THE FOLLY OF PROHIBITING DRUGS

European Countries Are Starting To Realise That A Policy Of Retribution
Against Drug Addicts Is Both Immoral And Stupid

Small chinks are opening in the wall of stupidity that surrounds drug
policy. In the US, a few brave souls are challenging the "war on drugs" - a
euphemism for a war upon its citizens. The Netherlands and Switzerland are
experimenting with decriminalisation. And, last week, a report from a
select committee of the House of Commons even opened a few holes in British
government policy. It is regrettably timid but still a small step in the
right direction.

Fresh thought is desperately needed. In the early 1970s the UK followed the
US into the war on drugs, with disastrous results. According to Transform,
a British campaigning group, "in 1970 there were just over 1,000 heroin
users. By 2000 that figure had grown to at least 200,000." According to the
British crime survey for 2000, a third of those aged 16-59 had used illegal
drugs, mostly cannabis, at some point in their lives. Of 9.5m young people
aged 16 to 29, some 2.3m had used an illicit drug in 2000 alone.

Supply has not been halted: street prices of drugs have fallen over the
past 12 years, not risen. Yet prohibition has inflicted substantial
collateral damage. Ten per cent of all British people sent to prison in
2000 were convicted of drug offences. On some estimates, a third of all
property theft is drug-related. Overwhelmingly, these criminals, have been
the so-called "problematic drug users" - estimated to number 250,000. Each
of these people spends an average of about Pounds 16,500 a year on drugs,
of which about Pounds 13,000 is the proceeds of crime.

Prohibition also creates an illegal market in the UK worth an estimated
Pounds 6.6bn a year - a honeypot for organised criminals. But drugs are a
global industry. Consider what it has done to Afghanistan and Colombia.

Thus, "if we judge whether the existing drugs policy is working by
measurable reductions in the number of people who use drugs, the number who
die or suffer harm as a result, the supply of drugs, the amount of crime
committed to get money to buy drugs and the organised criminality involved
in transporting and supplying drugs, we have to say that the results are
not coming through." The radicals making this damning judgment are the
Association of Chief Police Officers, no less.

There are three broad responses to the failures of this "war": moralistic,
libertarian and utilitarian.

Moralists believe that the right response to failure is to try harder. In
the US, federal government spending on anti-drug programmes rose from
Dollars 900m in 1979 to Dollars 18bn (Pounds 12.3bn) in 1999. For
moralists, the taking of drugs is downright wicked. William J. Bennett,
America's first drugs tsar, argued that users of drugs were "slaves" of
their vice. These slaves must be forced to be free - by being incarcerated,
if necessary.

This Orwellian policy is stupid and immoral - stupid, because it does not
work, and wicked, because the harm done by users to themselves is modest
compared to the harm done by the state to users. As authors of an excellent
book from the Washington-based Cato Institute argue, in attempting to stop
people doing what they want, the state is forced to act in ever more
intrusive, coercive and, in the US, simply unconstitutional ways.

The libertarian response is that, in the words of one of the Cato
Institute's authors, "we cannot protect free adults from their own choices
and we should not use the force of law to try". I find this position
persuasive. Others, alas, do not.

For this reason, it is necessary to focus on the third approach: the
utilitarian one of harm reduction. Drugs are harmful - but so is
prohibition. The utilitarian's approach is to reduce the total harm to a
minimum. Along with restricting supply, policy should aim at reducing
demand, educating potential users, treating drug abusers and minimising
harmful consequences for public health.

Someone committed to harm reduction could be a legaliser, since dangerous
substances become more harmful if illegal and unregulated. But this
combination is rare. This is partly because of fear of public opprobrium.
It is also because of the concern that legalisation would lead to increased
use (a concern that heavy taxation can alleviate but cannot eliminate).

The latter worry leads the House of Commons committee to end up opposing
the idea of legalisation, even though it recognises - a remarkable step in
itself - that in future "the balance may tip in favour of legalising and
regulating some types of presently illegal drugs".

The result is a series of modest but useful reforms. These include:
focusing the whole of policy not on casual users but on the most
problematic drug abusers; reclassification of cannabis, in line with the
proposals of Jack Straw, the home secretary, as a class C drug (the least
harmful category); and reclassification of ecstasy as less harmful than
either heroin or cocaine.

In addition, the report argues there should be: a substantial increase in
treatment places for cocaine abusers; universal availability of methadone
treatments; and complementary therapies for heroin users. It also
recommends creating an evaluated pilot programme of safe houses for
injections by heroin abusers, with a view to extending the programme across
the country; and a pilot programme for structured heroin prescription, on
the lines of the Dutch and Swiss programmes.

All this should be helpful, so far as it goes, which is not far enough. But
the crucial point in the report is the admission that "if there is any
single lesson from the experience of the last 30 years, it is that policies
based wholly or mainly on enforcement (of prohibition) are destined to
fail". It follows that "harm reduction rather than retribution should be
the primary focus of policy towards users of illegal drugs".

Bravo! The UK is at last moving out of the US-led camp of hysterical
moralists. Now it can start to think seriously. Sensible policies would
provide treatment and hope for the drug-dependent, not punishment; they
would deprive gangsters of their income, not try to push prices higher;
they would provide honest information to potential users, not offer lies;
they would reduce threats to public safety, not increase incentives for
crime; and they would limit the spread of disease, not promote it.

The UK debate is improving. In time, policy may even reduce the costs of
drug abuse, not raise them.

References can be found at www.ft.com/martinwolf martin.wolf@ft.com