UK - Expert commission calls for total overhaul of UK drugs legislation

[WrtngCocaineTutorial]

I think the people brainwashing others are allready brainwashed themselves, and has never read objective info on drugs. like an evil circle

[genaro]

classing substances by "harm potential"! Wow, they finally understood, I can't believe it!

now, I strongly disagree with the diagram that sounds illogical (notably cause solvants are listed among the least dangerous ones when we all know that solvants are clearly among the most harmful drugs to both the body and the mind).

...anyway, why are solvants listed when these are not considered illegal in any country?

[Zaprenz]

If such a comprehensive system is put in place it HAS to be up for constant review to be effective. (In SWIMs opinion)

Saying "buprenorphine is worse than solvents" MAY hold true for practical reasons right now according to variables and statistics that define what exactly makes a drug "bad" to society.

However in ten years time the above statement will no doubt be COMPLETELY meaningless.

SWIM could imagine a system which goes through a review every year might be effective. For example this year we have seen kids abusing Drug % and suffocating so this year its class A. (Still logistics of this would probably make it unfeasible.)

SWIM can imagine whats more likely is complete control on all compounds designated for human consumption. The designated part being decided by a court of law - no "not for human consumption get out disclaimer" . Guilty until proven innocent

[The Doors]

SWIM is in serious danger right now!

[Lunar Loops]

This is back in the news again, although nothing has been done since the last call for change. This from BBC News website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6173272.stm :


Call for ecstasy to be downgraded

Half a million Britons are believed to take ecstasy each week

Ecstasy and LSD should be downgraded from Class A to Class B, a government adviser on drugs law has proposed.
Professor David Nutt, who chairs a committee of a drugs advisory council, said grouping the drugs with others in Class A, like heroin, was an "anomaly".
But he said barbiturates could be "worth moving up to Class A".
Currently, possession of a Class A drug carries a maximum jail sentence of seven years, compared with five years for a Class B drug.
The penalties rise to a maximum of a life sentence for supplying a Class A drug, and 14 years for Class B.
Professor Nutt's comments came after the Commons' all-party Science and Technology Committee asked which drugs were wrongly classified.
"I think 4MTA, LSD and ecstasy probably shouldn't be Class A," he said.
4MTA, or methylthioamphetamine, is a derivative of ecstasy, but is not as widely used.
Drugs review
Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), confirmed that a review of ecstasy's legal ranking was under way.
The review would examine whether more could be done to reduce the harm caused by the drug, which is taken by an estimated 500,000 people a week.
Drugs minister Vernon Coaker said he would examine any recommendation put forward by the ACMD, but said that did not mean action would definitely be taken to reclassify the drugs.
"If the ACMD look at a drug and come to us with a recommendation of course we will look at it," he said.
"Whether we then act on it will be a matter of political judgment." In 2002, a recommendation by members of the Commons' Home Affairs Select Committee to downgrade ecstasy to Class B was dismissed by the then Home Secretary David Blunkett. Last month Home Secretary John Reid said he would not revise the drugs classification system, despite claims it inadequately reflected the real harm of drugs, and excluded legal substances such as alcohol and tobacco.

[WrtngCocaineTutorial]

does anyone know if Britain has changed their laws?
So that they now refect this new rapport?

[Trebor]

No, they have not nor will they change their laws in the near future. Not while the Labour government is still there.

[zera]

The study lists solvents (by which I assume they mean inhalants) as less harmful than cannabis? Bullshit.

Frankly we see this kind of muddled thinking all the time in the field of mathematics. What you're doing is taking a list of factors that define drugs such as intoxication level produced, likelihood of death or injury from recreational use, dependance and tolerance, withdrawal effects, and the like. Now one can determine which drugs are less harmful than others based on these criteria, but whatever units you're using the measure the criteria are going to be orthogonal.

That is to say there is no simple way to say "well okay a 5% increase in addiction rate is equal in harmfulness to a 40% increase in intoxication effects." So from a statistical viewpoint we say these numbers are ordinal, rather than cardinal that is adding them up and finding some mean to determine "overall harmfullness" is completely open to subjective weighing decisions.

It is mathematically impossible to produce an overall measure of "harmfullness" based on such multivarite non-interchangeable factors. One can rank drugs based on these individual factors, but any ranking of harmulness will have completely to do with the subjective weighing decisions of the compiler of the data.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Good post!

