops.

An excerpt from Drug Crazy by Mike Gray:

"Crack cocaine, of course, is an unparalleled menace, but the prohibitionists hardly have clean hands on this issue. Crack is a creation of the black market. The only reason for its existence is economic. It’s cheap. Unfortunately you get what you pay for. The high lasts only seconds before the bottom drops out, but low cost makes it available to the blue-collar market. There are few crack addicts on Wall Street. The traders prefer the smoother ride of the pure powder, and they can afford it. If prescription cocaine were available to serious addicts, there is every likelihood the demand for crack would disintegrate. In Liverpool, where John Marks gave addicts cocaine by prescription, nobody asked for crack."

This 5.5 tonnes of uncut cocaine could have come in very handy in the effort to protect our communities from crime. Examination of the results of the heroin prescription trials much publicised in the press earlier this month, shows that three quarters of the heroin addicts included in these trials were also crack addicts.

"those in the heroin group were committing a total of 1731 crimes in the 30 days prior to entering RIOTT treatment and after 6 months, this fell to 547 crimes"

How much further would this figure have fallen if the crack addicts had been prescribed cocaine alongside their heroin? The next course of action is not to expand the heroin prescription trial, but to accept the overwhelming international evidence of its benefits and roll out heroin prescription to every community that needs it. Scientific attention should now be turning to cocaine in an attempt to ascertain whether cocaine prescription can keep crack addicts out of trouble too.

Taxpayer's alliance utterly abandons the interest of taxpayers on heroin prescription issue.

2009-09-16T11:57:00.003+01:00

The taxpayers alliance aren't representing me with this article. Are they representing you?

http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/campaign/2009/09/poverty-and-addiction.html

Here is my comment in response to the blog post that I have posted on their website:
There are several problems with your arguments against prescription. Firstly, not including the criminal act of taking heroin, nearly all of heroin addicts' crimes will be acquisitive crimes to fund the drugs that will cost them around £400-£600 per week. If you reduce the cost of this habit to zero, you remove the need to commit crime to fund it and so are likely to greatly reduce your criminal activity. Yes, some will still occasionally commit crime, but I suspect this is only because they have been driven to break the moral taboo of criminal activity by the inflated costs of prohibited heroin. Simple economics of scale should reduce rapidly the £15000 per year cost of the scheme if it were expanded. If the cost is what you object to, why do you not suggest solutions to this? Finding alternative sources of heroin, direct purchase of opium from Afghan farmers for example, would greatly reduce costs. Can we not exempt addictive drugs from free prescription charges and allow the addict to at least partially fund their provision?
If heroin prescription is expanded to all users who currently commit acquisitive crime to fund their habit, there is the potential to reduce domestic burglaries by 80% and bring two thirds of street prostitutes off the street corners. Billions could be cut from criminal justice costs, not counting the massive benefits to the taxpayer of being freed from the fear of crime that addicts currently create by their actions.
Your shortsightedness on this issue is massively failing the interests of the taxpayers you claim to represent.

Lib Dems should urgently grasp the drugs nettle

2009-09-15T08:45:00.006+01:00

With The Observer editorial and contributors calling for reform of drug policy over the last couple of weeks and The Independent yesterday announcing the resounding success of heroin prescription experiments, the time is right for the Liberal Democrats to rethink their approach to drugs policy for the next election.

In 2002 The Observer published a poll that suggested that 2% of the population believed heroin should be legalised or decriminalised. In August of this year, a survey by PoliticsHome suggested 19% of the population supported legalisation of all currently illegal drugs, and over half the population supported legalising some of the currently illegal drugs. It appears attitudes to prohibition are changing, and changing fast. Our current policy was formulated in 2002. If it took popular opinion into account at that time, these polls suggest that popular opinion has moved on, and so should we.

We have the opportunity to lead public opinion on this issue. We can revive faith in politics by presenting intelligent policies for the good of the people and then try persuading them to vote in their best interest. While Labour and the Tories pander to the loudest man in their focus group sessions, we can show that we have the courage to stand up, tell the truth about the policies we need, and lead.

Below is the text of the flier for the only drugs policy fringe event at the coming conference. If you want to contribute to the debate, please come along.

