A cost benefit analysis for the war on drugs? The government just says “no”!

Transform have been trying without success to get the government to publish a cost/benefit analysis of its drugs policy since late last year. This, remember, is a government that promised “evidence based” policies so it’s reasonable to expect them to actually have the evidence already. Drugs policy is perhaps one of their major policies and one which they’ve invested a lot of our money in for close of 40 years, so they’ve had plenty of time to amass the evidence.

Strangely it seems they don’t have the evidence to support the policy though and worse are very reluctant to allow an investigation in order to find the truth. When Transform put the idea of a cost/benefit study to the government some time back they were given an very telling answer:

Which is why when (the now former) Home Office Minister Bob Ainsworth MP was asked to audit drug law enforcement to see how effective it really is, he refused, saying; “Why would we want to do that unless we were going to legalise drugs?”

No doubt born from frustration Transform have commissioned a cost/benefit study of the drug war themselves, the study is online ont he Transform website entitled “A Comparison of the Cost-effectiveness of the Prohibition and Regulation of Drugs”. Given the steady stream of damming reports form advisory bodies, think tanks and the like over the past few years, it shouldn’t come as too much of a shock to learn the results indicate the present policy is an expensive waste of money.

Rather than highlight yet again the findings of the Transform study – it’s been all over the media today and you can see the results for yourself by following the link above or reading their latest blog entry, what I want to draw attention to is the responce from the Home Office. Instead of agreeing to an independent audit of the drugs policy or being open about the evidence they have, they came out with this comment – quoted here from the Telegraph which ran a story with the slightly confused headline “Illegal drugs cost the country £16bn a year, says charity Transform”

But a Home Office spokesman said: “Drugs are controlled because they are harmful. The law provides an important deterrent to drug use and legalisation would risk a huge increase in consumption with an associated cost to public health.

“The legalisation of drugs would not eliminate the crime committed by organised career criminals; such criminals would simply seek new sources of illicit revenue through crime. Neither would a regulated market eliminate illicit supplies, as alcohol and tobacco smuggling demonstrate.”

Lets take that line by line, because it says a lot about the lack of honesty that surrounds the government’s approach to drug use:

1:  “Drugs are controlled because they are harmful.”

Reality: Drugs are not controlled because they are illegal, therefore supplied by an uncontrolled  and underground industry which reaches into every section of society. The drugs, which themselves have health implications are made far more dangerous because prohibition prevents any form of quality control, doses are unknown and indeed high levels of contamination are used as an indicator of success of the policy.

2: The law provides an important deterrent to drug use

Not in my experience or that of a great many of my friends over the years it didn’t, neither did it for the present Home Secretary Jaquie Smith, or my MP Charles Clarke, or of course the leader of the opposition David Cameron.

Indeed, if the government is so sure of this deterrent effect, why can’t it simply provide the evidence it has to demonstrate the truth of what it says because I haven’t heard of any. Actually, there is a fair amount of evidence to suggest enforcement makes little of no difference, take for example a study by Craig Reinarman, University of Santa Cruz entitled “The Limited Relevance of Drug Policy: Cannabis in Amsterdam and in San Francisco”

With the exception of higher drug use in San Francisco, we found strong similarities across both cities. We found no evidence to support claims that criminalization reduces use or that decriminalization increases use.

We’ll let the fact that they actually found higher rates of cannabis use in SF than they did in Amsterdam pass, the fact they didn’t find any deterrent effect is good enough to make the point. So if the Home office has access to better research, why are they so reluctant to tell us what it is? Of course they don’t have any real study to back this assumption, but the whole justification for the prohibition of drugs depends utterly on there being a deterrent effect of criminalisation, so they can’t risk allowing a study to test the theory.

3: ” legalisation would risk a huge increase in consumption with an associated cost to public health”.

Well, would it? Especially regarding cannabis anyone who wants to can get it these days. As noted above there is actually no evidence to suggest use would go up and plenty to suggest it might actually come down. But of course, the assumption the Home Office is making is “all use is abuse – all use if harmful”, which is of course is plain wrong. Take for example the case of booze, which isn’t only legal but actively promoted and advertised with multi-million pound budgets. Many millions of people drink, most of them reasonably sensibly. A few people drink unwisely and to excess. How would restricting the vast majority of sensible users make the damage done by alcohol less prevalent? The experience of alcohol prohibition in the USA demonstrated the truth of this only too clearly of course – use dropped greatly in prohibition days, but harm went through the roof.

So yes, we can accept as a hypothesis that use may well go up, but it does not necessarily follow that irresponsible use and the harm this causes would do so as a result.

Further, much of the harm done by illegal drugs is caused not so much by the drug but by the uncontrolled way it’s sold, uncertain doses and in the case of cannabis unknown strains, contamination and so on. A legal, controlled trade would reduce this harm.

4: “The legalisation of drugs would not eliminate the crime committed by organised career criminals; such criminals would simply seek new sources of illicit revenue through crime.”

This is close to laughable. The organised career criminals are running the drugs trade for one simple reason and one reason only: They can make a lot of money very easily from doing so. If this source of easy money was  removed – which allowing a properly controlled and regulated supply side would do – then there would simply be no reason for profit driven organised crime to get involved.

What’s worse about the statement above is the idea that criminals are somehow not exploiting other avenues of crime at the moment because they’re into supplying drugs. Of course criminals will make money from any scam they can find and are already doing so.

It really is quite simple whatever the Home Office says; closing down the illegal market in drugs would undercut organised crime at a stroke.

Finally they make this claim:

5: “Neither would a regulated market eliminate illicit supplies, as alcohol and tobacco smuggling demonstrate.”

Well, of course it comes down to supply and demand. If the price is high enough then yes, someone will undercut it if they can. If the price on the street is seen as fair and is not too much artificially higher than it need be, then there would be no black market trade. If, however, tax levels were set too high and the same – or a similar- product was easy to source from somewhere cheaper – then there will be an illegal trade. This is what’s happening with alcohol and tobacco now, indeed this very point been presented as a strong argument against the proposals in Scotland for a minimum price for booze.

The Home Office case really doesn’t hold water and I suspect they know it. Come hell or high water however they will never freely admit it, but events are moving by the day.

We are presently stuck in the mire of Afghanistan, a situation brought about in no small part by the war on drugs. The USA is facing the very real possibility of  Mexico descending into violent anarchy and Canada facing gang warefare. The whole pack of cards is getting close to collapse, really it’s only a matter of time.