DRUGS VACUUM

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.