tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/drug-prohibition-3783/articlesDrug prohibition – The Conversation2020-09-07T20:12:21Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1456882020-09-07T20:12:21Z2020-09-07T20:12:21ZIf reducing harm to society is the goal, a cost-benefit analysis shows cannabis prohibition has failed<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356698/original/file-20200907-20-1ooje0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C4%2C2972%2C2039&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The case for a referendum on New Zealand’s cannabis law was already urgent in 2015 when the supposedly more pressing issue was whether we should <a href="https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/flags-of-new-zealand/flag-referenda">change the flag</a>. As I <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11539001">argued</a> at the time, prohibition had failed and was costing society far more than the drug itself.</p>
<p>As with alcohol, tobacco, prostitution and gambling, regulation – not prohibition – seemed the smarter way forward. Nothing has changed as the cannabis legalisation and control <a href="https://www.referendums.govt.nz/cannabis/index.html?">referendum</a> looms on October 17. If anything, the evidence from five wasted decades of war on cannabis is even more compelling.</p>
<p>First, tens of thousands of New Zealand lives have been disproportionately damaged – not through use of the drug, but because of its criminalisation.</p>
<p>According to figures released under the Official Information Act, between 1975 and 2019, 12,978 people spent <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/1209/Appendix_Two_-_C120817.pdf?1599450513">time in jail</a> for cannabis-related convictions (using and/or dealing). In the same period, 62,777 were given <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/1210/Appendix_One_-_C120817.pdf?1599450825">community-based sentences</a> for cannabis-related convictions.</p>
<p>These statistics have not been evenly distributed. Māori are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1177083X.2020.1760897">more likely</a> to be convicted on cannabis charges, even accounting for higher rates of use. </p>
<p>Each conviction represented real or potential harm to job prospects, ability to travel, educational and other forms of social opportunity.</p>
<h2>Despite the law, cannabis use increases</h2>
<p>Second, despite these penalties and the millions of hours of police time spent enforcing the law, demand remains stronger than ever. Mirroring international trends (an <a href="https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2020/en/exsum.html">estimated</a> 192 million people used cannabis in 2018, making it the most used drug globally), the number of people using cannabis in New Zealand is increasing.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cannabis-use-after-work-doesnt-affect-productivity-new-research-144780">Cannabis use after work doesn’t affect productivity – new research</a>
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<p>The most recent statistics suggest <a href="https://minhealthnz.shinyapps.io/nz-health-survey-2018-19-annual-data-explorer/_w_6e397eab/#!/explore-topics">15% of people</a> used it at least once in the past year – nearly double the 8% recorded in 2011-12. The rate for those between 15 and 24 could be closer to 29% (nearly double the 15% in 2011-12).</p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03036758.2020.1750435">Research</a> suggests most New Zealanders (about 80%) born in the 1970s have used cannabis at least once. Despite the hype, propaganda and fear, such widespread use has not sent the nation spinning of control.</p>
<p>This is not a universal rule. For a minority (perhaps 4% to 10% of all users), there is a risk of developing a dependence that impairs their psychological, social and/or occupational functioning. Again, Maori suffer <a href="https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/Documents/WT/wt_DOC_155808738/Wai%202575%2C%20B030.pdf">disproportionately</a> in this area.</p>
<p>Despite these risks, overall the damage of cannabis is far <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/we-took-a-scientific-look-at-whether-weed-or-alcohol-is-worse-for-you-and-there-appears-to-be-a-a8056186.html">less</a> (for both individuals and wider society) than for legal drugs such as <a href="https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/publications/alcohol-factsheets.pdf">alcohol</a> and <a href="https://www.health.govt.nz/your-health/healthy-living/addictions/smoking/health-effects-smoking#:%7E:text=Smoking%20kills&text=Around%205000%20people%20die%20each,That's%2013%20people%20a%20day.">tobacco</a>.</p>
<h2>Black markets only work for criminals</h2>
<p>Third, criminals have thrived on the illegality of cannabis. The median price of an ounce fluctuates between <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0955395920300694">$350 and $400</a>. With such attractive profit margins for an illegal product, a black market is inevitable.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cannabis-high-potency-strains-linked-to-greater-chance-of-anxiety-new-research-139614">Cannabis: high potency strains linked to greater chance of anxiety – new research</a>
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<p>In turn, the quality and safety of the product are not regulated, the market is not controlled (children become customers), and no tax is earned from the profits. The spill-over crime rate increases as gangs or cartels seek to monopolise business and expand their territory.</p>
<p>The referendum now offers the <a href="https://www.beehive.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2019-12/Cannabis%20Legalisation%20and%20Control%20Bill.pdf">Cannabis Legislation and Control Bill</a> as a solution to these problems. If it became law the current situation would change in several significant ways:</p>
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<li><p>access to cannabis for those aged 20 or over would be restricted to a personal supply (two plants) or purchase of 14 grams per day at a set potency level</p></li>
<li><p>sale would be through licensed premises selling quality-controlled product from licensed producers</p></li>
<li><p>standardised health warnings would be mandatory</p></li>
<li><p>advertising would be strictly controlled</p></li>
<li><p>cannabis could not be consumed in a public place</p></li>
<li><p>selling to someone under 20 would risk four years in jail or a fine of up to $150,000</p></li>
<li><p>cannabis sales would be taxed</p></li>
<li><p>money would be available for public education campaigns to raise awareness of potential harm and promote responsible use.</p></li>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/economics-of-legalising-cannabis-pricing-and-policing-are-crucial-119914">Economics of legalising cannabis – pricing and policing are crucial</a>
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<p>Some <a href="https://nzier.org.nz/publication/nzs-cannabis-referendum-2020-some-facts-and-recommendations-about-the-process-of-cannabis-legalisation-nzier-public-discussion-paper-20201">estimates</a> put the potential tax take as high as NZ$490 million per year. There are also optimistic arguments that criminality and harm associated with the drug will drastically reduce, if not be eliminated altogether.</p>
<p>But these outcomes will depend on the price and quality of the product, the effectiveness of policing the non-compliant, and providing the right help to those who need it.</p>
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<h2>There is no perfect solution</h2>
<p>While <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/14/legal-marijuana-medical-use-crime-rate-plummets-us-study">overseas evidence</a> suggests legalisation reduces many of the peripheral crimes associated with the illegal supply of cannabis, this tends to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07418825.2019.1666903">turn on</a> the types of crimes examined and the nature of the black market. </p>
<p>New Zealand conditions <a href="https://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/journals-and-magazines/social-policy-journal/spj18/cannabis-black-market18-pages31-43.html">may differ</a>. These caveats suggest it is overly simplistic to believe that regulation of recreational cannabis will lead to a happy utopia down under. There will always be harm and there will undoubtedly be teething problems if the new law goes ahead.</p>
<p>But that is not the question being asked on October 17. What voters have to answer is this: does regulation offer a better pathway than prohibition when it comes to reducing harm in our society?</p>
<p>Five decades of failure would suggest one of those options offers more hope than the other.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145688/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Gillespie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Around 75,000 New Zealanders have been sentenced for a cannabis-related offence since 1975. With the drug more popular than ever, is it time we let the evidence guide our decisions?Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of WaikatoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1293922020-01-30T12:44:41Z2020-01-30T12:44:41ZThe highs and lows of the opium trade in southern Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311814/original/file-20200124-81336-1d1c10h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The reach of European empires and of Indian Ocean trade networks drew southern Africa into the global politics of opium around the turn of the twentieth century. Between the late 1880s and early 1920s and there was a shift from economies of supply to regimes of control. </p>
<p>The colonies of Mozambique and South Africa were caught up in these big changes. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02582473.2019.1627402">recent paper</a> I highlight how official and unofficial actors shaped and responded to the global politics of opium and, in different ways, worked to benefit from these developments. </p>
<p>With a focus on Mozambique and, especially, South Africa, I demonstrate how the changing global politics of drug supply and suppression influenced local colonial social and political processes. </p>
<p>I also show how these histories influenced events worldwide, including the first efforts to use the League of Nations to control the international cannabis trade.</p>
<h2>Opium cultivation in Mozambique</h2>
<p>In July 1877 an unpleasant surprise greeted British Imperial consul, Captain James Frederick Elton, as he led an expedition through the Zambezi valley in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Mozambique">Mozambique</a>. An agricultural experiment was underway, and it seemed to be thriving. The enterprise was Portuguese; the crop was <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/crime/history-of-heroin-morphine-and-opiates">opium</a>. </p>
<p>This was a problem for him because there was open contestation between European countries hungry to <a href="https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Scramble_for_Africa">colonise the continent</a>. Elton recognised that active farming in this region was bad news for British interests and claim-making. </p>
<p>Worse, the healthy crop of <em>Papaver somniferum</em> heralded a new source of competition with <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Opium-Wars">British Indian opium</a> that monopolised the lucrative Chinese market.</p>
<p>In 1874, the Mozambique Opium Cultivation and Trading Company launched its experiment with £180,000, a concession of 50,000 acres of Portuguese crown land and exclusive rights to duty-free export for 12 years. </p>
<p>In fact, growing opium in the Zambezi valley proved a short-lived venture. </p>
<p>In 1884, poppy cultivation was ended by an anti-colonial uprising. Although the violence had broader aims and targets, African workers were motivated to destroy the opium plantation because of the company’s extortion of workers through taxes and forced recruitment. </p>
<p>Quests to profit from opium were taken up in a different way further south. </p>
<h2>The South African leg</h2>
<p>By the early 1900s the consumption of opium and its alkaloids, like morphine, were well established in southern Africa. A common ingredient in over-the-counter <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object-groups/balm-of-america-patent-medicine-collection/history">patent medicines</a>, opiates were distributed by shopkeepers, pharmacists and missionaries. </p>
<p>Because of disproportionate access, white citizens were most at risk of forming a ‘habit’. Afrikaans poet <a href="https://www.uj.ac.za/library/informationsources/special-collections/Online-Exhibitions/Eugene-Marais/Pages/Eugene-Marais-Early-Life.aspx">Eugene Marais</a> was famously a life-long morphine injector. At least one historian has argued that the writing career of <a href="https://digitalcollections.lib.uct.ac.za/humanitec/schreiner">Olive Schreiner</a> was, for a time, hampered by over-consumption of opiated Chlorodyne. </p>
<p>Opium also figured in labour control. Early in the century, until 1910, the Transvaal legally imported tons of opium for the use of migrant Chinese workers recruited to the gold mines. It legislated a <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-african-history/article/poppies-and-gold-opium-and-law-making-on-the-witwatersrand-190410/7F346245184D53E8B084CE30C1F772B7">formal system of opium provision</a> for these workers and farmed the revenue through a customs act.</p>
<p>Opium consumption was entirely legal. Nevertheless, especially from 1910, the South African government sought to <a href="https://mh.bmj.com/content/44/4/253.full">regulate all forms of opium sales</a>. Police showed most interest in opium used for smoking and occasionally raided ‘opium dens’. In 1910, police reported six such venues in Cape Town. All were in fact just rooms in private homes. Salon owners supplied opium, along with the pipes and lamps used to smoke it. </p>
<p>Their patrons were a small and eclectic community. There was, for example, William Birch, a ‘Coloured’ Pierrot troupe player, small time drug dealer and police informant; Daisy Harris, a ‘European’ hotel barmaid; Mr Kong Lee, who ran a laundry with his wife, a ‘St Helena woman’; Hamat Rajap, a Muslim tailor; and Richardson (alias ‘Country’), a black American traveller.</p>
<p>In Cape ports, sailors brought opium. Train stewards were known to move it inland. Some medical professionals also profited from a sideline supplying opium. In Johannesburg, risk-takers could try their luck smuggling Indian opium from up the coast and the port at Lourenço Marques (now Maputo).</p>
<h2>Colonial rule</h2>
<p>After 1910, quantities of opium in circulation remained relatively small. Yet, international opium conferences held in the <a href="https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/the-1912-hague-international-opium-convention.html">Hague in 1912</a> and in 1914 identified the Union of South Africa as a critical region for controlling ‘dangerous drugs’. Bordered by two oceans, with multiple ports and a growing pharmaceutical manufacturing sector, the Union was instructed to embrace the protocols being drafted. </p>
<p>But South Africa dragged its feet. That is until the 1920s when government officials such as <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/general-jan-christiaan-smuts">Jan Smuts</a>, who served as prime minister of the Union, promoted restrictive legislation. </p>
<p>Smuts was also one of the architects of the <a href="https://www.unog.ch/80256EDD006B8954/(httpAssets)/36BC4F83BD9E4443C1257AF3004FC0AE/%24file/Historical_overview_of_the_League_of_Nations.pdf">League of Nations</a>. He soon recognised that the international campaigns against ‘dangerous drugs’ could suit local political aims. </p>
<p>The government led by Smuts sought to control the consumption and production of cannabis (known as ‘dagga’ locally) within its borders. Cannabis had been used as medicine and recreational intoxicant by indigenous communities for at least 500 years. But the British <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-african-court-frees-cannabis-from-colonial-and-apartheid-past-103644">colonial view</a> of the plant became woven into narratives that fed white panic about crime and racial control. </p>
<p>South Africa requested that international bodies add cannabis to the ‘dangerous drugs’ list. With support from Egypt and other nations, cannabis was – along with opium, heroin, and cocaine – criminalised internationally in 1925.</p>
<p>The South African government also set about putting rigorous controls in place on the Mozambican border. The drive to control ‘dangerous drugs’ therefore also bolstered its capacity for territorial sovereignty.</p>
<p><em>This is the second article in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=DRSA">series</a> on drug regimes in southern Africa. They are based on research done for a special edition for the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rshj20/current">South African Historical Journal</a>. Read the full paper over <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02582473.2019.1627402">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129392/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thembisa Waetjen receives funding from the National Research Foundation (NRF).</span></em></p>Opium played a fascinating role in southern African colonial politics, conflict and social change - from the poppy fields of Mozambique to the early days of Johannesburg city.Thembisa Waetjen, Associate Professor of History, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1282462020-01-29T12:41:41Z2020-01-29T12:41:41ZSecret histories of drugs – legal and illegal – in southern Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311110/original/file-20200121-117907-1k57lih.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you want to score heroin in some of the historically black suburbs, or townships, of Johannesburg, South Africa, you need to find yourself a ‘Snyman’. A ‘Snyman’ is a drug dealer. The word is used in <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/978-1-137-01593-8_18">tsotsitaal</a>, the creole, urban dialect that emerged during the colonial and apartheid eras of segregation. </p>
