Source: The Guardian, UK



Pubdate: 13 July 1999









Leaders



Drugs vacuum



ubject: A new legal framework is needed



Scotland's longest-serving judge boldly castigated the current Scottish

criminal justice system's sentencing policy on drugs. He found it lacked

logic or coherence and challenged the idea that swingeing sentences were

deterring drug use: "A lot of wars have been declared (on drugs) and so far

all have been lost." The "going rate" for dealing in cannabis was set 20

years ago when the appeal court declared four years too lenient for a first

offender, a musician with pounds 2,500 worth of pot for the use of his band.



Two decades on that still remained in force. Someone handling large amounts

of cannabis should be ready to serve 25 years. What the judge wanted was

something more systematic - a sentencing policy based on careful, rational

and principled consideration of the facts. He wanted a proper examination

of the effects of cannabis - including a comparison with the harm that

tobacco and alcohol produce - and suggested a royal commission was what was

needed.



Lord McCluskey brushed aside Conservative critics, who complained he should

not have spoken out as a serving judge: "Well, if serving judges can't say

it and serving police officers can't say it and people serving in the

prison service can't say it, who's left to say it apart from politicians?

And they aren't saying anything about it at all." All of which was

confirmed by Jack Cunningham, the drugs minister, who when interviewed

yesterday on the implications of the McCluskey comments, implied there was

nothing to say until there had been a royal commission



We will not need to wait so long. An independent national commission has

been looking at the current legal framework in England and Wales for the

past two years and is due to report before the end of the year. It was set

up by the Police Foundation, with the help of the Prince's Trust, and

includes experts from all the relevant specialities. There have been huge

shifts in social attitudes, behaviour and drug use since the present

framework was put in place in 1971. Ministers are sensibly seeking to shift

resources away from enforcement, which currently takes up two-thirds of the

pounds 1.5bn spend on drug control, towards treatment and prevention. But

treatment waiting periods remain too long, and the spread of services falls

far short of many small towns suffering serious abuse. All major parties

have ducked the legal debate but not for much longer.