A party leader talking about drug policy!

I've been highly critical of politicians in the past for failing to engage with drug policy as an issue that is vitally important to the safety and well-being of the people of the UK (eg bit.ly/LibDrugs ). So I was absolutely delighted to hear Willie Rennie's speech to the Scottish Liberal Democrat conference at the weekend in which he laid down the gauntlet on the issue and challenged Alex Salmond to pull his finger out and get to grips with it.

The message was one seemingly designed to engender sympathy and understanding for addicts, highlighting the difficult lives that have often contributed to their situations and calling for professionals to be given the freedom to deliver the personalised services that give each individual the best chance of turning their lives around.

For a politician to try to encourage sympathy for addicts is brave and admirable. A more hard-headed politician might have tried to encourage sympathy for the many victims of the acquisitive crimes committed by addicts, or the parents of the kids that dealers draw into the drugs underworld. Who knows, perhaps that tactic might be stage 2 of the campaign. If Alex Salmond doesn't rise to the challenge, I dearly hope there is a stage 2. Too many people will continue to suffer if we don't see policies change.

Here is the passage of the speech in full (with thanks to Caron at http://carons-musings.blogspot.com/2012/03/in-full-rennie-tells-scottish.html):

"Late last year I spent a day with Turning Point in Glasgow. They help drug addicts – they give them a chance to turn their lives around with support that addresses all the issues in the life of the addict, not just the addiction.
Drug misuse is a health problem, but the solutions are not only medical.
Addiction is often a symptom of wider and deeper social problems.
Mental health, housing, lack of work skills, victims of child abuse can be factors that lead to drug misuse.
Therefore the support needs to address all these needs rather than the symptom.
Scotland continues to face a drugs crisis with thousands of homes blighted by the addiction, with addicts forced to steal, prostitute their bodies and deal in drugs just to get through one day to the next.
Drug dealers are the parasites that feed from the victim host.
On my visit to Turning Point I met Mary.
Mary has a six year old son who is cared for by her brother. Mary was in crisis but still had hope.
Her ambition was to feed her boy breakfast and take him to school.
For most this is the daily norm, for her it was a lofty dream.
Mary deserves an opportunity just like anyone else. She deserves a chance to recover.
I think we owe her that chance.
Too often moral rather than professional judgements dominate the drugs dilemma.
Every drug addict is different.
There is no one-size-fits-all-solution.
We need a flexible and patient focussed approach.
We should not seek to restrict options for moral reasons but ensure that trained professionals are able to deliver the service they think best for the patient.
I’m not sure if Alex Salmond has visited Turning Point in Glasgow. I don’t believe he’s spoken to Mary.
He’s certainly not championed the issue.
I am sure he cares about it. I don’t doubt that.
But the time that a leader devotes is a reflection of their priorities.
The leader of the Scottish Government needs to look again at his diary and make the time to lead on drugs.
Our First Minister prefers to court the rich and the powerful rather than the dispossessed and the vulnerable..."

Heroin prescription can be a vaccine against a broken society

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.

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

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.

The need for a Project "Project Prevention" Prevention

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

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

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."

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

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

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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.

You cannot change demand for prostitution without first tackling supply

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

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.