British Drug Policy: The Elephant in the Room

In the last few weeks we saw the parliamentary commission on drug policy come to a close. The commission concluded that a Royal Commission should be started to investigate the most sensible route forward on the matter: a more lengthy and rigorous public enquiry which would wield far greater power.

David Cameron was quick to dismiss the advice of the think-tank that had been dedicated to investigating the issue for the last year. This being a man who has (according to this BBC news article) used drugs in the past, who in 2002, when HE HIMSELF was a member of a  Parliamentary Commission on the same issue suggested that ecstasy should be down-graded from class A, and cannabis to class C, stating:

“Drugs policy in this country has been failing for decades. Drug abuse has increased massively, the number of drug-related deaths has risen substantially and drug-related crime accounts for up to half of all acquisitive crime. I hope that our report will encourage fresh thinking and a new approach. We need to get away from entrenched positions and try to reduce the harm that drugs do both to users and society at large.”

Here’s betting that Cameron, a decade or two from now, will join the long list of ex-prime-ministers, presidents and politicians who, only after they have lost their power, decide that that drugs should be decriminalised.

Of course, the new enquiry focussed on the same old issues: the dangers, the legal highs, drugs in prison. As with so many things though: the most interesting things are what weren’t said, what was ignored, and issues the commission chose not to linger with for too long.

It seems that a parliamentary commission can only go so deep, there are boundaries to work within and certain rules you have to stick by. In the case of this recent parliamentary commission the main boundary, the main rule, was the question of the fundamental legitimacy of drug prohibition. Really the purpose was to investigate drug policy whilst holding to a tacit assumption that recreational drugs must remain illegal.

The commission itself, as well as the inevitable tide of mediocre media analysis on the issue, failed to go to the real heart of the issue. The criminalisation of recreational drugs is a civil liberty issue, a ‘cognitive liberty’ issue: it is about no less than the state’s control over the minds and experiences of the population, over the freedom of the individual.

Nobody asks, nobody cares, about the question: “What gives those people the right to tell me what I can and cannot do with my own mind?”. People have used myriad means to alter consciousness for millennia, we have come to take it for granted that there should be ‘some one there to tell us what we aren’t free to do’.

Another ‘little thing’ about the issue didn’t really make it to the commission or the press. Whilst discussing all of the harms, the issue of the benefits of drugs didn’t seem to get quite so much attention. For some reason, discussing the statistically tenuous links between cannabis and schizophrenia (cannabis being a drug which has become more dangerous precisely because of its illegality) is infinitely more important than discussing the medicinal benefits of the drug. Likewise, calls for psychedelics to be integrated into the psychiatrists arsenal of controlled psychoactive medications, or at least for research into the medicinal benefits of the drugs to be allowed, weren’t given much time at the commission.

Then there’s the other great taboo, and this is the true elephant in the room: America. We all know that every time a British Prime Minister EVER speaks with a US President the words “special relationship” must be uttered at least once. Is drug prohibition, essentially, a diplomatic price we have to pay to maintain this “special relationship?”. We all know that if there’s one thing America doesn’t like, it’s for one of it’s submissive allies to start asserting too much autonomy.

If you look at the history of our drug policy, you will see that in every stage of its development it was following in the footsteps of America’s dug policy. If you look a little closer you’ll see America, every step of the way, holding the hands of British politicians and leading them into ‘the war on drugs’.

‘The war on drugs’ – a puritanical American moral crusade- the UN Convention is simply how America imposes it on the rest of the world. Imposing an unending war on the world, and in so doing, allowing its power and influence to permeate into the governments of all nations: it really is quite clever!

The truth is, fellow Brits: our government IS NOT IN A POSITION to back out of the war on drugs, they do not have the power to do it, they are not allowed. America wouldn’t like it, so it’s not going to happen: it’s a diplomatic thing more than anything else, it ‘might seem rude’ to our allies if we start thinking for ourselves. Drug prohibition is a poisonous policy: it needlessly sets the state against its citizenry. It is totalitarian, interfering with the personal choices of the individual, removing freedoms long-enjoyed by our predecessors.

Now that a couple of US states have decriminalised cannabis for recreational use, a double-standard is starting to exist: with all these things there comes to be a tipping point. Once enough countries or states legalise it, we think the other countries will be forced to do the same for reasons of sheer economics.

Nobel Prize Winners & Great Thinkers Urge Cameron to Legalise Drugs

A letter from sixty major public figures, including seven former presidents, twelve Nobel Prize winners and six British MPs, has asked Prime Minister David Cameron and the UK government to consider legalizing drugs, citing that the “global war on drugs has failed”.

Their letter says the illicit drug industry, worth £285 billion a year, is the third most valuable in the world after food and oil.

It calls for a debate on “decriminalising” the world’s 250 million drug users and asks Mr Cameron to start a public conversation with other global leaders. The group claims that drug use should be treated as a medical problem, rather than a criminal one.

The letter was coordinated by the Beckley Foundation, a charity that seeks drug policy reform. The group is also urging that governments and courts treat drug addiction as a “medical” problem, instead of a criminal violation.

“We must seriously consider shifting resources away from criminalizing tens of millions of otherwise law abiding citizens, and move towards an approach based on health, harm-reduction, cost-effectiveness and respect for human rights,” the letter states.

The letter adds: “Corruption amongst law-enforcers and politicians, especially in producer and transit countries, has spread as never before, endangering democracy and civil society.”

They urge world leaders to act now, because “use of the major controlled drugs has risen, and supply is cheaper, purer and more available than ever before”.

One of the signatories is Prof David Nutt, the former chief government drugs adviser, who was asked to resign in 2009 over his claims that Ecstasy was less dangerous than alcohol.

Among the many signatures are those of: Sir Richard Branson, Prof Niall Ferguson, the historian, and Prof A C Grayling (the philosopher) and The Countess of Wemyss who led the campaign.

According to the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, Cameron has in the past shown some sympathy with the campaign to legalize drugs. In 2002, he asked the-then Labour government “not to return to retribution and war on drugs”, adding “that has been tried and we all know that it does not work.”

During the leadership election, allegations were made that Cameron had used cannabis and cocaine recreationally before becoming an MP. Pressed on this point during the BBC programme Question Time, Cameron expressed the view that everybody was allowed to “err and stray” in their past”. During his 2005 Conservative leadership campaign he addressed the question of drug consumption by remarking that “I did lots of things before I came into politics which I shouldn’t have done. We all did.”

Amanda Feilding, the Countess of Wemyss and March, is a prominent advocate of drugs legalization in the UK.

“I think the Prime Minister has probably got the economy on his mind and not reforming drugs policy. But one must have a wake-up call that we must begin a global debate on how we minimize the harm from drugs,” she told the Telegraph.