Sunday, 20th 18.15 - 19.30
Bournemouth International Centre (BIC),
Durley Suite

Liberal Democrats For
Drug Policy Reform

Present:
What Can Be Gained From
Thoughtful Drug Policy Reform?

Chaired by: Dr Evan Harris MP.
Speakers include: Francis Wilkinson, former chief constable of Gwent police, Danny Kushlick of the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, Graham Watson MEP, and Ewan Hoyle of Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform.

In March of this year The Economist’s cover story was “Prohibition
has failed; legalisation is the least bad solution”. Esteemed
columnists such as Polly Toynbee, Nick Davies, Johann Hari and
Simon Jenkins, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Lord
Adair Turner and Tory leader David Cameron have all recognised
prohibition as a failure and called for legalisation to be considered.
But just how damaging is prohibition to our society? How should
we regulate a legal trade in drugs? And can a policy of regulated
supply be a vote winner at the coming election?

Useful links:
Transform website: http://www.tdpf.org.uk/
Leaked drugs report:
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2005/07/05/Report.pdf
Recent Pro-legalisation articles in:
The Times:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6733950.ece
The Financial Times:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/486fb0d8-7ca3-11de-a7bf-00144feabdc0.html
The Independent:
http://www.johannhari.com/archive/index.php?subject=drugLegalisation
David Cameron MP’s views:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-contender-calls-for-more-liberal-drug-laws-
505824.html
http://transform-drugs.blogspot.com/2009/03/fear-prevails-at-un-as-voices-for-drug.html
An excellent book on prohibition by Mike Gray, author of The China Syndrome:
http://www.libertary.com/book/drug-crazy
For further information or to join
Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform
e-mail ewanhoyle@gmail.com

A solution to our drink and drug problem?

2009-09-05T09:32:00.004+01:00

Just as sometimes it is necessary to be cruel to be kind, on the issue of drug and alcohol abuse, I feel it may be necessary to be illiberal to be liberal. In the run-up to my presentation at the fringe event "What can be gained from thoughtful drug policy reform?" I have been struggling with the question of how to regulate the sale of drugs. I have to balance the goals of keeping drugs away from children, eliminating illegal markets, protecting our European neighbours from hard drugs from our cheap, legal market, discouraging drug tourism and presenting a regime that would be acceptable to British voters.

For all of these goals I feel strict regulation is required and the strictest of regulation can be achieved by total state control of the trade. I cannot leave these substances in the private sector and our young people at the mercy of their marketing techniques and profit motive.

I suspect the people of the country would rather we err on the side of more state control rather than less. The whole policy would be quickly endangered if any newspaper could print the headline "Drugs epidemic sweeps country". It is for this reason that I am seriously considering recommending a kind of ration book/ID card. Yes you're all liberals and ID cards are evil, but please hear me out on this.

Any UK resident could apply for a card (drugs tourism already covered). It could be argued that no identifying demographic information should be linked to the card. Rather the card is just a means by which excessive purchasing could be prevented and health interventions could be offered. We would need to prevent people buying quantities that could only be interpreted as being for resale. For example, customers could be sold a week's supply of cannabis, a weekend's supply of ecstasy or cocaine etc. (exact quantities would have to be determined by people more knowledgeable than myself). When customers are identified by the computer system as being regular and/or heavy users, the pharmacist could be prompted to discretely offer an appointment with a suitably trained professional in which health and social issues stemming from drug use could be discussed. The system would also allow statisticians to effectively monitor drug use among different demographic groups and suggest health and education interventions to ensure people are kept safe in areas of concern. For example, if there was a rise in ecstasy purchases in an area, the pharmacists could be checked for best education practice, and the clubs could be assigned health workers to distribute education material about safe use. If any drugs epidemic were to threaten to appear, the knowledge on where and in which demographic population would be vital in organising a suitable response.

