Wednesday 14 March 2012

War On Drugs - part 4

Another email that I received and from Ben, who gave me permission to print in full.

 At last someone who shares my concerns about legalising. And I have to agree totally with the last 2 paragraphs. My sentiments exactly.


 Nadia, just a thought based on the last paragraph of Ali's contribution, and some statistics I vaguely remember Oliver Letwin spouting in Bournemouth when he was Shadow Home Sec. 
 90% or so of acquisitive crime is drug related.
In the UK, at the retail end of the drug supply, we have a nightmarishly bad system. People are locked up, given little help if any, then pushed straight back out onto the same streets.
Talking to those agencies like Focus 12, where Chip Somers will tell you that the key to staying straight is learning how to break that cycle, you can certainly see the argument for legalisation (an argument he was absolutely against when last we spoke).

 The argument for legalisation is a sensible one, based on cost/benefit analysis. If you legalise and regulate the use of many of the illegal drugs on the market today, you would be able to raise revenue through duty, and remove a huge amount of the work the police would have to provide, reducing their workload and saving a couple of billion pounds from the Home Office budget. However. All that saving would go straight onto the NHS budget. Treatment is hard. There is nowhere near enough treatment available. Illegal drugs are illegal based on scientific evidence criteria.

Drugs like Heroin and Crack Cocaine, or Crystal Methamphetamine, are harmful to use. They are highly addictive, and are designed to become more addictive. There are chemists out there working for organised crime who are designing synthetic forms of these drugs to boost the addictive qualities (just like tobacco manufacturers used to do) and the problem is that the need to feed the habit will eventually become all consuming to the user.
 I have used recreational drugs in the past. Alcohol and tobacco mainly. I also tried cannabis but it did nothing for me so I didn't bother.

I know others who regularly used recreational drugs and I have seen them destroy their lives. A maths teacher who smoked cannabis on a regular basis and ended up sounding like Ozzy Osbourne and unable to work a till in a pub because he couldn't add up. A school friend who smoked just one spliff of cannabis with a high THC content and went on to suffer from panic attacks for the next 10 years. Another school friend who was so disturbed by his use of cannabis that he hung himself in his bedroom. An acquaintance from my younger days who tried every drug under the sun and dropped dead at 29 from heart failure. Another friend whose fiancee dropped dead at 26 whilst asleep, following years of drug abuse.

 These drugs kill. Using them will kill you eventually. Or it might not. You might be lucky.

But it really is Russian roulette. The country needs to spend far more budget on dealing with the organised crime (narco-terrorists) who bring the stuff in, or increasingly produce it here. The cannabis growing trade in Ipswich is controlled by the Vietnamese for instance. Crack and heroin comes up from London as well as across from Liverpool. Ectasy comes from Holland via Harwich and Felixstowe. Cocaine mostly comes up from London or down from Glasgow and Manchester. All of it is easily available. Far too easily available. 

Drug pushers are bad people when they are selling drugs to addicts. Whether that be the landlord of the pub serving a known alcoholic, or the doctor who continues to prescribe Vicodin to a patient who is addicted, or the street level dealer pushing to kids on bikes.

 We need to have a serious think about how we are going to approach drugs policy in the UK. I can understand the legalisation approach but to me that is abrogating responsibility. We cannot just give up because it is hard. We have to redouble our efforts to tackle supply, whilst simultaneously providing help and support to victims so as to reduce demand. 

 The same arguments were made five years ago about street prostitution. I remember quite senior people telling me that the strategy wouldn't work, that it would push prostitutes to different areas of town but they'd come back, that it would push it to other towns, etc. To some minor extent there has been some of that, but you won the battle against street prostitution. Why not win the one against drugs as well?

 Ben

9 comments:

  1. Thanks to the author, Ben, a good response.

    I must take issue with this statement though:

    "Illegal drugs are illegal based on scientific evidence criteria."

    -- This could not be further from the truth. There is a dangerous disengagement from science in our drug policy. There has been a fleet of senior scientists that have left the ACMD owing to the level of scientific illiteracy in our current policy. This is why the ISCD was set up: http://www.drugscience.org.uk/

    Further, (excuse the blog source) this Question For Short Debate (video & transcript) in the Lords (09/03/11) goes some way in showing the extent of the distinct lack of evidence:

    http://homegrownoutlaw.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/evidence-evidence-evidence.html

    Please bear in mind that senior healthcare professionals do support reform. Sir Ian Gilmore, the outgoing president of the Royal College of Physicians, is a fervent supporter of reform. What is being asked for is that we place drugs under the control and remit of the health service and not the CJS.

    This response from Ben lays out what most people are after, and that we need to put more funding into treatment. But, the budget isn't there, and it won't all the while we pump billions into failed policies - and we can all reach agreement that current methods have failed. As pointed out in this response: prevalence is great, sources are impure & dangerous on all unregulated drugs, and people are self titrating blindly. No one wants to advocate drug use, but if we are able to take the sting out of them, and make things as safe as possible through health based measures, is this not a step forward. We could arguably have far better control over drugs under health policies than we can enforcement.

    Here's a good video for you to watch, Nadia. It's a policy fight club exchange on drugs policy. On the reform side we have Bob Ainsworth, former Labour drugs czar, Tom Lloyd, former chief constable of Cambridgeshire, and Sir Ian Gilmore who I've mentioned above.

    For punitive policies, we have Peter Hitchens, and Dr Hans Christian Raabe.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSrrOOOB04w

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  2. i like this idea of a Policy Fight Club!
    Watching on my Ipad now, thanks!

