From: [p--l] at [shuv.demon.co.uk] (Phil Stovell)
Newsgroups: alt.law-enforcement,talk.politics.drugs
Subject: BMJ - The war on drugs Prohibition isn't working some legalisation will help
Date: Sat, 23 May 1998 11:40:31 GMT
Editorial, British Medical Journal, Volume 311, 23-30 December 1995
Drugs, says psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, have taken over the lead role
from sex in the "the grand morality play of human existence. "No
longer, says Szasz, "are men, women, and children tempted, corrupted,
and ruined by the irresistibly sweet pleasures of sex; instead, they
are tempted, corrupted, and ruined by the irresistibly sweet pleasures
of drugs." Because dealing with drugs is viewed as a moral problem,
politicians tend to compete in their zeal to banish the evil from the
kingdom. Those who talk of legalisation are dismissed as mavericks,
and whipped back into line. The British government's drug strategy for
the next three years states baldly "There will be no legalisation of
any currently controlled drugs." But some legalisation would help.
The politicians fighting the jihad against drugs want to obliterate
the enemy. They, of course, make an exception for legal drugs like
alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine; indeed, British government last week
recommended teetotallers take up drinking alcohol for the good of
their health (3).
Yet a world devoid of drugs seems as unlikely as a world devoid of
poverty and sin. Thomas Sydenham observed 300 years ago "Among the
remedies which it has pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve
his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium" (4);
and Aldous Huxley wrote "That humanity at large will ever be able to
dispense Artificial Paradises seems very unlikely. Most men women lead
lives at the worst so painful, at the best monotonous, poor and
limited that the urge to escape longing to transcend themselves if
only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principal
appetites of the soul." (5)
If we accept that a world without drugs is unachievable (and probably
intolerable) then the important question, argues drug policy expert
Ethan Nadelman, becomes "What are the best means to regulate the
production, distribution and consumption of the great variety of
psychoactive substances available today and in the foreseeable
future?" (6).
To reduce the debate to arguments between "prohibitionists" and
"legalisers" is to oversimplify, but it's a useful device for
beginning to understand the issues. The case for legalising drugs
begins with the failure of current prohibitionist policies. The United
States has been conducting a "war on drugs" for seven decades, during
which time there have been steady increases in seizures of illegal
drugs, the numbers of people using drugs, and the health and social
costs of drug taking. Economists argue from first principles that the
war on drugs must fail. Any success in reducing the supply will raise
the price of illegal drugs. Addicts must then commit more crime to
feed their habit; and a rise in the profit margins of drug smugglers
urges them on to greater efforts.
The history of the drug trade is that supply always meets demand.
Milton Friedman, the Nobel prize winning economist, puts it thus:
"Illegality creates obscene profits that finance the murderous tactics
of the drug lords; illegality leads to the corruption of law
enforcement officials; illegality monopolises the efforts of honest
law forces so that they are starved of resources to fight the simpler
crimes of robbery, theft and assault." (7) The main result of the
United States war on drugs is a prison system bursting with petty drug
offenders, most of them African-Americans.
Britain has never been as warlike as the United States in efforts to
control drugs. British policy is, however, essentially prohibitionist,
and yet about seven million people in Britain have taken cannabis at
some time in their lives. (8) About a quarter to a third of young
people have tried solvents or illegal drugs by their 20th birthday
(9), and in one survey the proportion of young people who had been
offered drugs rose from 2% in 1969 to 41% in 1994. (9) LSD and ecstasy
have now also been absorbed into mainstream youth culture, with about
9% of those aged 16 to l9 having used ecstasy and about 8% LSD. (9)
These high reported prevalences are likely to be true because seizures
of cannabis more than tripled from 23 592 in 1984 to 107 629 in 1994,
ecstasy seizures increased from 39 in 1989 to 715 in 1994, and heroin
seizures rose from 2995 in 1984 to 4480 in 1994. (10)
Time to consider going Dutch?
Other countries have been more willing to experiment with
decriminalisation and legalisation. The Netherlands effectively
decriminalised penal possession of drugs in 1976, and cannabis is sold
in "coffee shops." The Dutch are now coming under great pressure to
reverse their experiment from neighbouring countries, worried that
they are being flooded with drugs from the Netherlands. Yet the 1976
changes in the Netherlands seem to have been followed by a fall in use
of cannabis: from 13 % of those aged 17-18 in 1976 to 6% in 1985.
