Source: Eastern Daily Press, Norwich, UK

Pub Date: 27 May 2002

Pub LTE: Drugs policy, is it working

Author: Derek Williams

"Drugs policy, is it working?" was the question the long awaited Select committee into the future of drugs policy report addressed. The short answer it gave was "no", it then went on to recommend a welcome move towards harm reduction but ruled out any move away from the cause of the problem, prohibition.

The committee did acknowledge that the calls for legalisation are coming from sensible people and that the arguments were compelling, but they nonetheless decided to keep with the proven failure of the drug war's criminalisation of users.

Actually, the report is a little confused in this conclusion. Whilst it ruled out legalisation of cannabis "because it would send the wrong message to young people", it did recommend providing heroin to users and providing them with somewhere to use that heroin, based on the successful schemes underway in Holland and elsewhere. Giving users their drug and allowing them somewhere to use it is actually legalisation in my book - highly controlled and regulated, but it's legalisation non the less.

And this is the rub, legalisation doesn't just mean a free for all unregulated market place, it actually means anything that's not prohibition.

Legalisation means the opportunity to control and regulate a market which is totally unregulated at the moment. Supporters of prohibition claim there's a deterrent effect provided by the law and point to the huge number of users of legal alcohol and tobacco, but they conveniently forget that these products are advertised and often marketed directly at young people.

The move towards harm reduction is long overdue, yet no true harm reduction is possible when drugs are supplied by the present illegal market, with no checks on strength, purity, quantity or who buys. They claim that children will still find ways around age limits and so they might, to an extent, but there's no age limits or any other controls over the sale of illegal drugs.

Cannabis is to become "less illegal", which will probably mean the police turning a blind eye to small scale use or possession, but where will this small scale possession come from? Every small bit of cannabis was once a big bit after all and this big bit was supplied by a dealer, some of whom also supply other substances. Indeed, even the government accepts that the biggest (if not the only) "gateway" cannabis provides to harder drugs is through the supply side, yet they've decided to keep it wide open.

All in all, the Select Committee report into the future of UK drugs policy was a rather limp affair and will do nothing to solve the cause of the problem, it was a waste of time.

Derek Williams