Study: Britain’s drug policy has failed

D’Arcy Doran

LONDON — Britain’s drug policy has failed and should be replaced with a system that recognizes drinking and smoking can cause more harm than some illegal drugs, according to an independent study published last Thursday.

Shifting the focus of drug education to primary school children from secondary students and the establishment of “shooting galleries” — rooms where users can inject drugs — are among the recommendations of a two-year study into drug policy and alternative solutions by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, or RSA.

New laws are needed that acknowledge that “whether we like it or not, drugs are and will remain a fact of life,” the report said. “On that basis, the aim of the law should be to reduce the amount of harm caused to individuals, their friends and families, their children and their communities.”

The commission, composed of academics, politicians, drug workers, journalists and a senior police officer, said current laws are “driven by moral panic,” with large amounts of money wasted on futile efforts to stop supply rather than going after the criminal networks behind the drugs on British streets.

The report, which aims to influence a government drug strategy review due next year, also called for jail sentences to be given for only the most serious drug-related crimes and for addicts to be given jobs and housing as part of treatment. It recommends the current drug classification system be replaced by an “index of harms.”

“The evidence suggests that a majority of people who use drugs are able to use them without harming themselves or others,” said the panel’s chairman, Anthony King of Essex University.

At the heart of the report is a call to end what the panel said was the current policy’s “criminal justice bias” in favor of treating addiction as a health and social problem, instead of simply a cause of crime.

London’s Metropolitan Police backed the report’s approach. A police spokesman said the force supported the proposed approach of evaluating drug policy success by “measuring the amount of harm reduced and reducing drugs supply by the targeting of organized criminal networks responsible.” The spokesman spoke on condition of anonymity in line with force policy.

But Iain Duncan Smith, the former leader of the opposition Conservative party, called the report “worryingly complacent” and accused commission members of failing to research the issue.

The report recommended supervised drug consumption rooms — which operate in eight European countries — as a way of preventing overdoses and offering treatment to high-risk users. Addicts are allowed to bring illegally obtained drugs into such rooms, but sharing and dealing is banned, and new or nondependent users are barred.

The emphasis of drug education should be helping young children develop decision-making skills and the only practical message for older secondary school students is harm reduction, the report said.

(Associated Press)