‘At best, controls may have kept the lid on the scale of the market. At worst, they may have exacerbated drug problems.’
These are the words of a report published in October by the independent UK Drug Policy Commission (UKDPC). Finding that current policies do not address the fact that there will always be a market for drugs, and that prohibition represents bad value spending of tax payer’s money, the report seriously suggests decriminalization as a viable solution.
The war on drugs costs £3bn a year. And despite declining drug use in the UK, its citizens still comprise 380,000 problem drug users. Every year, 2,000 people die from causes relating to drugs.
The European director of LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition), Annie Machon has observed this losing battle from the front lines. Working in MI5’s counter subversion department on terrorist logistic during the 1990s, Machon liaised closely with HM Revenue and Customs. Colleagues told her that actively looking for drugs in transit was ‘just a drop in the ocean.’ Uncovering and preventing the export and import of narcotics was simply too great a task.
‘It is impossible to stop the free flow of drugs,’ Machon asserts. From human drugs mules making it through airport security checks, to substance movement across deserts on camels through Iran and Central Asia, the international drugs trade is a many headed Hydra – hack one off and another will grow in its place.
‘Can you imagine any other trade worth about 500 billion per annum around the planet being left entirely in the hands of organised criminals?’ asks Machon, with exasperation.
According to UN estimates, there are 50 million regular users world-wide buying heroin, cocaine and other synthetic drugs.
Even David Cameron and Barack Obama have admitted to smoking cannabis as teenagers. When asked if she had ever tried drugs as a student, Machon laughed. ‘I would find it very difficult to find anyone under 60 in this country who hadn’t dabbled.’
The profits reaped from Western party habits, and life-shattering addictions, fund violent criminal gangs and even terrorist organizations, causing untold harm throughout the world.
And at the other side of the transaction, the money to buy drugs is often sourced through lower level criminal activity, from petty theft to armed robbery.
The war on drugs in the UK is a battle of attrition, one that has been waged for over forty years. The opening salvo was the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. For many, this is a set of laws which sentences people who should be rehabilitated.
‘At the moment we already have the associated problems (of drug addiction),’ says Machon. ