BOOZE AND DRUGS

One Bold Decision Deserves Another

Will one bold step lead to another?

Yesterday we reported the government was ready to resist reducing
current drink-driving limits on alcohol consumption down to a single
pint. This was indeed a difficult decision.

The lobby in favour of a reduction - police chiefs, the British
Medical Association, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents
and even the Automobile Association - have produced powerful arguments.

Even though drink-drive fatalities have been reduced by two-thirds in
the last two decades, the respected transport research laboratory
estimates a reduction to one pint would save 50 lives and prevent 250
serious injuries a year. Earlier research suggests that drivers who
have exceed one pint, have twice as much chance of being involved in
an accident.

But it is not quite that simple.

Drink-driving is already a game of chance. A Home Office study showed
250 people breaking existing limits, for everyone caught.

Other studies have put the number at 1,000 to one. Reducing the limit
would only further erode public support for the law. Ministers have
chosen pragmatism, deciding to stick to existing limits, roughly 1.5
pints.

Will this same pragmatic spirit be in evidence today when the national
commission on drug legislation reports with a host of sensible
proposals in respect of a more liberal approach to soft drugs?

Unlike alcohol, there is no strong commercial lobby pressing for a
more liberal approach to illicit drugs.

All that we have are serious researchers, who have pointed to the
devastating effects of our current legislation: the strictest in
Europe, yet by far the least effective, with far more young people
using soft drugs, more hard-drug addicts and, worse still, hard drug
addicts getting younger.

This government boasts of its pursuit of evidence-based policy-making.
Today it can demonstrate that commitment by resisting a knee-jerk
rejection and signalling its readiness to change course.