Government consults on the new drugs policy – after deciding what it will be of course.

Ever had the feeling of Déjà vu? The British government has announced it’s interested in hearing people’s views about the future direction of drugs policy before it launches it’s new strategy so you can tell them how good you think it is – it’s all a part of David Cameron’s “Big Society” idea apparently. Sadly, just like the last time this was done under Labour when they announced the “consultation”, they have also announced what they intend to do anyway and in particular they have no intention of changing the basic approach; any moves towards significant law reform are off the agenda, there will be no debate about the merits or otherwise of prohibition.

As the Home Office states on its consultation website – where everyone is invited to make their comments, for what it’s worth. Please do add your comments and treat the whole sham exercise with the respect it deserves.

Ministers have agreed the new strategic vision and broad themes for the Drug Strategy which will set the framework for the future delivery of drugs policy.

So they’ve decided what they intend to do and are now asking for comments. If this all seems a little pointless, well yes it is, it’s clearly no more than a PR exercise of the sort many of us hoped had died with the last government, but seemingly is still with us.  So what can we expect from this all new policy where nothing has changed?

The overall focus and scope of the strategy will be all illegal drugs. However, for those activities where a joint drugs and alcohol approach is appropriate, this is recognised, particularly in the areas of prevention, treatment and recovery. The strategy will take a broad approach to preventing and reducing substance misuse of whatever type.

This statement shows a certain degree of confused thinking right from the start. The term “illegal drugs” is not only pedantically incorrect – they are “prohibited” of course, not “illegal”, but at least they don’t use the totally incorrect term “controlled”. More importantly the term “illegal drugs” covers a huge range of substances each as different as chalk and cheese, yet they are discussed as if they are a single substance.

What is really wrong with this statement is that it continues the false idea that alcohol isn’t really a drug, it promotes the idea that a range of policies is correct for alcohol and a totally different – often totally opposite – range of policies are correct for everything else and just occasionally there might be a few overlaps where the same approach can be applied to “both”. We’re not off to a good start.

Worse, no mention is made here of problem drug use connected with prescribed medication, although it is touched on, briefly, much later.

So what do they have in mind for the new policy? The questionnaire has four main sections, the first being the “vision” thing, which doesn’t seem to see medical drugs at all:

Section 1: Vision for the New Drug Strategy

The Home Office will lead the new Drug Strategy to prevent drug taking, disrupt drug supply, strengthen enforcement and promote drug treatment with the focus on enabling people to become free of their addictions, including alcohol, to recover fully and contribute to society.

So clearly this is firmly rooted in the tired and failed mantra of a war on drugs – drug “control” through “prevention” (a euphemism for criminalisation), supply side reduction and general enforcement. This from a government which is constantly telling us we have a public finance crisis and everything provided by the public sector is facing cuts of 25% or more – including the police, yet there seems to have been no willingness to examine the cost effectiveness of the enforcement approach and – it seems – a strong desire to throw even more money at it. Something doesn’t add up.

Also of interest is the desire to “promote drug treatment with the focus on enabling people to become free of their addictions, including alcohol, to recover fully and contribute to society”. We have heard already of plans to force problem drug users into treatment by withholding benefit payments, it would seem that at the root of the thinking is the prohibitionist philosophy that “recovery” means “abstinence”, all that’s needed to make people recover is to get them to quit all drug (“illegal” drug and alcohol) use. This is naive logic even more faith based than we’ve endured over the past 13 years.

Worse, it makes this statement:

A more holistic approach with drugs issues being assessed and tackled alongside other issues such as alcohol abuse, child protection, mental health, employment and housing.

“Alongside other issues such as alcohol abuse” – just to confirm the idea that alcohol isn’t a drug of course. Is all use abuse? Reading this sometimes it seems so, but surely not?

