[Cannabis and Northern Ireland make Britain a virtual beacon of cheer this week]
LEADER: Common sense on drugs
Financial Times, Oct 25, 2001
Unbridled moralism is a dreadful basis for policy. Nowhere has this been truer than in drug policy. Instead of viewing drug abuse as a social challenge to be managed, governments regard it as an evil to be extirpated. They have inflicted greater damage on society by prohibition than would have occurred with greater liberalism.
Prohibition has raised profits on the sale of illegal drugs and spawned a huge, well organised and ruthless criminal industry. It has corrupted criminal justice. It has supplied vast incomes to some of the world's most un-pleasant governments and guerrilla movements. Illegal drugs are unsafe. In the US, the world's engine for prohibition, more young black men are in prison than in college, entirely because of the war on drugs.
It is against this global background that one should set the decision by David Blunkett, the home secretary, to reclassify cannabis as a "class C" drug, the least harmful category of controlled drug. In itself, this is a small step for policy. But it is one towards rationality. The UK needs to take further such steps and so help promote sensible approaches in the world at large.
The suggestion that cannabis be transferred from class B to class C was made in last year's excellent report on Drugs and the Law, for the Police Foundation. This argued, correctly, that the mis-classification of cannabis was not just illogical, on the basis of the harm it did, but brought the policy as a whole into disrepute.
At the time of publication, the reaction of Jack Straw, the home secretary at the time, was wholly negative. Mr Blunkett's decision indicates how misguided he was. It also shows how far behind the public mood the government had fallen. By taking this step, Mr Blunkett has also brought the UK into line with more enlightened countries such as the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal.
Yet classifying drugs on the basis of the harm that objective science suggests they do is just a start. The wider need is for a reconsideration of the basis of drug policy, with a view to limiting the harm done by both consumption and prohibition.
Any such rethink must be founded on three fundamental principles. First, incentives for creating and preserving the illegal supplying industry must be minimised. Second, dangers - particularly to public health and law and order - must, so far as possible, be eliminated. Third, users must not be treated as criminals and so be turned into hardened offenders.
The answer is to decriminalise the consumption of all drugs. Cannabis should be treated like tobacco, with which it has many similarities. The supply of hard drugs should remain illegal, in accordance with international conventions, but addicts should be registered and supplied by prescription or from some other controlled outlet. Dealing in hard drugs would remain illegal. But the opportunities for drug dealers would be reduced and the safety of drugs consumed be ensured.
The UK should take a lead in shining the light of reason on a crusade that has done - and continues to do - terrible damage. Mr Blunkett has made a good start. He should now initiate a comprehensive review of policy, with a view to taking this enlightened approach further.
Copyright: The Financial Times Limited