<p>‘Snyman’ entered this lexicon in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was around this time that cannabis smugglers supplying the gold mining compounds and nearby settlements began to diversify into pharmaceuticals. One drug of choice was methaqualone, also known as Mandrax. </p>
<p>Today, most young people who rely on a Snyman to supply them with a
bit of a heroin admixture locally known as <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037907381830481X">nyaope</a> aren’t aware that they are invoking the name of a mid-century professor of medicine at the University of Pretoria, Dr HW Snyman. In 1961 Snyman headed a governmental commission that bore his name. Its recommendations led to the Medicines and Related Substances <a href="https://www.nda.agric.za/vetweb/Legislation/Other%20acts/R_Medicines_and_related_substances.htm">Control Act</a> of 1965.</p>
<p>This means that, at the height of the apartheid era, black entrepreneurs trading in illicit pharmaceuticals adopted and repurposed the name of a white medical expert who enacted the state’s vision of drug regulation. In calling themselves ‘Snyman’, they showed a hefty dose of defiance as well as ironic humour.</p>
<p>The anecdote may be read as a metaphor of grassroots challenges to apartheid statecraft. But it also confirms growing, global evidence that drug prohibitions have never been far from the workings of ‘shadow’ economies. Indeed, chemically and socially, the <a href="https://www.strath.ac.uk/humanities/schoolofhumanities/history/centreforthesocialhistoryofhealthhealthcare/beyondthemedicinesdrugsdichotomyhistoricalperspectivesongoodandevilinpharmacy/">dichotomies</a> historically crafted between (legitimated) medicines and (illicit) drugs just don’t hold in practice. </p>
<p>We see this currently, for example, in the rapidly <a href="https://www.economist.com/international/2019/08/29/a-global-revolution-in-attitudes-towards-cannabis-is-under-way">shifting legal status</a> of cannabis (including in <a href="http://theconversation.com/south-african-court-frees-cannabis-from-colonial-and-apartheid-past-103644">South African law</a>) and its speedy absorption into <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-largest-marijuana-companies-2019-01-02">corporate commerce</a>; in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/04/purdue-pharma-oxycontin-sacklers-opioid-lawsuits">painkiller</a> ‘opioid crises’ and <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/podcasts/20190911/20190911.htm">fentanyl overdose deaths</a> in the US; in the <a href="https://www.unodc.org/nigeria/en/key-findings-of-unodc-study-on-tramadol-trafficking-in-west-africa-discussed-at-regional-meeting.html">illicit trade</a> in the painkiller Tramadol in West Africa; and in clandestine exports of Chinese Xanax into the hands of South African <a href="https://www.newframe.com/prescription-drug-poses-new-threat-to-youths/">school kids</a>.</p>
<p>A special issue of the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rshj20/current">South African Historical Journal</a>, Drug Regimes in Southern Africa, showcases research about some of the ‘secret’ histories of drugs from the southern region of the African continent. These range from Cape Town’s opium dens to cannabis experiments on cats; from big pharma bio-prospecting to the politics of synthetic sedatives and controversial cow vaccines.</p>
<p>But why spend time reading about the past when today’s drug dilemmas seem so urgent?</p>
<h2>Why history matters</h2>
<p>Historical research can offer critical perspectives that help make sense of current dilemmas. Historians don’t generally set out to inform policy. Nevertheless complex understandings of the past are key to sound decision-making in both legislative and medical practices. Historians know that debates about substances commonly called ‘drugs’ are far from new. As was pointed out by organisers of a recent <a href="https://www.strath.ac.uk/humanities/schoolofhumanities/history/changingmindssocietiesstatesthesciencesandpsychoactivesubstancesinhistory/">history conference</a> held in Shanghai:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>After all, experts offering definitive accounts of psychoactive substances, vacillating bureaucrats and politicians, unyielding moralists and fickle consumers are all among the figures familiar to historians from other periods and a range of places.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Historical research on ‘drugs’, whether defined as <a href="https://www.intoxicatingspaces.org/">intoxicants</a> or medicines, is an established field among scholars in the global North. This is shown in the work of the <a href="https://alcoholanddrugshistorysociety.org/about/">Alcohol and Drugs History Society</a> and its excellent journal, <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/shad/current">Social History of Alcohol and Drugs</a>. </p>
<p>But drugs history scholarship from and about the global South grows ever more vibrant. Histories of <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807859056/andean-cocaine/">cocaine </a> in South America and <a href="https://www.strath.ac.uk/humanities/schoolofhumanities/history/centreforthesocialhistoryofhealthhealthcare/ourresearch/theasiancocainecrisis/">Asia</a>, <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469613727/home-grown/">cannabis in Mexico </a> and <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-modern-african-studies/article/politics-of-law-enforcement-in-nigeria-lessons-from-the-war-on-drugs/8B56707532B2902B3C2A26354C97966B">Nigeria</a>, <a href="https://brill.com/view/title/13754">khat in Kenya</a> and the politics of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/drugs-politics/E2EFB2A2A59AC5C2D6854BC4C4501558">drug use in Iran</a> are a few examples. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137321893">Histories of drugs in Africa</a> are of growing interest worldwide.</p>
<p>Since the late 19th century especially, global flows of neurochemical substances and products have deepened the entanglements of consumers in Africa in networks of legal and illicit drugs production, flow, profit and risk. Historical perspectives bring to light the social processes through which bioactive plants, manufactured pharmaceuticals and techniques of treatment come to figure in diverse and changing human experiences. </p>
<p>In the 20th century, the contexts of colonialism, apartheid and democracy shaped <a href="https://mh.bmj.com/content/44/4/253">drug control, provision and regulation</a> in South Africa.</p>
<p>Today media reports on drug issues in this country often invite panicked responses. Journalism frequently reproduces the hyperbole and moralism that have – for over a century – shaped public opinion here. Narratives that sometimes exaggerate or even mislead the public about new forms of substances, coming across borders, or the behaviours they allegedly cause, have had very negative consequences. These have included fuelling <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/10/we-are-a-target-wave-of-xenophobic-attacks-sweeps-johannesburg">xenophobic sentiments</a> as well as <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/opioids-in-south-africa">the stigma</a> attached to people using drugs. </p>
<p>At the same time, there are hopeful signs of change in public opinion. And there are positive indications of a quest for evidence-based policy and treatment solutions. An example is the case of <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/opioids-in-south-africa">harm reduction approaches</a> to opioid addiction.</p>
<h2>What’s needed</h2>
<p>The promises of pharmaceutical technologies are evident. So are the challenges. In today’s global world, we need the evidence offered by history to develop more informed, nuanced and less reactionary responses.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rshj20/current">special issue</a> ‘Drug Regimes in Southern Africa’ is proof of a growing body of work on the histories of drugs – illegal and legal – across the continent. </p>
<p><em>The information that ‘Snyman’ is used as a word for drug dealer was provided by Msawenkosi Gibson Nzimande, a University of Johannesburg Masters student currently doing research on substance use in Johannesburg.</em></p>
<p><em>This is the first article in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=DRSA">series</a> on drug regimes in southern Africa. They are based on research done for a special edition for the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rshj20/current">South African Historical Journal</a>. Read the full paper over <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02582473.2019.1681073">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128246/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thembisa Waetjen receives funding from the National Research Foundation (NRF).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie Parle receives funding from the National Research Council (NRF).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rebecca Hodes receives funding from the Medicines Research Council and the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa, the Medical Research Council of the United Kingdom, the Fogarty International Centre and the National Institute of Mental Health at the National Institutes of Health, United States, the European Research Council, and the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation.</span></em></p>From colonial poppy fields to pharmatrash, southern Africa offers a fascinating history of drug regimes – one that helps us make sense of drug policies and legislation today.Thembisa Waetjen, Associate Professor of History, University of JohannesburgJulie Parle, Honorary Professor in History, University of KwaZulu-NatalRebecca Hodes, Director, AIDS and Society Research Unit, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/814912017-07-27T14:40:35Z2017-07-27T14:40:35ZWhy the South African state needs to lose its fight against marijuana policy reform<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179611/original/file-20170725-28293-1defi3y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Thousands of South Africans are calling for the legalisation of marijuana. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Nic Bothma</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa is among many countries facing challenges to their drug control policies, particularly around marijuana, known locally as dagga. The <a href="http://www.sanctr.gov.za/YourRights/TheMedicinesControlCouncil/tabid/176/Default.aspx">Medicines Control Council</a> is developing <a href="http://www.mccza.com/documents/5933cac110.14_Media_Release_Cannabis_Nov16_v1.pdf">guidelines</a> for production for medicinal use and the country’s highest <a href="http://www.cda.gov.za/">drug policy guardian</a> has <a href="http://www.samj.org.za/index.php/samj/article/view/10863%3C/u">recommended</a> broader decriminalisation. </p>
<p>The key battle ground, however, is in the courts. </p>
<p>A new trial the state is likely to expend considerable energy trying to prove that marijuana use is seriously harmful. If this is indeed the substance of its argument, it should lose. The point isn’t whether marijuana causes harm, but whether criminal prohibition is the best way to address those harms.</p>
<p>South African Police Service statistics suggest that most anti-drug activity is against those in possession of small quantities. These are people who are unlikely to play any strategic role in drug supply, and whose deterrence or removal from the market has little prospect of having any impact overall.</p>
<h2>The legal wrangle to date</h2>
<p>The first recent knock to prohibition came in 2016 with a ruling by the Constitutional Court. The court <a href="http://www.saflii.org.za/za/cases/ZACC/2016/21.html">held</a> that the constitutional right to privacy was unjustly violated by parts of the country’s <a href="http://www.gov.za/sites/www.gov.za/files/a140_1992.pdf">drugs and drug trafficking act</a> that allowed a law enforcement officer to stop and search any person, property or vehicle on the grounds of “reasonable suspicion” of violation of the Act. The ruling <a href="http://www.groundup.org.za/article/when-can-police-search-your-home/">meant</a> that police would no longer be able to enter and search private properties without a warrant. </p>
<p>A bigger challenge came from the Western Cape High Court. This case was brought <em>inter alia</em> by <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/pretoria-news/rastafarian-lawyer-in-the-dock-over-dagga-1315010">Gareth Prince</a>. Prince lost a <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/2002/1.html">case</a> in the Constitutional Court in 2002 that sought exemption from the laws on the basis of his Rastafari religion. </p>
<p>Prince’s more recent case sought not just an exemption based on religious freedom, but to challenge marijuana prohibition overall on various grounds – including that it was based on an irrational distinction from alcohol. Ras Prince brought the case with Jeremy Acton, leader of the <a href="https://www.daggaparty.org.za/index-2.html">Dagga Party</a>.</p>
<p>Judge Dennis Davis, for a full bench, <a href="http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZAWCHC/2017/30.html">found</a> that the criminalisation of marijuana within the home unjustifiably limited the right to privacy. He concluded that the state had failed to show that criminal prohibition was the least restrictive way to deal with the problems caused by marijuana. The order was suspended for 24 months to allow parliament to amend the relevant laws.</p>
<p>The state quickly indicated its intention to appeal and to continue enforcement without any change. But it seems that several people charged with marijuana crimes have received stays of prosecution pending the outcome of the legal process.</p>
<p>A separate case is about to kick off in Pretoria. Myrtle Clarke and Julian Stobbs, known as the <a href="http://citizen.co.za/news/1581689/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-dagga-couple/">“The Dagga Couple”</a>, have turned their arrest for possession into a decriminalisation crusade. Their team has raised funds for local and international <a href="https://fieldsofgreenforall.org.za/expert-witnesses/">expert witnesses</a> to help them make their <a href="https://www.fieldsofgreenforall.org.za/images/legal/DC_LEGAL_SUMMARY.pdf">argument</a> that the criminal prohibition of marijuana is irrational, wasteful, and unjustifiably infringes numerous constitutional rights. </p>
<p>This is the first time that the issues will have the chance to be properly aired in court. </p>
<p>It’s long overdue.</p>
<h2>Pattern of arrests</h2>
<p>According to the South African Police Service’s annual <a href="https://www.saps.gov.za/about/stratframework/annual_report/2015_2016/saps_annual_report_2015_2016.pdf">report</a>, there were 259,165 recorded counts of illegal drug possession or dealing in 2015/16. These charges resulted in 253,735 arrests, accounting for almost a sixth of all arrests. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179610/original/file-20170725-31338-1xvauvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179610/original/file-20170725-31338-1xvauvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179610/original/file-20170725-31338-1xvauvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179610/original/file-20170725-31338-1xvauvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179610/original/file-20170725-31338-1xvauvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179610/original/file-20170725-31338-1xvauvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179610/original/file-20170725-31338-1xvauvr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Rastafarian lights up during a march for the legalisation of marijuana in South Africa.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Nic Bothma</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most drug arrests are made through stop-and-search or roadblock operations. National figures aren’t available but those from two of the nine provinces suggest that a vanishingly small proportion of drug charges (2%-4%) are for dealing as opposed to possession of drugs. Very few drug arrests are made at ports of entry, through special operations, or through the Serious Organised Crime Investigation Units. </p>
<p>Between 65% and 70% of drug charges are for possession of marijuana. The presumption is that possession of over 115 grams (about 4 ounces) constitutes dealing. This means that every year police seek out and charge about one in every 300 people for possession of an amount of marijuana that weighs no more than an apple. </p>
<h2>Criminal prohibition</h2>
<p>It isn’t clear whether criminal prohibition is an effective way to dissuade or help drug users. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26515984">Evidence</a> from other countries suggests that, generally, the greater the perception of risk, the lower the prevalence of use. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179614/original/file-20170725-12396-1ibb8l8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179614/original/file-20170725-12396-1ibb8l8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179614/original/file-20170725-12396-1ibb8l8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179614/original/file-20170725-12396-1ibb8l8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179614/original/file-20170725-12396-1ibb8l8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179614/original/file-20170725-12396-1ibb8l8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179614/original/file-20170725-12396-1ibb8l8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>But the strength of this effect is <a href="http://cssdp.org/uploads/2016/09/State_of_the_Evidence_Cannabis_Use_and_Regulation_Sept_7.pdf">debatable</a> to say the least, and it remains far from clear whether a liberalisation in marijuana policy results in a significant increase in its use or in associated harms. The effects of the recent wave of marijuana policy changes in various US states, for example, are still being closely <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/13/heres-how-legal-pot-changed-colorado-and-washington/?utm_term=.a17c9d60429f">observed</a> and debated. </p>
