May, Milliband and Clarke talk drugs as Lib Dems conspicuously silent.

In the last couple of weeks three major UK political figures have spoken about drugs and drug policy for a variety of reasons. It will not come as a surprise that they have demonstrated hypocrisy, ignorance and an irresponsibly casual disregard for evidence and expertise. What has been disappointing is the complete lack of any Liberal Democrat voices presenting the counter-arguments, highlighting the hypocrisy, and stressing the importance of evidence in policy-making.

The first to speak was Theresa May, responding to the advice of Les Iversen, the chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. Professor Iversen was appearing before the Home Affairs Select Committee drugs enquiry and suggesting lesser use of criminal penalties for drug possession and greater use of administrative penalties like the removal of a driving license or an obligatory education scheme. Theresa May's response was quick but ill-considered: 

"I have a very tough view on drugs. That view is informed by people I speak to who have seen the damage the drugs have done to people in their family," she said at a lunch for journalists at Westminster. "I think there are far too many people who think drugs is something you can do without it having an impact, but it does have an impact." http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jun/19/theresa-may-drugs-adviser-penalties

There are a few things that this response implies. Clearly she believes that the ACMD do not wish to restrict the harms caused by drugs to society despite the fact this is clearly part of their remit. She also implies the ACMD don't regard drugs as having an impact on the people who use them, which is again patently absurd and I'd imagine rather insulting. Finally she asserts that her second hand experience of drug use anecdotes somehow trumps the careful deliberations of a council of drug experts. 

Imagine a government-appointed panel of medical experts presenting a recommendation to a health minister on reducing the harms to society from cancer. If the minister was to reject those recommendations out of hand citing his or her second hand knowledge of people who have suffered from cancer, people would have no doubt about their startling incompetence. Why is drug policy different?

The second figure to speak was Ed Milliband, defending the shadow business secretary - Chukka Umunna - after he admitted using cannabis in his youth. 

Ed stated ""I think everybody is entitled to a past, and a youthful past if you like, before they go into public life," http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ed-miliband-backs-chuka-umunna-over-drugs-confession-7903216.html

If everyone is entitled to a youthful (drug-using) past, how is it justifiable to criminalise people for living a "youthful" present. Umunna is just the latest in a very long list of politicians that have confessed to past drug use. Perhaps the politicians are so relaxed about criminalising users because it is so disproportionately young people who are black and poor whose lives are blighted by being caught and punished. The nocturnal habits of the middle class students most likely to become future politicians are quite rightly not a priority for law enforcement. If a conviction does disrupt the life of a middle class student, they will of course be less likely to find themselves in employment, never mind political office, so will have lost their chance to affect the law.

The third and most significant contribution came from Ken Clarke in his own evidence session at the HASC drugs enquiry on Tuesday. His recognition - the first such by a government minister - that the war on drugs in the UK has "plainly failed" was refreshingly frank, and his support for evidence-based policy encouraging http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jul/03/britain-losing-war-on-drugs. Sadly, when decriminalisation was presented as a potential solution he chose not to talk about evidence but about his personal view that the loss of the deterrent effect of risk of arrest and criminal sanction would be too great. If he were only to examine the evidence for such an effect he would find it very weak indeed, and certainly not strong enough to shut down open consideration and debate of the topic. http://transform-drugs.blogspot.co.uk/2006/10/classification-and-deterrence-wheres.html

What has disappointed me most though about the last couple of weeks has not been what has been said but what hasn't, and who hasn't entered into the debate. The Liberal Democrats are part of this coalition government, but yet Theresa May and Ken Clarke are speaking for a government which will not change the laws on drugs (except presumably to make them 'tougher' around legal highs for example). 

Why are our senior politicians silent? I picked up a potential clue the other day while being quite bemused by the Lib Dem response to Cameron's proposed welfare reforms. The position stated by Clegg and Alexander was that they were "relaxed" about the proposals. This shocked me, not just because the welfare reforms proposed were utterly repulsive to me, but because that was exactly the word used to express the leadership's feelings about the drug policy motion that was passed near unanimously by conference last year. Can they really have the same attitude towards borderline evil welfare reforms and our party's new drug policy?

A few days later it dawned on me how these policy areas could both provoke "relaxed" attitudes. They are both policy areas in which the polls might tell the leadership that what they believe is unpopular. They are relaxed about the proposed welfare reforms because they don't feel it would be politically wise to call them simply awful. Polls tell them the public like them. They are relaxed about the party's drug policy, not because they disagree with it, but because they don't feel it would politically help them to admit that they agree with it wholeheartedly. 

