DRUG LAWS THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE WORLDWIDE

"IT'S MOVING FURTHER towards decriminalization than any other country in
the world," warned Keith Hellawell, the ex-policeman who was the British
"drugs czar" until the Labour government belatedly realized that his job
was as ridiculous as his title.

He was responding to British Home Secretary David Blunkett's announcement
on July 10 that being caught with cannabis will be treated no more
seriously than illegally possessing other Class C controlled drugs like
sleeping pills and steroids. He was technically wrong, but in terms of its
political impact he was right.

Hellawell was technically wrong because Britain is not leading the parade
of European countries that have broken away from the prohibitionist
approach in the United States. Even after Blunkett's changes, Britain will
lag behind other European countries like Switzerland, the Netherlands,
Belgium and Portugal in its laws on recreational drug use. But he was right
because Britain is: * Still more or less a great power. * Speaks English.

The main engine of the "war on drugs" is the U.S., which managed to
enshrine its prohibitionist views in international law during the Cold War
by a series of treaties that make it impossible for national legislatures
to legalize the commonly used recreational drugs. All that other countries
can do without Washington's agreement is to "decriminalize" the possession
and use of at least some of the banned drugs.

(This week, Canada announced it may follow Britain's lead by making simple
possession of small amounts of pot a ticketing offence.)

Numbers of smaller European countries have already decriminalized various
drugs, but what the Portuguese or the Dutch do will never have an impact in
the United States. Britain is one of the very few countries whose example
will ever be seen as relevant in the country that is the real home of the
"drug war." Britain's decriminalization of cannabis, and even more
importantly its partial return to the old policy of prescribing free heroin
for addicts on the National Health Service, could finally open the door to
a real debate in the United States.

The actual changes in British law are rather timid. In future, British
police will generally confiscate cannabis and issue warnings to users,
rather than arrest them. But "disturb public order" by blowing cannabis
smoke in a police officer's face and you're in jail. Moreover, only a small
fraction of Britain's 200,000 heroin users will get free prescriptions.
Nevertheless, this is by far the biggest crack that has yet appeared in the
prohibitionist dam.

Until the late 19th century, all kinds of recreational drugs were legal
throughout the Western world. Florence Nightingale used opium, Queen
Victoria used cannabis, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle writes in a
matter-of-fact way about Sherlock Holmes injecting drugs with a syringe.
Then came the Women's Christian Temperance Union, most powerful in the
United States. It succeeded in banning one drug after another until by the
early 20th century only the mainstream drugs, alcohol and tobacco, were
still legal in the U.S.

For much of the 1920s and '30s the WCTU even succeeded in prohibiting
alcohol in the U.S. Organized crime expanded tenfold to meet the
opportunity created by this newly illegal demand for alcohol - Al Capone
was just as much the result of alcohol prohibition as Pablo Escobar in
Colombia was of America's war on drugs - but eventually there was a retreat
to sanity in the case of alcohol. There will eventually be a return to
sanity on drugs, too, but Britain's decriminalization of cannabis is only a
very tentative first step.

The war on drugs is one of the most spectacularly counter-productive
activities human beings have ever engaged in. "We have turned the corner on
drug addiction," said President Richard Nixon in 1973, and predictions of
imminent victory continue to be issued at frequent intervals. But the
quality of the drugs gets better and the street price continues to drop. As
any free marketeer should understand, making drugs illegal creates enormous
profit margins and huge incentives to expand the market by pyramid selling.

Drug prohibition increases the number of users, fills the jails with
harmless people, channels vast sums into the hands of the wicked people who
work to expand the lucrative black market and causes a huge wave of petty
crimes. It is estimated that half to two-thirds of the muggings and
property crimes in both Britain and the U.S. are committed by cocaine and
heroin addicts desperate to find the inflated sums needed to satisfy their
habit.

Decriminalizing cannabis only nibbles at the fringes of this problem, for
cannabis users are overwhelmingly neither addicts nor criminals. The more
significant part of Blunkett's initiative is his willingness to revive the
old policy of prescribing heroin to addicts (now around 200,000 in Britain,
compared with around 500 when that policy was dropped at Washington's
behest in 1963). He's only willing to let a small proportion of them have
it on prescription for now, but since those will be the only heroin addicts
who stay alive and for the most part stay clear of crime, the rest will
also be back on prescription sooner or later.

It will be many years yet before mainstream American politicians gain the
political courage to take on the prohibitionist lobby directly, but the
external environment is changing.

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are
published in 45 countries.