I would also suggest extending the card purchasing scheme to off-license and supermarket purchases of alcohol (and cigarettes?). Firstly, it would reduce the stigma of holding the card. Many young people would dread certain relatives finding a card that identified them as a drug user. If the card also allows sale of alcohol, then many parents would deem it acceptable, and so young people would be more likely to turn to the newly legal drugs market. Secondly - and this is where you might think I'm getting too illiberal - this scheme could be very effective in keeping drugs and alcohol out of the hands of the under-age. If each drugs or alcohol purchase was recorded by this card system, then it might be possible for separate packages of drugs or alcohol to be identified as being purchased by a specific person. Say the police come across some under-age drinkers in a park, they could scan an identifier on the drinks container and find out that Joe Bloggs of 10 Bloggs Road purchased that beverage in the last few hours. Legal purchasers could be strongly discouraged from providing any drug to the underage by this system. I am by no means committed to this idea, it is just something I think could be considered (it does after all mean that identifying demographic information would have to be linked to the card, which contradicts my earlier point). The shock of this could be lessened somewhat by allowing the nearly of age to consume under suitable adult supervision. For example, lowering the drinking age to 16 for specially licensed premises. Most voters would probably agree that children should be prevented from taking drugs. This might be the best way of making this happen.

To cover the point about leakage overseas, I would suggest heroin should not leave the clinic at which it is sold or prescribed, and problem crack and heroin addicts could be sold cocaine or heroin with a subsidy that diminishes over time to encourage cessation of use. No drug that could leave the premises would be sold at a price that would so undercut the illegal market as to make export worth the risk. Again, I am not completely committed to this either and would be interested to hear what others think.

A proper solution to binge drinking based on science.

2009-08-12T15:53:00.004+01:00

I've been thinking on this for a while now and thought I might need a bit of scientific research to back up my assumptions. Sure enough, stick "loud music alcohol consumption" into Google and you find this: http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/09/why-loud-music-in-bars-increases.php

Following this discovery, I can now confidently propose my solution to binge drinking. The plan would be to reform the licensing laws to create premises (or zones within premises) either designated as conversation areas or dancing areas. Conversation areas could be limited to a music volume of around 72dB, and could be your usual pub environment: tables and chairs, wine bottles with candles in, glasses with plastic flowers, whatever takes your fancy. Dancing areas can have the music at whatever level they like, but with no seating, and no tables. You're either there to chat to your friends... or to dance. There is no point in being sat at a table incapable of communication and incapable of monitoring your ability to stand up straight. It is about time somebody stood up and said "That is a crap night out." Give me somewhere I can chat and laugh, give me somewhere I can dance. But you can stick your tequila slammers, flaming sambucas, slippery nipples and pitchers of binge right up your fat publican bottom.

Hmm. Turns out I was more passionate about this subject than I thought.

On a more sober note (ahoho), would it not be better if our youngsters were drinking with responsible adult supervision and examples than necking vodka and cheap cider in parks. Perhaps we should consider opening up these conversation and dancing areas to 16 and 17 year olds. Give them an idea of what adult drinking behaviour is like. Obviously, certain premises might not be deemed suitable for the youngsters, and some might not want their custom. But where's the harm in letting teenagers enjoy the pub quiz, the karaoke night and the pool table at the local family pub? Better the landlord phones up to tell you your son or daughter is a little worse for wear, than a medical professional phoning to say they've had their stomach pumped and have lost a tooth.

Victoria Derbyshire show talks to former drug addicted prostitutes

2009-07-30T10:41:00.002+01:00

Just in case anyone else out there wants to text or e-mail in with a comment that isn't calling them skanks.

Who will help me bring our girls home?

2009-07-29T11:18:00.001+01:00

My argument for bringing drugs under effective legal control is not a libertarian one. I have never taken drugs and never intend to in the future. Nor do I wish for anyone else to take drugs. My argument comes from my experiences watching television documentaries, weeping as I witness the emotional pain presented, and wanting to do something to prevent such pain happening again. My empathy with the people I see perhaps comes from my own experiences witnessing my brother descend into psychosis three times in my teenage years and the effect this had on my family. While I have tried to find the answer to psychosis, and believe I have some ideas that may be very useful in improving treatment, I am perhaps too emotionally attached to the subject, and with my chronic fatigue, I fear the frustration of not being able to communicate those ideas effectively, and any rejection of those ideas. That is a fight I simply do not have the energy for.