On the basic issue of forcing people into abstinence based rehab, as Andrew M Brown wrote in the Telegraph on Monday 23rd August “Cameron’s radical drug policy is all very well, but addicts need a reason to get better”

The thing is, it’s easy to sound impressively uncompromising when you talk about addiction in the abstract. But addiction is an unusual medical problem in the sense that in many cases the patient doesn’t want to get better. Kindness and love very often are not enough to “cure” an addict, so it’s hard to see how punishment is likely to fare any better. Addicts may not have a disease – that’s a matter for debate – but they are certainly sick.

He goes on to  say that forcing people into rehab will simply lower the already low success rate and add to the “revolving door” routine of failed clients; of course he is right. Unless the government is planning to spend a huge amount more on residential rehab of dubious effectiveness (in which case which other aspect of drugs policy gets cut?) this whole approach is going nowhere. The idea that you can force people into good health is just plain daft.

The key word is “enabling”, that doesn’t – or shouldn’t – mean “forcing”. Of course it is reasonable that treatment should be available to anyone who really wants it and all too often it hasn’t been, but as Andrew Brown says the only people who stand a chance of success in quitting drugs are those who are deeply motivated to do so. Just providing that level of access to treatment will cost a huge amount of money though, all of it extra money, it simply isn’t going to happen.

“recovery” is a word bandied around a lot in this document, just what does this word really mean? Well, it’s not actually defined anywhere in the Home Office consultation beyond the above, but the policy seems to be based on it. Basing a policy on an ill-defined term is risky to put it mildly and means this whole exercise is little more than tough talking rhetoric.

Of course, the vast, vast majority of drug users – be it illegal drugs or alcohol the-not-really-a-drug – are not problematic users and do not have an addiction. So should the policy apply to all drugs or only those which cause the biggest problems? Amazingly this is actually a question asked in the consultation, although it comes not in the basic “vision” section but in the next part and it’s not even the first question asked there.

Section 2: Prevent drug use – Department for Education lead:

Acting early, particularly with young people, can help stop drug and alcohol problems from developing.

Can it? Well maybe although how you act early with old people isn’t clear.

The reasons that people come to misuse drugs or alcohol are complex, influenced by personal, community and societal factors. And while we know that adolescence is typically the point at which misuse starts, prevention strategies need to consider the full range of these factors

It is reasonable – desirable of course – to have a policy to keep kids away from drugs, that goes without saying, but to assume that keeping “young people” away from drugs will prevent addiction problems later in life is a bit of an assumption and seems based on the “progression” idea of starting with cannabis and escalating to heroin.

What do they mean by “young people”? Again the term isn’t defined, does it mean children, or teens or late teens or early 20’s? Is there a point where a policy designed for children stops and a policy designed for adults begins? This, of course, isn’t discussed.

What do they mean by “misuse”? As they are talking about “drugs and alcohol” here they presumably accept that not all use is misuse. So do they accept people can “use” drugs? If so, is the policy supposed to prevent “use” or just “misuse” in young adults?

Again it’s all so shallow, way too shallow for such a complex issue. As if to acknowledge this we get a real stinker of a question here:

Question B4: Which drugs (including alcohol) should prevention programmes focus on?

* Those that cause the most harm
* Those that are most widely used
* All drugs

This is one of those questions which is easy to ask but produces a real nightmare for the prohibitionist mind, because if the answer is the first or second option efforts need to be focused on alcohol. If the answer is “all drugs” then you have to give the same message to (apparently) two entirely different substances – alcohol and “drugs” and waste a lot of time effort and money trying to prevent something that isn’t going to be a problem.

This should have been the first question in the “vision” section if it is to mean anything, it needs to be a question relating to the whole application of the policy

Section 3: “Joint Home Office and Ministry of Justice lead”

As part of the full assessment on sentencing policy, we will ensure that sentencing for drug use helps offenders come off drugs

Here we go again, using the criminal justice system to enforce a healthy lifestyle. This section is all about how to use enforcement to “control” drugs – it seems to ignore all the experience of the past 40-odd years by basing the plans on the assumption that drugs can be controlled through enforcement, there is no evidence that this is the case of course and much to suggest it isn’t

Interestingly though the first question asked in this section is

Question C1: When does drug use become problematic?

