Thursday, October 30, 2014 

Prohibition still not working, still set to endure.

There's been much in the way of celebratory noises today following the publication of the Home Office study comparing how other countries fight, or rather don't, the war on drugs.  In one of those wonderful examples of a report just confirming what you already knew, it concludes there is no obvious correlation between a punitive approach and lower overall drug use.  Indeed, while drug use in Portugal has fallen since decriminalisation, it has risen in the Czech Republic, where more draconian legislation was introduced in 2010.  Who would have thought?

Except, oh, everyone.  Let's not mince words here.  Politicians have known for decades that prohibition doesn't work.  While the modern approach in this country can be linked back to the panic over heroin use in the early 1970s, coinciding with the Nixon administration's beginning of the crusade against drugs (more than somewhat based around Nixon's conspiratorial belief left-wingers were trying to destroy the right and society itself through promoting "homosexuality, dope, immorality in general"), let's not forget the lesson of that great American experiment from 1920 to 1933.  Quite apart from the inherent stupidity of making something illegal that you can easily brew yourself with ordinary household items, as prison inmates have been doing with little more than apple cores and orange skin since time immemorial, it resulted in the further rise of organised crime.  Back then it was the likes of Al Capone who benefited; now, if you so wish, you can go and see how the Mexican drug cartels operate.  Just be advised you need a strong stomach.

When the Graun nevertheless urges politicians to study the evidence, the leader writer does so knowing full well they have.  It's why politician after politician has come out in favour of liberalisation - after they've left office.  Nor is the refusal to consider decriminalisation all down to fear of what the tabloids will say, as Tony Blair proved when he took the baby steps of ensuring cannabis was downgraded as the Advisory Committee urged and the licensing laws were reformed.  Come the coronation of Gordon Brown, one of his first acts as prime minister was to suck up to Paul Dacre by upgrading cannabis to Class B again.  Blair more often than not led the tabloids, whereas those who've followed have done the opposite.

Is the tide beginning to turn?  Well, yes and no.  Yes, the weight of evidence is becoming too overwhelming to ignore.  Yes, the Sun, apparently sensing a wind of change (to mix metaphors) now joins the Graun in saying the status quo is not an option.  Yes, the legalisation of cannabis in some American states as well as decriminalisation in Uruguay is as the report itself recognises the kind of development that attracts and interests in equal measure.  All this seems encouraging, until that is you remember that we're still in 2014 criminalising the possession of plants which have "mild stimulative effects", as the coalition has done with the ban on khat.  Then you realise that alongside the warm words of Norman Baker on moving towards decriminalisation, the same report advises putting restrictions on head shops and internet sellers of "legal highs" while possession will remain legal.  Baker apparently wants these shops reduced to selling Rizlas; no word on whether bongs would also be allowed.  Where then exactly will people get their still legal for personal possession highs from?  The same person or sites retailing the illegal stuff, perchance?
 
Forgive me then if I don't get too excited by all this.  For the Lib Dems it's obviously been alighted upon as something that might just get a few of their former supporters to return to the fold, and in truth they deserve credit for continuing to push for change.  When though the first response from a prime minister who previously wanted to liberalise drug laws is to resort to the "sending a message" argument, and the Labour frontbench accuses the Lib Dems of wanting to solve "a problem that doesn't exist" it's still going to be years, if not decades, before we have laws based somewhat even slightly related to the evidence of harm.

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Share |

10/30/2014 10:55:00 pm | |

Thursday, December 12, 2013 

Don't break out the plant food just yet.

You have to suspect that today's Graun piece suggesting the coalition is considering introducing a regulatory regime for new legal highs rather than banning those linked to deaths after the fact is little more than a piece of enthusiastic briefing by Norman Baker. All it amounts to is including a toned down version of the New Zealand approach as an option in a consultation paper. As both Theresa May and David Cameron have repeatedly stated they are against liberalisation, with the Labour leadership also toeing the criminalisation line, the chances of there being even the slightest movement seem remote.

The plan also doesn't make sense. Why regulate drugs we know relatively little about when we could instead do the same for those we are far more familiar with? Apart from the minority who will always try something new, the only reason the legal high scene exists as it now does is precisely because of prohibition. The decline in the quality of ecstasy due to ever further restrictions being placed on its ingredients can be linked directly with the rise in alternatives. Indeed, it was only a few years ago that psilocybin mushrooms were perfectly legal to sell so long as they hadn't been prepared for use, a clearly scandalous state of affairs that New Labour saw fit to put a end to. If we wanted, we could within a matter of months have a situation where the sale of say, cannabis, LSD, ecstasy and shrooms was regulated and controlled, at a stroke decimating both the criminals who currently control the trade and the legal high merchants.

We almost certainly never will, of course, not least due to how the Sun and Daily Mail would respond. As I've previously remarked, it's fascinating how the Sun in particular reacted to the sudden rise of mephedrone in an almost textbook moral panic fashion, yet has barely commented since on the new substances that have replaced it. We've also got hell of a long way to go when it still seems khat will be banned, despite the Home Affairs committee calling on Theresa May to abandon her criminalisation of the plant. As yet there has also been no government response to the Advisory Council's recommendation that ketamine be raised to Class B from C. The last three recommendations from the ACMD have all been disregarded, as they either proposed keeping the status quo or the downgrading of the drug they reviewed. Call me cynical, but I get the feeling this time the government might just follow the ACMD's lead.

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Share |

12/12/2013 07:40:00 pm | |

Wednesday, July 03, 2013 

Khat fight; evidence loses.

Yesterday, the home secretary Theresa May did something both commendable and liberal.  She stood up in the Commons and made clear it is unacceptable that the police's use of stop and search is still resulting in disproportionate numbers of young black and Asian men being hassled purely for going about their daily business.  Launching a consultation after a pilot study made clear that when threatened with action, the number of searches fell without there being a corresponding rise in crime, it might just result in one of the grievances that helped spark the riots of two years ago being tackled.

There is though a unwritten rule when it comes to being a modern home secretary.  For every apparent liberalising reform you introduce, you have to then do something that makes life that little bit more miserable for one section of society.  Hence the utterly absurd, ridiculously counter-productive and flying in the face of all the evidence decision today to make khat, or qat, a Class C drug.

This is now the third time in relatively quick succession that the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs has seen its expert advice disregarded for entirely political reasons.  First, Labour under Gordon Brown ignored the council's report that said cannabis should remain Class C, with the panel a year later recommending the downgrading of Ecstasy, or MDMA, to Class B from A.  The head of the ACMD, Professor David Nutt, was then unceremoniously sacked by Alan Johnson after he continued to criticise the government for ignoring the council's advice.  Now with the supposedly more government friendly Professor Les Iversen at the helm, the coalition has decided it simply can't accept their view that khat is only a "mild stimulant" and its effects on the community are relatively negligible (PDF). Iversen merely says that he is "disappointed".

Theresa May for her part claimed that as some of the evidence is on the light side, it's possible the ACMD has underestimated the harm caused by khat, and so she pledges she's acting to protect "vulnerable members of the community". This is rather at odds with the coalition's economic policies, but let's take her word for it. That the ACMD had previously looked at khat in 2005 and came to the same conclusion is irrelevant, nor would it apparently make a difference if further research was commissioned.

The real reasoning behind the ban it seems is, err, that everyone else has already made it illegal. Whether the fears are substantiated or not, it seems the government has come under pressure from both the US and mainland Europe lest the UK become the main trafficking hub for the plant. Again, that khat is an extremely minority pursuit seems irrelevant, as the figures quoted in the ACMD report (2,500 tonnes imported in 2011, worth approx. £13.8m with VAT receipts of £2.8m) suggest. Normally the Tories love nothing better than sticking two fingers up at Europe, but it seems on this occasion that it's lobbying from the US that has made the difference. Considering the now wildly divergent laws that different US states have on cannabis, a drug that the ACMD believes is more harmful than khat, and that the US led war on drugs has worked so magnificently so far, a minister with more backbone would tell them where to get off. But no.

Unfortunately, as the ACMD report also sets out, in hardly any of these countries was khat subject to a harm review prior to it being made illegal (pages 57-58).  Indeed, in the Netherlands, where khat has recently been added to the same list of technically illegal but tolerated substances such as cannabis, the government there also ignored a review that found khat was relatively benign (PDF).  The report also makes clear the obvious consequences of putting khat in Class C: at the moment khat costs between £3 and £6 a bundle to the consumer.  Make it illegal though, and the cost will inevitably increase, attracting those already involved in the wider drugs trade who previously saw the market cornered by legitimate traders with low profit margins.  As Transform say, not only is the government ignoring expert advice that says the harm posed by khat is too low for it to be controlled, doing so will almost certainly make the problems there are worse.

For as Dr Alex Klein argues, there's more at work here than simply the positives and negatives of a plant that in Somali communities plays a role somewhat analogous to that of alcohol in our own.  He believes that the campaign to ban khat is led by those who see the "mafrishes", the cafes where khat is chewed, as a challenge to the authority of the mosque and Islamic organisations.  With the plant banned, and those opposed to the mafrishes likely to quickly inform the police if illegally imported khat continues to be chewed there, the potential for conflict is likely to increased rather than decrease.  Instead of regulating khat, for argument's sake similarly to alcohol, making mafrishes apply for licences, the government wants to move in one fall swoop from khat being completely legal to illegal, even if it's likely to be policed in a similar way to personal possession of cannabis now is.