<p>For people who have highly problematic drug use patterns, there is even <a href="http://beckleyfoundation.org/resource/briefing-paper-incarceration-of-drug-offenders-costs-and-impacts">less</a> consensus that the threat or reality of imprisonment is an appropriate or effective tool for either dissuading or helping them. Other approaches may well do significantly <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Caitlin_Hughes/publication/249284847_What_Can_We_Learn_From_The_Portuguese_Decriminalization_of_Illicit_Drugs/links/54d406e90cf24647580553bb.pdf">better</a>.</p>
<h2>Decriminalisation</h2>
<p>There are many <a href="http://decrim.idpc.net/">models</a> of decriminalisation. Policies that work in the Netherlands or Colorado might not work in a developing country like South Africa given differences in drug use, drug market and price structures, regulatory capacity and political climates.</p>
<p>The goal must be to find a broadly acceptable balance of a complex range of harms, benefits, and rights in the context of limited resources. </p>
<p>For example, South Africa needs to consider what impact decriminalisation would have on small-scale, informal farmers who <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0376835032000149252">depend</a> on the crop for their livelihood. Legalising marijuana could mean that they are forced out of the market by large agribusinesses, or falling prices. </p>
<p>On the other hand, prohibition arguably does more to harm the current producers and distributors than consumers. </p>
<p>The right balance won’t be found if marijuana is simply cast as a devastating alien threat to the nation’s children and communities. Instead it needs to be understood as a socially and economically ingrained pastime for which there is clearly considerable popular demand.</p>
<h2>Harm is not enough</h2>
<p>Justifying the criminal prohibition of marijuana is not a matter of proving that it causes harm. Evidence of major harm has not been enough to lead to the criminal prohibition of, for example, alcohol, nicotine, sugar, firearms and unprotected sex. </p>
<p>The case that needs to be made is whether criminal prohibition is effective, proportionate, and the minimally invasive way to address those harms. The state will struggle to prove this. An <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ann-fordham/drug-policy_b_9819900.html">increasing</a> number of countries have concluded that it is not.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81491/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anine Kriegler receives funding from the National Research Foundation and the David and Elaine Potter Foundation. She contributed as amicus curiae to the Western Cape High Court case mentioned in the article.</span></em></p>If South Africa’s argument in court is that marijuana causes harm, it deserves to lose. The real question it should ask is whether criminal prohibition is the effective way forward.Anine Kriegler, Researcher and Doctoral Candidate in Criminology, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/778192017-05-24T15:44:27Z2017-05-24T15:44:27ZFact Check: do the police spend over a million hours a year fighting cannabis?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170622/original/file-20170523-5749-1wxrhqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Counting the cost.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>One million police hours fighting a cannabis market that is out of control. Time to regulate it. </p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>Nick Clegg, former Liberal Democrat leader, commenting on <a href="https://twitter.com/nick_clegg/status/864084105897676800">Twitter</a> on May 15 on the party’s election pledge to legalise cannabis.</strong></p>
<p>According to the authoritative <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/drug-misuse-findings-from-the-2015-to-2016-csew">Crime Survey for England and Wales</a>, 6.5% of 16 to 59-year-olds use cannabis. But fewer people are using cannabis <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/drug-misuse-findings-from-the-2015-to-2016-csew">than in 1996</a>, when information first became available. </p>
<p>While much of the debate surrounding cannabis use has focused on the extent of potential harm to users, recently demands for a change in the law have focused on the benefit to the criminal justice system that legalisation might deliver. </p>
<p>The Liberal Democrats claim that a legal, regulated market for cannabis will save 1.04m police hours annually (just over half of this they calculate is spent on supply). Their calculations – which they shared with The Conversation – are based on <a href="https://data.gov.uk/dataset/criminal-justice-statistics/resource/1ded397e-aa3b-44c7-bc55-891c49019312">Ministry of Justice (MoJ) figures</a> of police caseloads for drug offences in 2015. They also use Treasury <a href="http://www.tdpf.org.uk/sites/default/files/Treasury-cannabis-regulation-CBA.pdf">estimates</a> of the number of hours police officers of different ranks (constable, sergeant or inspector) need to spend per case of cannabis possession or supply (updated from a thorough Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) <a href="https://www.unodc.org/documents/ungass2016/Contributions/Civil/Beckley_Foundation/Cannabis_Cost_Benefit_Analysis_Report_w_New_Foreword_110915.pdf.pdf">study</a>). The graph below shows the amount of time spent across officer ranks on each outcome for possession or supply of cannabis.</p>
<iframe src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/ERmpG/4/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" oallowfullscreen="oallowfullscreen" msallowfullscreen="msallowfullscreen" width="100%" height="363"></iframe>
<p>Cannabis is a Class B drug in the UK, possession of which can lead to five years in prison and an unlimited fine or both. Supply and production <a href="https://www.gov.uk/penalties-drug-possession-dealing">can be punished</a> with up to 14 years in prison and an unlimited fine or both. In practice, and based on MoJ 2015 figures, three quarters of a total of 75,207 cases of cannabis possession are dealt with by warnings (51%, including khat), penalty notices (11%) or cautions (13%). By contrast, 81% of all Class B drug supply arrests end up in court. </p>
<p>Data on the amount of actual police time spent fighting cannabis supply, however, are fuzzy. Treasury estimates do not differentiate between the time spent by police on cautions and preparation for court. The MoJ police caseload figures (which list 12,040 cases in 2015) also refer to the supply of <em>all</em> Class B drugs, not just cannabis. Nevertheless, if supply cases are comparable to possession, cannabis should account for around 84% of Class B drugs supply – or a little over 10,000 cases.</p>
<p>The Liberal Democrats also propose that they “will make cannabis safer by limiting THC content” – the drug’s psychoactive element. The ISER and Treasury studies <a href="http://www.tdpf.org.uk/sites/default/files/Treasury-cannabis-regulation-CBA.pdf">suggest</a> the limit could be set at 10%, but after legalisation there would still be an illicit trade in cannabis over this limit and, as happens with cigarettes, for cannabis under this limit to still be sold on the black market. So the police will need to remain active to enforce the regulatory regime, as well as policing the supply and possession of higher potency cannabis, including skunk, which would remain illegal and according to the <a href="http://www.dldocs.stir.ac.uk">Home Office Cannabis Potency Study 2008</a> dominates the market. These factors would be expected to reduce the proposed savings on police time. </p>
<p>Because it is currently unknown how much time exactly the police spends fighting cannabis supply (rather than all Class B drugs) and because, even after cannabis legalisation, a large part of the illicit market for the drug is likely to remain, the Liberal Democrats’ alleged savings of just over half a million hours in relation to <em>supply</em> offences (precisely 553,840 hours, calculated as 12,040 caseloads multiplied by 46 hours) are overly ambitious. Indeed, reasonably expected savings from releasing police time from supply offences for cannabis under 10% THC content may be completely offset by the additional demands triggered by cannabis legalisation.</p>
<p>In the last ten years, 15% to 25% of the cannabis possession police caseloads ending in cautions and court preparations <a href="https://data.gov.uk/dataset/criminal-justice-statistics/resource/1ded397e-aa3b-44c7-bc55-891c49019312">refer</a> to under 18-year-olds.</p>
<p>As the Liberal Democrats would still need to police the use of cannabis by this age group, their calculations, based on all caseloads, are already overestimated by 50,414 hours, the time the police spent in 2015 dealing with under 18-year-olds. This is the sum of 21,310 hours for 2,130 cautions and 29,104 hours for 1,819 court preparations for non-adults. </p>
<p>Following legalisation of cannabis use for adults, however, the proportion of under-18s who are cannabis users may decrease. This expectation is in line with examples from the effect on under-18s of policy initiatives on <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2010.03039.x/full">banning smoking</a> or <a href="http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.697684">alcohol consumption</a>. </p>
<p>Post legalisation, however, overall demand for cannabis is <a href="https://www.unodc.org/documents/ungass2016/Contributions/Civil/Beckley_Foundation/Cannabis_Cost_Benefit_Analysis_Report_w_New_Foreword_110915.pdf.pdf">expected to rise</a> by between 9% and 24%. There is also evidence of a link between cannabis use and shop-thefts, other <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19485560903054762">acquisitive crimes</a> and <a href="http://www4.ntu.ac.uk/apps/news/187447-15/Revellers_face_brunt_of_violent_crime_study_suggests.aspx">violence</a>. Greater cannabis use will also <a href="https://www.unodc.org/documents/ungass2016/Contributions/Civil/Beckley_Foundation/Cannabis_Cost_Benefit_Analysis_Report_w_New_Foreword_110915.pdf.pdf">likely increase</a> alcohol consumption and arguably alcohol–related offences. </p>
<p>There is <a href="http://www.tdpf.org.uk/sites/default/files/Treasury-cannabis-regulation-CBA.pdf">mixed evidence</a>, however, about the role of cannabis as a gateway drug for harder drugs but, if confirmed, cannabis legalisation may lead to a rise in still illegal harder drug use and associated offences. All these will pose additional demands on policing in indirect ways and further reduce savings on police time.</p>
<h2>Verdict</h2>
<p>The police spent nearly a million hours fighting cannabis in 2015, on the assumption that cannabis supply caseloads accounted for 84% of all Class B drug offences. A regulated and licensed cannabis market will definitely release police time with regards to enforcing possession of low potency cannabis. </p>
<p>But the overall 1.04m police hours the Liberal Democrats claim would be saved in police time by legalising cannabis is vastly overestimated because of the questionable estimates relating to supply offences. Discounting the 553,840 hours the police spent in 2015 enforcing the supply of Class B drugs offences – time which would still, at least in part, be required to regulate the sale of low potency cannabis and enforce the ban on the supply and possession of high potency versions of the drug – and the 50,414 hours spent policing cannabis possession among under-18s, which would also remain illegal, the hours potentially saved total under half a million. </p>
<p>There are, however, other potential positive policy outcomes from legalisation, such as a predicted fiscal benefit from tax revenue of between £541m and £768m – and overall savings to the health and criminal justice systems predicted at anywhere between £19m and £71.6m by the Treasury and ISER. The full extent of the reduction in police time arising from the legalisation of cannabis, however, is still very much open to conjecture.</p>
<h2>Review</h2>
<p><em>James Mehigan, lecturer in criminology, Open University</em></p>
<p>This is a logical and fair discussion of the available data on this topic. The point the Liberal Democrats are making, that in a legalised-cannabis- world police would have more time to deal with more serious offences, is a strong one. But quantifying exactly how much extra time they would have in such circumstances is fraught with difficulty. It is right to say that any form of legalisation will inevitably leave some cannabis criminalised and therefore subject to regulation by the police. This regulation will use up at least some of the freed hours. The Lib Dems have chosen a figure for freed hours at the high end of the scale and while the data doesn’t neatly allow us to be precise about the figures, the author’s calculation that it would be significantly lower is reasonable.</p>
<p>The question may be slightly bigger than just police hours, however. Possession of cannabis is a gateway offence that often introduces young people to the criminal justice system <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10610-012-9191-1">and its many deleterious effects</a>. Legalising it may alleviate pressure on other aspects of the criminal justice system (such as probation) and allow young people to more effectively enter the jobs market without the stigma of a criminal conviction. The economic impact of this cannot be measured in the abstract.</p>
<p><em>The Conversation is checking claims made by public figures and in the public domain. Statements are checked by an academic with expertise in the area. A second academic expert then reviews an anonymous copy of the article. Please get in touch if you spot a claim you would like us to check by emailing us at <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk-factcheck@theconversation.com">uk-factcheck@theconversation.com</a>. Please include the statement you would like us to check, the date it was made, and a link if possible.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77819/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andromachi Tseloni has received research funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the College of Policing, Higher Education Funding Council for England, and Home Office Police Knowledge Fund, and Drinkaware. She is a member of the Nottingham Crime and Drugs Partnership Board. This article does not represent the views of the research councils.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Mehigan is a member of the Policy Council at Liberty and the Police Action Lawyers Group'</span></em></p>The figures don’t really add up.Andromachi Tseloni, Professor of Quantitative Criminology, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/770462017-05-16T06:37:24Z2017-05-16T06:37:24ZNAFTA’s biggest loser: the US, after Canada and Mexico get rich trading marijuana<p>The president of the United States, Donald Trump, prides himself on his business acumen. But his protectionism may get America a truly bad deal when it comes to North America’s next big market: marijuana.</p>
<p>Fulfilling a <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-pot-marijuana-legalization-timeline-1.3252088">campaign promise</a>, on April 13 Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau presented a bill to <a href="http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&DocId=8894959">legalise</a> cannabis for recreational uses (<a href="http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-2016-230/index.html">medical marijuana</a> has been legal in the country since 2001).</p>
<p>Two weeks later, Mexico’s Congress followed suit, passing a bill <a href="http://gaceta.diputados.gob.mx/PDF/63/2017/abr/20170428-II.pdf">to authorise</a> cannabis use for medical and scientific purposes.</p>
<p>Two of three North American countries are now well positioned to unlock an industry that, according to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/debraborchardt/2017/02/22/marijuana-industry-projected-to-create-more-jobs-than-manufacturing-by-2020/#418afe923fa9">Forbes</a> magazine, was worth an estimated US$7.2 billion in 2016 and is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 17%. </p>
<p>In the US, on the other hand, a protectionist administration has threatened to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/30/business/nafta-trade-deal-trump.html?_r=0">withdraw from the “terrible” North American Free Trade Agreement</a> (NAFTA) and actively relaunched <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-does-donald-trump-think-about-drugs-70844">the US drug war</a>. It looks like America’s businessman president may allow his country to miss out on the cannabis boom.</p>
<h2>Prohibition is a commercial disaster</h2>
<p>Medical marijuana research is a growth industry. Cannabinoids, a main (non-psychoactive) chemical component in marijuana, hold significant prospects for development in the <a href="https://www.vice.com/es_mx/article/la-oportunidad-desperdiciada-por-mexico-ser-una-potencia-en-la-industria-farmaceutica-cannabica">pharmaceutical industry</a>, as potentially does tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the ingredient that makes users feel high.</p>
<p>Marijuana has been scientifically proven to soothe the effects of <a href="https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/cam/hp/cannabis-pdq#link/_40_toc">chemotherapy</a>, treat <a href="http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaophthalmology/fullarticle/264203">glaucoma</a> and ease some <a href="http://www.drugandalcoholdependence.com/article/S0376-8716%2814%2901975-9/abstract">chronic pain</a>. But <a href="http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2338251">many fields of inquiry remain untapped</a>, thanks in large part to stringent US laws that classify cannabis <a href="https://www.dea.gov/druginfo/ds.shtml">as a Schedule I drug</a>. That’s the most tightly restricted category, reserved for substances with “no currently accepted medical use.”</p>