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  3. Have to say more convinced by Peter Hitchens argument. Will tweet the link to others for their opinion!

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  4. You say "However. All that saving would go straight onto the NHS budget." There is no evidence that legalisation would increase use. Decriminalisation didn't increase use in the Netherlands (amongst dutch people. Amsterdam did become a stoner mecca for Germans, Brits and Yanks) or Portugal to any significant degree. With that, the rest of the argument falls over.

    The fact is right now, anyone who wants drugs can get drugs, so comprehensively has the "war on drugs" failed.

    The problem is that people who want drugs are denied safe, clean product of known strenght. That's the main reason for many (not all, no-one's pretending Drugs are good for you) of the health effects.

    Finally, if Drug takers live less long, the health-bill will go down, not up.

    The cost to the NHS really is a very, very weak argument for continued prohibition.

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  5. The reason Portugal might look a success is that real rehabilitation was not provided and many of them came to Britain for rehab and support to stay off drugs! Portugal provided only a part of the solution. So NHS bill will go up because we must reduce demand at same time.
    However, that is one small part and your point is not just about the bill so Thankyou for your input again.

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  6. This paragraph is hilariously hysterical "I know others who regularly used recreational drugs and I have seen them destroy their lives. A maths teacher who smoked cannabis on a regular basis and ended up sounding like Ozzy Osbourne and unable to work a till in a pub because he couldn't add up[Has your Ozzy Osborne friend been tested for early onset Altzheimers?]. A school friend who smoked just one spliff of cannabis with a high THC content and went on to suffer from panic attacks for the next 10 years.[No evidence is provided beyond assertion that one spliff caused panic attacks for 10 years, Too easy to blame "drugs!" for mental illness, poor parenting or just simple bad behaviour.] Another school friend who was so disturbed by his use of cannabis that he hung himself in his bedroom. An acquaintance from my younger days who tried every drug under the sun and dropped dead at 29 from heart failure. Another friend whose fiancee dropped dead at 26 whilst asleep, following years of drug abuse." [Too easy to blame lifestyle. A friend who drank moderately, never took drugs, was a Conservative councillor, and all round lovely chap was found dead in his flat at 28 by his mother. Should I blame squash? Coffee? or just a dicky ticker? A girl at Uni, who likewise never took drugs, went completely doolally with the stress of exams, and has been regularly sectioned ever since.]

    Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

    When ever any drug user has a mental health episode, it's too easy to blame "drugs", forgetting non-drug users go bonkers too. Were drugs legal, we would be able to tease out the epedimialogical effects. The evidence is sketchy at best that Cannabis has any effect on mental health. The strongest assertion that can be made on the evidence is that it may be a contributory factor in people already predisposed to schitzophrenia. Cocaine has a stronger relationship with depression, but not as strong as that for alcohol. Perhaps legalisation and research might be more effective than an utterly failed ban?

    The drugs your friends smoked/snorted/injected would be less damaging were they legal. None of these anecdotes are remotely convincing support for a ban.

    The past participle of "Hang" is "Hanged", not "hung". The plural of "anecdote" is not "Data".

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    Replies
    1. I will leave the writer Ben to reply back to you himself, kf be so wishes.

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  7. The reason I blame drugs for the mental health episodes of my friends is because there is clear scientific evidence to support it. Whilst you're right, there may be other factors in all of my anecdotes, the evidence is quite clear. The evidence is consistent with the view that cannabis increases risk of psychotic outcomes independently of confounding and transient intoxication effects. (Cannabis use and risk of psychotic or affective mental health outcomes: a systematic review, Moore, Zammet, Lingford-Hughes, The Lancet, 2007)
    Another study found that there is evidence that frequent cannabis use may have a deleterious effect on mental health beyond a risk for psychotic symptoms. (Cannabis use and mental health in young people: cohort study, Patton, Coffey, Carlin, Degenhardt BMJ, 2002)

    I can find you at least another ten similar well respected scientific journals that say the same thing.

    The idea that the "evidence is sketchy at best" is ludicrous. I don't care how much you pick up my grammar and quote high school latin at me, in some attempt to show how clever you are, at least get your facts straight.

    The thing is it isn't for me to prove that a ban need supporting. It is already illegal. It is therefore for those who advocate legalisation to prove their case. Arguing ad nauseam that the ban has failed to limit the availability of illegal drugs isn't an argument against the ban, its an argument against the way the police service enforce the law of the land. The vast majority of traffic on the motorway is doing over 70mph but that isn't (whatever the Goverment says) a good reason to increase the speed limit.

    When Ipswich said it would eradicate street prostitution, they were told it was impossible. You can't turn back the tide anymore than Canute can. Well Ipswich HAS eradicated street prostitution. You are making exactly the same arguments for legalising drugs as were made to legalise prostitutes.

    1. Safety - legal drugs are safer because they have different ingredients. Not safe, just safer...
    2. Prohibition has failed and will always fail.
    3. You can't ban something that people will always find a way around.

    Those were all the same arguments against trying to eradicate the horror of street prostitution. Yet the partnership of IBC, Suffolk Police and SCC managed it.

    I don't agree that the eradication of drugs is impossible. I think that increased resources, drugs courts, more education, mandatory drug testing for JobSeekers, serious work targetting dealers and repeat offenders would do massive amounts of work on reducing the problem.

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  8. Thanks Ben, I knew you would answer accordingly and have justified your original piece. There is still so much more to do. I would also include an area that has not been worked on enough and that is to reduce demand.
    that way you kill this scourge at the roots, not at the branch which has now become grotesque.

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