Monthly prevalence of cannabis use among Dutch high school students is
around 5.4% compared with 29% in the United States. (11) Forbidden
fruit may, indeed, be sweetest.
One simple argument for criminalising drugs is often used by
governments in the context of tobacco: that the state has no right to
interfere with what individuals do in private so long as they don't
harm others.
Another argument is that legalisation would cut the huge costs of
enforcement, prosecution, and imprisonment. Thirdly, a legal market
could allow quality control of drugs and education on how to avoid
them or use them more safely; drugs might more predictably be
prevented from reaching the young and vulnerable. Finally, many of the
adverse health effects of drugs stem from criminalisation rather than
from the drugs themselves. Anyway, current policy is clearly not
driven by totting up the good and bad effects of drugs: few are more
harmful than tobacco.
Although the arguments for legalisation can be expressed forcefully,
almost nobody argues for a free, legal, unregulated market for all
drugs, and clearly no single policy will cover all drugs. Nadelmann
says: "It is imperative that any drug policy distinguishes between
casual use that results in little or no harm to anyone, drug misuse
that causes harm primarily to the consumer, and drug misuse that
results in palpable harm to others - and then focuses primarily on the
last of these, secondarily on preventing the misuse of drugs, and
little at all on casual drug use." (6)
The key question is how the world would look if drugs were legal. The
Australian National Task Force on Cannabis has identified five options
for cannabis legislation: total prohibition; prohibition with civil
penalties; partial prohibition; regulation of the production,
distribution, and sale of cannabis; and free availability. (12) The
task force opted for keeping possession, cultivation, and sale in any
quantity illegal but decriminalising "simple personal use or
possession ... without compromising activities aimed at deterring
cannabis use."
Others - for instance, economist Richard Stevenson have tried to
describe a world where large companies produce, distribute, and
advertise drugs like heroin and cocaine and invest heavily in research
designed to produce drugs that will satisfy customers' wants while
making them safer. (13)
Much more work needs to be done on envisaging a world that includes
some legalisation of drugs. But it's clear that purely prohibitionist
policies don't work and make the problems of drug abuse worse.
Governments worldwide have followed illogical and often
counterproductive drug policies, primarily because drug use is seen in
moral terms. Wars on drugs are doomed to failure, but experiments with
decriminalising and even legalising drugs - as in the Netherlands -
have shown promising results.
Policies that allow some decriminalisation and legalisation are much
more likely than prohibition to succeed in achieving everybody's aim
of minimising the harm from drug abuse.
RICHARD SMITH
Editor
British Medical Journal
BMJ, London WC1H 9JR
BMJ volume 311 23-3O DECEMBER 1995
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with drugs: consequences of government control. Lexington, Mass:
Lexington, 1987
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Health, Secretary of State for Health, Secretary of State for
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department of Health, 1995.
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Winning the war on drugs: to legalise or not. London: Institute for
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5. Huxley A. The doors of perception and heaven and hell. London:
Penguin, 1959
6. Nadelmann E.A. Progressive legalisers, progressive prohibitionists
and the reduction of drug related harm. In: Heather N, Wodak A,
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from faith to science. London: Whurr, 1993.
7. Friedman M. An open letter to Bill Bennett. Wall Street Journal
1989; 7 September. A14
8. Baker O, Marsden J. Institute for the Study of Drug Dependence.
Drug misuse in Britain 1994. London ISSD, 1994.
9. Wright JD, Pearl L. Knowledge and experience of young people
regarding drug abuse, 1969-94. BMJ 1995; 310:20-4
10. Anonymous. Statistics of drug seizures and offenders dealt with,
United Kingdom, 1994. Statistical Bulletin 1995: Issue 24/95. (ISSN
0143 6384).
11. Morgan JP, Riley D, Chesher GB. Cannabis: legal reform, medicinal
use and harm reduction. In: Heather N, Wodak A, Nadelmann E, and
O'Hare P, eds. Psychoactive drugs and harm reduction: from faith to
science.
London: Whurr, 1993
12. Ali R, Christie P. Report of the National Task Force on Cannabis.
Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1994.
13. Stevenson R. Winning the war on drugs: to legalise or not. London:
Institute for Economic Affairs, 1994.
--
Phil Stovell
Petersfield, Hants, UK
[p--l] at [shuv.demon.co.uk]
http://www.shuv.demon.co.uk/