<p>Pharmaceutical companies are keen to further disprove that thesis, knowing they will soon be able to patent cannabis-based medicines in both <a href="http://www.altonivel.com.mx/55156-empresas-de-marihuana-ponen-la-mira-en-mexico-para-invertir/">Mexico</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38083737">Canada</a>. Patients and doctors, too, have pleaded for restrictions on medical marijuana research in the US <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/cjarlotta/2015/06/30/more-rearch-on-cannabinoids-for-medical-use-needed-study-finds/#165df279eb48">to be eased</a>.</p>
<p>In the US, eight states and Washington, DC, have also <a href="https://theconversation.com/marijuana-legalization-big-changes-across-country-67415">legalised</a> recreational marijuana. A <a href="http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/state-medical-marijuana-laws.aspx">total</a> of 29 states plus the nation’s capital have legal medical cannabis. </p>
<p>But US Attorney General Jeff Sessions (who has <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-jeff-sessions-delivers-remarks-efforts-combat-violent-crime-and-restore">declared</a> that he “rejects the idea that America will be a better place if marijuana is sold in every corner store”) and Homeland Security chief John Kelly (who has <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-are-politicians-still-referring-to-marijuana-as-a-gateway-drug-39348">erroneously</a> called marijuana a “<a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/homeland-sec-kelly-marijuana-dangerous-gateway-drug-n747901">dangerous gateway drug</a>”) consistently overlook this fact.</p>
<p>The Trump administration is determined to revamp prohibitionist policies. In a radical rollback of Barack Obama’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-grants-final-330-commutations-to-nonviolent-drug-offenders/2017/01/19/41506468-de5d-11e6-918c-99ede3c8cafa_story.html?utm_term=.8c3d8055b963">compassionate approach</a> to nonviolent drug offenders, Sessions has actually <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/05/12/politics/sessions-criminal-charging-memo/">ordered federal prosecutors</a> to charge suspects of any drug-related crime with the “most serious, readily provable offence”, or whichever crime entails the harshest punishment.</p>
<p>This move will have well-documented implications for law enforcement. In 2015, marijuana arrests outweighed those made for all violent crimes combined, including murder and rape, 574,000 to 505,681, according to the NGO <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/10/12/every-25-seconds/human-toll-criminalizing-drug-use-united-states">Human Rights Watch</a>. </p>
<p>Now America’s drug war will have commercial consequences too. In the US, the National Institute on Drug Abuse has developed research mainly on the <a href="https://www.drugabuse.gov/drugs-abuse/marijuana/marijuana-cannabinoid-research-nida">negative</a> effects of cannabis, only marginally considering its potential medical uses.</p>
<p>Medical trials conducted on human beings require permission from <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/difficulty-of-study-medical-marijuana-2013-8?IR=T">several federal agencies</a>, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration, and, when it comes to illegal substances, the Drug Enforcement Agency. That makes getting clearance for cannabis trials unduly complicated.</p>
<p>The inconsistencies between federal and state legislation also discourage research because they do not offer a secure legal ground for <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/35/101">patenting</a> cannabis-based medicines. Potential investors in medical cannabis are forced to <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/a-patent-for-cannabis-plants-is-already-a-reality-and-more-are-expected-to-follow">consider</a> not only corporate competition but also criminal prosecution.</p>
<p>Likewise, because budding American cannabis producers struggle to access <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/finance-economics/21720501-investors-can-gain-exposure-budding-industry-set-profit-canadian">investment funding</a>, the industry’s growth potential remains stunted.</p>
<h2>Outsmarting Trump</h2>
<p>If all of this sounds bad for American investors and patients, it’s good news for Mexico and Canada.</p>
<p>The Mexican medical marijuana bill <a href="http://www.gob.mx/cms/uploads/docs/Iniciativa_Marihuana.pdf">championed</a> by President Enrique Peña, who is not a bold politician, is quite limited. It emerged in response to <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/an-8-year-old-girl-just-became-mexicos-first-medical-marijuana-patient">the story of Grace</a>, a profoundly epileptic eight-year-old girl for whom cannabis oil, illicitly administered by her desperate mother, proved a literal lifesaver. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SvhtFCPEyCE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The story of eight-year-old Grace won Mexican hearts.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By removing from cannabis the legal label of “<a href="http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2017/04/29/mexico/1493419178_321134.html">forbidden plant</a>”, the law will enable it to be used for medical or scientific purposes and permit the health ministry to conduct clinical research. </p>
<p>In legal terms, Mexican cannabis is now a <a href="http://mexico.justia.com/federales/codigos/codigo-civil-federal/libro-cuarto/primera-parte/titulo-primero/capitulo-i/#articulo-1793">commercial good</a> that falls under NAFTA’s purview. Medical cannabis is estimated to bring in between US$1 billion and US$2 billion to <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/02/02/medical-marijuana-mexico/">Mexico</a> over the next ten years. </p>
<p>Canada is making a bigger bet on marijuana. Once its cannabis-regulation bill <a href="http://time.com/4739145/justin-trudeau-canada-legalize-marijuana-pot-2018/">is implemented</a> in July 2018, it will become the <a href="http://www.montevideo.com.uy/contenido/Tras-Uruguay-Canada-se-convertira-en-el-segundo-pais-del-mundo-en-autorizar-el-cannabis-para-uso-recreativo-340341">second country</a> in the world to fully legalise marijuana, after Uruguay. It will <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/world/canada/trudeau-marijuana.html?_r=0">stop short</a> of establishing an open market, though; provinces will decide where and how marijuana may be sold and priced, in conjunction with the federal government. </p>
<p>As in Mexico, Canadian cannabis will comprise a commercial good. Its medical <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/587568/estimated-medical-marijuana-market-size-canada/">marijuana market</a> is expected to be worth US$1 billion by 2020, while recreational marijuana <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/ca/Documents/Analytics/ca-en-analytics-DELOITTE%20Recreational%20Marijuana%20POV%20-%20ENGLISH%20FINAL_AODA.pdf">prospects</a> run as high as US$22.6 billion.</p>
<p>Once both countries’ systems are up and running, cannabis trading between Mexico and Canada can begin. The <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/finance-economics/21720501-investors-can-gain-exposure-budding-industry-set-profit-canadian">world’s first cannabis-focused exchange traded fund</a> has already opened on the Toronto Stock Exchange. </p>
<p>In theory, Canada and Mexico could also <a href="https://www.nafta-sec-alena.org/Home/Texts-of-the-Agreement/North-American-Free-Trade-Agreement?mvid=1&secid=3d71288c-7661-4fdb-8ab1-a6e3be74bdb6">trade</a> medical marijuana with dozens of US states. But given the current administration’s “<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/inaugural-address">America First</a>” motto, anti-Mexico rhetoric and fearmongering about drugs, that may prove difficult. </p>
<h2>The biggest losers</h2>
<p>The federal government is also forcing the US to miss out on something more valuable than profit: improving public health and social well-being. </p>
<p>Drugs in general and cannabis, in particular, can do harm if misused. But they are <a href="https://www.thefix.com/kofi-annan-war-drugs-more-dangerous-drugs-themselves">far less dangerous than the drug war</a> itself. After all, the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/mar/12/legal-marijuana-edibles-policy-studies">health risks</a> associated with legal cannabis can be prevented by strict packaging and labelling guidelines.</p>
<p>For Canada, which has long been <a href="https://www.canada.ca/en/services/policing/justice/legalization-regulation-marijuana.html">progressive</a> in its drug policy, cannabis legalisation should continue to reduce the harm created by the illicit drug trade. </p>
<p>Mexico’s bill has more radical implications for health and public safety. An average of <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/daniel-joloy/ten-years-of-militarised-drug-policies-in-mexico-more-violence-and-human-rights-violati">51 people die</a> every day in the country’s violent drug war. That’s so many homicides that male <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/06/mexico-men-life-expectancy-drug-war-murder">life expectancy</a> has actually dropped by more than half a year since 2010. </p>
<p>For many Mexicans, the revenue from medical marijuana is less important than the possibility of rolling back the <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-decade-of-murder-and-grief-mexicos-drug-war-turns-ten-70036">deadly drug war</a>. The country’s timid steps towards legalising medical marijuana have begun a critical process of democratic deliberation around <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexicos-military-is-a-lethal-killing-force-should-it-really-be-deployed-as-police-75521">using the military</a> for law enforcement in the war on drugs.</p>
<p>As for the US, it needn’t miss out. If only to keep America from falling behind Canada and Mexico, a scenario that would haunt its president, Trump could take action to improve the health, wealth and safety of his people. And that, <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/26/politics/donald-trump-nafta/">to use his own words</a>, would actually be a “fair deal for all”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77046/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luis Gómez Romero does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mexico and Canada are about to turn medical cannabis into North America’s most lucrative new market.Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/570492016-04-11T20:02:32Z2016-04-11T20:02:32ZTasmania’s ‘smoke-free generation’ is undemocratic age discrimination<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/117922/original/image-20160408-23926-10r1lwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Prohibiting tobacco won't work.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/littlesourire/14792168597/">Nadja Tatar/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tasmania is considering <a href="http://www.parliament.tas.gov.au/bills/pdf/40_of_2014.pdf">legislation</a> to create a “tobacco-free generation” by banning sales to persons born after July 1, 2000. It is a tobacco prohibition law, albeit one whose <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-next-for-tobacco-control-a-smoke-free-generation-42248#comment_680335">endgame will play out for future generations</a> only. That is concerning, as it’s unlikely to achieve its aims, but also because it undermines civil rights and representative government.</p>
<p>The “tobacco-free generation” proposal reflects an increasingly interventionist approach by <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2016/march/1456750800/richard-cooke/boomer-supremacy">state governments</a> and <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2016/04/04/medical-submission-exposes-the-misogyny-in-nanny-statism/">public health organisations</a> in the name of public health. The frustration of those on the tobacco front line is understandable; the drug represents a significant social danger.</p>
<p>But <a href="http://www.aihw.gov.au/deaths/leading-causes-of-death/#leading-age">so do obesity, dangerous driving, family violence, depression and suicide</a>. Our legal response to these social risks must be evidence-based and considerate of constitutional limits and civil rights.</p>
<h2>Prohibition doesn’t work</h2>
<p>Laws that rely on prohibition to reduce the prevalence and harm from drugs generally fail to achieve their aims. That was true of historic <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition">alcohol prohibition laws</a>. It remains true of the continued legal <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-works-best-in-the-war-on-drugs-31015">prohibition on narcotics</a>.</p>
<p>Prohibition is rarely successful for many reasons. An important one is that regulatory compliance is best achieved with co-operation rather than coercion. Effective regulation encourages the “buy-in” of those regulated and facilitates self-regulating conduct, even when the state isn’t looking over their shoulder. </p>
<p>However, if people view a law as unjust or unfair they will be much less likely to comply with it. “Buy-in” is vital to <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1311664">drug regulation</a>, which obliges people to stop using otherwise enjoyable things. It is also relevant to the Tasmanian bill, under which the lawmakers’ generation will always be able to smoke, but those who come later (who, notably, cannot yet vote) will never be able to.</p>
<p>Targeting laws at people who cannot hold lawmakers to account at the polls is undemocratic. It is also unfair to have one generation telling the other to “do as I say, not as I do”.</p>
<p>This unfairness will undermine regulatory “buy-in”, particularly in a society where new generations already feel disadvantaged by their predecessors. As Richard Cooke <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2016/march/1456750800/richard-cooke/boomer-supremacy">wrote of the NSW lockout laws</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>They have been locked out of the housing market, locked out of affordable education, locked out of the welfare system and secure employment. They have seen their political power and their real wealth shrivel. And now the one area where their expectations had not been curtailed – recreation – is being destroyed as well.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Lawmaking must be evidenced-based</h2>
<p>Like “zero tolerance” laws that promise (and usually fail) to reduce crime, drug prohibition laws focus on rules rather than outcomes, and belie the complexity of the underlying social issue.</p>
<p>The reality is that successfully modifying entrenched social behaviour requires a range of regulatory approaches, applied consistently and incrementally across generations. That is certainly the case for tobacco: educative, policy and economic measures tend to have a more sustained impact than <a href="http://www.aihw.gov.au/publication-detail/?id=60129549469&tab=3">legal measures alone</a>.</p>
<p>Tobacco <a href="http://www.dhhs.tas.gov.au/publichealth/tobacco_control">risk-reduction measures are working</a>, albeit slower than many would like – but that is the nature of facilitated, rather than forced, generational change. Intergenerational risk reduction requires the patience and trust in future generations to make the right decisions for themselves. </p>
<h2>Unjustified discrimination</h2>
<p>Beyond the regulatory issues, the proposed law is discriminatory. The nominal date of July 1, 2000, adopted by the Tasmanian bill is unjustified, and will only become more so as time goes on. </p>
<p>There is no rational reason why, at January 1, 2030, a 30-year-old person can buy cigarettes, but a 29-year-old person (perhaps born only an hour earlier) cannot. Both are otherwise competent adults, but only one is legally allowed to buy tobacco. The legal distinction has no public health basis and is solely concerned with their age. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/know-your-rights-age-discrimination">Commonwealth, state and international law prohibits age discrimination</a>, but state parliaments <a href="http://www.parliament.tas.gov.au/ctee/Council/Submissions/GAA%20TFG/160212%20UTas.pdf">can technically extinguish</a> these rights if they choose. </p>
<p>There would be some irony if baby-boomer lawmakers – who come from the generation <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/older-men-on-average-income-targets-of-work-discrimination-20120129-1qnzj.html">most reliant</a> on age-discrimination laws – choose to deprive the next generation of such rights protections.</p>
<p>The very laudable public health ends the proposed Tasmanian legislation seeks to achieve do not justify the means it adopts. Citizens should not, once they have passed the age of consent, be treated unequally to their peers. We should not be segregating our society based only on the fortune or misfortune of the day they were born. </p>
<p>Strengthening existing measures, or even banning tobacco sales outright, may be politically risky. But it is a legitimate way to make laws in our system. Passing discriminatory laws that target only the part of the population that can’t vote is not. </p>
<p>If there is to be a tobacco “endgame” then the decision should be left to the generation standing on the field, not the one that came before.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57049/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brendan Gogarty was a Committee-appointed lawyer to the Legislative Council Sessional Committee Government Administration A for the Tobacco Free Generation Bill (Tas).
