ISSUES
: Drugs
Chapter 2: UK drug laws
24
an evidence-based cross-party
consensus that still underpins the
policies in place today. And it is
that same success that has freed
the ideologues from the necessity
to engage with messy reality and
let them loose in an anarchic
ideological playground.
Flagrant ideological posturing
along these lines flourishes in our
nonsensically combative political
culture. It’s almost impossible for
any government policy to be called
a success; politicians have learned
that to claim a win for any policy is
to invite a charge of complacency
today
and
risk
humiliation
tomorrow.
The resulting fixation on problems,
failures and misfires drives any
genuine improvement so far down
the agenda that it falls out of sight.
In Whitehall, political invisibility
means being starved of cash and
influence – and this creates a
dynamic in which civil servants,
producer interests and service
users learn to displace good news
with a constantly evolving narrative
of failure.
Get real
There are obviously legitimate
debates to be had about how we
protect the public from the harms
of illegal drugs – and the role of
criminal sanctions. On the one
hand, is it morally justifiable to
lock people up for possession to
protect them from themselves?
On the other, under a more liberal
regime, how would we stop a free
market driving up both use and
harm?
These are not easy questions
to answer, and they demand a
proper debate. But as things
stand, our absurd ignorance of
our own success means we’re
drifting towards unnecessarily
radical ‘solutions’ – even though
it’s entirely possible to develop
incremental improvements to our
management of illegal drugs to sit
alongside our responses to alcohol
and legal highs.
The stale, ideological alternatives
our political tribes are still pushing
would scarcely be contemplated if
the successes of our current policy
got a tenth as much airplay as its
problems do. And the losers from
this will not be publicity-hungry
entrepreneurs or misguided think-
tankers, but rather the 0.5% of our
population for whom drug policy
is genuinely a matter of life and
death.
30 October 2014
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supposedly characterised family
and social life across all classes
before the social upheaval of the
1960s.
To accept that drug use has
been falling for years and that
its attendant harms are clearly
in retreat would destroy this
dystopian vision. It would also
invite a less politically convenient
explanation for poverty, one that
emphasises structural inequality
rather than the individual failings of
the poor. Faced with this prospect,
the easier option for ideologues
is to ignore the facts, thereby
sustaining the integrity of their
analysis and the power of their
polemic.
Meanwhile, the liberal intelligentsia
apparently sees recreational drug
use as relatively benign, chalking
all harm up to the consequences of
prohibition and the “failed war on
drugs”. Prohibition is blamed for the
mass incarceration of young black
men in the USA and the deaths of
thousands in Mexico’s drug wars,
as well as providing a justification
for continuing US interference in
supposedly sovereign Central and
South American states.
These arguments usually conclude
with a call to review the 1971 Misuse
of Drugs Act, as if that’s the prime
cause of racism in the US justice
system, explains the history of US-
Latin American relations, or drives
the brutal internecine struggles of
the Mexican cartels.
But given the reality of the situation,
an honest discussion of the real
situation in Britain – less use, less
harm, ready access to treatment –
would hardly support a wholesale
review of drug laws and the UN
convention.
Running riot
Across the commentariat, opinions
on drugs are a means to signal
political identity and affiliation. The
brand value of being in favour of
either legalisation or prohibition is
much too potent to allow it to be
diminished by inconvenient truths.
The real public health and crime
crises that followed in the wake
of the heroin epidemic spawned
