ISSUES
: Drugs
Chapter 2: UK drug laws
20
Legalising drugs would bring not
freedom but enslavement
Pro-drug liberals are blind to the side-effects of their theories. Most parents do not
want their children exposed to such an experiment.
By Kathy Gyngell
F
rom the relentless pro-drugs legalisation media
blitz of the last few weeks, you would think this
was the most pressing item on the Government’s
agenda after the floods. It is not. Who is behind this
campaign with a Gantt chart on their wall logging the
daily media hits is a question for another day.
My worry is why responsible people are lending their
names to this ‘cause’ when they are so obviously
ignorant of the facts and the implications. I am not
bothered about Russell Brand. His petition demanding a
parliamentary debate has become the stuff of comedy,
given his earlier public strictures on ignoring democracy.
Beyond celebrity groupies and metropolitan admirers,
his erratic and self-serving ramblings won’t persuade.
No, the people who perturb me are middle-aged political
converts to this cause: Nick Clegg, Nigel Farage, Daniel
Hannan and Norman Fowler. Whether intentionally or
not, they have aligned themselves in a culture war which
pits the liberal against traditionalist, cosmopolitan
against parochial and old against young. This is what
drugs’ legalisation is about: a war over fundamental
values. It is not a battle about basic freedoms – far from
it. Drugs enslave.
I doubt whether any of these politicians are or were
‘recreational’ drug users, let alone former addicts, or
that they’d wish drugs on their children. Yet they’ve
been persuaded that a hypothetical taxed and regulated
system – one they’ve been told would cut police and
prison costs, undercut criminal gangs and end the war
on drugs to boot – would sanitise drug use. It wouldn’t;
it would normalise it.
Hannan, the normally sceptical Conservative MEP, is
the most recent convert. “Do you want your children
to take drugs?” is the wrong question to ask, he says.
Many would beg to disagree. Having dispensed with
children, the crux of his case is that “most quantitative
analyses conclude that [drug] legalisation would bring
net advantages”.
He is right that a number of economic analyses
commissioned and published by pro-drugs lobby
groups claim this by computing the fiscal costs
associated with existing laws. He is wrong if he thinks
they address and estimate the full costs of legalisation.
Quite simply, the data required for a formal cost-benefit
analysis is not available.
As the authors of the report that so impressed him
admit, theirs are “subjective indications… some of
which should be regarded as illustrative calculations
rather than formal estimates”.
The social and economic costs of departing from current
policy – whether bearing on public health, mental health,
education, productivity or crime (including drug driving)
policing, wide-scale drug testing or bureaucracy – are
Proportion of 16- to 59-year-olds reporting use of Class A drugs ever in their lifetime,
2005–2014/15
2005/06 2006/07 2007/08 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15
Class A
Any cocaine
7.4
7.8
7.8
9.3
8.7
8.9
9.6
8.9
9.5
9.8
Powder
cocaine
7.3
7.7
7.7
9.2
8.6
8.8
9.4
8.8
9.4
9.7
Crack
cocaine
0.9
1.0
0.9
1.0
1.2
1.2
1.3
1.0
1.0
1.2
Ecstasy
7.3
7.4
7.6
8.6
8.3
8.3
8.6
8.3
9.3
9.2
Hallucinogens
9.5
9.2
9.1
9.4
9.2
9.2
9.2
9.0
9.1
8.5
LSD
5.6
5.5
5.3
5.5
5.3
5.3
5.4
5.1
5.3
4.7
Magic
mushrooms
7.4
7.2
7.0
7.5
7.4
7.2
7.5
7.2
7.3
7.1
Opiates
0.9
0.8
0.8
0.9
0.9
0.9
1.1
0.8
1.1
0.9
Heroin
0.7
0.7
0.7
0.7
0.7
0.6
0.8
0.6
0.8
0.7
Methadone
0.5
0.4
0.4
0.4
0.4
0.6
0.7
0.5
0.6
0.6
Source: Drug misuse: findings from 2014/15 Crime Survey for England and Wales, Appendix Tables