The solution to psychosis is far from simple, which sets it apart from a problem I was presented with in harrowing manner by the Cutting Edge documentary "Killer in a Small Town". The film presents the stories of the young women who were murdered in the space of a month by Steve Wright in Ipswich in November and December of 2006 and one sequence particularly affected me. Three women that were reported to be prostitutes had been murdered in Ipswich in recent days and the police were asking the girls who worked the town's red-light district to stay at home. In an interview with an ITV News reporter when asked "Despite the dangers, why have you decided to come out tonight?" one of those young women replied "Because I need the money. I need the money." That young woman was 24-year-old heroin addict Paula Clennell, who was to become Steve Wright's 4th victim. As I watched this I was thinking "Just give her the drugs. Can the police not give her some drugs, just to keep her safe until the killer is caught?" But they couldn't do that. Heroin is illegal.

There are thought to be 80,000 prostitutes working in the UK. 93% of them are using illegal drugs. Studies suggest that two thirds of prostitutes are experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder. You'll probably all have heard of PTSD in the context of soldiers coming back from the horrors of war, yet only 1 in 8 soldiers returning from Iraq meet the criteria for the diagnosis and the British deployment was never more than 45,000. Our soldiers have the comfort of knowing they fight for Queen and country, as our prostitutes are raped every night by our mistaken belief that they can just say no to drugs, or that prohibition works and everything will be ok if we just get tougher. As the bodies of our brave soldiers are flown back from Afghanistan there are growing calls to "Bring our boys home". Where are the marches asking for the government to bring our girls home?

For more of my views on drugs see http://forum.libdemvoice.org/ I proposed a motion for the coming conference in the policy forum and my ideas on the effective control of drugs are presented there. I am currently trying to put together a fringe event at the coming conference with the working title of "Can bringing drugs under effective legal control improve our society, save billions and win votes?" and could do with some moral support, practical help, useful advice, whatever.

Ewan.

A new blog for your enjoyment... hopefully

2009-07-28T16:30:00.000+01:00

Greetings to all at LibDemBlogs. I have just been accepted onto the site and look forward to having some intelligent feedback on the ideas I have presented and hope to present far more regularly from now on. So far I only have a few blog posts on reforming drugs laws, prostitution, electoral reform and saving old people from loneliness, but I hope the exposure LibDemBlogs will grant me will fan the flames of my creativity. If you are not moved to comment on my posts, please make use of my elect/true/meh/balls rating system. Meh being the appropriate rating if you really don't care either way about the issue, aren't sure, or just find me boring, and the other ratings being fairly self-explanatory. Cheers, Ewan.

The Home Office is far, far wrong on drugs

2009-04-16T02:38:00.000+01:00

Quotes from a home office statement in reply to Transform's “A Comparison of the Cost-effectiveness of the Prohibition and Regulation of Drugs”

1 "Drugs are controlled because they are harmful.

2 "The law provides an important deterrent to drug use and legalisation would risk a huge increase in consumption with an associated cost to public health.

3 "The legalisation of drugs would not eliminate the crime committed by organised career criminals - neither ; such criminals would simply seek new sources of illicit revenue through crime."

"Drugs are controlled because they are harmful.”

The notion that illegal drugs are in any way “controlled” is utterly preposterous. The very essence of the illegal market is that it is carried out without any government regulation or control. Controlling illegal drugs is exactly what the reform advocates are proposing, and regulating manufacture and retail of drugs will considerably reduce the harm they can cause. All the illegal drugs are harmful it is true, but they are made considerably more dangerous by accidental or deliberate contaminants, inconsistent preparation strengths and ignorance of safe use.

The harm caused by cannabis and the skunk varieties in particular is causing great debate in the media. There is a strong likelihood that the skunk situation has been brought about because of simple production economics. Cannabis plants have been selectively bred and grown to maximise profit for the number of plants you are able to grow. Skunk is the strongest variety you can grow, so you will make more money growing and selling skunk. Were cannabis to be legalised, I would hope that a wide variety of strengths and active ingredient ratios would be on offer, so that the customer has the option of choosing the mellow, giggly cannabis variety rather than the anxiety, paranoia, delusion and perhaps mental illness inducing varieties that may be dominating the illegal market (certainly the press).

There is also a strong possibility that users of heroin will be able to move away from injection, the current likely method of administration. Injection of heroin maximises the delivery of the drug to the brain for each unit purchased. With prescribed or cheaply available heroin this cost consideration is no longer relevant, so users could employ safer, if less efficient, methods of administration.