Brendan is a life-long non-smoker. He has never received any form of contribution or support from the tobacco industry or anti-smoking lobby. All opinions here are his own. </span></em></p>The decision to smoke should be left up to people themselves, not the generations that came before them.Brendan Gogarty, Lecturer in Law, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/536122016-01-25T16:31:39Z2016-01-25T16:31:39ZHow did the mind-boggling new drugs bill make it through parliament?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109161/original/image-20160125-19667-1jnbopy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What the blazes is going on?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&search_tracking_id=RNk8JgleEhOWCuQdERqKkg&searchterm=hallucination&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=266426783">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are two things that politicians tend to be bad at: sex and drugs. Thankfully, MPs’ recent visits to our bedrooms have tended to be brief, and usually have left us in a more liberal place than we were before. But drugs? Politicians can really get their teeth into drugs – with often messy results.</p>
<p>The Conservative party was elected in 2015 with a clear majority, and therefore a mandate to start work on its manifesto pledges. One of these promises was to address so-called “legal highs” – a project that birthed the <a href="http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2015-16/psychoactivesubstances.html">Psychoactive Substances Bill</a>. The Commons and the Lords are now reviewing each other’s final amendments, the bill’s final stop before becoming law.</p>
<p>What problem does the Psychoactive Substances Bill hope to solve? Currently drugs are regulated by the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1971/38/contents">Misuse of Drugs Act</a> which classifies controlled substances according to their “harms” and specifies penalties associated with using, supplying or trading in those drugs. But the drugs world moves quickly, and new drugs come to the market frequently. </p>
<p>The bill is designed to get ahead of this flair for innovation, and to presume that any substance that acts on a person’s mental state is dangerous until shown otherwise. The bill excludes substances that are dealt with elsewhere, such as alcohol or nicotine, and leaves the controlled drugs to the Misuse act. The Psychoactive Substances bill therefore mops up the remainders.</p>
<p>But rather than cleaning up a mess, it’s made a whole new one.</p>
<h2>All over the place</h2>
<p>For the purposes of this bill, a psychoactive substance is defined as such if “by stimulating or depressing the person’s central nervous system, it affects the person’s mental functioning or emotional state”. The bill then lists classes of substance that are not to be included. So controlled drugs are left to the Misuse act; medicines, alcohol and nicotine have their own laws; and foods have their own system of safety and acceptability.</p>
<p>But the lack of a strict list of included substances has led to considerable confusion. Many Christian churches burn incense during services, to heighten the religious experience. The Home Office has had to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/02/church-incense-not-included-psychoactive-substances-bill-home-office">assure</a> church leaders that the law would not be used to criminalise priests, although the current form of the bill does not address this explicitly – which means that incense is technically illegal.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109164/original/image-20160125-19667-1i9gdur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109164/original/image-20160125-19667-1i9gdur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109164/original/image-20160125-19667-1i9gdur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109164/original/image-20160125-19667-1i9gdur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109164/original/image-20160125-19667-1i9gdur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109164/original/image-20160125-19667-1i9gdur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109164/original/image-20160125-19667-1i9gdur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trippin’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&search_tracking_id=RNk8JgleEhOWCuQdERqKkg&searchterm=incense%20catholic&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=&page=1&inline=254044279">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The stand-out moment in the debate was when Conservative MP Crispin Blunt revealed himself to be a regular user of alkyl nitrite, or <a href="https://theconversation.com/crispin-blunts-poppers-speech-a-brave-acknowledgment-of-awkward-truths-53528">“poppers”</a>, as are many gay men. An amendment to remove these from the bill failed to gain enough votes to pass. </p>
<p>A government body is now set to investigate these substances, but, as Mr Blunt stated during the debate, it is “bordering on crazy to then ban these substances with a view to unbanning them in two or three months’ time”.</p>
<h2>Illegal, until it isn’t</h2>
<p>Another amendment which failed was the proposal to exclude cognitive enhancing drugs. Cognitive enhancers are a topic of huge scientific and ethical interest at the moment. Drugs such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/modafinil-the-smart-drug-leading-the-charge-towards-a-future-of-neuroenhancement-46477">modafinil</a> (which is already classed as a medicine) may increase cognitive performance in cognitively healthy people, which has led to their use on university campuses as a study aid.</p>
<p>Although covert use of these substances is generally considered to be unfair, it could be argued that widespread cognitive enhancement is good for society as a whole <a href="https://theconversation.com/put-down-the-smart-drugs-cognitive-enhancement-is-ethically-risky-business-27463">if deployed responsibly</a>. Outlawing these drugs risks shutting down what could be a productive and healthy debate.</p>
<p>The original formulation of the bill failed to make an exemption for properly qualified researchers to use the drugs to explore possible harms and benefits, a gap that the final amendments agreed by the House of Commons are meant to plug. Various psychoactive drugs are <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2015/jun/08/the-psychoactive-substances-bill-an-opportunity-or-threat-for-research">recognised as potentially beneficial</a>, at least if the relative harms and benefits are understood. Allowing researchers to test these harms and benefits in the same controlled conditions as they do in other clinical trials could create a crucial avenue for medical drug discovery. </p>
<p>But a second, largely overlooked benefit to allowing clinical research is that looser regulations can allow for better-informed policy. Rigorous exploration of the effects of psychoactive drugs may lead to the conclusion that the harms are overstated compared to the costs of enforcing the legislation. That a research amendment has been accepted is a sign that politicians may be more receptive to expert opinions than they <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8334774.stm">have been in the past</a>.</p>
<p>Still, despite that ray of hope, the bill still leaves us in an absurd position. The UK now has a legal structure that criminalises substances that have been in common use for centuries and seemingly without significant risks. It is also not entirely clear what other harms will be avoided. Aside from a few high-profile cases, we simply do not properly understand what risks people take when they consume novel psychoactive substances. </p>
<p>While we can debate the extent to which the government is responsible for protecting us from danger, it’s clear that diverting police and court resources to these drugs will inevitably draw resources from other areas. And even as further research into the newly-banned substances may reveal that the government’s worries are unfounded, adding to the list of unbanned substances and curtailing the prohibited list, surely our money could be better spent.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53612/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Davis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The government’s blanket ban on psychoactive substances is all over the place.Nick Davis, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/401452015-05-06T17:22:03Z2015-05-06T17:22:03ZManifesto Check: Labour crime policies offer few surprises<p>The general election of 1979 drastically changed the place of crime in politics. Thatcher’s promise to be tough on crime is arguably what won that election for the Conservatives. This set a precedent, wherein being seen as soft on crime became politically unappealing. The Labour party eventually responded to this agenda, and <a href="http://crj.sagepub.com/content/1/3/301.short?rss=1&ssource=mfc">Blair’s promise</a> to be “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” became the rallying cry of the New Labour movement. </p>
<h2>Community-based policy</h2>
<p>The crime section of the new <a href="http://www.labour.org.uk/page/-/BritainCanBeBetter-TheLabourPartyManifesto2015.pdf">Labour manifesto</a> opens by acknowledging crime as a cause of fear and insecurity. People certainly fear violent crime, but the statistics suggest that it is very much on the decrease, and has been since the mid-1990s. </p>
<p>Much of this has taken place during the New Labour years, and the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/drug-misuse-findings-from-the-2013-to-2014-csew/drug-misuse-findings-from-the-201314-crime-survey-for-england-and-wales">Crime Survey for England and Wales</a> shows that reported violent crime between 1995 and 2014 has fallen from 3.8 million in 1995 to 1.3 million in 2013/14. Over the past five years, reported violent crimes have dropped by 21%, with public disorder offences fallen by 29%. Over the same period, crimes involving weapons have decreased by 34%, and homicides by 28%. </p>
<p>But crime statistics are <a href="https://theconversation.com/fact-check-has-violent-crime-gone-up-40915">notoriously inaccurate</a>, particularly during times of huge public sector cutbacks when there aren’t the personnel to discover – let alone detect – crime. Crime surveys, on the other hand, are far more accurate, and these do suggest that violent crime is in decline. Nevertheless, there is some discrepancy with the numbers appearing in <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/nhs/11358596/Rise-in-AandE-attendances-is-ten-times-that-under-last-Government.html">A&E departments</a>. </p>
<p>There have been huge cuts in the number of fully fledged front-line police officers during the coalition years with more predicted. But this fails to take into account the large numbers of much cheaper Police Community Support Officers (PCSOS), which were originally introduced by New Labour. </p>
<p>Now, Labour pledges to safeguard more than 10,000 police officers for the next three years, and also to guarantee “neighbourhood policing in every community”. The public does like to see uniformed officers on our streets, but this manifesto is not at all clear whether the intention is to employ proper police officers, or support workers.</p>
<h2>Addressing domestic abuse</h2>
<p>Some argue that many offences, such as domestic abuse continue not to be reported or even recognised as a crime by some of the victims. In light of this, and <a href="http://www.womensaid.org.uk/domestic_violence_topic.asp?section=0001000100220036sionTitle=statistics">the fact that</a> two women each week are estimated to be killed by a current or former partner, it makes sense to address domestic violence against women and girls. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/aug/03/domestic-violence-refuge-crisis-women-closure-safe-houses">Women’s refuges and Rape Crisis Centres</a> do sterling work, but their sources of funding have been very fragile during the coalition years. Sexual abuse is a similar area of contention, and certainly the recent “discovery” of <a href="https://theconversation.com/complicity-and-conspiracy-in-rotherham-should-teach-us-how-to-handle-future-cases-30979">widespread grooming gangs</a> is a long-established issue previously not acknowledged. Labour clearly plan a major extension of intervention in such cases.</p>
<h2>Policing policies</h2>
<p>There is a general theme throughout the manifesto of a return to community-based methods, such as strengthened community safety partnerships, and giving local people a role in setting priorities for neighbourhood policing. </p>
<p>In its manifesto, the Labour party intend to abolish directly elected (and expensive) Police and Crime Commissioners, all of which were returned by <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20352539">very small numbers of electors</a>. It is unlikely that many people will miss their passing, although there is no suggestion as to how they will be replaced. </p>
<p>The manifesto also promises a new Police Standards Authority, to replace the Independent Police Complaints Commission. However, it is not known who exactly will constitute this Police Standards Authority – this will be a crucial determinant of its efficacy. </p>
<p>The imbalance in the ethnic composition of the police force is another issue the Labour manifesto addresses. Whether it is simply racism that stops ethnic minorities from joining the police or a more complex phenomenon, is unknown. But there have been plenty of initiatives to address this imbalance and no serious political party has been opposed to these policies. </p>
<h2>Tough</h2>
<p>Crime prevention is one of the many issues mentioned in passing, but the suggested initiatives have very little to do with preventing crime. There is a focus on restorative justice for perpetrators of anti-social behaviour; but the question of who is going to administer this is not approached. </p>
<p>It is clearly important to protect workers from violence in the workplace, but tougher penalties, as Labour proposes, might not work. There is little detail on many of Labour’s policies as to how, or by whom, these strategies should be implemented. None of this seems to have been costed and the implication would seem to be a growth in staff, which will inevitably be expensive.</p>
<p>The establishment of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales completely revitalised juvenile/youth justice initially at great expense although its budget was significantly reduced over the duration of three governments. Originally planning its abolition, the Coalition Government further reduced its budget and moved it into the Ministry of Justice. </p>
<p>There is a recognition in the Labour manifesto that <a href="http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/portals/0/documents/oldenoughtoknowbetter.pdf">Youth Offending Teams</a> do an excellent job and the decision to increase its jurisdiction to deal with 18 to 20-year-olds. It is supported by <a href="https://d19ylpo4aovc7m.cloudfront.net/fileadmin/howard_league/user/pdf/Research/What_is_Justice/HLWP_16_2015.pdf">widespread evidence</a> that this age group is more juvenile than adult. And this would be cost-neutral due to the subsequent savings in the adult criminal justice system. </p>
<h2>Drug related crime</h2>
<p>Drug addiction continues to be a <a href="http://www.routledge.com/articles/an_introduction_to_criminological_theory/">major cause of street crime</a>, although it’s not certain why this proposed extension of joined-up services will greatly help. Treatment is undoubtedly the way forward and should be encouraged. The Liberal Democrats go a step further, by <a href="https://theconversation.com/qanda-could-portugals-drug-reforms-work-in-the-uk-38181">suggesting decriminalisation</a>. Yet in the context of the current agenda, improved agency cooperation is probably the best that can be done – but do not expect it to significantly reduce drug addiction. </p>
<p>The issue of “legal highs” is a cyclical process. They are all legal until they are made illegal, and then others take their place. And deciding when it is appropriate for a government to ban the sale and distribution of them is problematic. </p>
<p>Despite the significantly falling crime rates, the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn1page1.stm">prison population</a> is at its biggest in Europe, and in British history. Even though improved facilities and better trained staff will be beneficial, Labour doesn’t provide the details for these pledges.</p>
<p><em>The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/manifesto-check-2015">Manifesto Check</a> deploys academic expertise to scrutinise the parties’ plans.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40145/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger Hopkins Burke does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Labour’s crime manifesto goes communitarian, despite them not branding it that way.Roger Hopkins Burke, Principal Lecturer in Criminology, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/376942015-02-22T19:12:36Z2015-02-22T19:12:36ZImpending Bali executions rely on mistaken ideas about drugs<p>The impending execution of Bali Nine ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran has led to <a href="http://theconversation.com/bali-nine-hypocrisy-politics-and-courts-play-out-in-death-row-lottery-36205">an impassioned public debate</a> about capital punishment. But some of the reasons being used to justify the executions just don’t hold up under scrutiny. </p>
<p>Proportionality – the notion that punishment must fit the crime – is a <a href="http://www.thomsonreuters.com.au/fox-and-freibergs-sentencing-state-and-federal-law-in-victoria-3rd-edition/productdetail/121363">fundamental principle of criminal law</a>. The argument for executing Chan and Sukumaran holds the death penalty is proportionate because they voluntarily participated in the illicit drug trade, which wreaks havoc on the social fabric.</p>
<p>Indonesia’s co-ordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs, Tedjo Edhy Purdjanto , for instance, has said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Because of the drug lords, 40 drug addicts die [in Indonesia] every day.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Supporting this view, A Current Affair journalist Caroline Marcus <a href="http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/opinion-the-bali-nine-ringleaders-traded-in-death-by-smuggling-heroin-and-now-must-face-the-consequences/story-fnihsr9v-1227188153470">wrote in The Courier Mail</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>when weighing up the right to life of convicted drug traffickers against the rights of victims and the wider community’s welfare, it should be a no-brainer where our sympathies must lie.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There are two key assumptions being made here. The first is that Chan and Sukumaran are directly responsible for the harms – including deaths – associated with illicit drug use. The second is that people who use drugs are especially vulnerable to drug traffickers, so society must protect them. </p>
<p>According to this way of thinking, death penalty for drug smuggling deters would-be ringleaders from planning similar drug operations, and protects some of society’s most defenceless citizens. But these assumptions aren’t supported by evidence.</p>
<h2>Complex causes</h2>
<p>The idea that drug “lords” are directly responsible for drug deaths suggests there’s a direct, causal connection between drug importation and drug deaths. This notion simply cannot be sustained; although harms are sometimes associated with drug use, drug-related harms are <a href="http://uhri.cfenet.ubc.ca/images/Documents/dsiv2013.pdf">complex phenomena, shaped by many things</a>. </p>
<p>Drug overdoses are the result of a <a href="http://theconversation.com/cory-monteith-addiction-and-the-search-for-better-endings-16169">constellation of factors</a>, including laws that prohibit drug use, insufficient treatment options for people who want to reduce substance use, and the lack of medically-supervised drug consumption facilities, among other things. </p>
<p>All of these can play an important role in preventing fatal drug overdoses, so there’s no guarantee people would have died had the drug smuggling operation been successful.</p>
<p>At any rate, the link between Chan and Sukumaran and the deaths of people who use drugs are hypothetical because the drugs never reached their intended destination. The execution of the men cannot be a proportionate response because it relies on flawed logic about the cause of harms that never eventuated. </p>
<h2>Drug users are victims</h2>
<p>The second key assumption is that Chan and Sukumaran preyed on vulnerable consumers, variously described as “victims” and drug “addicts” in comments made in the media. </p>
<p>This idea belies a key stereotype about drug markets: that they are structured in certain ways, with a fixed hierarchy of roles. According to this logic, those in the upper echelons of the system (drug manufacturers, for instance, and traffickers) have more power than those lower down in the chain (drug mules and consumers). These claims are also unsustainable. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72588/original/image-20150220-28201-ttqyy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/72588/original/image-20150220-28201-ttqyy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72588/original/image-20150220-28201-ttqyy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72588/original/image-20150220-28201-ttqyy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=344&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72588/original/image-20150220-28201-ttqyy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72588/original/image-20150220-28201-ttqyy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/72588/original/image-20150220-28201-ttqyy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members of what is known as the Bali Nine were smuggling heroin from Indonesia to Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dkalo/5851768737">Dimitris Kalogeropoylos/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If dealers and traffickers had all the power, we might expect to see demand for drugs and drug prices remain relatively stable over time. Instead, demand is shaped by factors such as supply, pricing, and the availability of other drugs. </p>
<p>At times, dealers are themselves vulnerable. They work hard to develop trust and rapport with their clientele. They negotiate with consumers on price and may face competition. Where their customers have limited means to pay for drugs, they <a href="http://ebooks.cambridge.org/pdf_viewer.jsf?cid=CBO9781139162142A010&ref=true&pubCode=CUP&urlPrefix=cambridge&productCode=cbo">sometimes accept other goods</a> in exchange.</p>
<p>Research suggests <a href="https://dpmp.unsw.edu.au/sites/default/files/dpmp/resources/DPMP%20MONO%208.pdf">every drug market is subtly different</a>, with different power dynamics. So it is much too simplistic to suggest people who consume drugs are always being taken advantage of, even if this may be the case in some drug markets, at certain times. </p>
<h2>Understanding addiction</h2>
<p>Addiction is actually a <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1465-3362.2012.00501.x/abstract;jsessionid=9F7FBCA1AADB7498448C3237CB8FC1E9.f04t03">complex and contested term</a>, but this is not reflected in how it’s used in current debates. Indeed, the way we talk about drug users is akin to saying everyone who drinks alcohol is an alcoholic.</p>
<p>For many, the word <a href="http://www.janushead.org/6-2/room.pdf">addiction conjures up</a> images of helplessness, hopelessness and a loss of control. And when consumers of drugs are referred to simply as addicts, it implies particular relationships between them and other people, including drug dealers. It suggests a power imbalance that might not necessarily reflect reality. </p>
<p>Although some people who consume drugs may have trouble managing their drug use (just as some people who drink alcohol do), drug users <a href="http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409408390">form a very diverse population</a>. And <a href="http://www.angusrobertson.com.au/books/habits-remaking-addiction-helen-keane-suzanne-fraser-david-moore/p/9780230308107">many would reject</a> simplistic and patronising assumptions about their capacity, and more importantly, their choice to consume drugs.</p>
<p>They would not see themselves as “victims” or “addicts” but as willing consumers. We should be aware of just <a href="http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(14)00770-0/fulltext">how stigmatising</a> the language of “addiction” can be, and how much that matters.</p>
<p>No one is denying that drugs can cause harm but when two lives are at stake, it behoves us to ensure that we aren’t justifying ending them based on stereotypes. We must reflect on the potentially uncomfortable fact that <a href="http://drugpolicy.ca/report/CDPC2013_en.pdf">many people use drugs for pleasure</a> – and that drug consumers are not always or necessarily the vulnerable victims of “evil” drug lords. </p>
<h2>An urgency</h2>
<p>And anyway the approach to Chan and Sukumaran is at odds with <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955395914000590">the way that drug users are treated</a> in other parts of the criminal justice system. The “victims” the Indonesian justice system is “protecting” from drug dealers in this instance are elsewhere punished for buying and consuming drugs.</p>
<p>The use of unsustainable claims about drugs and drug “addiction” to <a href="http://www.ihra.net/files/2014/08/06/IHRA_DeathPenaltyReport_Sept2011_Web.pdf">justify the most extreme form</a> of state-sanctioned punishment isn’t unique to this case. While the impending executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran make the stereotypes and inconsistencies in our views about drugs and drug users more immediate, they actually need careful and constant assessment. </p>
<p>Such claims have the potential to shape public understandings of drugs and drug addiction in profound ways. For Chan and Sukumaran, their lives depend upon it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37694/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Seear does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ideas about drug use that are used to justify the death penalty for smuggling don’t hold up under scrutiny.Kate Seear, Associate Professor in Law and Academic Director of the Springvale Monash Legal Service, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/335722014-10-30T06:28:57Z2014-10-30T06:28:57ZDrug policy is working – why do we prefer to think otherwise?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63219/original/f6ywg2jt-1414605133.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Britain's heroin habit isn't what it was.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-207634663/stock-photo--portrait-of-young-sick-drug-addict-man-holding-heroin-or-cocaine-syringe-thinking-and-looking.html?src=pp-same_model-207634693-2">Marcos Mesa, Sam Wordley via Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On all sides, our politicians and commentators seem convinced Britain’s drug policy has been a failure. </p>
<p>Party conference season saw Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg rehash his old refrain that we’ve “<a href="http://www.itv.com/news/update/2014-10-06/clegg-warns-the-war-on-drugs-is-not-working/">lost the war on drugs</a>”. Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice <a href="http://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/publications/no-quick-fix-exposing-the-depth-of-britain%E2%80%99s-drug-and-alcohol-problem">still portrays</a> drug addiction as one of the main drivers of worklessness, poverty and social exclusion in our poorest communities. And on October 30, the narrative of failure will be rehearsed yet again when Green MP Caroline Lucas initiates a <a href="http://www.carolinelucas.com/media.html/2014/10/28/parliament-in-first-drug-policy-debate-for-a-generation/">three-hour debate in parliament</a> calling for an impact assessment of our current drug laws. </p>
<p>But these diagnoses are misleading: for all the problems that remain, the major successes of our drug policy deserve to be acknowledged. Here are some of the headline facts, which can take even informed observers by surprise.</p>
<h2>Turning it around</h2>
<p>Drug use is much less common than most people assume. In England and Wales, about <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/drug-misuse-findings-from-the-2012-to-2013-csew/drug-misuse-findings-from-the-2012-to-2013-crime-survey-for-england-and-wales">one adult in three will have used a drug in their lifetime</a>; for the vast majority, this will be short-term or intermittent cannabis use. </p>
<p>Use of the most dangerous drug, heroin, is much rarer. Public Health England estimate there are now <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/mar/06/heroin-crack-cocaine-users-low">fewer than 300,000</a> heroin users in England, compared to estimates of more than 450,000 at the height of the heroin epidemic in 1999.</p>
<p>The biggest fall in heroin use has been among young people; our addiction problem is in a cohort of middle-aged users, who began using heroin in the 1980s and 1990s and who also suffer from poor mental health, alcohol misuse, homelessness and social exclusion. By and large, they are not the vulnerable teenagers of popular imagination.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, a <a href="http://www.nta.nhs.uk/uploads/prevalence-commentary.pdf">range of research</a> suggests that a major part of the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/31/tough-case-mystery-britains-falling-crime-rate">sharp rise in crime</a> experienced in the 1980s and 1990s was caused by the dramatic increase in heroin use during that period; it is also estimated that ready access to treatment (including in prison) currently prevents 4.9m crimes per year.</p>
<p>Levels of HIV, closely associated with needle injection around the world, are also very low among British injectors, largely thanks to the harm-reduction policies pioneered by Norman Fowler when he was Margaret Thatcher’s health secretary in the 1980s. In the USA, <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2856849/">up to 20%</a> of injectors have HIV; in Byisk, in Russia, it’s <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2856849/">more than 70%</a>. But in England, the rate is just over <a href="http://www.turning-point.co.uk/media/70524/atthesharpendlshortreport.pdf">2%</a>.</p>
<p>Of course, not all the news is good. Drug-related deaths <a href="http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/subnational-health3/deaths-related-to-drug-poisoning/england-and-wales---2013/stb---deaths-related-to-drug-poisoning-in-england-and-wales--2013.html">rose startlingly in 2013</a>, after falling each year since 2010. The immediate and long-term health risks of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/legal-highs-need-regulation-not-an-outright-ban-32462">legal highs</a>” are still poorly understood; the poor integration of drug and mental health services is a continuing scandal. </p>
<p>But if we resist the meaningless rhetoric of “winning” or “losing” the “war on drugs”, we’ll see that the broader reality of England’s drug problem today is that fewer people are using drugs, fewer are becoming addicted, and the social and economic impacts of drug use are shrinking.</p>
<p>We’ve clearly come a long way since the first national drug strategy, <a href="http://www.drugsandalcohol.ie/5399/1/Police_anti_drugs_strategies.pdf">Tackling Drugs Together</a>. While drug addiction still has a disproportionate impact on vulnerable citizens living in Britain’s poorest communities, there is no longer a plausible argument that drug addiction is destabilising our society. </p>
<p>Yet despite rapidly declining use, falling crime, an ageing cohort of users as young people shun heroin and still-low levels of HIV – all of which would once have been seen as causes of celebration and proof of success – British drug policy is almost universally derided as a failure. Why?</p>
<h2>Decline and fall</h2>
<p>For ideologues of a traditionalist conservative bent, drug use is part of a broader liberal folly, a social program that has trashed the morals – self-reliance, responsibility, deferred gratification, sacrifice, duty – that supposedly characterised family and social life across all classes before the social upheaval of the 1960s. </p>
<p>To accept that drug use has been falling for years and that its attendant harms are clearly in retreat would destroy this dystopian vision. It would also invite a less politically convenient explanation for poverty, one that emphasises structural inequality rather than the individual failings of the poor. Faced with this prospect, the easier option for ideologues is to ignore the facts, thereby sustaining the integrity of their analysis and the power of their polemic.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the liberal intelligentsia apparently sees recreational drug use as relatively benign, chalking all harm up to the consequences of prohibition and the “failed war on drugs”. Prohibition is blamed for the mass incarceration of young black men in the USA and the deaths of thousands in Mexico’s drug wars, as well as providing a justification for continuing US interference in supposedly sovereign Central and South American states. </p>
<p>These arguments usually conclude with a call to review the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act, as if that’s the prime cause of racism in the US justice system, explains the history of US-Latin American relations, or drives the brutal internecine struggles of the Mexican cartels. </p>
<p>But given the reality of the situation, an honest discussion of the real situation in Britain – less use, less harm, ready access to treatment – would hardly support a wholesale review of drug laws and the UN convention.</p>
<h2>Running riot</h2>
<p>Across the commentariat, opinions on drugs are a means to signal political identity and affiliation. The brand value of being in favour of either legalisation or prohibition is much too potent to allow it to be diminished by inconvenient truths. </p>
<p>The real public health and crime crises that followed in the wake of the heroin epidemic spawned an evidence-based cross-party consensus that still underpins the policies in place today. And it is that same success that has freed the ideologues from the necessity to engage with messy reality and let them loose in an anarchic ideological playground.</p>
<p>Flagrant ideological posturing along these lines flourishes in our nonsensically combative political culture. It’s almost impossible for any government policy to be called a success; politicians have learned that to claim a win for any policy is to invite a charge of complacency today, and risk humiliation tomorrow. </p>
<p>The resulting fixation on problems, failures and misfires drives any genuine improvement so far down the agenda that it falls out of sight. In Whitehall, political invisibility means being starved of cash and influence – and this creates a dynamic in which civil servants, producer interests and service users learn to displace good news with a constantly evolving narrative of failure.</p>
<h2>Get real</h2>
<p>There are obviously legitimate debates to be had about how we protect the public from the harms of illegal drugs – and the role of criminal sanctions. On the one hand, is it morally justifiable to lock people up for possession to protect them from themselves? On the other, under a more liberal regime, how would we stop a free market driving up both use and harm? </p>
<p>These are not easy questions to answer, and they demand a proper debate. But as things stand, our absurd ignorance of our own success means we’re drifting towards unnecessarily radical “solutions” – even though it’s entirely possible to develop incremental improvements to our management of illegal drugs to sit alongside our responses to alcohol and legal highs. </p>
<p>The stale, ideological alternatives our political tribes are still pushing would scarcely be contemplated if the successes of our current policy got a tenth as much airplay as its problems do. And the losers from this will not be publicity-hungry entrepreneurs or misguided think-tankers, but rather the 0.5% of our population for whom drug policy is genuinely a matter of life and death.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33572/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Hayes is a former CEO of the National Treatment Agency. As such he was responsible to ministers and parliament for the funding and delivery of treatment for drug addiction in England between 2001/13. He currently chairs the Northern Inclusion Consortium, a collaboration between five third sector organisations providing integrated responses to social and economic exclusion.</span></em></p>On all sides, our politicians and commentators seem convinced Britain’s drug policy has been a failure. Party conference season saw Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg rehash his old refrain that we’ve…Paul Hayes, Hon. Professor Drug Policy, London School of Hygiene & Tropical MedicineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/310152014-09-09T20:30:49Z2014-09-09T20:30:49ZWhat works best in the war on drugs<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/58543/original/h2kx5mjt-1410244100.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Most of the world continues with a criminal justice approach to drug use despite ample evidence of its harmfulness.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/94382772@N00/5150341484">Jason Verwey/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1967, the <a href="http://www.beatlesbible.com/1967/07/24/the-beatles-call-for-the-legalisation-of-marijuana/">Beatles took out a full-page advertisement</a> in The Times describing Britain’s marijuana laws as “immoral in principle and unworkable in practice”. Almost half a century later, both <a href="http://www.gcdpsummary2014.com/#pathways">past and serving political leaders</a> around the world are acknowledging that drug prohibition in the guise of the war on drugs hasn’t worked. </p>
<p>Global drug prohibition slowly evolved during the 20th century with several international meetings culminating in three UN drug treaties and a network of UN agencies to enforce them.</p>
<p>The three treaties – the <a href="Single%20Convention%20on%20Narcotic%20Drugs,%201961">Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1961</a>, the <a href="http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/treaties/psychotropics.html">Convention on Psychotropic Substances, 1971</a>, and the <a href="http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/treaties/illicit-trafficking.html">United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, 1988</a> – bound their signatories to pass legislation imposing criminal sanctions on those convicted of cultivating, producing, transporting, selling, buying, using or possessing any of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_Drugs#Schedules_of_drugs">approximately 250 drugs listed by the UN system</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.unodc.org/unodc/commissions/CND/">UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs</a> sets policy, the <a href="http://www.unodc.org/unodc/index.html?ref=menutop">UN Office on Drugs and Crime</a> implements it, the <a href="https://www.incb.org/">International Narcotics Control Board</a> monitors national compliance, and the <a href="http://www.who.int/en/">World Health Organization</a> tells the Commission on Narcotic Drugs what to add to the list of illicit drugs.</p>
<p>This approach has been an utter failure. </p>
<p>The drug trade has expanded substantially in the half century since the first international drug treaty; the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime <a href="http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/WDR-2005.html">estimated the total retail value</a> of the global illicit drug trade in 2003 at US$320 billion. </p>
<p>And deaths, disease, crime, corruption and violence have all soared. It’s clearly time to go back to the drawing board. </p>
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<p>Drug policies have to be realistic to be effective, and prohibition clearly isn’t. Whatever else drugs might be, they also create powerful markets; in the absence of a legal source, strong demand finds other forms of supply. </p>
<p>After the <a href="http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-157.html">United States government prohibited alcohol</a> in 1920, for instance, consumption fell. But, within a few years, it started rising again and by 1922, it had surpassed the 1920 level. </p>
<p>Since the start of the war on drugs, governments across the world have allocated most funds to drug law enforcement. But the policy failed abjectly because drug laws cannot be enforced. </p>
<p>Drug traffickers make so much money that they can corrupt or intimidate whoever stands in their way. Prohibition has undermined governments and eroded important civic institutions in both supplier and transit countries, such as Afghanistan and Pakistan.</p>
<p>Indeed, the drug trade is too big, too powerful, and too awash with profit to ever be eradicated. Still, we can do something about it.</p>
<p>To be effective, drug policies have to be based on evidence, rather than intuition about what should or shouldn’t work or public opinion. But while it is a terrible policy for society and public health – it lands masses of people in jail for minor crimes, for instance, and makes the difficult task of controlling blood-borne viruses almost impossible – the war on drugs is often good political strategy. It helps political candidates win elections on a law-and-order platform, providing a disincentive for ending the hardline approach. </p>
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<p>Evidence shows drug law enforcement has been an <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1308340/pdf/pubhealthrep00029-0016.pdf">expensive way to make a bad problem worse</a> because it manifestly cannot do what it sets out to do, which is make drugs unavailable.</p>
