THE DRUGS DEBATE

Where This Report Is Most Radical, It Is Incoherent

The most valuable, and least controversial, contribution of Drugs and
the Law, the Police Foundation report on drug abuse in Britain, is to
widen the public debate that the Government has reopened.

Nearly 30 years after the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 entered into force,
it must be right to examine whether existing policies on prevention,
treatment and punishment are as effective as they need to be. The
answer, both in the statistics on use and trafficking produced in this
report and in most people's experience, is in the negative.

The law is so far from effectively deterring traffickers or reducing
abuse that the police are, rightly, concentrating their efforts on the
most serious offences, barely attempting to enforce the law for the
least grave crimes.

On the face of it, therefore, the case for change would seem
strong.

Yet the "health warning" in this report - that "we have been forcibly
struck by the lack of research and the weakness of the information
base about drug use in the United Kingdom" - sits oddly with its
authors' readiness to propose radical new departures. The report
itself pays inexplicably scant attention, notably, to research into
long-term brain damage from using amphetamine derivatives and
methamphetamines such as Ecstasy and speed.

But if the report is right that assessment of policy options is
"hampered by the need for more research and better evaluations", it is
hard to see how there can be a clear case changing the law on the
basis of admittedly inadequate knowledge.

The report, chaired by Viscountess Runciman of Doxford, makes dozens
of recommendations in four main areas: the classification of drugs;
penalties and sentencing policy; police powers; and the law on
cannabis.Some of them, such as strengthening the laws on trafficking
by making dealing in drugs a separate offence, make obvious sense:
courts ought to be able to sentence dealers for continued activity
rather than, as now, merely on isolated acts of supply. Equally, if
the law is to keep pace with the rapid development of synthetic drugs
and abuse of prescription drugs, a national early warning system that
allows for emergency scheduling of new substances is needed.

So are expanded treatment facilities for addicts, who in some areas
wait up to two years for help. But where the report is most radical -
on reclassifying drugs, decriminalising cannabis and lowering or
abolishing prison sentences both for supplying and possessing drugs -
it is also at its least coherent.

The report recommends downgrading Ecstasy and related compounds from
Class A, arguing that it is "dangerous" to present all drugs as
equally harmful when users "know" Ecstasy to be less dangerous than
cocaine or heroin.

Yet its own surveys show that 16 to 24-year-olds do not think this at
all; around 90 per cent - nearly as many as say the same of heroin and
cocaine - rank both Ecstasy and amphetamines as "very or fairly
harmful". These surveys record health risks as the reason most
frequently cited by all ages for not taking drugs; so why signal to
16-19 year-olds that "dance drugs" are considered less dangerous than
they were, above all when, because these synthetic drugs are
relatively new, no one "knows" for sure?

Even cannabis, which the report would decriminalise by moving it from
Class B to C where it would cease to be an arrestable offence, is a
toxic mixture containing over 60 cannaboids, some potentially
therapeutic and others harmful. Once medical trials have isolated its
therapeutic properties, there will be a case for prescribing it for
illnesses such as multiple sclerosis.

But this must not be made a Trojan horse for radically liberalising
the law.

The police insist, moreover, that moving cannabis to Class C will
seriously inhibit their ability to disrupt the illicit drugs market.

If they cannot arrest for cannabis possession or raid premises, those
caught would be able to warn accomplices and destroy evidence.

It is too cavalier for armchair theorists simply to say that "we have
not been persuaded" by empirical argument from officers in the front
line. There is plenty of evidence for the theme, running through this
report, that Britain is losing the war on drugs. But that is not a
good reason to disarm.

Drugs ruin lives.