People in politics often lead delusional lives, some recent examples include Jeremy Corbyn believing he could win a general election and a Liberal Democrat, Jo Swinson, that she would become prime minister. It is good to believe anything is possible in politics, but too often we believe things in the face of all the evidence.
So it is, after 50 years of a war on drugs, the pretence continues that drug prohibition is working whilst drug deaths spiral, dealers home-deliver a range of drugs products in pretty packaging and workers sit outside the Home Office’s Marsham Street HQ having a lunchtime spliff.
The politics of drugs policy is not getting any easier — across most of the developed world it is a dog’s breakfast. When drugs policy is discussed, it often dissolves into a hunt for which ministers have taken a Class A drug. Interesting, but not particularly helpful, as we already know that illegal drugs can cause huge damage to individuals, families and communities, not least through the huge number of unnecessary deaths they cause each year. There is so much squalor and misery, reflected in the record numbers of drug deaths across the UK last year, with around 10 people dying every day from substance abuse.
That figure doesn’t include the many other drug-related killings that go on, mainly in our city centres, where rival criminal gangs fight it out to keep control of their drug fiefdoms. Things have reached a point, according to a home affairs select committee report, where the riches of drug barons mean that they can spend considerably more than our police forces on technology, weaponry and manpower.
The police and other law enforcement, in terms of resources, have become a poor match for the drug organisations. Estimates are that only 20 per cent of drugs smuggled into the UK are ever found, when it needs a success rate of above 80 per cent to have an impact on supply.
In the UK it remains official policy that prohibition works, and we can win the drugs war. The question we should all be asking is can we? Is it possible for a government to enforce a complete prohibition of illegal narcotics? The bad news is that drugs reform is a subject Conservatives like to avoid: it’s in the “too difficult” category, mainly because many Conservative Party members and supporters won’t stand for the notion that there is any alternative to prohibition. Why would Conservative MPs and ministers choose to make their jobs any harder than they already are? It is a subject where there are no easy answers and only hard political choices.
The good news is that reforms and new ideas are being tried and steadily beginning to take root elsewhere around the world, from North America and Europe to Australia. Experiments are taking place, mistakes are being made, there are new regulations and the sweeping away of some old ones.
There is a developing brave new world that it will be hard for the UK to entirely ignore. British resistance is already faltering as public opinion is changing fast on the best way to counteract the ever-increasing dangers from drugs. Survey after survey suggests that more liberal, health-orientated solutions are finding favour, even amongst Conservative voters. The opportunity to reform and to try a different approach is ready to be taken, one that might break the dominance of criminal gangs, dirty money, violence and unnecessary deaths.
With a new Conservative government and a large majority, there is the capacity to be radical and to make the important, but difficult, decisions to try something new for the first time in 50 years. Essentially there are only three choices government can make:
1) Try to hold the status quo, keep turning a blind eye to the reality of the current failure of prohibition and maintain what will be a steady descent into US-style drug chaos;
2) Persuade the Treasury to commit massive additional prohibition enforcement funds, including manpower, technology, criminal justice and other resources;
3) Think through a new approach, based on what is happening around the world, that focuses on reducing harm and treats drug use as primarily a health issue.
For many families and communities doing nothing is not an option. During this parliament it is entirely predictable that the public will start making regular and stronger connections between Class A drugs, substance abuse deaths, criminal gangs and inner-city knife and other violence. It’s not something the media has turned much attention to so far, but it will. The predictable reaction of government is usually a temporary clampdown or initiative, often concentrated in a local area. Experience tells us they don’t work for long.
Will this government commit huge new resources to reinforce current prohibition policy? Some backbenchers would support this approach, but it has it challenges. The USA tried and it did not work, despite filling up its prisons and spending countless billions. It is equally unlikely it will work here, hence the Treasury would likely balk at investing the money required to make it do more than scratch the surface of the problem.
The politics of drugs is evolving around the world, and it is entirely the UK’s choice whether to be an innovator, an early adopter or a laggard. There are no easy answers or solutions and it is undoubtedly true that the wrong policy decision can make the drugs epidemic worse. However, we are at a junction as a country where there is the possibility for the government to try something new and different, preferably something bold. Isn’t it time to at least try?
This article was published originally in The Times, on 21st January 2020. See: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/prohibition-isnt-working-its-time-the-government-took-bold-steps-on-drugs-2pk89gczs