Tag Archives: drugs policy

Reflections on my first year as Drugs Policy spokesperson

It’s been a year since Alex Cole-Hamilton appointed me  Scottish Lib Dem  spokesperson for Drugs Policy. This is a new portfolio shadowing the Minister for Drugs Policy Angela Constance in response to an increasing trend of drug-related deaths in Scotland that has made us the Overdose Capital of Europe.

Since my appointment I have sought to learn, make connections and speak to people most affected by substance misuse while putting forward common sense proposals such as accelerating the rollout of Naloxone (overdose prevention kits), introducing supervised consumption centres, and calling for widespread drug law reform at the UK level. Here’s one TV interview with GB News where I put forward such proposals:

My primary focus  is reducing overdoses and drug-related deaths.  My first job involved travelling to Holyrood to attend a vigil  for Overdose Awareness Day.

I spoke to people who have lived with addictions and families who have lost loved ones to overdose. I even had the honour of meeting Peter Krykant, a former addict who took action into his own hands to start up Scotland’s first ever mobile overdose prevention centre in the back of a van. After being shown around the back of Peter’s old ambulance which  he’s modified into a mobile safe consumption centre, and upon hearing about all the lives he had saved, I was struck by the power of direct action, and how often it’s ordinary people taking matters in to their own hands who achieve far more than Government Ministers ever can.

Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 4 Comments

Alex Cole-Hamilton: It is time for Scottish Government to kickstart a new era of drugs policy radicalism

Days after the release of tragic drug deaths statistics, Scottish Lib Dem MSP Alex Cole-Hamilton has written an open letter setting out a series of radical proposals to tackle the ongoing epidemic of drugs deaths.

Statistics released on Friday show that 1,339 people died of drug-related deaths in 2020, an increase of 5% from 2019.

Alex is urging the Scottish Government to:

  • take radical steps with the prosecution authorities and the Lord Advocate to help establish heroin assisted treatment and safe consumption spaces.
  • establish new specialist Family Drug and Alcohol Commissions to help provide wraparound services and to take a holistic approach to those reported for drug offences, learning from best international practice such as that in Portugal.
  • Divert people caught in possession of drugs for personal use into education, treatment and recovery, ceasing imprisonment in these circumstances.
  • Adopt the principle that individuals and families shouldn’t have to pay for the care and treatment of those at risk of death from drugs or alcohol.

Alex’s open letter is long, but worth reading in full. Its radical and liberal ideas are also relevant south of the border:

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 15 Comments

17 October 2018 – today’s press releases

Moran to move amendment to deliver votes at 16

Liberal Democrat Education spokesperson Layla Moran will today move an amendment to the Overseas Electors Bill to lower the voting age to 16 for UK citizens living abroad.

The Overseas Electors Bill, which proposes extending the right of UK citizens living abroad to vote in UK elections, will be debated at the Public Bill Committee today .

Ms Moran is moving her amendment in the wake of the Welsh Assembly supporting plans last week to introduce votes at 16.

Ms Moran said:

If we are

Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , , , and | 2 Comments

Reforming Drug Policy Shouldn’t Just Be About Cannabis

drugsWe are the party at the forefront of drug reform policy. There are and have been smaller, single-issue parties that have been campaigning for the legalisation of cannabis for years, but we are the only major party to bring the debate on to the political mainstage.

There are different arguments for the cases of decriminalisation or legalisation – though the two main arguments are almost always centred round healthcare. The first is: with decriminalisation, we can treat addiction like an illness instead of a crime – a noble idea, …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 29 Comments

What next for Lib Dem drug policy?

Wow, what a month March was for Liberal Democrat drug policy. First, the Lib Dem-commissioned independent panel report on cannabis regulation was published, advocating a framework for a fully legal regulated market for cannabis. Secondly, Norman Lamb proposed a motion to adopt the framework of the panel report as official party policy, which was subsequently voted in near-unanimously at conference. Finally, Norman presented a 10 Minute Rule Bill to the Commons, presenting our newly adopted policy to the rest of the House with an impassioned speech. The motion was voted through without contest and will now receive its second hearing later this month, on April 22nd. Progress indeed, although sadly it is deeply unlikely that the Bill will get past its second hearing.

