Source: The Times, London, UK http://www.thetimes.co.uk/
Contact: letters@thetimes.co.uk

Simon Jenkins byline

The Misuse of Drugs Act has divided society and branded half a
generation 'criminal'. Now at last there is a chance to think again

Hooked on an unworkable law

Idoubt if any law on the statute book has done less good and more harm
than the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. Over its bleak quarter century, a
law supposedly protecting ourselves, our children and "society" from
harmful products has done the opposite. Their consumption has soared.
It has led more young people into prison and a life of crime than any
other Act. Distribution of amphetamines, hallucinogens, cannabis, and
cocaine and opium derivatives has risen sharply. Half the population
under the age of 30 has used or is using illegal drugs.

Here, in other words, is a law that has failed. It is a dud law, an
unenforceable law, a counterproductive law, an instance of how bad
politicians are at what they claim is their chief job, passing
legislation. Yet a dud law on food safety, or dangerous pets, or drunk
driving, might be changed. The Misuse of Drugs Act seems impervious to
amendment or repeal. It contains a repelling magnet.

To the Tories, the Act was as sacred as the Act of Union. On this
subject, they were the irrational in flight from the undebatable. Many
hoped that a new Labour Government would prove more openminded. I
would guess that half the present Cabinet privately agrees with Clare
Short in wanting to drop some of the Act's "dead letters", such as on
cannabis possession. I would even hazard Tony Blair's name on that
list. Yet the new Home Office Ministers are as dyed in the wool as the
old ones. I heard George Howarth's voice tremble on radio when asked
to review the Act. No, he gasped. His colleague Alun Michael protested
that even using the phrase royal commission was anathema. It might
"send wrong signals" or "be misunderstood".

The result is a startling divide in social policy, between an older
generation which believes a social law is far too weak and a younger
one which (by twotoone, according to polls) believes the precise
reverse. This is the polarisation that faces the committee set up this
week by the Police Foundation under Viscountess Runciman. Clearly,
what politicians are too frightened to discuss, others must discuss
for them.

The polarisation is now extreme and growing wider. Few heroin users
before the 1971 Act were criminals or social outcasts. Their drug was
available on prescription. Heroin addiction is now said to be
responsible for 20 per cent of all crime recorded by police. For the
first time in history a drug supposedly outlawed to curb its use is
addicting an everwidening circle of young people. Meanwhile,
magistrates are locking up otherwise lawabiding sellers of cannabis
for seven years. Prisoners now have the highest drug consumption per
capita of any occupational group in Britain. The Home Office is unable
to stop its prisons becoming the hottest dope houses in the land. Yet
it believes it can ban drug use in the outside world.

This is close to madness. On one side of the argument are those who
believe that "one more push" under the Misuse of Drugs Act might work.
They insist that the list of substances that already damage people's
bodies is long enough. All drugs are hell. The only way the community
can condemn that hell is through the criminal law. Traffickers should
incur society's most savage punishment. Alcohol and tobacco are
integrated into our social habits. Were they not, we would ban them
too, and in the case of tobacco we are in the process of doing just
that.

These people see their case reinforced by ever more evidence of the
enhanced narcotic effects of even "recreational" drugs. Modern
chemicals are of unknown effect. Recent research on Ecstasy in America
suggests that the damage it does to brain cells may shorten the
brain's life. We are possibly producing a generation of young people
prone to early senile dementia. By all means research, educate and
practise "harm reduction", say the prohibitionists. But never
legitimise.

Two increasingly distinct groups oppose the prohibitionists, one
ideological, the other pragmatic. The ideologues share with classical
libertarians the view that the State should not interfere with
individual liberty except to protect minors or maintain order. They
claim it is absurd that adults smoking cannabis, students taking
Ecstasy, or rock stars sniffing cocaine need to be protected from
themselves by other adults who dislike these products and can deploy
the criminal law against them. Such products are in the same ethical
realm as alcohol and nicotine. Narcotics are as old as human society.
Prohibition merely legitimises the prejudice of one group and intrudes
on the personal freedom of another. In this spirit, the financier
George Soros yesterday donated $15 million to fight America's
draconian drugs laws.

The pragmatists are downtoearth. To them, prohibition simply does
not work. It is like using cavalry against tanks. The trumpet blast is
noble but the war has passed on. As the Chief Constable of
Bedfordshire, Michael O'Byrne, said last week, either Government
should hurl far more money at crushing drug distribution, or the
police must be relieved of this burden. The present law can be
enforced only at random, which means ineffectively and corruptly.

Every newspaper reader knows how prevalent the drugs distribution
business now is in Britain and across the globe. City centres, housing
estates, market towns, pubs and clubs are in thrall to this hugely
profitable (because unregulated and untaxed) industry. It ranks with
the oil industry for global turnover. It has far outstripped all other
criminal activity and is believe to finance a quarter of the world's
governments and as many of its police forces. The outlawing of
narcotics banned by the West probably causes more violence and misery
across the world than anything short of war itself.

When the Customs and Excise declared its "best ever" year for drug
seizures, it merely announced the best year for drug trading. This is
senseless market intervention. I doubt if the Government seizes even 1
per cent of what enters Britain each year. Like the US Navy, which
spends $2 billion trying to "interdict" drugrunning in the Caribbean,
such operations have a marginal effect on street prices. Indeed, one
of the most cogent (if cynical) arguments for maintaining prohibition
is that the drugs trade channels money free of tax to communities that
legitimate commerce is unlikely to reach from the poor of Colombia
to the AfroCaribbean distribution networks of South London.

Last week I saw drugs openly sold on the streets of Edinburgh during
the festival. Tons of cannabis, Ecstasy and cocaine would have been
traded at the Notting Hill Carnival, under the nose of the carousing
leader of the Conservative Party. Nobody can visit council estates in
Moss Side, Leeds or Newcastle, where drugs are now the cheapest
pastime and most buoyant trade, and regard the Misuse of Drugs Act as
operational. Police officers and social workers are the ultimate
"redrafters" of bad laws. To them drugs are not as seen by middleaged
and suburban voters, an alien menace to be repelled by the criminal
law. They are a fact of everyday life, dangerous because unregulated,
cheap because untaxed, corrupting because distributed by unlicensed
cartels.

This debate reaches deep into the cultural psyche. The most common and
most widely debilitating drug on earth, alcohol, is something Britons
believe they have learnt to "handle". Anyone who walks the streets at
night, or visits a police cell or casualty ward, knows that this is
untrue. Yet we call a bottle of whisky "safe" and a joint of marijuana
a potential killer. We have succeeded, with public consent, to control
alcohol's ability to turn car drivers into killers. Yet the drugs
preferred by the young and many immigrant groups are greeted with an
irrational horror.

None of this validates legalisation. It does plead for a review of the
Act. The difficulty is that the present coalition of policemen, social
and health workers, two thirds of voters under 25, and a myriad others
who use, sell or tolerate illicit drugs does not constitute a
majority. In a democracy, majorities must be obeyed, however closed
their minds.

What is depressing about the present debate is that an industry with
an astonishing power to penetrate every aspect of the social economy
is still political anathema. Another committee is unlikely to change
minds. My hope is that this one at least might start to open them.

The author is a member of the new committee of inquiry.