INCREMENT OF HARM

Government Obsession With Drug Crime Has Overshadowed The Needs Of
The Truly Marginalised

UK drug policy is unique. In no other area of social policy do we
criminalise at one stroke both recreation and disadvantage. In no
other area have we seen so much evidence of the counterproductive
effects of a predominantly criminal justice response to a public
health problem. And we have seen almost no genuine debate or
evidence-based scrutiny from ministers. The last 10 years of this
parliament's tacit and active support for a policy based on moral
panic has finally broken the camel's back. As the Home Office reviews
its last 10-year strategy - results are expected next month - the
Drugs and Health Alliance has been formed to bring together
organisations committed to bringing about a public health-led
approach for the next decade.

In the mid-80s the Conservative government, in the face of a
potential HIV/Aids epidemic, initiated a proactive harm reduction
strategy that led to the UK having one of the world's lowest rates of
HIV. It was based exclusively on a pragmatic public health and harm
reduction approach to dealing with unsafe sex and injecting. No one
suggested that we should ramp up penalties for injecting drugs or
make unsafe sex illegal. How times have changed. Twenty years later
there are significant political taboos among senior policymakers who
dare question the prevailing tough criminal justice line on drugs.
The result has been that most of the drugs initiatives in the last
decade have had draconian law-making at their core.

Our current policy is completely at odds with social and legislative
norms, a strategy based on criminalising drugs in order to reduce
social harm. Yet, as the PM's strategy unit drugs report of 2003
showed, it is the very illegality of the supply and use of drugs that
causes harm. Despite our commitment to harm reduction, drug use
exists within a political and legal framework that is harm
maximising; hepatitis C remains at 80% among injecting drug-users and
HIV, while still very low, is on the increase.

Throughout the last decade government has shown a pathological
unwillingness to debate the efficacy of the current approach. Witness
the lack of genuine engagement with the Police Foundation drugs
report of 2000, the Home Affairs Select Committee report of 2002, the
Science and Technology Committee report on drug classification of
2006 and the recent RSA report, as well as the announced and then
withdrawn public consultation on the drug classification system and
the lack of consultation or parliamentary scrutiny of the Drugs Act
2005. The list is endless. One concern is that the upcoming
consultation on the future of the UK drug strategy will end up
looking strikingly similar to the last one.

The frustration of many working in the drugs field is that the
obsession with crime reduction has overshadowed the need for
improvement of individual and public health. We are demonising some
of the most marginalised people in the UK rather than offering them
effective treatment. For commissioners of services, this ought to
look perverse and bizarre: enforce the drug laws in such a way as to
increase the offending of problematic users of the most dangerous
drugs, "identify" them through the criminal justice system and
finally spend money on "treatment", as ordered by the court, as a way
of reducing their offending. The UKP13bn to UKP16bn in crime costs
associated with the current drug policy should suggest an urgent
reallocation of the billions spent on counterproductive heavyhanded
enforcement, toward education, dealing with underlying social
problems and treatment in a primary care setting.

Ultimately, we need a new paradigm for drug policy development, one
based around health and wellbeing rather than macho posturing and
knee-jerk, short-term responses to the failures of the current
criminal justice-based policy. The UK sits atop the rankings for
levels of problematic heroin and cocaine use. The Dutch, Spanish,
Swiss, Portuguese and numerous other nations have all adopted a more
public health-focused approach. The average age of heroin users in
the Netherlands is 40. They have half the rate of cannabis use
compared to the UK. Isn't it time that we joined them?

The consultation on the new strategy offers a window of opportunity
for change that will close again soon. This is our chance to let
government know that tough enforcement does not reduce harm, it
creates it. We should grab the chance with both hands.

Danny Kushlick

Danny Kushlick is spokesperson for the Drugs and Health Alliance
Drugshealthalliance.net (http://www.drugshealthalliance.net)