[darawk]

Originally Posted by zera

The study lists solvents (by which I assume they mean inhalants) as less harmful than cannabis? Bullshit.

I think they come to that conclusion because solvents are such shitty drugs, that fewer people would choose to use them and fewer still would actually get addicted.

But you're right, it's impossible to come up with an end-all measure of harmfulness, but I think generally this chart they came up with isn't too far off. And it's certainly better than the previous system, that's for sure.

[Alfa]

Less harmfull to what? Personal use or public health? In the latter case they may be right as few people are using them, so the total harm to society is more limited than the minimal harm of personal cannabis use times the amount of people that use cannabis.

[Lunar Loops]

BUMP...

Not quite sure why this is appearing in the UK press again at the moment, but this article was in The Observer:

Alcohol and tobacco are deadlier than ecstasy, report warns
Jamie Doward, home affairs editor
Sunday March 4, 2007
The Observer



The government is to be urged to consider a controversial plan to reclassify drugs according to the harm they do. The new ranking system would see alcohol placed high on the scale because of its links to violence and car accidents. Tobacco, estimated to cause 40 per cent of all hospital illnesses, would also come before the class-A drug ecstasy. However, there is no suggestion that alcohol and tobacco should be banned. The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce's commission on illegal drugs, communities and public policy has been examining what it believes is a 'serious misfit between the law relating to drugs and the way in which drugs are actually used by members of society'.
The commission, which includes John Yates, the Metropolitan Police's assistant commissioner, has heard evidence from experts and charities in a bid to find ways of making the UK's drugs laws more effective.

It has highlighted a study carried out by a team led by Colin Blakemore, chief executive of the Medical Research Council, that suggests classification should not be linked to penalties for drug possession but rather the relative risks involved in taking them.
The study of 20 drugs - both legal and illegal - weighed up their physical harm, their relative addictiveness and the impact they have on wider society, to produce a new 'rational' league table.
Blakemore suggests current drugs laws are outdated. 'The system has evolved in an unsystematic way from somewhat arbitrary foundations with seemingly little scientific basis. We suggest a new system for evaluating the risks of individual drugs that is based as far as possible on facts and scientific knowledge. It could form the basis of a new classification scheme for the Misuse of Drugs Act.'
The Drugs league table
Drugs assessed in order of danger
1 Heroin
2 Cocaine
3 Barbiturates
4 Street methadone
5 Alcohol
6 Ketamine
7 Benzodiazepine
8 Amphetamines
9 Tobacco
10 Buprenorphine
11 Cannabis
12 Solvents
13 4-MTA
14 LSD
15 Methylphenidate
16 Anabolic steroids
17 GHB
18 Ecstasy
19 Alkyl nitrates 20 Khat

[turkeyphant]

Originally Posted by shroomonger

BUMP...

Not quite sure why this is appearing in the UK press again at the moment, but this article was in The Observer

Thing is the current news article originated in the Observer and all the other newspapers are merely referring to that. It mentions the The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce committee rather than the Home Office Science and Technology committee that did last summer's report. The quotes also come from completely different people even though the ranking of the "league table" is exactly the same.

Has anyone managed to track down this more recent report?

[grecian]

The idiotic use of the word 'deadlier' in the headline implies that ecstasy itself is deadly. The implication being that the reader assumes that, not only ecstasy, but all drugs above ecstasy in the table (ie cannabis) are also deadly.

Accidental poor wording or deliberate attempt to mis-inform... who knows?

[Alfa]

Threads merged.

[darkglobe]

We all know that deaths as a direct consequence of Cannabis use are extremely rare, if at all. The ones that are documented were probably as a result of bad cutting.

I personally agree that the classification list needs updating, but I would focus more on making it harder to abuse prescription drugs, and stop conectrating on the moral panics created by the media which relate to the so-called "Hard Drugs".

Heroin is undoubtedly dangerous due to it's method of administration, unreliable quality/strength and extreme addiction potential. Note the word potential, as I'm not implying that everyone gets addicted.

Cocaine in my eyes has too much of a friendly and status-enhancing image. People need to be reminded of it's addiction potential and severe health impacts.

Ecstasy, believe it or not, is still relatively new to the drugs market, and as such there is little information on the dangers of long-term use actually are.

Alcohol contributes to more deaths than Cannabis or direct deaths from Heroin.

My opinion (post would've been more in-depth but im in a rush): scrap the laws, legalise the drugs and produce them in a lab environment ie take the wanted chemicals out and make pills with no other harmful ingredients. It's been done with nicotine, why not with other drugs?

~Dark

[turkeyphant]

More from the BBC today:

Drug laws 'need major overhaul'

The Royal Society of Arts (RSA) says illicit substances can be "harmless", while drinking and smoking can cause as many problems.

It says the law has been "driven by moral panic", and suggests policy-making should be left to drug teams and local authorities.

The Home Office says it does not accept all of the report's recommendations.

'Political manipulation'

Professor Anthony King of Essex University, who chaired the Commission on Illegal Drugs, said the "great majority" of drug users did not harm themselves or others.

He added: "Current policy is broke and needs to be fixed."

The report, entitled Illegal Drugs, Communities and Public Policy, comes ahead of a major government review of the country's drugs strategy next year.

The RSA's panel recommends scrapping the Misuse of Drugs Act and replacing it with a broader Misuse of Substances Act, and replacing the existing ABC classification system with an "index of harms".

This would extend the definition of drugs to include alcohol and tobacco - as well as illegal substances, which the report says have been "demonised".

It also calls for so-called "shooting galleries" to be introduced where users can inject drugs as well as wider access to prescription heroin.

The report suggests the wrong people are in jail and in treatment, while money is wasted trying to hit "inappropriate" targets.

The system is "crude, ineffective, riddled with anomalies and open to political manipulation", it adds.

The report argues that current drug campaigns do not work, nor does drug testing at the point of arrest and both should be abandoned.

It says policy should be about reducing harm and pursuing the criminal gangs behind the drugs trade rather than the level of crime.

And if drug taking does not harm anyone, then criminal sanctions should not be applied, the report continues.

Another of its recommendations is to pass the power to shape policy from the Home Office to local authorities and drug teams.

'Harmless use'

The report says: "The idea of a drugs-free world, or even of a drugs-free Britain, is almost certainly a chimera."

It continues: "The use of illegal drugs is by no means always harmful any more than alcohol use is always harmful.

"The evidence suggests that a majority of people who use drugs are able to use them without harming themselves or others.

"The harmless use of illegal drugs is thus possible, indeed common."

It says drugs education is "inconsistent, irrelevant, disorganised" and "delivered by people without adequate training", and its main focus should shift from secondary to primary schools.

The Home Office has estimated that the social cost of drug abuse alone to the country is between £10bn and £17bn a year.

It said its strategy has led to a 16% fall in drugs crime and more people able to access treatment.

Martin Barnes from the charity Drugscope said drug use needed to be addressed as a wider social problem.

He added: "There's really far too great an emphasis on it being a problem solely associated with crime.

"It's about public health, it's about poor mental health, it's about homelessness."

The RSA has spent two years examining the impact of current policy as well as alternatives.

'Worryingly complacent'

Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith said the report was "worryingly complacent".

He added: "The RSA has also failed to do its homework by not surveying the views of drug addicts - who want recovery and drug-free lives - not managed dependency on methadone."

David Blunkett, the former home secretary, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he wanted to see "a much more sensible debate" and that he supported a "substantial" expansion of the prescribing of heroin.

But James Griffith-Edwards, emeritus professor of addiction behaviour at the University of London, told BBC Radio Five Live that he was sceptical about the report.

He said: "I doubt whether any swingeing remedies would get one very far."

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg called the report "an extremely important contribution" to the debate, adding: "The so-called war on drugs is failing."

And Steve Rolles of drug law reform campaign group Transform praised the Commission's findings.

"This really is a rational response to 30 years of dramatic failure," he said.

[Evil GIR]

David Blunkett, the former home secretary, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he wanted to see

Sorry, I was tempted to make another David blunket joke there,

Anyway i have noticed the more religious a place is the harsher the punishment or law is that surrounds drugs. You can see this simply by comparing the state law of Texas to say Florida

So I just think that the current laws are based on personal belief rather that science. People in power just don't want anyone else to take drugs just because they don't believe in em.

[turkeyphant]

Originally Posted by dib

So I just think that the current laws are based on personal belief rather that science. People in power just don't want anyone else to take drugs just because they don't believe in em.

This case been the case since the very first drug laws were introduced and continued, most notably with LSD and marijuana, throughout the 20th Century. For, example, consider this:

Ultimately, these LSD experiments failed for 2 reasons, one scientific and the other cultural ... As LSD became increasingly associated with student riots, antiwar demonstrations, and the counterculture, governments intervened to criminalize the drug, restricting and then terminating formal medical research into its potential therapeutic effects.

Dyck, Erika. 2005. “Flashback: Psychiatric Experimentation With LSD in Historical Perspective”, Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 50 (7): 381-388.

[renegades]

Expert commission calls for total overhaul of UK drugs legislation

By Nigel Morris, Home Affairs Correspondent

Published: 09 March 2007



Britain's antiquated laws have failed to control the rapid spread of drug use over the past 30 years and should be replaced with a system that treats users as victims rather than offenders, the Government has been told.
A two-year survey of drug use reached the damning conclusion that the current legislation is "not fit for purpose", failing to recognise that alcohol and tobacco can cause more harm than "demonised" substances such as cannabis and ecstasy. The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce Commission on Illegal Drugs said current laws were "driven by a moral panic" and one of its members warned that increasing numbers of primary school children were experimenting with drugs.
The commission, which included academics, community workers and politicians, demanded the abolition of the Misuse of Drugs Act, to be replaced with a broader Misuse of Substances Act.
It believes the system of dividing drugs into A, B and C categories should be swept away in favour of an "index of harms", recognising the damage that different substances do to users and society as a whole.
Under one possible ratings system, heroin, cocaine and barbiturates would be rated the most dangerous drugs. Alcohol (5th) and tobacco (9th) would be treated as more hazardous than cannabis (11th), LSD (14th) and ecstasy (18th).
In a proposal that would effectively decriminalise cannabis, it said jail sentences should be reserved for the most serious drugs offences. It said current classifications for ecstasy and LSD - both class-A substances - lacked credibility.
The commission called for the Home Office to be stripped of government responsibility for drugs policy in favour of local councils and drugs teams. The move would prevent drug use being treated primarily as a criminal justice issue and switch the focus to tackling addiction.
It called for children to be warned about the dangers of drug use while they were still in primary school.
One commission member, Steve Rossell, chief executive of Cranstoun Drug Services, which provides treatment to addicts, said: "I'm seeing the average age of first use of drugs dramatically dropping year on year. In order to address that ... children need to have the facts put before them at a far earlier age."
Another member, Fatima Roberts, a community worker in London, said children as young as five were well acquainted with a drugs culture. In a recent project in Tower Hamlets, they had drawn pictures of drug dealers with spliffs, chains and fast cars.
The report called for wider prescription of heroin to addicts and for the introduction of "shooting galleries" where users can inject. It demanded improvement in rehabilitation services in prisons in an effort to break the link between addiction and acquisitive crime.
Its chairman, Anthony King, professor of government at Essex University, said the great majority of drug users did not harm themselves or others. He said: "Current policy is broke and needs to be fixed."
Its report received a chilly response from the Home Office, which said it did not accept all the recommendations. A spokesman said: "We are not complacent and we will continue to look to improve our work in this area wherever we can." But Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: "This is a wake-up call. Our current policies are clearly not working. We need a non-partisan debate about the way forward."
Iain Duncan Smith, the chairman of the Conservative Social Justice Policy Group, said: "The report grossly underplays the damage done to individuals and society by the taking of psychoactive drugs. [And] it adopts a defeatist attitude to the spiralling growth in drug misuse."
The commission's report said drugs were not confined to any one section of the population, with substance abuse in all social classes in all parts of the country.