“legalisation would risk a huge increase in consumption”

The likelihood of increased consumption is very small.

Currently, the vast majority of people's first exposures to any drug will occur in a social environment, most likely coinciding with the consumption of other drugs with which the person is already familiar (alcohol being the most likely). The person offering the drug experience will probably, in the case of “low-harm” drugs such as cannabis, amphetamines, ecstasy or cocaine be using their access to drugs as social currency. It is unlikely that they will be seeking any financial benefit, rather they are just showing off and wanting to make friends. A naïve, inebriated party-goer might judge this drug-provider as someone with connections, someone they would rather not offend, or they might just be curious about the drug experience and be unsure when another opportunity to experiment might arise.

Consider now a similar scenario in an environment of regulated drug supply. The person with drugs is now just some guy who went to the chemist. They need not be especially well connected, they have nothing to brag about and they are altogether less interesting. The person being offered drugs knows that they can go to the chemist themselves the next day if they are really interested and would know that the person offering the drug is committing the offence of unlicensed supply if they accept.

The current common scenario with heroin and crack is that the benign show-off of the soft-drug example is most likely themselves addicted to the hard drug being offered and is now more interested in making customers than friends. Such people will routinely seek out vulnerable young people and offer them some heroin or crack, often without disclosing the drug's identity, in the hope of recruiting them as customers for the drug they are selling to fund their own habit.

If prohibition was to end then heroin and crack addicts would have nothing to gain from exposing others to the drugs they use. Their drug of addiction would be either available on prescription or at an affordable rate that need not be funded by criminal activity.

I suspect and hope that the culture of drug use at social gatherings will become the far more mature and responsible “get your own” model that currently applies to alcohol at student parties. Such a rule for drugs would also be much easier to maintain as the drugs being used would not need to be kept in the fridge and can be safely stored in a pocket or purse.

If all drugs were legalised and regulated there would be no formal marketing and any unlicensed supply would be illegal and should be heavily punished. Anyone interested in obtaining drugs would have to go to a licensed pharmacy where they should be given the necessary educational material to allow them to make an informed decision on whether to proceed. I feel it wise that a request for heroin by any customer be followed by a week-long cooling-off period similar to those required when purchasing firearms in the USA. It is not desirable for anyone to be able to obtain such a powerful drug for recreational use on a whim or a “bad day”.

"The legalisation of drugs would not eliminate the crime committed by organised career criminals - neither ; such criminals would simply seek new sources of illicit revenue through crime."

There are so many things wrong with this presumption. Criminals are in the illegal drug trade because it is easy, highly profitable and, on examination, no more morally wrong than working in an off-license.

Drug-dealing is a victimless crime, at least in the eyes of those involved in the transactions. Each criminal event is not going to be reported or even detected if the dealers have any sense, so the likelihood of punishment is extremely small.

The average organised career drug-dealer probably sees himself as just another businessman supplying goods in response to demand. If demand for illegal drugs plummets (as it would if drugs were legalised and regulated) then there isn't going to suddenly be another illegal commodity that will appear to take their place in the market, certainly not one that will be so demonstrably worth the risk. If these gangsters have guns kicking around left over from their wars for drug-dealing territory, I suppose it might be plausible that they turn to armed robbery or other crimes requiring intimidation, but this example and any other alternatives would be considerably more risky than their former lifestyle and would quickly be rejected by the vast majority.

The only potential growth area of criminality that might fit the drug smugglers skills and experience would be sex trafficking. With the legalisation of hard drugs there would be a considerable drop in the number of prostitutes working to manage their addictions. I do not know if this would suddenly cause an explosion of demand for new prostitutes, but it is possible. I would hope that the huge gap in moral acceptability between drug and sex-trafficking would be one that the organised criminals would not care to cross, but this is an eventuality which has to be anticipated. Certainly those police units formerly employed in combating the drug trade would be much more usefully employed preventing the rape and imprisonment of young women.

Desirable features of the post-prohibition environment:

Newly legal drugs should only be available from licensed pharmacies from pharmacists trained in the risks, safe use and possible side-effects of the available drugs.

A wide range of cannabis varieties should be available to allow users to choose their favourite experience and to ensure pockets of illegal trade do not survive to plug gaps in provision.

