As you drive over the Pyrenees – the mountains which separate France and Spain – it becomes possible to hear Radio 4 on Long Wave if you can ignore the static and the cricket isn’t on. So it was, parked on a campsite near the French town of Condom, I braved the loud static bursts and did my best to listen to the Today programme for my first fix of news in about three weeks. I’ve been enjoying the sun in Spain incidentally, which is why this blog has been neglected for so long.
As soon as the radio came on I recognised the voice of Brian Paddick and it was clear there was a drugs story so I strained an ear to listen, but the signal was too weak and the static bursts just too loud to really get the flavour of what had happened. Sadly because of the cricket that uses Radio 4 long wave I didn’t get to hear any more about it until I got back home and only now do I realise that we in the cannabis law reform movement owe Brian Paddick an apology, I’ll come back to that later.
The story I half heard under the static crackles of course was the report from The UK Drug Policy Commission – UKDPC – (Download PDF) entitled “Tackling Drug Markets and Distribution Networks in the UK – A review of the recent literature”.
For drug warriors who still believe prohibition can be made to work and that enforcement is a solution to the problem of illegal drugs, this report makes depressing reading. It’s not the first of course, over the years we”ve had a whole string of such damning reports from bodies such as the Police Foundation (2000), the Number 10 strategy unit (2003) and the RSA (2007) as Transform’s Steve Rolles pointed out in the Guardian last Wednesday.
Fact is enforcement doesn’t work. It fails at the first hurdle in that it doesn’t disrupt the drugs trade in such a way as to restrict the availability of drugs on the street, it has “unintended” side effects which make the situation worse and there is little or no evidence to suggest it ever could work.
It’s thought that around 12% of the heroin and 9% of the cocaine imports are being busted and the report estimates that between 60% and 80% would need to be seized to put major traffickers out of business -this despite the huge cost of trying. Regarding the effectiveness of the enforcement approach, the report says this under the heading “Key points” on page 40:
Reducing supply
· Despite significant drug and asset seizures and convictions of traffickers and dealers, drug markets have proven to be extremely resilient. They are highly fluid and adapt effectively to government and law enforcement interventions.
In English “it doesn’t work”, enforcement cannot disrupt the drug trade enough to prevent it operating.
· Although the availability of controlled drugs is restricted by definition, it appears that additional enforcement efforts have had little adverse effect on the availability of illicit drugs in the UK.
As defined by that work of fiction, the “Misuse of drugs act” of course, the legal document that defines the word “controlled” to mean “illegal”. The only way that drugs are in any shape or form “restricted” is the fact you can’t buy them from anyone accountable.
· Since 2000, average street prices in the UK have fallen consistently for heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis.
This is the real rub because rising prices (along with increasing contamination of supplies and hence unquantifiable dangers for consumers) would be the only real indicators of “success” for prohibition.
Reducing demand
· The illegal status of drugs is likely to have contained availability and use to some extent. However, drug laws do not appear to have direct effects on the prevalence of drug use: ‘tougher’ enforcement does not necessarily deter use.
Oh dear oh dear, “The illegal status of drugs is likely to have contained availability and use to some extent” is a pretty weak claim and even this is an assumption for which there is no evidence as the report makes clear. Indeed, the acceptance in the second half of the paragraph that “drug laws do not appear to have an effect on the prevalence of drug use” sort of undermines even that assumption.
As “‘tougher’ enforcement does not necessarily deter use” it’s hard to see how moving cannabis to class B is going to have any effect, but we knew that anyway.
· There is good evidence that drug treatment (including interventions initiated within the criminal justice system) can reduce drug use and reoffending rates.
In that “treatment” for drug addicts usually means substitution with methadone as discussed on previous blogs here and elsewhere, but that’s not reducing drug use as such, it’s simply a diversion away from the illegal drug market.
There isn’t any “treatment” for the vast majority of non-problematic cannabis users of course, they just go off and find a new dealer.
Reducing harm
· Law enforcement efforts can have a significant negative impact on the nature and extent of harms associated with drugs by (unintentionally) increasing threats to public health and public safety, and by altering both the behaviour of individual drug users and the stability and operation of drug markets.