It said: "Illegal drugs and drug users are frequently depicted as evil and a threat to society. In our view demonisation does more harm than good... The idea of a drugs-free world, or even a drugs-free Britain, is... a chimera. The main aim of public policy should be to reduce the amount of harm that drugs cause."
Charles Clarke promised a review of the drug classification system, which dates from the early 1970s, when he was Home Secretary. It was abandoned when he was succeeded by John Reid, who shows no sign of wanting to revisit the issue.
Martin Barnes, chief executive of the charity DrugScope, said the report marked "a watershed in political and public debate on the future of drugs policy".
He said: "The emphasis on drugs as a criminal justice issue needs to shift to a more explicit focus on health and reducing the wider harms caused by drugs to individuals, families and communities."
Controlled substances
Cannabis
Easily cultivated in temperate climates. More than three million regular users in UK - higher than elsewhere in Europe. Costs £30 to £80 per ounce of resin, £35 to £110 for herbal cannabis, rising to £160 for highest quality. Class C substance.
Report Says: "Used more like tobacco and coffee than other drugs and by a wider variety of users. Medicinal uses."
Dangers: Little evidence of physical dependence, but can be psychologically addictive.
Reducing Use: Warning children about dangers.
Heroin
Derived from the opium poppy, the vast majority of which are grown in Afghanistan. UK use higher than in most Western countries, but less than 1 per cent of adults (approx 40,000) are users. Wide variations in street price, averaging £40 per gram. Class A.
Report Says: "Accounts for a large proportion of problematic drug use."
Dangers: The most physically addictive drug, with debilitating side-effects. Linked to crime.
Reducing Use: Introducing "shooting galleries" and prescribing heroin.
Cocaine
Made from the coca shrub. Growing popularity, with 800,000 regular users and the UK topping European league table for use. Readily available for £30 to £55 per gram, with 10 to 20 lines per gram. Class A.
Report Says: "Increasing numbers of teenagers experimenting with it because of media campaigns against ecstasy."
Dangers: Psychological dependence. Regular users become run down. Risk of heart attack. Damage to nose and facial muscles.
Reducing Use: Acupuncture and neuroelectrical therapy.
Crack
Smokable form of cocaine turned into rocks. Epidemic use forecast in the late 1980s has not materialised. Concentrated in major cities. Class A.
Report Says: "Image as the 'cheap and squalid poor relation of powder cocaine'." More users than heroin addicts among children in care, rough sleepers and prostitutes.
Dangers: Highly and instantly addictive. Linked to crime with growing numbers of addicts in jail, and associated with homelessness.
Reducing Use: Getting users off the streets.
Ecstasy
Synthetic drug taken as a tablet which gives rush of energy lasting up to six hours. Popular among younger adults - 9 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds reported using it. Costs £1 to £5 per pill. Class A.
Report Says: "Clubbers' drug of choice for 20 years. Class-A status has undermined its credibility among younger people.
Dangers: Over 200 ecstasy-related deaths in the UK. Increases blood pressure and heart rate.
Reducing Use: Leafletting campaigns targeted at clubbers. Educational campaigns in school.
The global view
Australia
In the mid 1980s, drug policy began to focus more on public health. Needle exchange programmes were introduced as early as 1986 to prevent the spread of HIV. Most territories have decrimin-alised possession of small amounts of cannabis.
United States
Successive White House administrations have taken a hard line. At least 500,000 Americans are in jail for drugs offences. But state legislators are increasingly beginning to shun the White House's hardline stance.
Russia
Decriminalised the possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use in 2004. Has cracked down on drug paraphernalia, including needles.
Switzerland
Policy on soft drugs is similar to other European countries, but supplies hard drugs to addicts to reduce criminal activity and prevent diseases. Moves are afoot to decriminalise cannabis.
Taiwan
While drug use is regarded as a criminal activity, Taiwan tries to avoid jail. Offenders are forced to detoxify. First-time and minor offenders generally asked/forced to detoxify in hospital and then at a rehabilitation clinic, rather than charged.
Canada
Has generally resisted pressure from Washington to enact harsher drugs laws and has a strong tradition of needle exchange programmes. Heroin-prescription trials under way.
The Netherlands
One of the most liberal drugs stances in the world, although harder drugs are still illegal, with stiff penalties enforced
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/pol...cle2341351.ece

[Lunar Loops]

The current report (discussed in a few threads now) lead to the following leader in The Guardian (UK):
Stop the war
Leader
Friday March 9, 2007
The Guardian


