The vital drug policy
debate that is increasingly occurring worldwide is encountering some
difficult obstacles. The passage up the lower slopes of the political
mountain is getting increasingly smoother, as can be seen in the
substance of the Home Affairs Select Committee report that was
published last Monday. But when the arguments reach the political
pinnacle, they are met with the usual intransigence and a gentle
nudge off the nearest cliff-edge, only to resume their long ascent
back to the top table.
Much of the problem
faced by the arguments for reform is created by the language used to
characterise those arguments. These arguments are sometimes deployed
by reformist advocates themselves, and sometimes by the clumsy
journalists that report them, but each mention of “ending the war
on drugs” or “liberalising the drug laws” creates a narrative
in which drugs are winning a war or winning their freedom. In a
policy debate that follows this narrative, the figures at the
political pinnacle are being asked to admit defeat in a war, failure
of their policies and to announce tolerance of the existence of what
is widely regarded as a social evil. Even on a good day it is hard to
imagine political leaders doing one of these things, never mind all
three.
The slogan “end the
war on drugs” has to go. Like the “Robin Hood tax”, it may have
been good as a rallying cry to raise the profile of the cause, but it
is essential that it gets ditched before the final push.
In my speech to last
year's Liberal Democrat conference proposing the Liberal Democrat's
new policy I suggested we adopt new weapons for a new, 21st
century war on drugs. The 21st century war should continue
to be a war on drugs, but the goal of eradication of drugs from
society was always unattainable and has to evolve into a different,
and potentially achievable goal.
The 20th
century war was ugly and imprecise, effectively carpet bombing large
areas of our cities with myriad harms. It was a war in which
collateral damage appeared to be an explicit goal rather than an
accident best avoided. In a war on drugs, why were humans
going to jail? The 21st century war on drugs should
instead take inspiration from ancient history and adopt a distinctly
Roman style of capture and enslavement. It should be defined by the
goal that drugs can be be our slaves but never our masters.
And that goes for all
drugs. When a hard-working citizen returns from work on a Friday
night and demands a soothing head massage from their servant drug,
who are we to dictate whether that drug be a glass of red wine or a
cannabis joint. The state has a role in educating on how a drug best
be handled, and if a drug looks like it has ambitions to become a
citizen's master, the state and citizen need to be able to work
together to put that drug back in its place, or to help the user
dismiss the drug if the situation becomes too perilous.
There are far too many
citizens around the world who's lives are currently ruled by drugs.
Where heroin or crack is master, many are compelled to steal, deal or
prostitute themselves to unsavoury men on dark streets. Where
cannabis becomes master, all too often the instructions coming from
the drug are mutating into the bizarre and isolating orders from the
voices of psychosis. There are many drugs whose power over their
users becomes so great that the other things of importance in their
lives are neglected. Partners, children, jobs, cherished pastimes,
all falling by the wayside because of the unchecked power of illegal
and unregulated psychoactive drugs.
And it is not just
users that fall victim to the power that drugs hold. When greed and
ambition are combined with the presence of drugs and a dearth of
other opportunity for achievement another kind of victim is
frequently created. With the heady combination of greed and drugs as
master, those who get involved in the drugs trade have been drawn
into a life fraught with danger of incarceration or extermination at
the hands of their peers.
So how do we achieve
this drug war victory in which drugs are our servants and never our
masters?
Well, I'm going to set
an example by shifting abruptly from metaphor into clear description
of what policies and procedures a post-reform UK could employ.
Despite the pro-reform debate in the media being dominated by
extremely sensible advocates such as Tom Lloyd - the former chief
constable for Cambridgeshire - and representatives of the charities
Release and Transform, the media still throws up daft speculation.
Will class A drugs will be available at corner shops? Will
legalisation lead to widespread cannabis experimentation and
increased incidence of psychosis resulting from that?
The positions of these
prominent reformers and myself have come from careful consideration
of evidence and the utilisation of logic and reason. All combined
with a determination to reduce the harms that drugs and the laws
governing their use cause to individuals and society.
For me the evidence and
logic points to the immediate adoption of the Portuguese system in
full. Their addicts are getting treated, heroin addiction is much
less prevalent and their jails are less crowded. Their investment in
drug services combined with their decision to decriminalise
possession of drugs for personal use have been a resounding success
for drug users and their families. Rather than tolerating drug use,
anyone found in possession of drugs is referred to a Commission for
the Dissuasion of Drug Addiction. The message being sent is not that
drug use is ok, but that the government cares and wants to help users
find health and happiness.
