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..."

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

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.

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

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?

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.

Prostitution propositions

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.)