Defeat is always hard to face, especially for belligerent leaders. But there comes a point where logic forces the hand. In the second world war, after two Japanese cities had been destroyed, Emperor Hirohito surrendered with understatement. "The war situation," he told his countrymen, "has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage." In the case of the war on drugs, yesterday's report from a Royal Society of Arts commission makes it plain that, by any rational appraisal, a similar point has been reached. Will ministers face this reality, ditch Britain's failed policies and adopt in their place ones that might reduce the harm that drugs do?
Even before yesterday's report, events this week have revealed the perversities that flow from criminalisation. The squandering of court and police resources - resources which are intended to protect the public - was seen on Wednesday when a 68-year-old grandmother was convicted for growing cannabis that she uses to treat pain. On the same day No 10 let it be known that one of Tony Blair's aims at this week's EU summit would be to persuade his counterparts to volunteer forces to destroy the Afghan poppies used to produce drugs. That appeal is being made both because intermittent western attempts to destroy the crop so far have met the opposite of success - the harvest is now 30 times what it was 2001 - and because the British army is concerned that the already considerable risks it faces in Helmand province would be greatly magnified if it fell to it to destroy the $3.1bn industry on which much of the population there depends.
The costs, in terms of criminal justice and diplomacy, might be worthwhile if the consequence was a reduction of drug addiction on the streets of Britain. But that has not happened. When the existing framework for criminalisation was established in 1971, insofar as there was a drugs problem at all, it was concentrated among 2,000 registered addicts and perhaps a few thousand more who were hidden. Academic analysis, highlighted by yesterday's report, suggests that three decades later the UK had 360,000 problem users.
International comparisons only confirm the picture of failure. Britain has a higher recorded rate of opiate use than anywhere else in the world. Consumption of cocaine and amphetamines is arguably the highest in Europe. The RSA commission, which included no lesser policeman than the Metropolitan Police's assistant commissioner John Yates, suggest that drug use bears no simple relation to the stringency of drug laws. It points out that relatively liberal policies in Holland and Portugal go hand in hand with lower rates of consumption than are found in Britain.
This bleak picture of failure is familiar from other reports which have come before. But policy, bar a shift in the approach to cannabis which itself has been controversial, has not changed much. RSA polling evidence shows that the public is now readier to countenance pragmatic reform than nervous politicians think. By two to one, people believe that those whose only crime is to use drugs should not be brought before the courts but instead offered help and support. That should create the political space needed to shift the focus away from punishment and towards harm reduction. One priority is scrapping the residual requirement on the police to waste time on cannabis, a drug that is far from healthy but whose dangers cannot justify making criminals of those who smoke it. It is more important, however, that heroin addiction should be medicalised through rapid expansion of schemes to allow GPs to prescribe it. Not only would addicts then be saved from poisoning by impurities, but they would be spared the daily scramble to fund the next illegal fix. That could cut acquisitive crime at a stroke. A healthy peace dividend could flow to the whole community if an end was called to this most unwinnable of wars.

[Lunar Loops]

And this from The Telegraph (UK):
'Drugs are not going to go away'


By Anthony King

Last Updated: 1:42am GMT 09/03/2007



In its report, the RSA commission sought to begin the process of revolutionising the way in which policy makers in Britain tackle the problems associated with the use and abuse of illegal drugs.
We did so not by advocating instant solutions and eye-catching panaceas; but by recommending an entirely new approach to the problems posed by both illegal drugs and other psychoactive substances such as alcohol, tobacco and tranquillisers.


