LEGALISING DRUGS WILL SAVE LIVES

A couple of weeks ago I got a call from Dave Hoskins. His son died a couple
of years ago after taking ecstasy.

After his son's death, Dave embarked on a publicity campaign in his town
that involved standing outside clubs with a poster sized picture of his
son, warning against the dangers of drugs.

He had also teamed up with Paul Betts - father of Leah who had also died
after taking E. It would be an understatement to say that legalisation was
not his preferred option for controlling drugs. He had rung to speak to me
after seeing the evidence session to the Home Affairs Committee (HAC)
inquiry into UK drug policy, in which my colleagues and I had argued for
the legalisation, control and regulation of drugs.

As a result of seeing our evidence Dave had decided to back our calls for
legalisation. This is an astonishing turnaround for a man who has undergone
the horror of the experience of the death of his child. Until his sonAs
death from a heroin overdose, Fulton Gillespie was a student of the "hang
'em and flog 'em" school of drug policy.

He now believes that a legalised system of heroin distribution might have
saved his son's life. Mary Smith is a founder of Knowle West Against Drugs
(KWADS). KWADS was one of the first community-led mothers against drugs
groups to be set up in the UK. It is now one of the premier street drug
agencies in Bristol. Mary's son was a problematic heroin user and a major
pain in the arse for his mum and the community in which they lived.

For years I debated the merits of legalisation with Mary while she pointed
out the error of my ways. She recently announced that she was now
supporting legalisation as the most sensible way of dealing with drugs in
her community. I have nothing but respect for the way that these
individuals have come around, overcoming their hurt, anger and grief to
take on a position of pragmatic harm reduction. It is their willingness to
accept the reality of drug use and misuse that underlies their respective
positions.

The fantasists

On the other side Professor Susan Greenfield, Melanie Phillips, Peter
Hitchens and Clare Gerada (spokesperson for the Royal College of GPs)
appear to inhabit a fantasy world where young people can be persuaded to
spend their hours playing hoopla and tinkering with the mechanisms of their
fob watches. Professor Greenfield asked in last week's Observer "Do we
really want a drug culture lifestyle in the UK?" My dear professor, we
already have one. And it cannot be stopped. Although cannabis is at the
more benign end of this culture, it cannot be denied that cannabis can be
used dangerously. And, yes professor, it does "make you see the world in a
different way" and does literally "leave its mark on how our neurons are
wired up". That is why people smoke it. And this is exactly why we must
control and regulate its production and distribution. No drug is made safer
left in the hands of organised criminals and unregulated dealers.

Those of us calling for legalisation, control and regulation wish to see
the criminal elements removed from the business and the end of the
deregulation of the production and distribution of powerful psychoactive drugs.

Cannabis (and indeed all drugs) must be legalised not because it is safe,
but precisely because it is potentially dangerous.

It's prohibition what done it

Professor Greenfield spuriously asserts that the argument for legalising
drugs is analagous to legalising mugging or burglary.

Both these activities have a direct negative effect on other people.

Stealing other peopleAs property is a substantively different activity than
rewiring oneAs neurons and does not warrant comparison. Those who argue
that drugs cause crime forget that it is the very policy of prohibition
(not the use of the drugs themselves) that creates illegal drug markets and
the property crime committed by problematic users.

In his evidence to the HAC, Terry Byrne of Customs and Excise (C&E) gave
the biggest clue as to why prohibition creates the very problems it is
intended to solve.

When asked if the efforts of C&E affected the price and availability of
drugs at street level, he replied: "Prices are as low as they have ever
been. There is no sign that the overall attack on the supply side is
reducing availability or increasing the price." However, he did counter
this with this comment on how C&E affects prices at wholesale level: "The
price of a kilo of cocaine in South America is UKP 1000. It should cost
about UKP 1500 by the time it reaches the UK, but it actually costs UKP 30
000." Herein lies a significant problem at the heart of prohibition - the
thirty-fold increase in value of this illegally traded commodity. This may
be a useful performance indicator for officials at Customs and Excise but
the effects of this price hike are monumentally destructive. When combined
with a huge level of demand, it makes the trade so lucrative that it
becomes a magnet for organised crime.

The UN estimates the value of the global trade at $400 billion a year (8%
of international trade). The Home Office estimate for the UK is UKP 6.6
billion.

The amount of money involved is now so vast that no law enforcement agency
can possibly halt the trade. The massive premium added by Terry Byrne and
his colleagues leads to the high price of heroin and cocaine at street
level is what fuels half all shoplifting, burglary, vehicle crime and theft.

Withdrawing from prohibition

Our addiction to prohibition is based on a fantasy world in which our
children can be kept safe from drug-related harm: through the UN Drug
Control ProgrammeAs activities to stop Afghan farmers growing heroin, by
talking up the dangers of cannabis, by locking up dealers and by showing
pictures of dead young men and women. Our children are not made safer as a
consequence of prohibition; they are in fact in much more danger.

From Bogata to Brixton prohibition is killing and causing untold misery to
countless millions. The fantasy of successful prohibition must end in order
that we can see and engage with the reality of drug use in the twenty-first
century. Embracing a prohibition-free lifestyle Legalisation is not a
cure-all, however.

Drug users young and old will still die as a result of using drugs and
there will always be a small illegal market. We have a stark choice: accept
the reality of drugs in an adult fashion and manage the drugs market, or
deny it and abrogate control to unregulated dealers and gangsters.
Legalisation will produce a massive reduction in the problems surrounding
drug use and create a context for an evidence-based analysis of what works
in drug policy. The debate is being held back at present by a
well-intentioned but misguided group of people who prefer the false safety
of their fantasy (a world protected by prohibition) to facing up to the
very real dangers of a society where illegal drugs are freely available
with no controls at all. There is nothing more dangerous than social policy
built on escapist desires. It is never too late to relinquish the hold that
prohibition has and embrace a prohibition-free lifestyle.