There may be not much desire on either side for an electoral pact between the Liberal Democrats and the Greens but we are working together on drugs policy, as both parties see the futility of continuing with the current approach.
They firstly counted the cost of prohibition’s failures:
Because the scale of our failures can’t be ignored any longer. There are around 2,000 drug-related deaths every year, and it is estimated that 400,000 people in the UK have a serious drug misuse problem. Consider then that for every one of these cases, there are many more whose lives are thrown into chaos because their loved ones suffer from a vicious cycle of dependency. The failure of current policy is quite literally failing millions of people.
The financial costs are massive too. Every single year in the UK alone, we spend over £3billion of taxpayers’ money tackling drug use, roughly half of which is spent on drug law enforcement. That total – over £3billion – would buy six state-of-the-art hospitals.
So how should things change?
We can do much better, and the public deserves much better. In Portugal, where the government has pushed to get addicts into treatment, whilst also decriminalising personal drug use, health outcomes are radically improving and the number of deaths caused by drugs is falling. Pleasingly, the approach is also extremely popular amongst the public – polls show support for the reforms are extremely high.
Political parties must work together to sort this. Both our parties, Liberal Democrats and Greens respectively, are leading the fight for reform. We are calling for an evidence based approach – for decriminalisation so that those who are caught with drugs for personal use are channelled into treatment rather than placed in prison, and for appropriate regulations to protect us all.
There are clear cases when currently illicit drugs can be used for beneficial purposes. Cannabis can be a highly effective medical remedy. It can be used to treat the symptoms of a range of illnesses, including MS, glaucoma, chronic and neurogenic pain and the side effects from chemotherapy and HIV/AIDS treatment. Norman Baker, the Lib Dem Home Office Minister, has recognised the strength of this evidence and suggested we need to change what are presently highly restrictive laws.
You can read the whole article here.
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7 Comments
We need a “carrot and stick” approach to hard drugs. The messaging the article sends out is wrong. The message is simply: “let’s be nice about drugs and it will pay for itself”. There’s a market for this sort of politics, but it’s a niche one.
For once a sensible approach to drugs use
for decriminalisation so that those who are caught with drugs for personal use are channelled into treatment rather than placed in prison, and for appropriate regulations to protect us all.
But most of those who have drugs for personal use are not addicts, they are just people who like taking drugs because they enjoy it.
How is a policy of ‘treatment’ going to stop them taking drugs?
There are clear cases when currently illicit drugs can be used for beneficial purposes
We already have a system for this: it’s called prescriptions and it’s how, for example, terminally ill patients are provided with painkilling drugs that would otherwise be illegal.
There is no reason why Cannabis could not be prescribed for those for whom it is medically beneficial, while remaining illegal to posses for those who simply enjoy its effects, under existing laws.
“…There may be not much desire on either side for an electoral pact between the Liberal Democrats and the Greens ..”
There may be not much desire on either side for a coalition between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives after May. But it is like a form of drug addiction. Four and half years of addiction and even though the “high” can no longer be felt, the compulsion to “just have one more hit” because it will be better next time warps the brain.
Over the last four years the damage the addiction has done has become more and more obvious, but the addict staggers on resorting to extreme measures to pay for another dose.
There are of course clear cases when coalitions can be used for beneficial purposes.
In Portugal they once had a coalition and it did some really good things.
We should have an approach to coalitions which is evidenced based.
Perhaps we should work with the Green Party to examine the evidence of the damage done to the Liberal Democrats by the leadership’s addiction to coalition with the Conservatives. One piece of evidence might be the fact that half our voters have gone over to the Greens.
The problem is with any ‘initiative’ taken by the Party at present – it has to be viewed as a device to advantage the electoral prospects of Cameron & Clegg and for another coalition.
Although drugs policy is a very important issue – nothing is going to change within the lifetime of this parliament – it will be for the next government to decide.
Both Sky and the BBC commented that it does no harm for the coalition parties to have an apparent falling out this close to the election.
It gives the two party leaders a media opportunity to pretend that they actually care about something – other than being in power and the continuing right to run the nation for the benefit of their masters – bankers & global organisations – and to find new ways of making the vast majorities worse off and their lives more stressful.
It’s one of those rare moments that I agree with Huppert.
>We need a “carrot and stick” approach to hard drugs.
Yeah, it’d be great if they lured you in with mad visuals, warm fuzzy feelings and then left you feeling beaten the next day! Oh…
Surely the whole concept of “hard” drugs is as “carrot and stick” as it can be? Either way, the current situation has failed, with legal-high drugs available on the high street that are more powerful and dangerous than what we currently categorise as class A’s. We’ve got little data, we categorise new substances very slowly on the weakest available evidence and society has mostly moved on, leaving the government position looking increasingly irrelevant. You can ignore a problem as much as you like, but it won’t solve it and I think we currently have a situation where people find it difficult to seek help because of the legal taboo.
Does the UK really have a mindless drugs policy of prohibition rather than treatment?
That seems to be the way liberals have interpreted this week’s Home Office report. So it’s somewhat surprising to actually read the following in the report’s conclusion :-
“Close consideration of countries with quite different approaches to drug possession demonstrates that the issue is more complex and nuanced than legislation and enforcement alone… As in Portugal, prevention and treatment are a key element of responses to drugs in the UK… The UK’s balanced approach enables targeted demand-reduction activity, and good availability and quality of treatment. Indeed, while in Portugal, we were encouraged to hear that drug treatment in the UK is well-regarded internationally.”
Which suggests to me that the UK is already doing a lot of the sensible things that Huppert and Lucas imply are not being done.
If you compare the UK and Portugal since 2001 (when Portugese decriminalisation started), the UK has a much better record in terms of reducing drug use. Yet those who claim to be following the “evidence-based” approach take this as evidence that, er, the UK’s policy is failing catastrophically while Portugal’s is a roaring success.