I am in no doubt
however that Portuguese services could be better still. In
Switzerland and a growing number of European countries that have
followed their lead, heroin assisted recovery clinics are being
utilised as means of engaging addicts with treatment services. Heroin
is far more effective than methadone at reducing street drug use,
drug-related criminality and retaining users in treatment so that
their other social, economic and medical problems can be addressed.
Heroin clinics, where the drug is provided for use inside secure
premises under medical supervision, can reach those chaotic
individuals for whom methadone is at best a stop-gap between hits of
the real thing and at worst just another deeply unpleasant
prescription inflicted upon them by the state.
Heroin assisted
recovery clinics provided with much broader eligibility criteria than
at present could really help users and their families to find hope
that they need not live a life of criminality and squalor. But such a
policy can also reach those victims of greed that decriminalisation
does not. The more heroin addicts are attracted to new clinics and
other means of rehabilitation, the more the requirement for criminal
suppliers to fill that gap in the market is undermined. Only by
effectively treating as many existing addicts as possible can we have
a fighting chance at removing the dealers from communities and
preventing them recruiting another generation into the same grim
lifestyle.
Please excuse the
return to metaphor but pharmaceutical heroin really is the slave that
nurses the stricken addict and protects him or her against the
domineering master that is the heroin available outside the clinic's
walls.
As effective as
decriminalisation was in Portugal, it can not be a policy endpoint in
itself. Why would you take away the intended deterrent of
criminalisation of possession but still leave the manufacture and
supply in the hands of criminals with all the negative consequences
that entails? Without consideration of the international context any
rational examination of Portugal's decriminalisation policy would
find it to be utterly bizarre.
Legal regulation of
drugs was not considered as a policy solution in Portugal only
because they were a signatory to the UN drug conventions. Yet in
recent weeks Uruguay and the US states of Washington and Colorado
have announced their intention to introduce regulated supply of
cannabis for recreational use in direct defiance of these
well-meaning, but utterly misguided documents. If Uruguay can do it
they why should the UK not be a pioneer, perhaps devising a middle
way between Uruguay's state monopoly and the American free market
model, a carefully designed model that will have the best chance at
public and international acceptance.
The British public are
rightly concerned about the potential for cannabis to compromise the
mental health of young people. Having lived with the traumatic
presence of a psychotic family member in my own life for the last 15
years, I have long been driven by a desire to prevent other families
having to navigate the distressing events and uncertainty my family
has been forced to endure.
Cannabis legalisation
does not have to be a blind leap of faith into an unknown, chaotic
free market. Why would we take cannabis out of the hands of immoral
criminal profiteers and place it into the hands of immoral corporate
profiteers? Doing so would likely imperil the mental health of the
population and we should resist such a model as fervently as we
should rail against the status quo.
Instead we should seek
to design a model for which capture and enslavement would be an
eminently suitable metaphor.
If cannabis is to be
sold in shops it should be sold by trained professionals who have
been educated thoroughly on the various risks and harms that the drug
presents. Those professionals must then be responsible for educating
customers in turn. Of vital importance is that every cannabis user
should be able to identify the early warning signs of psychosis in
themselves or in their peers. Indeed without that goal, cannabis
legalisation loses a lot of its appeal to me. Given the prevalence of
psychosis in society, the early age at which it can attack, and its
devastating long-term impact, you'd think that teenagers should be
being taught about psychosis anyway. To legalise a drug whose users
experience psychosis at twice the rate of the general population and
not to provide that education as a condition of purchase would be
negligence of the highest order.
When a customer does
experience signs of psychosis, it is imperative that we learn from
that in order to adjust our advice to the rest of the cannabis-using
population, and it is with that in mind that I propose an online,
structured, consumer support community. When a user takes a
particular strain or preparation, they should be strongly encouraged
to review their experience with that form of the drug. Much as many
online vendors now tailor recommendations to their customers with the
phrase “users who purchased x also purchased y”, the
cannabis-using community could be given recommendations based upon
their enjoyment of particular strains and preparations of cannabis.