Why is that question asked here? Again, this should have been a question asked early on in the “vision” section. It should also be followed by a question asking whether non-problematic drug use should be the focus of enforcement activities at least in the same way or to the same extent as problematic use, but it isn’t. Why it’s asked here is unclear.

Section 4:  “Rebalance treatment to support drug free outcomes – Department of Health lead” – This is all about enforcing abstinence through the health service, quite scary stuff potentially.

We recognise that drug addiction is a complex disorder that has serious health costs and causes serious harm to the community. Whilst reducing harm is an important component of treatment, promoting and supporting recovery and a drug free lifestyle is the ultimate aim.

Is addiction in and of itself the cause of such problems? This is pure rhetoric; addiction as such doesn’t automatically lead to serious health issues or harm to the community. Addiction to nicotine, although severe for example doesn’t lead to harm for the community and the health effects of nicotine addiction are caused almost entirely by the method the addiction is serviced – ie smoking. Much the same point can be made for heroin and there are plenty of examples of people with a long term medical addiction to heroin living long lives and causing no problems whatsoever. Many of the social and health harms caused by addiction to prohibited heroin are caused by prohibition; there are many issues here, it isn’t as simple and as clear cut as this implies but no discussion of this is allowed.

The phrasing of this is interesting as well: “promoting and supporting recovery and a drug free lifestyle”  would seem to accept that “recovery” and “a drug free lifestyle” are not necessarily the same thing?

Question D3: Are there situations in which drug and alcohol services might be more usefully brought together or are there situations where it is more useful for them to be operated separately?

Again, they really don’t seem to know what to do about this totally false “drug and alcohol” distinction, which only exists because of the legal distinction at the heart of the policy. The only “advantage” in treating “drugs and alcohol” as separate issues would seem be in order to support the drugs policy and to re-enforce this false distinction.

Question D4: Should there be a greater focus on treating people who use substances other than heroin or crack cocaine, such as powder cocaine and so called legal highs?

This question is strange, why are “legal highs” mentioned like this? This is supposed to be a Dept of Health lead section, surely the only issue here should be what to do with people who have a problem with a particular drug?

At least they finally get around to mentioning the issue of other “legal” (un-prohibited) drugs other than alcohol

Question D5: Should treating addiction to legal substances, such as prescribed and over-the-counter medicines, be a higher priority?

That is the only mention of medical drugs, which is really quite shocking for a drugs policy, but that’s what you get when you base your thinking on rhetoric.

Section 5: Support recovery to break cycle of drug addiction – Department for Work and Pensions lead: Another section dedicated to forcing people into a healthy lifestyle.

The coalition government believes in an approach to tackling drug and alcohol dependency that is firmly rooted in the concept of recovery and reintegration, as a process through which an individual is enabled to overcome the symptoms and causes of their dependency, and become an active and contributing member of society.

This is great, apart from the apparent lack of understanding the the person needs to want this outcome as has been mentioned, it really can’t be forced onto people who don’t want it. If we are talking about providing help to people who really want to lead a drug free lifestyle (or at least a life free of a certain drug) then yes, but we’re not really, are we?

This of course comes from a coalition government headed by David Cameron who once said

“Politicians attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator by posturing with tough policies and calling for crackdown after crackdown. Drugs policy has been failing for decades.”

and

it would be “disappointing” if radical options on the law on cannabis were not looked at.

and Nick Clegg who heads the Libdems, a party which once upon a time (before they got elected) had a radical, sensible drugs policy which seemed to call for the eventual legalisation of cannabis and which was a party proud to issue a document entitled Realism, Responsibility: Proposals for the Reform of Drugs Law (a document which was quietly taken down from the Libdem website a while back, but is still available at Transform). All this proves that politicians aren’t to be trusted if you can see their lips move, but we knew that already.

The final comment to all this is that the one drug not addressed in this “consultation” scam is cannabis, the most widely used and popular of the prohibited drugs of course. Perhaps they hope that if they don’t say anything about it, cannabis will just go away? What do you intend to do about non-problematic cannabis use by adults Mr Cameron, and why?