However, before we congratulate ourselves too much having the most progressive drug policy of any UK party, we must ask ourselves what next? Where do we go from here? To know this, we must look at our existing policies, at what declarations we may have forgotten, and what new evidence can be brought to bear in shaping a truly liberal, evidence-based drug policy.

Ewan Hoyle, a long-time activist for drug policy reform within our party, alluded to this at conference, where he reminded the audience of the wider aims of our drug policy. In particular, he pointed out that much of the harm associated with drug use is often related to harder drugs, and it is these harms that it is essential we mitigate with intelligent policy interventions.

Posted in Op-eds | 19 Comments

Drug reform should be our new flagship policy

In my past two articles I argued for a more muscular liberalism that was more strident in championing liberal causes and for occupying the liberal ground whilst still appealing to a broader audience than ourselves.

In the interests of achieving this aim we need to pick our fights and causes carefully. We need a new flagship policy, one which wipes away the memory of tuition fees and sets us apart from our opponents. We must lead the charge on an issue and make it our own in a way we never quite managed in the public perception of equal marriage and green energy in coalition.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 49 Comments

LibLink Special: Nick Clegg’s El Pais article: “We are losing the war on drugs”

Earlier this month, Nick Clegg wrote for Spanish newspaper El Pais about the need to totally change the way we deal with drug use. Liberal Youth Scotland co-president Hannah Bettsworth, a final year Spanish student, has kindly translated it for us.

On 19th April next year, United Nations member states will hold a special session in New York to discuss the future of the world’s drugs policy. The starting pistol for government negotiations around the summit was fired last week, in a meeting at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna.

The last time an event of this importance was held, in 1998, the meeting was dominated by US Government strategy, which still consisted of the doomed ‘war on drugs’, thought up by Richard Nixon in 1971. (awkward sentence in English) The gathered member states, in a move we can today see as a false collective delusion, solemnly agreed to reach the goal of “a drug-free world in 2008.”

Of course, 2008 came around and nothing happened. Not only had production, supply and use of illicit drugs not been wiped from the Earth, trafficking continued to flourish and bring millions of dollars to organised crime. The well-intentioned efforts of law and order had had hardly any impact in the long term. Violence in origin and transit countries had skyrocketed (in Mexico alone, it is calculated that 100,000 people have died in the war on the cartels since 2006.) Around the world, millions of drug users are still hounded and incarcerated. This serves only to ruin lives – it has no deterrent effect.

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged and | 17 Comments

Norman Lamb: ‘It is ridiculous that we still put people in prison for personal drugs use’

Norman Lamb spoke last night in Newbury at a panel discussion on drugs misuse and our current drug laws.

Norman said that he has thought through the “drugs danger” and whether it should receive a criminal response or a health response. He said he has concluded that there should be a health response. He alluded to John Stuart Mill’s ‘self-regarding acts’, where the state shouldn’t interfere and ‘other-regarding acts’ where some state intervention may be justified. He said that it is wrong to criminalise those suffering mental ill health who resort to drugs because of their condition. It is “ridiculous”, Norman asserted, that we still put people in prison for personal drugs use.

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 15 Comments

LibLink: Nick Clegg and Richard Branson: We have been losing the war on drugs for four decades. End it now.

Nick Clegg Glasgow 2014 by Liberal DemocratsIn a major keynote speech today, Nick Clegg will call for responsibility for drugs to be moved from the criminal justice system to the health care system. In that, he has the support of Richard Branson and the two men have written for the Guardian’s Comment is Free section. First of all, they show how the current system is both wasting money and failing:

 Since the “war” was declared by President Richard Nixon in 1971, we have spent over £1tn trying to eradicate drugs from our societies. Yet the criminal market continues to grow, driving unimaginable levels of profit for organised crime. We devote vast police, criminal justice and military resources to the problem, including the incarceration of people on a historically unprecedented scale.