Such an online space would hopefully be welcomed by users as a means
of identifying the strains that they would most enjoy, but would also
be very useful in diverting users away from strains that might
compromise their sanity or other aspects of their health. The
possibility of consumers agreeing to the combination of this data
anonymously with medical records would also rapidly advance our
understanding of the relationship between cannabis and health, both
positive and negative, and help us modify the regulatory model to
better serve the interests of users and the community in general.
Cannabis is a dangerous
drug. The families of those who have developed psychosis associated
with its use are very right to be vocal in highlighting those
dangers. What needs to be recognised however is that their child's
illness was born in an unregulated illegal market. These families
have a choice. They can fight to preserve the prohibition system that
so tragically failed their children, or they can fight to create a
regulated system in which children are better protected. With adults
being served by legal vendors, it will be so much harder for dealers
to maintain a worthwhile income by dealing to children. Rather than
the paltry fines we see for alcohol resale to minors, concerned
parents can lobby for severe punishment for those who deal to under
18s. They can also join me in lobbying for the provision of much
improved mental health and drugs education in schools. The skunk they
so deplore is a product of the black market profit motive. To fight
to preserve the illegality of the drug is to promote skunk's
dangerously dominant position in the market and the livelihoods of
the hated individuals who corrupted your child's mind.
Reform of drug laws is
only going to go one way. Gone are the days in which we can aspire to
arrest and charge everyone using cannabis. We can't afford the
expense, and society would not tolerate the persecution of children
being a priority. We also know from international experience that
greater enforcement does not lead to lower use. The deterrent effect
is a myth (at least at the population level). Concerned parents have
to instead consider how their children would be better protected and
start participating in the debate in order to promote their family's
interests. The regulatory model that is coming should not be shaped
by the concerns of bureaucrats and drug users alone. Concerned
parents and families who have fallen victim to prohibition's failings
have to be the loudest voices at the negotiation table if the harms
of cannabis are going to be effectively restricted.
One issue parents
should engage with is the problems that might arise if there were
companies who would profit from the artificial promotion of cannabis,
or particular strains. It might therefore be wise for commercial
interests to be excluded from the market altogether. The best way to
prevent advertising and marketing encouraging consumers to make
decisions against their interests and those of society is to as far
as possible ensure that nobody's wealth would be dependent upon
continued use of the drug or of particular forms of the drug.
It is quite possible a
state monopoly is the only model that can demonstrate to the voters
that legalisation is a process we are embarking upon with appropriate
care, with the highest regard for the health and happiness of the
nation.
If this proposal works
in reducing the harms people experience as a result of using
cannabis, and the many harms associated with the illegal trade, then
it would be highly responsible to extend the model to other drugs.
One by one we can capture and enslave drugs into service of health
and happiness, releasing people from the yoke of addiction and the
impact of the crime and ignorance that goes hand in hand with
prohibition and the illegal market.
While Nick Clegg should
be lauded for being the first sitting government minister to demand a
change in our approach to drugs, David Cameron is also right to
reject a Royal Commission. For too many people 2015 will be years too
late. There are teenagers (some even younger) smoking cannabis
regularly in all of the UK's cities and towns, blissfully ignorant of
the horrible, desperate, psychotic life they are risking. There are
young addicts all around the country prostituting themselves to fund
their next fix. Putting themselves in harms way because politicians
don't have the courage to accept that the best treatment for them and
their community is to provide them with a clean preparation of their
drug of choice. And the lottery of criminalisation keeps making its
daily draw with no-one asking why young, black, and poor seem to be
the balls that keep dropping out of the machine, while middle-class,
white, cocaine-user, banker and politician keep spinning around and
around without a care.
Drug policy reform is
not about liberating drugs. It's about liberating people from
ignorance, persecution and the drugs that have power over them. Can
we please finally declare a war on drugs so that we can capture and
enslave them and put them to work easing our pains and helping us
smile. Without a proper war on drugs with sensible, realistic goals,
too many people will be left to fight and lose their own personal
battles without the knowledge, help - and in some cases drugs - that
they need to triumph.
It doesn't take courage
to call for a two year examination of the available evidence. It does
take courage to stride proudly in front of public opinion, call for
the adoption of policies that we know have worked elsewhere, and
present an innovative model that can finally start to bring dangerous
drugs under effective control.
I implore any
politician reading this to find that courage.