<p>Health and social interventions, on the other hand, are relatively inexpensive ways of making a bad problem less bad, albeit slowly. Such approaches include harm reduction in the form of needle syringe and drug-replacement programs, and social interventions such as encouraging people who use drugs to get treatment. </p>
<p>Consider Switzerland, which was swamped with drug problems in the 1980s. When increasing funding to police and making penalties more severe failed to halt the soaring crime rate, increases in HIV transmission through needle sharing, and drug overdose deaths, the government turned to a different approach, including improved drug treatment. </p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(06)68804-1/abstract">2006 study</a> in the nation’s largest city Zurich showed the annual number of new recruits to heroin in the city went from 80 people in 1975 to its estimated peak of 850 in 1990, and then dropped to 150 in 2002. It showed similar falls in crime, HIV prevalence, and drug overdose deaths. </p>
<p>The Swiss case illustrates how gains are small and slow rather than heroic and overnight. But slow and small gains are definitely worthwhile in the face of the alternative. </p>
<p>This kind of harm reduction approach is very effective and quite inexpensive. A <a href="https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ph52/resources/ph18-needle-and-syringe-programmes-review-of-effectiveness-and-cost-effectiveness-revised-full-report-october-20082">2008 UK review of the evidence</a> for the cost effectiveness of needle syringe programs found they were overwhelmingly worthwhile.</p>
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<p>The Australian government, for instance, spent A$150 million on <a href="http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/needle-return-1-sum">such programs between 1988 and 2000</a>, preventing an estimated 21,000 HIV infections and 25,000 hepatitis C infections. The program saved around 4,500 lives that would have been claimed by AIDS and 90 by hepatitis C. And for <a href="http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/needle-return-2">every dollar the government spent</a>, it saved A$4 in health-care costs and A$27 in the lost economic contribution of drug users and the cost of drug use to the users themselves. </p>
<p>By contrast, reducing drug use remained the priority in the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9057732">United States</a>, so HIV spread extensively among and from people who inject drugs there. </p>
<p>There are only two studies estimating savings or social and health advantages from drug law enforcement. </p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/2006/RAND_MR331.pdf">1994 RAND Corporation report</a> looked at the benefit of every dollar the government spent on coca plant eradication in South America, interdiction of powder cocaine being transported from South to North America, US Customs and police, and treatment of severely dependent US cocaine users.</p>
<p>US citizens benefited 15 cents per dollar spent on the first, and 32 and 52 cents, respectively for the second and third. But the benefit of the last measure, that is, treatment rather than law enforcement was US$7.46 for each dollar spent. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/2006/MR827.pdf">Another report found</a> the annual reduction in total US cocaine consumption for a $US1 million investment was an estimated 13 kilograms for mandatory minimum sentences, 27 kilograms for conventional law enforcement, but over 100 kilograms for treatment of severely dependent users. </p>
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<p>Punitive drug policies have turned out to be an expensive waste of time, at great social cost. When newly-elected Mexican president Felipe Calderon assumed office on December 11, 2006, he freshly <a href="http://www.cfr.org/mexico/mexicos-drug-war/p13689">declared war on drugs</a>. When he left the presidency six years later, around 70,000 Mexicans had been murdered by drug traffickers, the army or the police.</p>
<p>Prohibition also helps more dangerous drugs to push less dangerous ones out of the market. </p>
<p>In the 1950s and 60s, anti-opium policies in Laos, Hong Kong, and Thailand where the drug was traditionally used, <a href="http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=491603">turned out to be pro-heroin</a>. Young, sexually active men injecting heroin replaced old men smoking opium, leading not only to a heroin industry but an increase in the price of narcotic drugs and health problems because of parental drug use. It also created the right conditions for an HIV epidemic among injecting drug users.</p>
<p>Another problem with punitive drug policies is they need a lot of law enforcement. This is only good news for people who work in customs, police, courts and prisons. </p>
<p>The number of people incarcerated in the United States, for instance, increased from 500,000 in 1980 to 2.3 million in 2009. Much of this growth was the result of sentences for drug-related offences. Indeed, <a href="http://plagueofprisons.com/research/journalofurbanhealth1.pdf">one estimate</a> puts the number of years of life lost in New York state as a result of the punitive drug laws of the early 1970s was comparable to the number lost as a result of 9/11. </p>
<p>If we approached drug policy with a return-on-investment approach, high cost-low gain interventions such as incarceration and sniffer dogs would be wound down. </p>
<p>Supporters of drug prohibition often insist reform supporters articulate a fully worked-out alternative. But reform should be thought of as a process rather than an event. It should be carried out in incremental steps with further steps adopted if evaluation shows the earlier reforms have been successful and more is required. </p>
<p>The threshold step is redefining the problem as primarily a health and social issue. As shown above, taxpayers clearly get significant benefits from government spending on reducing the demand for and harm from drugs. </p>
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<p>Once the problem is redefined, most decisions fall into place. The paramount aim of the reformist approach must be to reduce the adverse health, social and economic costs of both drug use and drug policy, rather than aiming to reduce drug use regardless of consequences. </p>
<p>When the drug market has been brought down to a manageable size using health and social interventions, drug law enforcement may well start to be effective. </p>
<p>The aim should be to regulate the market as much as possible while acknowledging it will never be completely regulated. There will always be a black market for drugs, and the best way of shrinking it is to expand the regulated market. </p>
<p>Drugs can be regulated by prescription controls, pharmacy controls, premises where drugs are sold with consumption occurring on site, and premises where drugs are sold but consumption occurs off site. </p>
<p>Methadone is <a href="http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/86/3/08-010308/en/">a good example of a drug regulated</a> by prescription controls across most of the world. It represents a pragmatic compromise between the preference of drug users to keep using heroin and the community, which would prefer drug users to abstain.</p>
<p>This is not a shot in the dark; there are examples of countries that have seen positive results from embracing an alternative to the war on drugs.</p>
<p>In 2001, <a href="http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/content/50/6/999.abstract">Portugal set threshold quantities</a> for every type of illicit drug. People found in possession of quantities above the threshold levels are referred to the criminal justice system. Those found in possession of quantities below the threshold are referred to the Commission for Drug Dissuasion where a small panel carries out an interview to determine how the person is functioning as part of the community. </p>
<p>If they are leading a normal life – raising children, for instance, or studying or training, or holding down a job and keeping up with financial commitments – they are reviewed again in a year or so. Those not functioning poorly are referred to drug treatment. </p>
<p>Portugal also improved its drug treatment system as any country must do if it wishes to reduce drug problems. And treatment has be raised to the same standard as the rest of the health-care system. The policy has worked well for the country; overdose deaths, HIV, crime, and problematic drug use have all fallen. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/58570/original/s9dftkm9-1410262466.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/58570/original/s9dftkm9-1410262466.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/58570/original/s9dftkm9-1410262466.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58570/original/s9dftkm9-1410262466.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58570/original/s9dftkm9-1410262466.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58570/original/s9dftkm9-1410262466.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58570/original/s9dftkm9-1410262466.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/58570/original/s9dftkm9-1410262466.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Instead of this way to deal with drugs, most of the world continues with a criminal justice approach and draconian policies despite evidence of its failure. </p>
<p>Clearly, the war on drugs has taken a grave international toll, and not all of it has been discussed here. Many of the nations it affects are in the process of developing and they are often brought to their knees by corrosive effects of drug prohibition. </p>
<p>The first thing to do is publicly acknowledge the failure of the war on drugs. Then we can start reversing the system. This may be difficult, but it is by no means impossible.</p>
<p><em>This article is the first in a series that will examine the complex problems facing humanity, and assess the evidence on what works best to fix them.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/31015/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Wodak is president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation.</span></em></p>In 1967, the Beatles took out a full-page advertisement in The Times describing Britain’s marijuana laws as “immoral in principle and unworkable in practice”. Almost half a century later, both past and…Alex Wodak, Emeritus Consultant, St Vincent's Hospital, DarlinghurstLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/202812013-11-14T06:13:17Z2013-11-14T06:13:17ZAnalysis reveals economic benefits of legalised cannabis<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35185/original/7vdq4ycy-1384365146.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Have you paid tax on that?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">prensa420</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It is easy to despair of the low quality of public debate on drugs policy in the UK. Some of the loudest voices reflect fixed views and make opportunistic use of any fragment of evidence that happens to support them. The very act of contemplating certain policy options can attract vehement criticism and –- consequently, perhaps –- some policy-makers who, before entering government, had open minds on options for drugs policy, cling firmly to the prohibitionist line when in power. </p>
<p>Few participants in the public debate on drugs policy are prepared to consider the full range of issues involved in policy choice, or acknowledge the large uncertainties that exist in the research evidence. The debate is often conducted in emotive terms, using vague conceptions of “tough” and “liberal” policy, sometimes making large deductive leaps that have little backing in logic.</p>
<p>Cannabis is the most widely used illicit drug in Britain (the research reported here all relates to England and Wales rather than Great Britain or the UK). Although its use has been in slow decline for over a decade, <a href="https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/d/153">survey evidence</a> still suggests that there may be as many as 3.4m users (down from 5.5m in 2006), more than all other illegal drugs combined. </p>
<p>UK policy is prohibitionist: the users and suppliers of cannabis are threatened with maximum sentences of five and 14 years imprisonment respectively. We currently imprison more than 2,000 people a year for cannabis offences, despite the lack of any clear empirical evidence of an effect of enforcement activity on cannabis use.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35182/original/4hfhjps3-1384363031.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35182/original/4hfhjps3-1384363031.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35182/original/4hfhjps3-1384363031.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=246&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35182/original/4hfhjps3-1384363031.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=246&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35182/original/4hfhjps3-1384363031.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=246&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35182/original/4hfhjps3-1384363031.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35182/original/4hfhjps3-1384363031.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35182/original/4hfhjps3-1384363031.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=309&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Trends in custodial sentences for cannabis offences and cannabis use.</span>
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<p>This prohibitionist policy is dictated by international treaty provisions and aspirations which found expression in a remarkably implausible UN slogan: “a drug-free world – we can do it!”</p>
<h2>Would regulation work?</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/d/153">recent report</a> co-authored with Mark Bryan and Emilia Del Bono considers one radical policy option –- a system of licensed, regulated and taxed cannabis supply. </p>
<p>We identify no fewer than 17 possible consequences that need to be evaluated before arriving at an informed and balanced view on the case for this reform. They include: savings in various policing and criminal justice costs; changes in cannabis-related crime, accidents, dependency, mental and physical illness, productivity, and the scarring effects of a criminal record. </p>
<p>Cost-benefit analysis can be used to put all projected consequences of reform –- both monetary and non-monetary -– on a common cash-equivalent basis. This gives us a coherent overall view of the arguments and some idea of which particular consequences might be crucial in tilting things one way or the other. </p>
<p>We evaluate only the effect of the reform on the social costs imposed by cannabis users on the rest of society and we are able to make estimates of the net social effects of reform for 13 of the 17 items on our list of possible consequences.</p>
<p>There are large uncertainties in evaluating the costs and benefits of reform. The first is what a legalised market would look like. The US model of legalisation leads to a large numbers of suppliers and different products that is hard to regulate. Other models, like the extreme case of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-uruguays-legal-weed-means-for-the-war-on-drugs-16646">government monopoly proposed for Uruguay</a>, entail fewer, larger licensed suppliers operating under tight product controls. </p>
<p>The possibility of product regulation is one of the strongest arguments for legalisation. The primary psychoactive component of cannabis is D9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which has been linked to impaired brain function and psychotic symptoms, but research suggests that another component, cannabidiol (CBD) has a protective anti-psychotic effect. In the last decade or so, there has been a worrying rise in the market share of high-THC, low-CBD forms of cannabis (usually known as “skunk”), and this worrying trend has proved impossible to control under prohibitionist policy.</p>
<p>A second major source of uncertainty is the nature of demand. It has not proved possible to arrive at a clear understanding of the reasons for the slow decline in cannabis use or the shift towards higher-potency product. There is also no research consensus on price effects, especially the cross-effects of variation in cannabis prices on the demand for alcohol, tobacco and other drugs. </p>
<p>A third difficulty is in identifying the true causal relationship between cannabis use and eventual long-term harms. </p>
<h2>So what’s the cost (or benefit)?</h2>
<p>Given these uncertainties, we considered three possible outcomes based on differing levels of cannabis demand after legalisation. A “low response”, where cannabis use barely increases; a “high response” scenario, where usage increases a great deal; and a “mid response”. </p>
<p>We assume a significant degree of product regulation, with government setting excise taxes at a rate comparable with those used in the alcohol and tobacco markets. We also assume a residual illegal supply with a market share rather larger than the share of illegal supply in the tobacco market at present. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35183/original/327bwrwz-1384364642.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35183/original/327bwrwz-1384364642.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35183/original/327bwrwz-1384364642.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35183/original/327bwrwz-1384364642.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35183/original/327bwrwz-1384364642.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35183/original/327bwrwz-1384364642.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35183/original/327bwrwz-1384364642.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35183/original/327bwrwz-1384364642.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Projected net social benefit of reform under three demand response scenarios.</span>
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</figure>
<p>The striking feature of these estimates is how small the projected costs and benefits are. This is partly because we are only considering costs and benefits to non-users. The anticipated costs to cannabis users themselves (health risks, for instance) are necessarily outweighed by the anticipated enjoyment of consumption.</p>
<p>But it is also partly because the plausible scale of cost savings (reduced enforcement costs) and cost increases (medical care, crime victimisation) to society appear to be inherently modest. There is no compelling evidence for a huge impact –- either good or bad –- on the rest of society from the changes in cannabis use likely to be produced by legalisation.</p>
<p>A possible exception to this is cannabis-related crime. Although we find very little evidence that cannabis use causes any crime at all, the large size of the market means that costs could be high under the most pessimistic “high response” scenario. But the large projected net increase in cannabis-related crime in that case (almost £600m) is highly uncertain, with a margin of error of plus or minus £800m.</p>
<p>By far the largest projected impact relates to the government budget. Under this reform, government gains additional tax revenue from licensed supply and makes net savings on policing and criminal justice costs. Since taxes represent transfers within society rather than gains to society, the improvement in the government’s budgetary position is not a strong argument for reform in principle, but it might be an attractive feature of reform to governments in practice.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Projected gains to the government budget.</span>
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</figure>
<p>There is nothing in these findings that should frighten any government –- there is no “killer fact” that makes legalisation unthinkable. While there is a significant possibility of net social harm if the demand response to policy change turned out to be extremely high, close monitoring of prevalence would allow the policy to be evaluated in practice and reversed if necessary.</p>
<p><em>A version of this article first appeared at <a href="http://societycentral.ac.uk/2013/11/01/the-costs-and-benefits-of-a-licensed-taxed-and-regulated-cannabis-market/">Society Central</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/20281/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Pudney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It is easy to despair of the low quality of public debate on drugs policy in the UK. Some of the loudest voices reflect fixed views and make opportunistic use of any fragment of evidence that happens to…Stephen Pudney, Professor of Economics, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/101972012-10-25T00:05:33Z2012-10-25T00:05:33ZHow to reduce opioid overdose deaths in Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/16833/original/jkm8ht76-1351035057.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Most overdose deaths are due to heroin but an increasing number are due to pain relieving prescription opioid drugs.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Thomas Marthinsen</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Once again, overdose deaths from opioids are increasing in Australia. And once again, we are in danger of ignoring effective, evidence-based interventions. </p>
