THE DRUGS POLICY DILEMMA

by Alan Beith MP

There is a serious debate taking place about drugs policy in Britain and there is a political debate which is frivolous and irresponsible. The Government initially participated mainly in the non-serious debate but has now entered into a more serious one without ceasing its efforts to trivialise the issues involved.

The recent Green Paper addresses some of the issues in a responsible and objective way: can this have been produced by the same Government whose ministers, when they appear in the House of Commons, reject out of hand the appointment of a royal commission to consider drugs policy, and lambast as irresponsible anyone who is prepared to debate the arguments for and against changing the law on cannabis possession? Ministers have turned that issue into a kind of political virility test, overlooking entirely the fact that in most police forces cannabis possession is the subject of a caution, and that

in Scotland when the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill becomes law later this year it will become a matter of a fiscal fine of between 25 and 100 pounds. At the same time the Home Secretary in England has increased the maximum fine to 2,500 pounds for the same offence. If the issue of cannabis is so politicised what hope is there for a realistic discussion of enforcement policy which is so manifestly a failure?

Ministers are content to rest their credibility on the street value of a few successful swoops by the understaffed customs and excise, and they have not even considered the worrying possibility that, if drugs enforcement policy was actually to succeed, and street prices rose, crime would increase in order to pay for those prices. The dilemmas in drugs policy are so difficult and the issues so sensitive that they need to be addressed away from the political heat by a royal commission, which can take detailed evidence and give authority to any recommendations for change. That is why the Liberal Democrat conference last autumn voted for a royal commission and suggested that the issues it considered should include the expansion of rehabilitation centres, guidance on drugs to be given in schools, resources for the police and customs, stiffer penalties for drug dealing and decriminalising cannabis possession.

My own standpoint is that the dangers of signalling public approval of drug use by legislating to decriminalise cannabis possession seems likely to outweigh any gains which could be achieved by such a change. Young people in particular, however, find it hard to accept what seems to them a hypocritical legal position under which the alcohol use and smoking favoured by their elders cause vastly more death and damage than drug use as a whole, let alone cannabis, and this, together with the drift into crime to feed drug habits, undermines the respect of the law.

The argument often heard is that this situation arises out of the high prices of drugs, coupled with their price-inelastic nature. From this follows the claims that attempts to restrict their supply can only lead to higher prices, only exacerbating the problem. This calls the entire system of international drug enforcement policy into question, and yet just such an argument has been made by several senior police officers, including the secretary-general of Interpol Raymond Kendall.

Variants on the idea of legalisation involving state control of drug supplies further complicate discussion, involving as they do the ethical position of the state in supporting drug addiction. Schemes involving the institutionalised distribution of drugs report varying success, and are surrounded by controversy.

None of these factors may be considered in isolation however, and nor can the UK's drugs policy. The UK is a signatory to the UN drug conventions, which oblige governments to suppress and prevent the trafficking of contraband substances. The experience in the Netherlands is that the limited tolerance given to cannabis use has opened the door to international drug dealers, and arguably increased the country's drug problems. Variations in drug laws and enforcement provide incentives for dealers to target particular countries. Any radical changes to drug laws need to be considered in an international perspective.

It is in such a light that we must consider the most energetic debate over decriminalisation at present, that concerning cannabis. In recent years, celebrated decisions have seen the Netherlands and certain of the German states resolve to relax legislation regarding the possession of cannabis, a decision based on several cogent arguments. It is generally accepted that cannabis is the most widely used of all controlled substances, with some estimates claiming that up to 50 per cent of young people today have used the drug at one time or another. Arguments are made that there is no medical evidence that the drug is addictive, or even particularly harmful: the fact that there are no recorded incidents of death as a direct result of its use is frequently used to support the claim. But cannabis use inevitably promotes smoking and persistent use can cause damage to the liver. It is also increasingly accepted that long-term use is often accompanied by induced psychosis. Breakdown times in the human body are also unknown: unlike alcohol, which is disposed of relatively quickly, it is thought that heavy use of cannabis may have effects lasting several days. A regular pattern of use thus propagates a constant, low-level of intoxication. And unlike alcohol, cannabis cannot be traced in breath samples, increasing the hazards of drivers being, possibly unknowingly, under the influence of the narcotic.

To debate cannabis legalisation in isolation is to ignore the experience of those countries which have experimented with just such a scheme. It is significant that both the Dutch and German regional governments have expressed regret at the implementation of these measures, and indeed the Netherlands has announced a review of the policy. As has been predicted, both areas became internationally popular amongst the criminal fraternity. The climate of perceived tolerance has lead to spiralling use of hard drugs, furthered by distributors keen to exploit liberalisation of drug enforcement policy. There is undoubtedly a risk in increasing access to narcotics that as more people start to use legalised cannabis, so they will be drawn into the world of hard drugs: it is not possible to separate the two by legislation, and especially not when it is in the interests of the dealers to maintain the link to more profitable drugs. We must not underestimate the ruthlessness of the major drug dealers, nor their ingenuity; an National Criminal Intelligence Service member has described the international drug syndicates as "flexible and complex, with a willingness to destroy anything that gets in their way". The objective of these organisations is profit and it may be that decriminalisation of what is often an 'entry-level' drug may actually facilitate in that.

I have used the example of cannabis to illustrate the dilemma of drug policy. They are even more stark when we consider the conflicts that arise between sympathetic and constructive treatment of hard drug addicts, which may require some medical prescribing of drugs and the need to give an unambiguous signal to society as a whole of the horrific threat posed by these drugs and to stop the evil done by those who recruit others into self-destructive addiction.

The Green Paper says that it is clear that the debate on drug policy ican be considered in good faith by responsible people who respect each other's views". As yet there is not much evidence that Government ministers are prepared to practice what they preach.

Alan Beith is the Liberal Democrat MP for Berwick-Upon-Tweed, deputy leader of the party and has been its Home Affairs spokesman since September 1994.

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