The northlondonhippy

The Trans­form Drug Pol­icy Foun­da­tion, the only UK organ­i­sa­tion of its kind to advise the United Nations on such issues, will this week pub­lish a new report claim­ing the cur­rent strat­egy has failed. The report, ‘After the War on Drugs: Tools for the Debate’, claims there is an urgent need for full con­sul­ta­tion on allow­ing the con­trolled sup­ply of ille­gal drugs. ‘It is clear our drug pol­icy can­not con­tinue down the same failed path for­ever,’ the report states. ‘Prohibition’s fail­ure is now widely under­stood and acknowl­edged among key stake­hold­ers in the debate… the polit­i­cal ben­e­fits of pur­su­ing pro­hi­bi­tion are now wan­ing and the polit­i­cal costs of its con­tin­u­a­tion are becom­ing unsustainable.’

The report claims that drug pro­hi­bi­tion has allowed organ­ised crime to con­trol the mar­ket and crim­i­nalised mil­lions of users, putting a huge strain on the jus­tice sys­tem. The Home Office esti­mates that half of all prop­erty crime is linked to fundrais­ing to buy ille­gal drugs. The police claim that drug mar­kets are the main dri­ver of the UK’s bur­geon­ing gun cul­ture. Offi­cial fig­ures released last week showed that drug offences recorded by police had risen 14 per cent in April to June of this year, com­pared with the same period in 2006.

Politi­cians claim tough anti-drugs laws send clear sig­nals to soci­ety. But Trans­form points to a Home Office sur­vey, com­mis­sioned in 2000, which showed the social and eco­nomic costs of heroin and cocaine use were between £10.1 and £17.4 bil­lion — the bulk of which were costs to the vic­tims of drug-related crime.

‘Over the course of 10 years, a series of dif­fer­ent inquiry reports into UK drugs pol­icy all say the same thing: the pol­icy is mal­func­tion­ing,’ said Steve Rolles, the report’s author. ‘They’ve all been blithely ignored by the gov­ern­ment, which insists it is mak­ing progess.’

Last week, North Wales Police chief con­sta­ble Richard Brun­strom said he would ‘cam­paign hard’ for drugs such as heroin to be legalised. Pre­vi­ously he has said that drugs laws are out of date and that the Mis­use of Drugs Act 1971 should be replaced by a new ‘Sub­stance Mis­use Act’.

Trans­form claims the con­sul­ta­tion process, which fin­ished on Fri­day, was designed to sti­fle debate on drugs pol­icy. ‘The con­sul­ta­tion process has been a sham,’ Rolles said. ‘It hasn’t high­lighted any poli­cies to con­sult on. It’s becom­ing very clear the next 10-year strat­egy is going to be iden­ti­cal to the last one. The whole idea that there is going to be a rad­i­cal change is just not the case.’

The think-tank has taken the unusual step of writ­ing to the Bet­ter Reg­u­la­tion Exec­u­tive, set up to ensure gov­ern­ment runs smoothly, to com­plain that the Prime Min­is­ter, Gor­don Brown, is already mak­ing pol­icy before the con­sul­ta­tion process had finished.

The Prime Min­is­ter sig­nalled ear­lier this year that the gov­ern­ment would reclas­sify cannabis. He also recently insisted the gov­ern­ment would never decrim­i­nalise drugs, some­thing Trans­form argues makes a mock­ery of the con­sul­ta­tion process.