In many parts of the world, drug violence has become endemic. As Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, visits the UK, we should remember the estimated 100,000 people killed in Mexico alone since 2006. Yet tragically, the sum total of enforcement efforts against drug supply over the past 40 years has been zero. Efforts at reducing demand have been similarly fruitless. Here in the UK, a third of adults have taken illegal drugs and the gangs are doing a roaring trade. The problem simply isn’t going away.

While other countries around the world are rethinking their approach, Britain remains stubbornly, truculently wedded to the old way, with tragic human consequences:

And yet we desperately need better solutions in this country. One in six children aged 11 to 15 is still taking drugs; 2,000 people die each year in drug-related incidents; the use of unregulated “legal highs” is rampant.

At the same time, the police are stopping and searching half a million people a year for possession of drugs, prosecutions of users are close to record levels, and prison cells are still used for people whose only crime is the possession of a substance to which they are addicted. This costs a lot of money, which could be better spent on treatment and on redoubling our efforts to disrupt supply. And it wrecks the lives of 70,000 people a year who receive a criminal record for possession and then find themselves unable to get a job.

As an investment, the war on drugs has failed to deliver any returns. If it were a business, it would have been shut down a long time ago. This is not what success looks like.

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged , , and | 14 Comments

What Theresa May didn’t want you to see: Norman Baker reveals all on drugs report

Norman Baker has revealed that the report into effective ways of tackling drugs policy commissioned by Liberal Democrats in Governemnt had some of its conclusions removed by Theresa May, presumably for fear of upsetting the Daily Mail.

From the Guardian:

He said that drugs policy should be based “on evidence, not dogma” and that, although the Conservatives were opposed to liberalisation, they were losing the argument on the issue.

Under pressure from the Lib Dems, the Home Office commissioned a report looking at the international evidence on the impact of legislation on drug use. Theresa May, the home secretary, made no secret of the fact that she had no enthusiasm for the project, and when it was published in October, with Baker taking the lead in publicising it, Conservative ministers signalled that they would ignore it.

Posted in News | Also tagged | 10 Comments

Opinion: The legalisation of drugs – let’s not take the line of least resistance

drugsIt’s 1977…. a hot summer evening in Chicago (no – this is not the start of a Raymond Chandler novel). I’m getting a lift back from an outer suburb to the city which takes around an hour on the freeway. It’s late. The driver is going illegally fast. He’s desperate to get home he tells me – so he can smoke some dope. I am desperate to get back in one piece.  I suppose the only thing that might have made his driving worse is if he had actually already smoked the stuff. But that’s what addiction does – it makes people a bit desperate. And make no mistake, cannabis can be addictive.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 36 Comments

LibLink: Julian Huppert: Politicians can’t afford to look tough any more. We need to embrace drugs reform

Writing in the Independent, Julian Huppert makes the case for drugs reform in the wake of the Parliamentary debate brought by he and Caroline Lucas. They were debating the Home Office report instigated by Liberal Democrat ministers which provided evidence that the prohibitionist approach simply doesn’t work. Unsurprisingly, the Tories did everything they could to suppress it. Julian writes about the debate and the Liberal Democrat perspective:

Posted in LibLink | Also tagged and | 18 Comments

Nick Clegg and Colombian leader to build pressure for drugs reform

Nick Clegg might not be having much luck with the Conservatives on drugs reform, but he’s trying to build an international consensus. He’s agreed a joint approach with Colombian leader Juan Manuel Santos according to the Observer:

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 12 Comments

A good night for marijuana – US mid-term elections

USA Flag - Some rights reserved by freefotoukFiveThirtyEight has certainly shone through as an excellent resource in these US Mid-term elections. On that website, at the end of a long night, Harry Enten wrote the excellent headline above with these reflections:

In addition to Republican governors, Republican senators and minimum wage increases, marijuana had a good night. Recreational marijuana easily won in Oregon and Washington, D.C., and it’s currently leading in Alaska.

Posted in LDVUSA | Also tagged | 4 Comments

The Sun: “Nick Clegg makes a powerful case for reform of our drugs laws”

The Lib Dem website says this: “Nick Clegg has announced that the Liberal Democrat manifesto will include a commitment to end imprisonment for possessing drugs for personal use, so that no one is sent to prison, where their only offence is one of possession. Under the proposals, users would instead receive non-custodial sentences and appropriate medical treatment.”