Cameron, May and Clarke go unchallenged because the party leadership have decided they're going to do the easy thing, not the right thing, the exact opposite course to what was promised in Clegg's conference speech last year. This analysis fits in with the hints that Liberal Democrats are going to spend the rest of this parliament bringing absolutely nothing new to the cabinet table. I have heard there is a feeling that having policy proposals knocked back by the Tories will make us look weak, leaving me to presume that our role will just be trying to stop the Tories doing their worst. So, rather than establish our principles as an independent party over the next three years, in the eyes of the public we'll instead be morphing into the whingeing liberal wing of the Tory party. 

Now that's weak.

The advice of our PR "gurus", timidity of our leaders, or both is removing all the risk, passion and honesty from our politics, and rapidly diminishing the prospect of us being once again respected and favoured by the electorate.

Dear Anonymous, Please don't be the Leeroy Jenkins of drug policy reform.

I read with concern that the online activist organisation "Anonymous" have chosen to initiate a cannabis legalisation campaign http://www.tokeofthetown.com/2012/04/anonymous_announces_opcannabis_phase_1.php on the very same weekend that the Guatemalan president, Otto Perez Molina, has made the most nuanced, sophisticated argument for reform to come from a head of state in my time as a drug policy reformer http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/07/war-drugs-latin-american-leaders.

I am concerned because your unelected group of activists, while no doubt meaning well, do not present the same nuances, nor do you possess enough understanding, of the options for reform or the potential harms of the drug of which you speak.

One of the "hysterical anti-cannabis campaigners" some liberalisers describe turns out to be in fact be a "good liberal" psychiatrist persuaded by the steady accumulation of evidence that the links between cannabis and psychosis are real: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b01bwmvt (from 17:50). Like so many medicines both ancient and new, cannabis is a dangerous drug AND a medicine and needs to be regulated as such.

So Anonymous, you are wrong to say that cannabis is not a dangerous drug. You may also be quite wrong in your mode of activity. Phase 1 appears to be completely benign, though it will likely be an unhelpful display to the rest of society that the usual suspects support cannabis "legalisation". I am also very uneasy that "Phase 1" hints at further phases of Anonymous activity. With the US government being presented with the best arguments for reform by Latin American leaders in the near future, we really do not need them to be distracted by stunts in support of the poorer, tired, traditional arguments for reform. History is littered with instances of acts and campaigns that piss off enemies delaying indefinitely the eminently reasonable changes the acts were meant to bring about. I'm pretty sure the Falklands would be the Malvinas by now if the Argentinians hadn't invaded in the 80s. And Osama bin Laden was trying to get American troops to LEAVE the Middle East when he started his campaign of terror. I'm not comparing you guys to Osama bin Laden. I'm just saying that, if Phase 2 or 3 involves being dicks in the eyes of the government just because you can, then that kind of stuff tends not to work the way it's intended.

If you want to push the "free the weed" agenda, you would be much better off drawing attention to the moderate arguments for gradual reform. Once we have achieved the strict control and regulation of legally available cannabis, then the argument on whether to regulate lightly or continue strict regulation can begin.

And apologies for the Leeroy Jenkins line. It was a crude attempt to speak your language. Hell, I can't even be bothered embedding links (did I even say that right?)

And please don't take this as an attack. It's a plea for you guys to be a help rather than a hindrance. We're so close to achieving our shared goal.

Best wishes,

Ewan.

Maintenance funding and access to higher education in Scotland.

The Herald this morning reports that the intake of poor pupils to university in Scotland is the lowest in the UK http://www.heraldscotland.com/mobile/news/education/scots-intake-of-poor-pupils-for-university-lowest-in-uk.17169194?_=1101345c98cd475727c535ef86f2ba8c4e991a20 , and we still have the highest drop out rates. I've written the letter below in order to offer a potential explanation:

"It comes as no surprise to me that Scotland continues to hold the "UK's worst" status in attracting poor pupils into higher education and keeping them there. A simple examination of the financial support available to Scottish students relative to English ones reveals Scots to be at a striking disadvantage. A Scottish student from a household with a £26000 annual income will receive £5333 in loans and grants in 2012/13. An English student with the same household income will receive £7035, a whole 32% more than their Scottish contemporaries. It appears the furore over the rise in tuition fees south of the border has blinded Scots to the fact that our students are being asked to scrabble around for the necessary up-front fees for their food and lodgings, while English students study in relative comfort. It's high time Scottish politicians considered the funding of higher education with the needs of students and our economy at the forefront of their thoughts. With both eyes fixed on the morning's headlines, their paralysis on this issue risks seriously constraining social mobility in Scotland.

The sources for this information are here:

http://www.studentfinance.direct.gov.uk/calculator/studentfinancecalculator/1213/
http://www.saas.gov.uk/student_support/support_packages.htm#young_inside

It's worth investigating. As the incomes rise the disparities get even larger."

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..."

My speech to the fringe event on cannabis regulation

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

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

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