The claim that prohibition unintentionally increases threats to public health is a bit hard to justify since the measure of success is high levels of contamination, but even ignoring that this admission is really damning: As we’ve said before enforcement creates new harms. Hate to say “we told you so”, but we did, ages ago and now it’s official.
· However, it is possible to focus enforcement activity on reducing the harm caused by drug markets (particularly new or emerging ones), for example by targeting those dealers who cause the greatest levels of harm and displacing drug markets to less populated areas, or through partnership arrangements which can help ensure rapid access to treatment and increasing awareness of local drug services during police enforcement operations.
In other words, it might be possible to limit the harm caused to society by the operation of illegal drug markets if they are kept out of sight! Displacing drug markets to less populated areas has a real ring of desperation about it somehow, although providing addicts with substitute drugs might slow down the turf wars and desperate acts of people suddenly deprived of their fix by police busts.
Pretty bad eh? You would expect that a report like this would make some pretty radical recommendations, perhaps along the lines of “try something else”, but no, it doesn’t.
As Steve Rolles in the Guardian put it
It is disappointing that when the UKDPC report does touch on the policy alternatives to absolute prohibition it does so only very briefly, with a mention of the legalisation debate tucked away in its final paragraph. When the report’s most optimistic conclusion is that better enforcement may be able to “at least ameliorate the harms associated with visible drug markets”, it’s a shame that an opportunity to explore alternatives – legal regulation and control of drug production and supply that would largely eliminate these socially corrosive illegal markets – was missed.
The whole report assumes the war on drugs is, at it’s heart, right and the only way forward. It isn’t even remotely critical of the present policy – apart from saying pretty bluntly that it doesn’t work of course.
Two opinion pieces in the Sunday press tried even harder to gloss over things. In The Sunday Times Tim Hollis of Humberside Police argues for more money to strengthen enforcement
Crucially, any new initiative needs solid financial support if it is going to work. It’s no good if the government backs such a scheme, only to withdraw funding after two or three years.
He should learn that when you’re in a hole, the best thing to do if you want to get out is to stop digging. Indeed, he almost accepts that by saying:
One way of freeing up much-needed cash is to divert funds away from the prosecution of small-time users – indeed, once young people enter the criminal justice system, there is strong evidence to suggest that their risk of descent into serious drug use is greatly increased.
But then, having seemingly realised where this logic goes he adds
That doesn’t mean we should ignore the softer, so-called “gateway” drugs such as cannabis. I fervently believe that because of its detrimental effect on mental health – particularly that of young people – cannabis should be reclassified as a class B drug
Right, he repeats the old cannabis is a “gateway” drug mantra again, despite all the evidence to the contrary and supports sending out the message in a way he knows doesn’t work. In his mind what we have to do is stop arresting low level recreational users but we need a change in the law so that we can arrest more of them. Depressing logic – if you can call it “logic”, isn’t it?
Of course, the Mail had to carry something and they had a piece by Brian Paddick, famous for being the leading light in the Brixton cannabis experiment a few years back. Brian has in the past made some good points regarding the futility of the enforcement approach, now he has a simpler excuse:
In contrast with other crime categories there are no police targets for drugs offences – so there is no incentive to take the problem seriously.
In fact, there is a disincentive, because the more drugs arrests you make, the more of a problem you appear to have on your patch. In other words, police forces are rewarded for sitting on their hands.
Once this wouldn’t have been a consideration but now, sinking beneath the performance targets laid down by Whitehall, it’s a clincher in deciding how well a police chief is performing.
The apology mentioned at the start of this blog entry we owe to Brian Paddick is this: When he introduced the cannabis policy to policing in South London back in 2001 or so, he seemed to understand the nature of the drug problem, he seemed to understand that cannabis in particular was so widely accepted in that community that its enforcement was driving a wedge between the police and the community and he seemed to understand the real need for cannabis law reform. Well we got him wrong and it turns out he didn’t understand anything of the sort. He is, sadly, someone who still believes – despite all the evidence and even now following this latest report – that prohibition can be made to work and that it is the right thing to do. So sorry, we got you wrong Brian, you are an idiot after all. No wonder he did so badly in the recent London Mayoral elections.
Said it before, but it needs saying again: Illegal drugs are not controlled drugs, that is the real problem.