That’s not so surprising. The Lib Dems have long argued for a more rational approach to our drugs laws, with Nick making the point before that “If you are anti-drugs, you should be pro-reform.”

More surprising is that The Sun newspaper says this:

Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 30 Comments

Drugs and e-cigarettes: criminalise, legalise, regulate? Here’s what Lib Dem members think…

drugsLib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum  to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. More than 830 party members responded – thank you – and we’re publishing the full results.

Two-thirds of Lib Dems back legalisation of ‘soft’ drugs…

Posted in LDV Members poll | Also tagged and | 14 Comments

Opinion: Drugs – Evidence based policy, liberalism and some Uruguayan political courage

drugsAre we seeing some change in the way societies view drugs?

Last December Uruguay legalised cannabis, and in the US, the states of Colorado and Washington legalised cannabis for personal use in 2012. The Netherlands has, for some time, allowed cannabis use in specialist coffeeshops. Of course, none of these examples have opted for free and unfettered access for all, but rather a regulated system where the authorities can exert control. The Uruguayan plan includes a user registry, a tax, and quality control, with the aim of reducing profits for organised crime, and reducing drug related violence.

Posted in Op-eds | 17 Comments

Nick Clegg: “If you are anti-drugs, you should be pro-reform”

clegg drugs observerThe message may not be new – Nick Clegg first declared that “If you are anti-drugs, you should be pro-reform” back in December 2012 – but that’s no reason not to welcome the Lib Dem leader’s re-statement that urgent reform of the UK’s drugs laws is needed.

It’s the splash in today’s Observer, which reports:

In some of the most outspoken comments on the issue by a serving British politician, Clegg laments the current situation in which “one in five young people have admitted taking drugs in the

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 56 Comments

Opinion: Being tough on drugs means being pro-reform

The Sunday Times is claiming to have knowledge of the results of Jeremy Browne’s drug policy “grand tour”. In an article today, Put that in your pipe, Mrs May, the paper describes many conclusions expected to feature in the final report which will bring great cheer to the ordinary Liberal Democrat member:

“A review ordered by Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, and due to be published before Christmas, is expected to suggest Britain could benefit from emulating two American states where the use of recreational cannabis is legal. The Home Office report is also expected to call for

Posted in News and Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 23 Comments

Opinion: Where is the Liberal Democrat influence over drugs policy?

qatYesterday we learnt that the Home Secretary has decided to ban the drug ‘khat’, against the recommendation of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). The Lib Dems were reportedly against this move, and the decision lay with Theresa May. This and other decisions suggest that drugs minister Jeremy Browne has been given a script but no power.

The disappointing decision to make khat a Class C drug follows the view of the ACMD in January that it should remain legal (having said the same thing …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 13 Comments

Opinion: Decriminalising drugs

drugsThe 2011 Liberal Democrat conference passed a motion calling for all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs to be scrapped, the introduction of a regulated market in cannabis, and the expansion of heroin maintenance clinics for the most fervent users.

The UK Drugs Policy Commission (UKDPC), published its final report in 2012. According to UKDPC, the cost of implementing current policy on illicit drugs is at least £3bn a year, but a lack of evidence for what works and provides value for money, and politicians’ unwillingness to act on available …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 13 Comments

Jeremy Browne sets off on global drugs policy research tour

Liberal Democrat Home Office Minister Jeremy Browne is in Portugal this week. As reported in the Guardian, he has embarked on a tour that will take him to Denmark, Sweden and the US to investigate different drugs policies before reporting his conclusions at the end of the year.

He is quoted as saying:

I’m proud of the UK’s drug policy and there are strong signs our approach is working. Illegal drug use is at its lowest level since records began and far more people are leaving treatment free from dependency than ever before.