The government though doesn't want to get into a debate where khat is compared to alcohol, for the reason that it's one it would almost certainly lose. As David Nutt comments, "[I]f politicians wish to argue for drug prohibitions on a moral basis, because they think it is obnoxious and dissolute to sit around getting high from leaves or intoxicated by drink, that's fine, let them make the case, and see whether parliament or the electorate have an interest in policing people's personal habits".  It's far easier to instead rely on claims of links to terrorism, just as it's also easier to ban something getting the blame for a problem rather than tackle the real root causes of why Somalis tend to be marginalised.  When the self-appointed leading campaigner against khat claims there is no such thing as a responsible user of the plant, something immediately disproved when the Independent last year visited a number of mafrishes, it's clear that evidence is still always likely to be trumped by emotion.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

7/03/2013 10:48:00 pm | |

Monday, March 29, 2010 

Fear, panic and politics win yet again.

If ever there was a purer example of how fear, panic and politics will always win out against rationality, cold reflection and research, it's in the proposed fast-track criminalisation of Mephedrone, "Meow Meow" or 4-MMC, or whatever you want to call it. It also marks the final capitulation of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which having previously argued against the government's reclassification of cannabis from Class C to Class B, and having urged that Ecstasy be downgraded to C now seems to have decided under its new leadership to simply act as the pseudo-scientific justificatory rubber stamp that the government needs.

On the face of it, the ACMD is justifying its quick decision on the grounds that 4-MMC, rather than being an actual new drug, is rather more simply an amphetamine masquerading as a designer drug. The precedent for classifying it more quickly than it usually would was last year's ban on "Spice", marketed somewhat similarly to how 4-MMC has been, but which has definitively been identified as containing synthetic cannabinoids. This is in difference to 4-MMC, which has been identified as being based on cathinone compounds found in khat, but as yet has not been so conclusively independently examined. Khat is also not illegal in this country, having been considered by the ACMD for possible criminalisation in the past, but felt to be "safe" enough for it be left outside classification, although cathinone and cathine themselves are classified as Class C. Spice has also been around for a lot longer than 4-MMC, having first been sold back in 2002, while 4-MMC dates only from three years ago.

A far more appropriate response from a council interested in actual evidence rather than anecdote would have been to delay making a recommendation until more research had been conducted. Indeed, it's almost certainly what the previous head of the ACMD, Professor David Nutt, sacked by Alan Johnson for criticising the government over their failure to reclassify Ecstasy following the committee's advice would have recommended. Nutt has also suggested that a new classification, a so-called Class D, should be introduced under which "new" drugs like 4-MMC could be temporarily classified until more is known about them. This would allow them to be sold but place such substances under far stricter regulation than the current free-for-all, which will incidentally continue if it is criminalised but instead mean that it will be organised crime rather than legitimate businesses in control of the supply. It's not just Nutt calling for such a change, but also the UK Drug Policy Commission, which is referring to its similar suggestion for a new emergency classification as "Category X".

With the resignation of so many members of the ACMD in protest at the sacking of Nutt and the government's general attitude towards its previous advice, the latest coming only this morning, it's difficult not to wonder whether those being pushed forward as replacements are not already more in tune with the government's favoured point of view. Even if this is a slur on their characters, then the pressure on them to make a quick decision could hardly be greater. The last month has seen what was already a stream of concern about Mephedrone turn into a veritable torrent, with the tabloids seemingly determined to whip up a moral panic, as hopefully this blog has identified. Not content with just further promoting the drug, as those supplying 4-MMC have themselves made clear the media's coverage has done, regardless of its tone, they've been actively lying about how schools supposedly couldn't confiscate it from students, selectively quoting from ministerial letters in order to continue the charade. Combined with the relatives of loved ones who believe their children have died as a result of taking 4-MMC, ignoring that almost all those who have died after using it were also taking other (illegal) drugs at the same time, politicians have had to make clear That Something Must Be Done, and will be done. Gordon Brown last week actively described an inanimate substance as "evil"; under such an atmosphere, and with an election only just over a month away, it's difficult to believe that even if the ACMD has asked for more time the government would have agreed. Instead, 4-MMC's criminalisation is to be rushed onto the statute books, and with Conservative support, seems certain to become law before the election.

This is the worst of all possible worlds. The very first step of criminalisation is that the price of the drug, which has been relative low, will sky rocket. Those that have become somewhat dependent on it, although again the evidence for this is only anecdotal, and if the drug is closer to amphetamine than methamphetamine addiction tends to be mental rather than physical (although withdrawal doesn't care which is which) will have to find the extra money to pay for it, which usually leads to acquisitive crime, or to switching to a substitute, the most likely of which are either speed or crystal meth. Due to their illegality, drugs which may well have previously been "pure" are far more likely to be doctored or watered down, potentially with far more harmful substances in the case of the former, or leading to the user needing even more in the case of the latter. As mentioned above, where previously "legal high" and drug paraphernalia shops as well as "entrepreneurs" have been supplying and selling 4-MMC, the usual lowlife will now be moving into the breach. Far be it from me to defend capitalism, but where previously the legitimate economy has at least been somewhat benefiting from the rise in popularity of 4-MMC, we're now going to see all of that growth cut off, which is clearly just the government should be doing when we're trying to pull fully clear of recession. Lastly, as 4-MMC is a so-called designer drug, there's nothing to stop a replacement being developed and appearing on the streets potentially within months, with this entire cycle repeating.

All we're doing is moving from a state of affairs where there was little known about the dangers of the drug but it was legal is to one where the position is the same but the drug is illegal. Even while the police claim that they'll be targeting "dealers", which until the criminalisation becomes law are perfectly legitimate businesses and individuals, there will still certainly be cases where recreational users will be charged and prosecuted simply for wanting to make their weekends slightly better. The very same politicians that would never argue for the prohibition of alcohol or tobacco, not just because they enjoy it themselves but also because history shows us that it doesn't work are perfectly prepared to criminalise others for their different choice of psychoactive substances. The policy of drug prohibition will one day be seen in exactly the same terms as that of alcohol prohibition, but it won't be until at least the last generation either retires or is removed from power.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

3/29/2010 11:59:00 pm | |

Tuesday, January 05, 2010 

Scum-watch: Nutted.

Back in November the Sun decided that it was time to resort to the old tabloid trick of attacking someone by association when they couldn't lay a finger on the target himself personally. David Nutt, a senior adviser on drugs to the ACMD, had just been defenestrated by Alan Johnson for daring to argue again that cannabis isn't as dangerous as either the government claims or its classification suggests, so naturally it was time to go scouting around his children's social networking pages to see if they could find any pay dirt.

The result, an article which accused his son Stephen of partaking in cannabis because he was smoking what was clearly a roll-up and not a normal, honest, cigarette, his daughter Lydia of drinking underage, and the by no means hypocritical sneering at his eldest son for appearing naked in the snow in Sweden, ended up being removed with days of it appearing.

Yesterday the Press Complaints Commission published Stephen Nutt's letter of complaint on their website (h/t Tabloid Watch):

The complaint was resolved when the newspaper removed the article from the website, undertook not to repeat the story and published the following letter:

FURTHER to your article about photographs of me on my Facebook site, (November 14) I would like to make clear the pictures were not posted by me and while I had been drinking I was smoking a rolled-up cigarette which did not contain cannabis as the article insinuated. My younger sister Lydia was not intoxicated, so was not drinking under age. My older brother lives in Sweden where it is custom to use a sauna followed by a ‘romp' in the snow in winter. He was neither drunk nor under the influence of intoxicants. Innocuous photographs were taken out of context in an attempt to discredit my father's work.


Which is about as comprehensive and wounding a clarification as ever gets published in the Sun. The article was so obviously in breach of the PCC's code on privacy, not to mention accuracy, that it should never have been published in the first place though; why then should the paper get away without making anything approaching an apology, only having to print a clarification buried away on the letters page? As long as the PCC remains so toothless in the face of such egregious breaches of its code, the campaigning will continue not just for reform but potentially for independent regulation of the press.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

1/05/2010 09:56:00 pm | |

Friday, October 30, 2009 

How government science policy works.

1. In an effort to bring some evidence into a policy often made on the back of scaremongering, hysteria and misinformation, appoint an independent body to examine and advise on what the specific dangers and harms of drugs are, with a view to bringing their suggestions on which drugs should stay legal and illegal, and if illegal, which category they should be in into line with the actual law.

2. Ignore entirely what the board tells you when it doesn't fall into line with you want to hear, and especially so when it completely contradicts what the Daily Mail says.

3. When the chief scientist on the board then complains about this and continues to maintain that his view is right while yours is wrong, demand that he apologises for the "hurt" he caused to the families of those who have died while taking drugs.

4. When the chief scientist then again repeats his argument and accuses you of "devaluing and distorting" the scientific evidence, demand that he resigns for daring to express the opinion which you asked him to provide in the first place.

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

10/30/2009 08:48:00 pm | |

Wednesday, February 11, 2009 

The war on drugs marches on.

Partly because the moral panic about Ecstasy has long since died away, and partly because it was well-known that Jacqui Smith and the Home Office would reject any suggestion whatsoever that the drug should be downgraded to Class B, the publication of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs' report on the harm associated with the drug, and the predicted refusal to accept their advice to downgrade it have been rather underwhelmingly reported. This is a shame, because it's quite clear that when compared to the decision to upgrade cannabis to Class B, the refusal to downgrade Ecstasy is just as outrageous and contemptible.

The problem with our drug laws only gets more and more obvious as the years go by. The Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 is the root of all the problems: it is, to use the horrible cliche, not fit for purpose. The prohibition of drugs has not stopped their use; it has rather only increased it, enriched the criminals that sell them and made it even more difficult to treat those who become addicted. The key problem though is that the 1971 act is blanket prohibition masquerading, with the involvement of the ACMD, as a harm reduction strategy when it is nothing of the sort. This fiction is kept up by the three separate classes of drugs, with the most dangerous and most harmful in Class A, with the least harmful but still illegal in Class C. The classification system is however completely and utterly broken; it has the more or less completely harmless magic mushrooms in Class A, alongside the also relatively benign LSD and Ecstasy, while cigarettes which kill hundreds of thousands across the world every year, is in none of the categories. Likewise, alcohol, which can cause untold misery and precipitates violence, is also completely legal.

Both should of course remain completely legal; if individuals want to slowly poison themselves, especially with tobacco and nicotine, then they are perfectly entitled to do so as long as they don't harm others at the same time. Our liberated attitude towards tobacco and alcohol is in sharp contrast to that towards cannabis, which although can cause harm, as heavy use suggests that it can induce psychosis, as well as having similar effects on the lungs when smoked to tobacco, remains illegal and demonised by the popular press. Ecstasy is arguably even safer than cannabis: the ACMD report and David Nutt's previous article which compared MDMA use in harm terms to horse riding, both argue that the main danger when using the drug is that users become either dehydrated, from drinking too little while dancing, to becoming too hot, or more rarely, develop hyponatraemia, where too much water is drank, which notably was the actual cause of death in the case of Leah Betts. MDMA itself is only toxic when taken in very high doses, which is rare. It's also not addictive, there is little concrete evidence as yet that it has long-term side effects, although some studies have suggested there may be memory problems in later life, and unlike cocaine, heroin or indeed alcohol, it tends not to lead to violence among those who take it; quite the opposite, in fact. The other main cause for concern is directly associated with its illegality: it's impossible to know what else is in the pill other than MDMA, or indeed whether there is any MDMA in what you've bought at all, or whether it might instead contain its sister, MDA, or other substances. If anything, the levels of MDMA in the pills has declined over time: the pills which became exceptionally popular due to their intensity during the early 90s, named "love doves" after the dove stamped on them, have long gone, as have the similarly well-remembered initial "Mitsubishis", stamped with the car company's logo, from the late 90s. MDMA "powder", which is regarded as more likely to be purer, has increased in popularity as a result.

Compared to the insanity which is the Class A status of magic mushrooms, or Psilocybin mushrooms to give them their proper name, Ecstasy's status looks reasonably rational. That something which grows perfectly naturally of its own accord is illegal is a mind-twister by itself; when you consider that the number of people who have died as a result of taking shrooms numbers between 0 and 10 despite evidence that they have been used since before the earliest recorded history makes it even more ludicrous. The only thing that's going to damage someone from taking magic mushrooms is what a bad trip might do to their psyche, and even then most will get over it with no problems whatsoever.

The government itself knows that once the debate has moved on from the hysteria to the actual scientific evidence regarding harm, the blanket prohibition on drugs is now fast becoming completely untenable. This is why it has withdrawn from so much as bothering to argue their case regarding the softer drugs, and was doubtless ecstatic to be helped along regarding cannabis by the useful idiots in the press that claimed that the cannabis of today was 20 or 30 times stronger than before, when this was demonstrably not the case. Instead, it's had to settle on "sending a message"; it was sending a message that smoking cannabis was unacceptable by raising it to Class B, while emphasising the dangers of the new ultra-strength skunk, just as it is now sending a message that taking Ecstasy is unacceptable by keeping it in Class A. Ever since the initial moral panic over heroin in the 1960s, the press has helped with the idea that most drugs are unpredictably deadly, while public opinion has also stayed in much the same position, supporting prohibition and most recently the raising of cannabis back up to Class B.

The ACMD in essence completely wasted its time in bothering to review Ecstasy, because the government had already made plain and clear that regardless of what their review said, Ecstasy would stay in Class A, as Transform made more than clear in their submission to the ACMD (PDF). At least the policy on ecstasy has been consistent: the downgrading of cannabis, which was in line with the ACMD's recommendation, was then overturned once the government decided that to upgrade it again was politically expedient, regardless of their scientific analysis. If the members of the ACMD had something resembling guts, they would resign en masse, as after all, what is the point of an advisory council which delivers independent advice based on a review of the all the relative literature and evidence if that evidence is going to be completely disregarded because it doesn't fit with the government's pre-defined policy? Instead, David Nutt apologised to Jacqui Smithover his comparison of the dangers of Ecstasy and horse riding after she disgracefully criticised him in parliament. His article ruthlessly exposed the stupidity inherent in our current policy towards drugs, and also ruthlessly exposed our government ministers as being just as stupid, and just as cowardly in the face of the ignorance but deafening noise of the tabloid press. Evidence-based policy has never been such a contradiction in terms.

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Share |

2/11/2009 11:59:00 pm | |

Wednesday, May 07, 2008 

You better hope you don't smoke the reefer.

It's incredibly hard to articulate in words just how mindbogglingly stupid the government's decision to reclassify cannabis as a "Class B" drug is. Let's put it this way - if you repeatedly dropped a baby on its head from a height which didn't crack its skull open but did understandably adversely affect its intelligence, then supplied that child throughout its lifetime with only Ayn Rand books, the Daily Mail, and GMTV for intellectual stimulation, then through your connections sent him to work at Goldman Sachs before he progressed to becoming prime minister through freak luck, not even he, so mentally stunted that he couldn't even tie his shoelaces without needing the help of a civil servant, would not think that making cannabis a Class B drug again would be a good idea.

That's the kind of level of abject intellectual poverty we're dealing with here. There's Gordon Brown, the acclaimed brainbox behind Britain's prospering economy, so intelligent that he went to university at sixteen, and he comes out with such insultingly idiotic statements regarding the "lethal quality" of cannabis that it almost makes you wonder if this isn't just him openly prostituting himself to Paul Dacre as bending over and opening himself up so that the entire Mail team can have a go. We have "Wacky" Jacqui Smith, an Oxford graduate, who has herself admitted to use of cannabis back in her care-free youth before she realised that the drug is in fact incredibly dangerous and that one puff can kill you stone-dead, having the audacity to stand up in front of parliament and announce that she's accepting every recommendation of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs' report - except the one which says the drug should remain at Class C, because "[she] must err on the side of caution and protect the public."

The sort of doublethink this requires would have utterly delighted Orwell. Here's a drug where the links between mental illness are in the words of ACMD "weak but probable", and so it needs to not just be illegal, as it was under Class C, but to be in Class B, where simple possession of the tiniest amount could potentially lead to your imprisonment for five years. The chances of that happening are minuscule, but then we need to err on the side of caution and warn the public, don't we? The ACMD says that cannabis is a "significant public health issue" which is true; but then so is the use of tobacco and alcohol. The links between tobacco and numerous types of cancer are not just weak but probable but firmly established. Likewise, the link between alcohol and liver cirrhosis and other illnesses are not just weak but probable but firmly established, not to mention the link between alcohol and public disorder across towns and cities across the country every weekend. The Lancet's own attempt at drawing up a rational scale to assess the harm caused by drugs found that both alcohol and tobacco should be ranked higher than cannabis. By the same yardstick being used to measure the harm of cannabis, alcohol and tobacco should both be either Class B or even Class A controlled substances, but neither cause is likely to be taken up by the Daily Mail.

Quite how this issue has been resurrected and reanimated time and time again since David Blunkett took the ACMD's advice back in 2004 and downgraded cannabis is in itself bewildering but instructive. Nothing whatsoever has been learned or discovered in the last 4 years that ought to change the status quo - instead, what has occurred has been a hysterical, unbelievably misleading media campaign, led not just by the Daily Mail, but also by those who really ought to know better on the Independent on Sunday. We've been told that the cannabis on the streets today is not the average two and a half times stronger than the traditional "soapbar" Moroccan resin which up until very recently made up the vast majority of the market, but instead 25 times or even 30 times stronger. We've been told that smoking just one cannabis joint increases the risk of developing schizophrenia by 41%, when the actual study in fact found that an "average user" of cannabis faced an increased risk of developing a "psychotic outcome" by 0.4%. We've been told that despite all the evidence to the contrary, that cannabis can be directly linked to the deaths of at least 3 people, ignoring all the side issues and other factors entirely.

Perhaps the most shocking fact about this most egregious of u-turns is that by any standard, the downgrading of cannabis to Class C has worked as it was intended to. The police themselves supported the original decision, having become fed up to the back teeth with having to deal with individuals with tiny amounts of the drug on them when it was a complete waste of time; as a result of their confiscate and warn policy instituted after the downgrading, countless hours have been freed up to go after real criminals. The numbers of those taking the drug over the last few years have dropped according to the British Crime Survey, from 28.2% of 16-24-year-olds who admitted to cannabis use in 1998-9, to 21.4% in 2005-6. The police's new concern, that organised crime is moving in to cannabis production, with Vietnamese gangs being the ones fingered is almost certainly nothing to do with the downgrading but with the economic realities on the ground. It's no longer worth the hassle to import the old resin or different varieties when it can be so easily grown in converted houses, often with the electricity for the hydroponic systems being stolen as well. They can also earn more for the stronger varieties, which is why they are being increasingly grown, although there are also indications that various (incredibly dangerous) ploys are being employed to make it look as if the buds have a higher THC content than they actually do, as it takes longer to grow the plants to their full strength.

That last statistic shows exactly how many young people this change in the law will further criminalise and put in danger of having their lives potentially ruined purely because of their choice to consume a substance which affects absolutely no one other than themselves. 1 in 5 use it; if they don't, then they will certainly know a friend or acquittance who does. The change in the law and the spurious sending of messages will do nothing whatsoever to stop them using it, but what it will do is further disenfranchise them and put them further at risk of having the weight of the law fall on them for no greater purpose except to please Paul Dacre. The hope was that even if the change in classification went ahead that the police themselves would continue with their current policy, something that everyone at the ACMD meeting supported even if they wanted the classification changed. None of them wanted more young people to be criminalised, yet that is exactly what the government is proposing with its system of "escalating penalties" with first-time offenders also increasingly likely to be arrested under Labour's plans.

Let's not pretend however that if even the government had taken the ACMD's advice that it would have been a happy outcome. The entire classification system is a joke, based on nothing more than prejudice and political short-termism rather than actual evidence. How on earth can a system which has MDMA, LSD and magic mushrooms in the same category as street heroin and crack cocaine be taken seriously? The only solution to the entire drugs problem which underpins the vast majority of crime is to abandon the lunacy of prohibition and come to a position where addicts are either treated or provided with the drug by the state in lieu of weaning them off it. Cannabis, and the aforementioned other drugs in Class A should be regulated, age-restricted and taxed, with full education on the dangers of them provided in schools. It's time to take the entire market out of the hands of criminals, end the absurd, doomed to failure drugs "war" and be both reasonable and sensible about our dependency on all chemical highs. The taboos and myths all have to be tackled.

The former is of course a fantasy which couldn't possibly seem further away, and one which we cannot possibly know would work, mainly because we haven't been allowed to try it. The one abiding message about today's reclassification, apart from how it proves that when Gordon said he would listen, he meant he would continue to listen to the tabloids, at least when he wants to hear them, is that it shows just how much both politicians and Labour continue to hate the young. It's to be expected from the Daily Mail, which yearns for the 1950s to return, but this is a government increasingly made up of those who are only just approaching middle age. They surely remember their more hell-raising days, when they binge-drinked, smoked pot and even probably broke the law in more serious ways, yet they only listen to those who seem to have an ever increasing loathing for them. According to UNICEF we're the worst western country for children to grow up in, and it's not because of our addictions to self-fulfilment, but because the young are increasingly regarded as either annoyances, or at the most extreme end of the scale, yobs ready to kick the older generation to death. Is it any wonder when their lives are increasingly miserable for various reasons that they do turn to both alcohol and drugs? Until Labour gets to grips with why we are an unhappy society, and increasing crackdowns on crime and the young for so much as daring to gather on street corners are eschewed in favour of ending the casual criminalisation of an entire generation, then the problems that go hand in hand with them will continue to be false issues flashed up which demand pointless messages to be sent.

Related posts from the ever excellent Transform blog:
Millions quit cannabis following reclassification
Miserable re-classification saga enters its final furlong

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Share |

5/07/2008 08:53:00 pm | |

Friday, April 04, 2008 

The tabloids always win part two.

To get into the mindset of why exactly it is that Gordon Brown, despite all the evidence, is determined to reclassify cannabis to "Class B", you only have to read the beginning of this Daily Mail article, written by none other than our old friend James Slack:

You MUST reclassify cannabis: Brown gets message from police chiefs, charities, MPs and victims

Gordon Brown was urged last night to overrule his drugs experts and reclassify cannabis.

Advisers are expected to tell him that the drug should remain in Class C and not be moved to the more serious Class B from which it was downgraded in 2004.

But campaigners, police chiefs and opposition MPs said the Prime Minister must ignore the recommendation when it is delivered later this month.

In the words of the Mail's own Richard Littlejohn, you almost couldn't make it up. The drug experts MUST be overruled and the campaigners, police chiefs and opposition MPs, all of whom know far better just how dangerous cannabis is, HAVE to be listened to.

It's also, as you might expect, complete and utter nonsense that it was just the "one" presentation that made the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs decide that cannabis should remain Class C. While we obviously don't know the reasons for its ruling in full, as it's still at least a month off and all that's happened is that the BBC were leaked the hardly surprising news that nothing in the last two years has changed to make them alter their opinions, we can make an educated guess that a panel of experts is hardly going to be swayed by just the one piece of evidence. As it is, this one presentation is still rather important: if cannabis causes schizophrenia at such a level as the critics claim, then you would expect that doctor's surgeries across the land would have noticed a rise in the number of those seeking treatment. This unpublished data from a confidential paper drawn up for the Home Office, based on surveys from 183 GP practices in fact showed that between 1996 and 2005 there had been significant reductions in the incidence and prevalence of schizophrenia. The critics could counter by saying that the "skunk" they so bleat about is a relatively recent development, and that those suffering don't necessarily seek treatment, but it's hardly a ringing endorsement of their continued case for cannabis to be in a higher class.

As Steve R on the Transform blog relates, all the motions of the ACMD were went through properly, perhaps even with a slight frustration that they had to yet again go through the risks and arguments over cannabis, something they've had to do at least twice previously in the last four years, only to reach the exact same decision. All of the myths propagated by the tabloids, the Independent on Sunday and those in favour of a return to Class B also continue to be found to be wrong. "Skunk" is not 20, 25 or 30 times more powerful than the old Moroccan resin: it's instead double the strength it was ten years ago, and only 4% of the "skunk" seized has a THC-content of more than 20%, the highest percentage found being 24%. Skunk might now be the type of cannabis seized 85% (other studies suggest 70% to 80%) of the time, but use of the drug has actually fell since it was reclassified to Class C. The reporting of the most recent study that considered the links between cannabis and psychosis was also predictably sensational and wrong: it found that smoking cannabis increased the risk of developing a "psychotic outcome" by 0.4%, duly reported as increasing the risk by 40% by smoking just one joint.

The reasons for why the Association of Chief Police Officers support reclassification to Class B couldn't be much stupider. Rather than being concerned about more time being wasted by beat officers no longer being able to confiscate and warn when most of the rank and file favour legalisation and view any messing about with cannabis users as about as productive as themselves going around on duty stoned, they instead worry that Vietnamese gangs have taken over the trade and are now mass-growing cannabis in factories concealed in houses. Quite how raising its classification would affect this change in the market as the suppliers have realised that's it far easier to grow it here using hydroponics than to risk importing it from abroad isn't clear, but in their warped logic it must somehow make sense.

Admirably, most of those who support reclassifying the drug as B don't relish the subsequent criminalisation of youth that would go hand in hand with it. It seems to only be the tabloids and the Conservatives that favour that, and even they try and hide their vindictive streak by instead arguing that Labour sent "the wrong message" by down-classing it. That no one who has ever smoked cannabis has ever cared what class it is and instead is only interested in the actual effects doesn't seem to have dawned on the old drug-war warriors yet; it might have given the impression that cannabis was legal, but that ought to be countered by a major education programme, as some of the saner voices have long been calling for, not by penalising those who dare to experiment with it, as most of the current class of politicians have themselves admitted. You mustn't now though, because it's an entirely different drug, as even Boris Johnson tediously said today after his belated statement on his own teenage drug use.

The whole point of the exercise of asking the ACMD for its view was to get Brown through the election he still thought he was going to call without having to make an actual decision, while being a sop to the Mail he has so assiduously courted. Once he'd won, he could then get away with going with the ACMD's decision even if the tabloids turned on him. It's all rather strange: there are very few votes either way in reclassifying the drug or not; now, if he proposed legalising it, which continues to be the only sane way to deal with the dreaded Vietnamese gangs and to end the lunacy of prosecuting small time possessors of the drug, then that would be something worth getting properly worked up about. Instead, Brown's likely to further try to appease the Sun and Mail by completely ignoring the expert advice that he commissioned in the first place, just as they too regard it with such utter contempt.

This is what should happen instead. Labour should be honest with both themselves and everyone else by coming out and saying the following: cannabis is potentially dangerous, just like all other drugs. There is a risk of developing mental illness through its use, especially if you smoke it constantly and you're already susceptible through genetic links to health problems, while those whose minds are still developing, such as anyone under 18, should certainly not use it for the same reasons. This is why we're going to decriminalise it, regulate it, tax it and age restrict it, and continue to monitor the scientific research carefully as it continues to be accumulated, all things that are already done with alcohol and tobacco, both of which, according to the Lancet's recent attempt to draw up a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs are higher on the risk scale than cannabis is. At the same time, we'll launch an unprecedented education programme aimed at establishing exactly what the risks are to children of all ages, while making completely clear what the change in the law means to everyone.

That, however, would be evidence based policy making; and in this country, the tabloids always win.

Related post:
Mike Power - What IS he smoking?
Transform - ACMD cannabis report update...

Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Share |

4/04/2008 10:00:00 pm | |

About

  • This is septicisle
profile

Links

Last posts

Archives

Email me
Syndicate this site (XML)
Powered by Blogger
and Blogger Templates