<p><a href="http://ndarc.med.unsw.edu.au/sites/ndarc.cms.med.unsw.edu.au/files/ndarc/resources/NIDIP%20Bulletin%20-%20opioid%20induced%20deaths%20in%20Australia%202008.pdf">According to</a> the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, there were 360 opioid overdose deaths in 2007 but 500 in 2008 – a 40% increase. These overdose figures have been carefully checked. </p>
<p>Preliminary figures suggest that there were 612 such deaths in 2009, a 22% increase from 2008, and 705 in 2010, a 15% increase from the year before. Increases in overdose deaths occurred in all of the major states but were most marked in Victoria where such deaths increased 133% from 73 in 2001, to 170 in 2008.</p>
<p>Most of these deaths are due to heroin but an increasing number have recently been due to pain relieving prescription opioid drugs. Most involve men in their early 30s.</p>
<p>And for every fatal overdose, there are many more non-fatal overdoses. Non-fatal overdoses can result in severe physical and mental damage, expensive ambulance call outs and admissions to hospital emergency departments and intensive care units. So the health and financial costs of non-fatal overdoses to individual young Australians and the community are anything but trivial.</p>
<h2>Recent trends</h2>
<p>Heroin is produced from opium and most of the heroin reaching Australia originates from Burma. The last time opium production peaked in Burma was in the mid-1990s. That increase resulted in a glut of heroin in Australia and annual opioid overdose deaths peaked at 1,116 in 1999. </p>
<p>Opium production in Burma decreased 82% from 1,760 metric tonnes in 1996 to 312 metric tonnes in 2005. Annual opioid overdose deaths in Australia fell to 938 in 2000 and then to 386 in 2001. Opioid overdose deaths then remained below 400 until 2008. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/WDR2011/World_Drug_Report_2011_ebook.pdf">In recent years</a>, Burma’s opium production has increased 88% from 312 metric tonnes in 2005 to 586 metric tonnes in 2010. If this trend continues, Australia could once again experience the extremely high levels of overdose deaths that occurred in the 1990s.</p>
<p>The shortage of heroin in Australia that began in 2000 (and also affected some other countries) coincided with the sharp decline in opium production in Burma between 1996 and 2005. This decline was probably due to a combination of factors including the retirement of a major Burmese opium warlord (Khun Sa), a shift from outdoor opium cultivation (easily detected by aerial and satellite surveillance) to indoor amphetamine production, increasing consumption of heroin in China en route to Australia and local climatic changes. </p>
<p>Inevitably, some Australian politicians claimed at the time the shortage was due to the then new “tough on drugs” policy; they were less enthusiastic about accepting responsibility for the increase in amphetamine use that followed the heroin shortage.</p>
<h2>Treatment options</h2>
<p>There are several things we can do to address this looming problem. First, we could expand and improve our drug treatment system and reduce the barriers to entering and remaining in treatment. There’s copious high-quality evidence that methadone and buprenorphine treatments are effective and safe. For every $1 spent on these treatments, there’s a community saving of $4 to $7. </p>
<p>Methadone and buprenorphine reduce the excess risk of death among people who inject heroin by about 80%. And a recent study suggests that these treatments reduce the risk of HIV by over 50%. They also reduce property crime substantially. </p>
<p>But most people who enrol in methadone or buprenorphine programs have to pay at least $50 per week from what is usually a very low income. And there’s far more demand than supply of such treatments in most parts of Australia. </p>
<p>What’s more, the treatments are very stigmatised, especially methadone. Many patients enrolled in methadone and buprenorphine treatment complain that staff don’t treat them with respect. Many don’t even bother trying to enter treatment and others leave far too early. </p>
<p>Stigma is one of the nasty side effects of our punitive approach to illicit drugs. The experimental and unapproved drug naltrexone is also advocated by some as something of a panacea but a <a href="http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/your-health/naltrexone-implants">recent NHMRC review</a> concluded that there was insufficient evidence that this drug is effective or safe.</p>
<h2>Safer injecting</h2>
<p>Safe injecting facilities (like the Kings Cross Medically Supervised Injecting Facility) also reduce the risk of fatal and non-fatal opioid overdoses. They mainly cater for the most disadvantaged subset of an already very disadvantaged population of people who inject drugs. </p>
<p>Many of the people who attend the 90 safe injecting facilities around the world have severe physical and mental illnesses, are homeless and very isolated. Many have had little or no previous contact with health or social agencies, including those providing drug treatment. </p>
<p>Safe injecting facilities are only needed near or within large drug markets (where most overdose death occurs) that spill over into surrounding neighbourhoods. Australia only needs a few such facilities in half a dozen major cities in the country. </p>
<p>New South Wales accounts for almost half of Australia’s drug overdose deaths and a fifth of these deaths occur within two kilometres of Kings Cross. Safe injecting facilities also improve neighbourhood amenity so they’re usually very popular with local residents.</p>
<p>Trying to repair the severe and multiple problems that have developed over the many years of injecting drugs takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. People who use drugs, their families and communities often look for a magical quick-fix solution that will instantaneously sort everything out perfectly. So too do our politicians. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, there are no quick fixes. But there are effective and pragmatic interventions that will save hundreds of lives and millions of dollars. What we need to do is ask ourselves if we are ready to think about these interventions for people who are someone’s son or daughter, sister or brother, father or mother.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/10197/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Wodak AM is a physician and a Director of Australia21, an independent think tank; President of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation; Emeritus Consultant of St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney; Visiting Fellow of the Kirby Institute, UNSW and; Visiting Fellow of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW.</span></em></p>Once again, overdose deaths from opioids are increasing in Australia. And once again, we are in danger of ignoring effective, evidence-based interventions. According to the National Drug and Alcohol Research…Alex Wodak, Emeritus Consultant, St Vincent's Hospital, DarlinghurstLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/95022012-09-12T04:37:26Z2012-09-12T04:37:26ZA new approach to drug reform: regulated supply of cannabis and ecstasy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/15352/original/bhyn853n-1347345701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The possession and use of cannabis and ecstasy should be decriminalised for Australians aged 16 and over.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">garyowen</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sixteen years ago the premier of Victoria, Jeff Kennett, asked me to conduct an inquiry into drug policy. At the time, deaths from heroin overdoses were high and the use of cannabis and other drugs continued to mount, despite prohibition. </p>
<p>While there has been some improvement in the management of drugs over the years, both in Victoria and nationally, fundamental problems remain. It’s time to consider practical solutions to the problem. </p>
<p>I <a href="http://www.australia21.org.au/publications/press_releases/A21_Alternatives_to_Prohibition_SEP_12.pdf">propose</a> a novel system whereby Australians aged 16 and over have access to a limited, regulated quantity of cannabis and ecstasy from a government-approved pharmacy supplier – provided they are willing to go on a national confidential user’s register. </p>
<p>When dispensing the substance, pharmacists would also be able to give clients advice and, where necessary, refer them for counselling or treatment. </p>
<h2>Why we need a new approach</h2>
<p>Harm from illicit drugs is not only serious to users; it affects their families and entire communities, especially when addiction leads to crime and prostitution. Drug use is understandably perceived as a threat by the community because of the violent behaviour that is associated with some drugs. </p>
<p>Beyond this, the drug trade leads inevitably to growth in organised crime associated with serious violence and corruption of law enforcement officers, as we’ve seen in many states and jurisdictions. These issues led to the United States abandoning prohibition of alcohol in 1933.</p>
<p>Australia remains among the small group of nations which have the highest consumption of cannabis. And we have the dubious honour of being the greatest user of ecstasy in the world. Both cause significant health and social problems for young people in their developing years. </p>
<p>While we’re making real headway in reducing tobacco use, and seek to reduce excessive alcohol use, prohibition leaves the supply of cannabis and ecstasy in the hands of traffickers. These drugs are often the starting point for young users, who are then offered much more dangerous party drugs, heroin and cocaine if they continue to deal with the traffickers.</p>
<h2>New model for ecstasy and cannabis supply</h2>
<p>Getting these two widely used drugs out of the hands of the illegal traffickers would be a start on dealing with drug use as a health issue, as counselling would be available. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.umbrellasociety.ca/web/files/u1/Comp_epidemiology_addiction.pdf">Low levels of use</a> do not present a risk to health <a href="http://www.researchgate.net/publication/5675673_Adolescent_substance_use_and_the_developing_brain">any more than</a> moderate and responsible use of alcohol. Long-established <a href="http://www.umbrellasociety.ca/web/files/u1/Comp_epidemiology_addiction.pdf">international evidence</a> shows alcohol and tobacco are far more addictive than cannabis. </p>
<p>Young people will not listen to advice about drugs, which currently they regard as hypocritical, when society condones the use of alcohol, despite it causing many more deaths and violent behaviour than any of the illicit drugs. Education – of the kind young people will listen to – is the key missing element in our efforts to reduce use of the drugs which are part of the social environment for so many young people. </p>
<p>So how would the regulated supply scheme work?</p>
<p>The production of a version of ecstasy, identifiable by shape and colour, could readily be contracted to a generic drug production company. </p>
<p>Australia has authority to produce opium under strict regulation in Tasmania, needed for the world’s pharmaceutical industry to make morphine for pain relief. Regulated production of cannabis, with coloured markers, could be similarly controlled.</p>
<p>Alongside this production, a confidential electronic register of cannabis and ecstasy users would be established and accessed by pharmacists. The supply of cannabis and ecstasy would be tightly regulated, and limited to a monthly total representing a safe weekly amount - well below the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17984159">quantities known to cause changes in the brains</a> of adolescents and young adults. The register would prevent “shopping” from multiple outlets. </p>
<p>Pharmacists are already important as a source of health advice in the community, dispensing methadone to former heroin users. Pharmacists could become really effective advisers to drug users. It would take time to prepare them for this task, but with discussion and appropriate dispensing fees, they might welcome the role.</p>
<p>Between two and three million Australians use cannabis every year. More than 50% of young people in some age groups have used cannabis. If the scheme reduced cannabis use by even 60%, and prevented young people moving to harder drugs by cutting off access to traffickers, that would be a huge benefit to young Australians, their families, and the community. </p>
<h2>What happens next?</h2>
<p>Because of the widespread and simplistic community view that drugs are “bad”, politicians recoil from any suggestion of their “legalisation”. But prohibition has manifestly failed for more than 50 years, and itself causes many problems. </p>
<p>Simply requesting the removal of all legal restrictions is currently a fruitless proposition, which I don’t believe any government will consider, especially when these are supported by international treaties to which we are committed. </p>
<p>We need a new approach. A formal trial of “regulated supply” associated with rigorous collection of evidence could represent a real start in examining alternatives. </p>
<p>Other countries are making innovative changes. Why not Australia?</p>
<p><br></p>
<p><em><strong>Further reading: <a href="http://ncpic.org.au/static/pdfs/young-people-training-package/cannabis-and-mental-health-put-into-context.pdf">Cannabis and Mental Health: Put into context</a> (Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing)</strong></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/9502/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Penington attended the Australia21 meeting as an invited participant. He is party to a large ARC grant covering Bionic Vision Australia, which he chairs. </span></em></p>Sixteen years ago the premier of Victoria, Jeff Kennett, asked me to conduct an inquiry into drug policy. At the time, deaths from heroin overdoses were high and the use of cannabis and other drugs continued…David Penington, Emeritus Professor, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/93282012-09-09T02:36:42Z2012-09-09T02:36:42ZDrug prohibition: moving to Plan B<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/15203/original/3xn86z24-1347157896.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It’s difficult to explain why up to three million Australians are better off purchasing cannabis from criminals rather than regulated sources.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chuck Grimmett</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.australia21.org.au/">Australia21</a>, of which I am one of the directors, released its <a href="http://www.australia21.org.au/our_research/illicit_drugs_download.html#a">second report on drug prohibition</a> on this morning. The report calls for a redefinition of how we deal with drugs to primarily a health and social problem. </p>
<p>Our <a href="http://www.australia21.org.au/publications/press_releases/Australia21_Illicit_Drug_Policy_Report.pdf">first drug report</a>, released in April, concluded that the war-on-drugs approach had failed comprehensively. It provoked a vigorous media response in which few commentators challenged the notion that heavy reliance on drug law enforcement had failed. </p>
<p>We invited prominent Australians who support a hardline approach to attend a meeting but all those approached declined. When someone of the stature of Mick Palmer, former commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, acknowledges that despite improvements in drug law enforcement, there has been little impact on the drug market, the debate has entered a new stage.</p>
<p>This second report builds on the conclusions of the first one, attempting to provoke a national discussion about what our best options might be. There are several reasons why this discussion is now different from previous debates about drug policy.</p>
<h2>Winds of change in the Americas</h2>
<p>Vigorous debates about drug policy are now taking place in Europe and the Americas. The murder of 50,000 Mexicans since President Felipe Calderon declared a war on drugs in December 2006 has brought that country to a precipice. Two previous Mexican presidents have called for legalisation and the current one has called for use of “market mechanisms” – presumably a euphemism for legalisation. </p>
<p>Latin America is being torn apart by pressure from the United States to stop drugs heading north to the biggest drug market in the world. President Barack Obama was forced to bow to pressure from Latin America in April and acknowledge (in an election year) that it was entirely appropriate to debate the legalisation of drugs, although he added this was something the United States would never do. </p>
<p>In a world-first, Uruguay’s president has sent a Bill to legalise cannabis to the legislature for consideration. At the Summit of the Americas in Cartegena, Colombia, earlier this year (14 to 15 April), the United States and Canada were isolated on drug policy. Latin America now wants change.</p>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">911 Bail Bonds Las Vegas</span></span>
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<p>The politics of drugs also seems to be changing in the United States. Primaries for a Democratic Congressional district in El Paso, Texas and a contest for the Oregon attorney general were both won by younger candidates supporting drug law reform, defeating older incumbents who supported a war-on-drugs approach. </p>
<p>And, the <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/150149/record-high-americans-favor-legalizing-marijuana.aspx">2011 annual Gallup poll</a> in the United States, asking “do you support the legalisation of marijuana?” reported that supporters (50%) now outnumbered opponents (46%). In 1969, 12% supported while 84% opposed legalisation of marijuana. Medical marijuana is now available in 17 states (and the District of Colombia).</p>
<h2>The situation in Europe</h2>
<p>There are now more countries providing models for how reform can be implemented. The Netherlands, Switzerland and Portugal have shown that reforms can be carried out without breaching international drug treaties, and that an approach with more emphasis on health and social measures can produce better outcomes and achieve strong community support. </p>
<p>In contrast, Sweden is one of few European countries still heavily reliant on severe punishment and drug law enforcement. It claims a drug-free nation as the over-arching goal of its drug policy and rejects safer injecting facilities and heroin assisted treatment. </p>
<p>Sweden still only has the same two needle syringe programs that were established 25 years ago. <a href="http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/attachements.cfm/att_143743_EN_EMCDDA_AR2011_EN.pdf">And it</a> has the eighth-highest drug overdose death rate in the European Union while the Netherlands has the 19th and Portugal the 25th. Overdose deaths have been increasing in Sweden, are stable in the Netherlands and falling in Portugal. </p>
<p>Still, the country seems to be slowly moving away from its hardline approach and gradually becoming more like other European Union countries. And it takes drug treatment seriously, as do all countries that have started reforming their drug policy.</p>
<p>Coinciding with a major expansion and improvement of drug treatment in Zurich, Switzerland, the estimated number of <a href="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(06)68804-1/abstract">new heroin users declined</a> from 850 in 1990 to 150 in 2002 with decreasing numbers of heroin overdose death, HIV infections and crime. The quantity of heroin seized by police also declined during this period suggesting a shift from the black market to the white market.</p>
<h2>Time to make the move</h2>
<p>Sooner or later, one side of politics in Australia will realise that drug law reform could be a vote-changing issue for young people. With the current and two previous presidents of the United States, and the current prime minister of Australia, and the current and previous leaders of the Opposition all known to have tried cannabis, it’s increasingly difficult to explain why two to three million Australians are better off purchasing cannabis from criminals, corrupt police or outlaw motorcycle gangs than obtaining the same drug from regulated sources.</p>
<p>Drug policy is a difficult issue for politicians. But the longer they delay reform, or even discussion of reform, the more difficult it’s going to get.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/9328/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Wodak is one of the directors of Australia21. He does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.</span></em></p>Australia21, of which I am one of the directors, released its second report on drug prohibition on this morning. The report calls for a redefinition of how we deal with drugs to primarily a health and…Alex Wodak, Emeritus Consultant, St Vincent's Hospital, DarlinghurstLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.