We were conscious that on this issue, as on most others, policy makers do not start with a clean slate.
They find themselves weighed down by a heavy load of laws, regulations, administrative arrangements and habits of mind inherited from the past.
Fresh thinking is difficult. Putting fresh thoughts into practice is, if anything, even more difficult.
We hope that, when they look back in five or ten years' time, those who work in the drugs field - and politicians and officials who work in the same field - will believe that this report contributed significantly towards broadening the public debate about drugs and introducing greater realism and rationality into drugs policy.
Drugs and other psychoactive substances are simply not going to go away.
People have used them for thousands of years, widespread demand exists, supply is plentiful, and the illegal-drugs industry, not to mention the alcohol, tobacco and legal drugs industries, are among the best organized and most market-oriented in the world.
Prohibition is no more a viable policy in Britain today than it proved to be in America during the 1920s and 1930s.
With regard to illegal drugs, young people, in particular, are often told 'Just say no'.
That may sometimes be good advice. The only trouble is that there are, and always will be, large numbers of people who, for whatever reason, ignore that advice and choose to say yes.
Drugs are a fact and, in our view, need to be accepted as a fact.
We believe, as our choice of title suggests, that policy and the administration of policy should be based on a cool appraisal of the facts, not on fantasy and wishful thinking.
Our acceptance of drugs as a fact of life does not mean that we are minded in any way to live with the harms that drugs cause.
On the contrary, it was precisely because we believed that drugs could be exceedingly harmful, and because we wanted to reduce the amount of harm that they cause, that we formed this commission.
Drugs are serious. They can cause problems, big problems. In our view, those problems should be tackled in the most efficacious ways possible.
Our suggestions are neither soft nor hard, neither left-wing nor right-wing.
They are purely pragmatic: that is, they are aimed at identifying the best means of working towards the desirable end of reducing the substantial amounts of harm that drugs cause in our society.

Anthony King is Professor of British Government at Essex University and chairman of the RSA commission on drugs.

[Fantasian]

I dont know whether this is good news or bad. Things seem to get thrown around so much in the Uk at the moment.

[Alfa]

Threads merged.

[Micklemouse]

From Drinkanddrugs.net

Radical rethink of drugs policy proposed
A radical rethink of drugs policy has been proposed by the RSA Drugs Commission, following a detailed two-year study. The report pulls drugs policy away from criminal justice and refocuses it on health and social support. Highlighting that the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 is 'no longer fit for purpose', the Commission calls for a new Misuse of Substances Act to include alcohol, tobacco, solvents, over-the-counter and prescription drugs. Launching the report, the Commission's chair, Professor Anthony King, urged ministers to 'undertake the task of re-orienting drugs policy and redirect it towards a broader conception of harm prevention and reduction'. Recommendations detail how this should be achieved by transferring the drugs policy lead from the Home Office to the Department for Communities and Local Government. A framework of local area agreements would help communities to tackle drug issues at local level, and drug action teams would be given 'enhanced status and profile' to co-ordinate cross-sector initiatives. The Commission is adamant that current drugs policy is not working, is 'driven more by moral panic than a practical desire to reduce harm' and needs a completely new approach to transform the fortunes of Britain's 350,000 problematic drug users. By looking at substance use as a heath and social issue, rather than just a crime problem, the Commission looks to redress a situation where 'drug users are frequently depicted as evil and a threat to society' to a 'calm, rational and balanced approach'. Drug policy should no longer be 'ghettoised', but integrated with policies on all areas of life. Evidence suggests that 'a majority of people who use drugs are able to use them without harming themselves or others', says the report - so it calls for help to be directed towards problematic drug users, found disproportionately among the poor, jobless, homeless, and socially excluded. Better housing, harm reduction support and stronger efforts to reintegrate to society those affected by drugs or alcohol, were more effective use of resources than ploughing them into criminal justice initiatives. The Commission calls testing on arrest 'ineffective, wasteful and ultimately unsustainable', and calls for a refocus of 'futile efforts to tackle illegal drugs, to concentrate on organised criminal networks rather than the casual user'. The fundamental overhaul had to include reaching children at a younger age. 'The "just say no" approach has not worked', says the report, which calls for children to be given drugs education younger, at primary school age, as part of 'developing general awareness of health issues and decision-making'. The bottom line was that current policy 'at best, gives mixed messages and at worst, is dishonest'. Separating health and criminal justice approaches and 'rating substances according to the amount of harms they cause' would be a large step towards a single, logical regulatory framework, suggests the Commission. Among early reactions, DrugScope welcomed the 'watershed' report and recommended it to politicians from all parties, to take a more realistic approach to drugs; while the Transform Drug Policy Foundation said 'good, but no cigar' - good for its positive recommendations, but no cigar for flirting with the idea of prohibition 'without really ever nailing' it. The report is at www.rsadrugscommission.org

The report is also at http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/loc...=1536&catid=15

Reputation Comments on this post:

thanks for finding the report

[turkeyphant]

Thanks Micklemouse - that's exactly what I was looking for. Unfortunately they only link to the Executive Summary online. The full report can be found here: http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/loc...=1537&catid=15

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Nice one!