A cool-off period (a week?) should be initiated before a naïve customer can get heroin from a pharmacy. For all other drugs a naïve customer should be given educational material that should be read through before completion of the sale on top of safe use and risk information vocally provided by the pharmacist. Pharmacists should refuse customers suspected to be already under the influence of any drug or suspected to be buying either for another person or, in the case of naïve customers, following encouragement by another person.

Penalties for unlicensed supply should remain at current levels in an attempt to ensure that everyone receiving drugs gets the appropriate educational material and pharmacist advice.

To be considered:

All existing heroin and crack addicts be prescribed maintenance doses to immediately take the bottom out of the illegal market.

Amnesties for firearms and other offensive weapons on the end of prohibition. Paying the bearer of the weapon a reasonable price for the weapon might encourage cooperation.

If people formerly involved in the drugs trade want to go clean they may need help with issues such as CV preparation and employment, and psychological therapy. The state should aid with their transition into a non-criminal lifestyle. Some might be usefully employed in the manufacture of the newly legal drugs. Others might require assistance in presenting the business skills they have acquired as skills relevant to employment. Large gaps in employment history might be a problem that would need addressed.

The more help we can give to drug criminals to assist their integration into society, the less likely would be a turn to other crimes following the lifting of prohibition.

The end of prohibition should have major impacts on:
Public Health
Prostitution
Numbers of children taken into care
Prison overcrowding
Respect for the police
Public finances
Foreign relations (Afghanistan and Latin America will be very happy)
Acquisitive crime and the fear of crime
Struggling urban communities

For more information the “Transform” blog is an excellent source.
http://transform-drugs.blogspot.com/

Prostitution propositions

2008-11-19T13:12:00.000Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7735908.stm

I don't believe in evil for the most part. The acts of murder and rape can be products of a damaged or desperate mind, responding in a horribly wrong way to the world they are experiencing. Sex-trafficking on the other hand, is the one thing that makes me spitting mad. It is hard to discount the word evil when describing a man who takes women and girls from their families and friends promising them a better life, only to brutally sell their bodies for his own personal gain.

With that in mind you would think I would welcome the government initiative to make it illegal to pay for sex with someone who is being controlled and is a prostitute against their will. Unfortunately, I believe anything which drives prostitution further into the shadows – and that is where the clients will want it to go if they think they're playing russian roulette with a hefty fine or rape charge – will make prostitution more dangerous for all the woman who find themselves involved in it. I believe it is right that anyone who pays for sex with someone they know to have been trafficked should face a rape charge, for that is exactly what they are doing. Not knowing the mindset of someone who pays for sex, I can only speculate that this might be an incentive not to ask any questions and just get in and out without any chit-chat. It is of course quite possible that this is what clients do anyway, and perhaps an explanation of why they need to pay for sex in the first place.

So how do we tackle the problem then?

Please be advised that the section of text below is in massive writing not because I believe it requires extra emphasis but that I didn't know how to fix it (sorry)

It is clear to me that you cannot tackle the issue of prostitution without tackling drug abuse. The statistics I could find suggest that 75-80% of prostitutes are addicted to drugs. A serious drug addiction makes it nigh impossible to hold down a job, so a £50 a day habit needs to be supported by prostitution or crime. I say needs, but if you could get the drug locally for free at a government sanctioned “shooting gallery” then there would be no “need” and somewhere near three quarters of prostitutes would have no reason to sell their bodies for cash.

(and relax)

Drug users are not necessarily bad people. They are just people who were sad, bored or ignorant at one point in their lives, made a really bad decision and found themselves imprisoned in an addiction to which their was no means of escape. No community is going to want a “shooting gallery” in their midst, until you explain the benefits that is. In Widnes, where there was an experimental heroin prescription policy, the local Marks and Spencer's was so delighted by the 90% drop in shoplifting that they donated £5000 to the project.

Read a remarkable article on the Widnes project here:

http://www.drcnet.org/guide2-95/liverpool.html

Okay, so now that you've quartered the prostituting population, what to do about trafficking? Looking at the situation from a cold, practical perspective, if prescribing heroin to existing addicts quarters the supply of prostitutes for their paying clients, how is demand going to be met? Would trafficking even increase to fill the gap with exploited, non-addicted girls and women from overseas? I don't know the answer to this, but I feel the key to ensuring this doesn't happen is to establish a difference between “good”, tolerated providers of prostitutes and those who are controlled by pimps and traffickers.

I suspect the only way to draw a solid line between the two groups is to introduce some sort of licensing arrangement whereby government can lay down the guidelines for what would be an acceptable organisation providing sex for sale. My own instincts on this would be that support staff should be voluntary or be on flat-rate pay without commission and that they should be entirely female and that social work and police – again female – should have full access to records, accounts, and interviews with the women employed. Once any such system is established, it would then be acceptable to me to have severe punishments for clients using unlicensed providers of prostitution.

Where prostitutes are identified who are being controlled, we should be looking to rehouse these women or girls out of the area in which their pimp operates - with friends and colleagues if necessary - in return for information leading to arrests. If women are concerned that grassing would put them in danger then it is our responsibility to make sure that all resources are made available to ensure that they can be reassured.

I believe this latest government initiative is yet another example of tinkering around at the edges of policy in the fear that there would be a public backlash against the sensible solution. It is the governments duty to do what is right for its people, not what is popular. If a proposal is unpopular, then it is the governments duty to explain as best they can why the proposal would work for the benefit of all (except pimps and traffickers, although surely they would be happier doing something else with their lives. They are still human aren't they? I'm not quite sure.)

Why we need single transferable votes

2008-11-19T12:22:00.000Z

So here are my thoughts on electoral systems: When considering which electoral systems are going to best represent the people of a country, there are many important issues that have to be considered (in no particular order except that in which they came to mind).

Local accountability:

The "first past the post" system currently employed in the UK works very well in this respect in that approximately 70,000 people in each constituency have a designated MP for their geographical area who they can go to with their problems. Any move towards PR will dilute this relationship to some extent. The first past the post system also forces the parties to tailor their candidates to the local political climate and so encourages a broad range of political views within their party. By example, Dennis Skinner, famously left-wing labour MP, is presumably elected because he reflects opinions in a left-wing constituency. In a party list system, where would people like Dennis Skinner come, presuming that the party leaders would rather have sheep towing the party line? Where would all the candidates come from, and how would the citizens know who to complain to? The "single transferable vote within party list" system that would give the citizens a say in where Dennis Skinners end up would surely favour candidates with a high public profile rather than quietly effective politicians which I suspect would be bad for effective government. A move towards the single transferable vote within present constituency boundaries causes no loss of the local accountability which is the one great strength of the current system.

Does your vote "count"?:

"First past the post" I believe is a misleading term, which applies only to westminster seats, and not to the situation in constituencies. A more accurate term for what happens in constituencies is "winner takes all". There is no "post" in percentage points past which you are guaranteed victory. The person with the most votes represents everyone in that constituency regardless of whether they love, tolerate or hate them. If you favour one of the smaller political parties, the greens for example, your vote is always going to be wasted under the present system. Anyone with any sense who feels the greens best represent their political views should ditch idealism and vote for the candidate who is closest to their standpoint and has a chance of winning. THIS IS NOT DEMOCRACY. If you walk into a voting booth and intelligently choose to vote tactically, your true opinions and beliefs are being suppressed. Okay, so it's you that is suppressing them, but you should not be forced into that situation in a truly democratic country.

The "single transferable vote" system destroys the need for tactical voting. You can rank everyone on the ballot according to how well they represent your views. If your first vote was for a party which didn't get many votes, your second preference may be crucial in deciding which candidate squeezes past the 50% mark needed for victory. Your vote counts at last. Oh, and if you don't feel you have enough information to engage and make a decision, you have the option of tossing a coin to determine the rankings of the other candidates before ranking the BNP last.

No longer would liberals stay at home or vote tactically in a labour-tory marginal. They can go out and vote liberal 1st and find out just how many people around them truly share their views. The same would go for tories in labour-SNP marginals and... well... everyone everywhere.

Coalition governments:

The Scottish parliament election system has the first past the post system with regional party list top-ups which has led to coalition government. It can be argued that coalitions lead to instability and damage the ability of governments to concentrate on running the country. It can also be argued however that a broader range of views (and citizens) are represented in coalition government, and that lesser coalition partners can be a moderating force preventing government flip-flopping to the the extremes of the political spectrum every 4 or 5 years. No country is going to be well served by 3 years of every 5 year cycle being spent undoing the policies of the previous government. Fortunately(?) it seems that British politics has lost its extremes - at least within the main political parties - and this would likely not occur.

A problem occurs however when the coalition partner is a party further to the extremes of the political spectrum. Try to imagine a situation whereby the percentage of the national vote is reflected in seats in parliament and the conservative party have no majority but can get legislation through if they make concessions to UKIP and/or the BNP. The voters have little say in which party is chosen as a junior coalition partner, thus the good intentions in choosing PR to create a more representative democracy are destroyed by an undemocratic negotiation amongst party leaders. Should a coalition situation arise under the single transferable vote system, the party leaders could theoretically refer to the second preferences of their supporters in judging where they would hope the party seek alliance.

In conclusion, the British electoral system would lose nothing and gain a great deal from adopting the single transferable vote. The only argument against it that I can see is an extra few hours counting votes in marginals on election night. I can live with that.

Old and lonely

2008-11-19T12:05:00.001Z

I was very surprised recently as I read an article on the BBC website addressing the loneliness of the elderly (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7701115.stm) The conclusions of the Help the Aged report were not in themselves surprising. If half of women over 65 are living alone, the fact that 1 million British pensioners consider themselves to be “often or always lonely” is sadly to be expected. What surprised me was the solutions the charity's report proposed:

“Amongst its recommendations, the report says the government should ensure the state pension is at a level which allows older people to live comfortable and stable lives.
Improved design of public areas, better healthcare and more provision of bereavement support are all issues which need to be tackled...”

How do these proposals stop someone feeling lonely? Better healthcare would just allow them to be lonely for longer, and how do you design a public area that encourages you to start a conversation with a pensioner? Less lighting and more blindspots might encourage the phrase “Gies yer pension!”, but beyond that I'm stumped.

Surely it's not a gigantic leap of imagination to consider that a solution to loneliness might be to invite another lonely person to stay in your home. Give a pensioner a health visitor and they will chat for an hour, give them a housemate and they can chat for a lifetime (what remains of it anyway).

Seriously though, the life of the pensioner has changed radically in the last few decades. Gone is the assumption that there will be room in your children's home for grandma. Communities have been broken up as industries have disintegrated, your family has most likely scattered around the country in search of work. If your spouse dies, you can be left terribly isolated.

The younger generation can go onto the internet flatshare websites and look for flatmates to lower their outgoings, but for the elderly the person they might share their house with is of far greater importance and less accessible if their IT skills aren't up to scratch. In my opinion this is where the government can step in. Lonely pensioners should be able to submit an in-depth profile to a government body or charity and be matched with other pensioners with similar interests, political outlook, daytime telly preferences etc. These relationships could last for 10-20 years and end in death so its very important the choice is right. It's not going to be a 1 or 2 year stay before another job opportunity opens up in another town like it is for the young folks.

Problems come with the fact that one of the sharers could well be saying goodbye to a house they have lived in for decades so there would need to be good social services support at the start to make sure no-one is taking advantage and the match is right for both parties. Perhaps trial periods could be established as routine while the mover's house is on the market. It would also not be appropriate to pair someone with care needs with someone who could meet them. The scheme would have to be seen as a way of helping healthy pensioners stay healthy.

The advantages to sharing are potentially massive for the sharers and for the economy as a whole. Those wishing to share can choose to either be sellers, who are happy to sell their old home and have a massive cash boost, or live-in landlords who can supplement their pension with a handy regular rent payment. Disposable income sky-rockets for both parties, and if this is rolled out around the country, we might just receive a nice boost out of recession. House prices would of course fall further but would it be worth it for affordable housing and a happy, healthy elderly?

It is important that this is just an option for people. There should be no penalty for those who are happy on their own. The current levels are £90.70 a week for a single person and £145.05 a week for a couple. I'm not sure any scheme such as I have proposed would need any more incentive than a promise that sharing would not jeopardise your single person rate.

1.5 million older people don't look forward to Christmas at all. That's just sad. Something needs to be done!