The end of yet another decade

For those of us who still, deep down, think of the year 2000 as being recent it’s sobering to think that not only is that almost it for not only another year, but another decade as well. Yes, the turn of the century was a decade ago and the naughties are almost over.  It’s interesting, not to say quite depressing to note how little things have changed in that time, despite so much of it – time that is – having passed. Not much may have changed, but a lot has certainly happened.

Ten years ago we were still optimistic that some kind of meaningful change was in the offing. Drugs were big news back then and although Tony Blair and Jack Straw had made it clear they were not going to even consider law reform most people expected something to happen.

Back in 2000 the main worries concerning the popular media at least were hard drug addiction and the growth of crack. In addition the media were complaining about the popularity of the rave culture and the use of Ecstasy.  So it was that the government became determined to concentrate on the drugs that do most harm, specifically heroin and cocaine, but also to eradicate Ecstasy from the popular culture.In the clubs up and down the country where the bar areas were mostly deserted, things were about to change.

The big change many of us hoped for with respect to cannabis never came of course, instead we got the move from B to C, a concept which was pretty meaningless to most people. It was a concept which the press interpreted as de facto decriminalisation and which the government then spent a huge amount of money trying to explain meant nothing really. For some reason, everyone was, apparently, confused and frankly for good reason.

Speaking of Frank, the government looked to the advertising industry to create its new anti drug campaign known as “Talk to Frank” or “Frank” as it seems to have become in recent times. Despite early promises of a campaign based on facts, Frank has become little more than the publicity arm of the Home Office, at least in its publicity campaigns.

Magic mushrooms, which had existed in the alternative psychedelic scene for years,  began to be commercially exploited and sold in so-called headshops. Instead of imposing sensible controls on the trade which few would have opposed, the government simply banned mushrooms as a class A drug despite there having been no reports of harm from their use. It seems they introduced the class A ban without asking the advisory body, the ACMD first.

Meanwhile the night life of the nation was re-organised. What this has meant more often than not is the independent nightclubs closed and were replaced by the “night time economy“, run by the brewers and fuelled by vodka mix drinks aimed at young people with drug speak advertising  – take VK- the vodka kick for example, a brand with uses Facebook and Kiss radio to recruit new users. VK is still very much alive and still using advertising techniques aimed at young people, something that for any other drug would be termed pushing.

Such commercial night clubs claimed to be “drug free” (alcohol of course not being a drug) and it can be easily argued that it was because of this aspect of government drugs policy the binge drinking crisis we have now came into being. Alcohol, a dangerous and addictive drug was substituted for ecstasy by means of advertising and commercialisation by companies who pay millions to political parties.

Despite the supposed “confusion” over the legality of cannabis its use began to drop amongst young people, however a campaign was started just a year after reclassification which claimed cannabis caused schizophrenia. The cannabis and mental health campaign was fronted by RETHINK the mental health charity, but right from day one it was allowed to be used as a campaign against the reclassification of cannabis.

All sorts of exaggerated claims were made about the increase in strength of so-called “skunk” – we were told it had increased “25 fold” by the Independent on Sunday which debased its reputation as a quality newspaper with an appallingly badly researched feature in which the paper “apologised” for having run a “Decriminalise cannabis” campaign. Various other papers – most notably the Daily Mail joined in a chorus of mis-information, eventually persuading the Conservative party to back a return to B. Labour tried to re-reclassify cannabis in 2005 but took the advice of the ACMD and kept it as class C. As a part of this whole process the then Home Secretary Charles Clarke ordered a total review of the whole drugs classification system, a review which was quickly dropped like a hot potato.

Ketamine, a drug which had existed quietly on the club scene for years, was criminalised under the misuse of drugs act.

Meanwhile the heroin problem got worse, and cocaine use continued to grow as cannabis continued to decline. We had already invaded Afghanistan of course and now the occupation there began to seem like the opening of another front in the war on drugs . The surge in opium production in Afghanistan was supplying the growing number of addicts at home and the huge profits bankrolling the Taliban. The “growing number of addicts” including several of my (former) close friends incidentally.

The lid is kept on the problem by means of Methadone – criticised by some as being no more than drug substitution – swapping one addictive substance supplied by organised crime for another supplied by companies approved by the government. Does that sound a familiar tactic?

The cannabis supply in the UK deteriorated around 2006 with the sudden appearance of widespread contamination, but the “skunk” hype continued.

Eventually in 2007 – and many would say not before time – Tony Blair stepped down and handed over to Gordon Brown who promptly announced that he intended to move cannabis back to B, eventually doing so against the advice of the ACMD on the grounds of public concern – a public concern whipped up in no small part by alarmist newspaper reports and despite the continued fall in the rates of cannabis use following the move to C.

RETHINK had continued their campaign, arguing against a move to B and in favour of a proper education campaign aimed at young people along with health warnings on Rizla papers and cannabis paraphernalia. They got nothing in the end, cannabis was reclassified, the “education campaign” turned out to be some pretty useless Talk to Frank adverts and the idea of health warnings wasn’t even allowed to be discussed. RETHINK’s weak management team had allowed themselves to be used by the prohibition movement, despite insisting that their campaign had no agenda in the law reform debate.

In the meantime of course, tobacco smoking gets banned in pubs and workplaces, which on the whole has been a good thing, except the rate of pub closures has increased. As the pubs have closed, the alcohol problem has increased with more people buying booze from supermarkets at a fraction of the price pubs can sell it whilst young people continue to be targeted by alcohol promotions . However, the sensible approach to tobacco control has achieved the type of success the drug war can only dream of. The stated 10 year aim of the UN to achieve a drug free world by 2008 under the slogan “we can do it” was quietly dropped because they couldn’t, the complete and utter failure of the UN’s 10 year strategy was airbrushed out of sight.

On the domestic front, efforts to find out how effective the government’s drugs policy have been have been stonewalled, Transform have long been demanding a proper cost benefit analysis, but the government wouldn’t dare allow such a thing – probably because it could never justify the results.The latest application under the freedom of information act was refused because it “might confuse the public”. This happened only a few weeks after David Nutt, the Chair of the ACMD was sacked for expressing views which went against the government’s drugs policy and which therefore severed to undermine the policy by spreading information.

There were several authoritative reports throughout the decade which threw some light onto the failings, but they were of course also ignored.

As all this is happening, it seems no-one noticed the explosion in the market for “legal highs“. Often marketed as a “harm reduction” measure and “a safer alternative” to illegal drugs they were, of course, no such thing. We are now in the impossible situation of the law running to keep up with a flood of new chemicals which haven’t been banned yet.

Since its criminalisation, the use of Ketamine has increased greatly and is now a matter or some concern apparently. Ketamine, a dissociative anaesthetic designed for combat use in the American war in Vietnam is classed lower than cannabis in the misuse of drugs act, as a class C drug.

The Executive Director of the UNODC Antonio Maria Costa, who is often rightly the subject of  ridicule  proclaimed the “success” of global drugs prohibition, despite it failing to even begin to achieve it’s stated aim on the grounds that the increase in drugs use hadn’t been as big as it would have been had the policy not been in effect! He did warn, however, of  “unintended consequences” of the war on drugs.  These “unintended consequences” amount to widespread corruption of whole countries and mass murder of innocent civilians, not to mention widespread environmental damage caused by the spraying of delicate tropical rainforests in an effort to eradicate the coca growing, displaced by previous eradication attempts.

As the decade draws to a close we are almost back at square one, in that alternatives to the war on drugs are again very much on the agenda. Several South American countries have backed away from all out prohibition, Portugal decriminalised all drug use in 2001 and saw a decrease in the problems as a result, Spain has a more relaxed attitude to cannabis, The Czech Republic has just announced people can grow cannabis for their own use and Holland still has its cannabis cafes.  In the home of prohibition, the USA, the laws against cannabis seem to be crumbling.  Things seem to be changing in the US and where America goes today, we usually follow.

Here we can all look forward to an election next year which is unlikely to change anything. Both Labour and the Conservatives support the fallacy of drug prohibition being a form of “control”, an example of political double-speak which goes way beyond anything Big Brother could have dreamt up. Change it seems, when it comes, will be forced on to the British establishment. But it’s hard to see how we can continue to pay an ever increasing yet uncosted  price for a regime which can provide no evidence of effectiveness, especially if there are to be huge cuts in essential services. At the very least and despite all the efforts to make it otherwise, as the decade closes, drugs are still very much in the news.

So with that UKCIA wishes all it’s readers a merry Christmas and a happy new year. Unless anything big happens, UKCIAnewsblog will return in the new year.