But I’m not complacent. The UK cannot deal with

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 3 Comments

Opinion: we must force the Tories to follow the evidence on khat

I feel sorry for the Academic Council on the Misuse of Drugs. It’s this panel of drug experts’ task to try and inject some sense into our country’s failing drug policy. Sadly, in the latter years of New Labour’s reign, it became the default option to ignore their advice on drug classification. On magic mushrooms, then on cannabis and then again on ecstasy, Labour couldn’t resist ignoring the ACMD, opting instead for populist posturing in an attempt to appear ‘tough’.

The Labour government’s unscientific urges on drug classification were deeply frustrating to Liberal Democrats, and this led us to a 2010 …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 30 Comments

Nick Clegg: Time to rethink drugs policy

The Sun running a story about the attitude of politicians to drugs reform is fairly commonplace. A Liberal Democrat politician calling for the drugs laws to be reviewed is fairly commonplace. What is however rather less common – and so all the more significant – is for the former to feature the latter in a positive light as LDV mentioned earlier today:

Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 2 Comments

LibLink: Nick Clegg declares the ‘war on drugs’ lost

It’s unlikely that many of our readers also take The Sun, but it’s probably equally unlikely that a Liberal Democrat would ever give an interview to it in which they spoke so freely about drug policy.

So, today’s headline in the Sun, “Nick Clegg: time to re-think drugs” will be an unexpected one, made more so by the rather supportive polling carried out by YouGov for it and the general tenor of the piece.

Here’s a snippet from the article;

If you

Posted in LibLink and News | Also tagged | 8 Comments

Julian Huppert MP writes… Drugs: We will be judged by what we achieve

Last year, the Lib Dems passed a near-unanimous Conference motion calling for a complete review of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. It included a call to “consider reform of the law, based on the Portuguese model”.

Today, the cross-Party Home Affairs Select Committee, of which I am a Member, has endorsed that position, and told the Government that they must focus on reducing the damage caused by drugs, rather than hard-line posturing.

Posted in Op-eds | 6 Comments

Opinion: It’s time for Nick Clegg to make the liberal case on drugs policy

The Mail on Sunday yesterday reported that the Home Affairs Select Committee report into drugs policy, reporting this morning, is going to recommend that the option of legalisation should be seriously considered and a Royal Commission should be set up to report on the issue prior to the 2015 general election.

As readers of my blog will know, I am a long standing supporter of liberalisation of our drug laws. So this report is a breath of fresh air as far as I am concerned. – A sensible pragmatic look at the problems with

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 32 Comments

Opinion: Don’t mistake the bodyguard state for a nanny

Richard Reeves has had a go at trying to describe a path for the Liberal Democrats to follow in order to escape from our current political mire.

It’s an interesting read, but peppered with many more sentences that made me groan than nod along. I take particular issue with his characterisation of minimum alcohol pricing and cigarette sales restrictions as indicative of the “nanny state” at work. The nanny state slaps your wrist as you reach for the cookie jar and says “no”. The nanny state stands between homosexuals who love each other and want to get married. The nanny …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 23 Comments

YouGov poll shows huge support for Lib Dem drug policy

Last year’s drug policy debate at conference ended with near-unanimous endorsement of the policy motion “protecting individuals and communities from drug harms“, but since then Liberal Democrats seem to have been passing up every opportunity to publicise our new policy.

When Theresa May dismissed the advice of the chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, Lib Dems were silent. When Ken Clarke said the War on Drugs was failing but that decriminalisation wasn’t the answer… Lib Dems were silent. When an audience member of question time last week asked if it was time to control, regulate and …

Posted in News | Also tagged and | 10 Comments
Advert



Recent Comments

  • Joe Bourke
    Sovereign wealth funds have been mooted by both Labour ...
  • Steve Trevethan
    What does “balance the budget” mean in practical reality?...
  • Mick Taylor
    @MohammedAmin. Strange then that our sister party in Luxembourg campaigned and won on radical policies like legalising cannabis, free public transport and legal...
  • Peter Martin
    @ Michael BG, "Are you suggesting that companies pay sick leave for long periods of time?" No. It would only apply to those on the JG scheme. ...
  • Peter Martin
    "Establish a Sovereign Wealth Fund" ??? Why would you want to do this? The reason for having them is to export capital which in turn keeps the ...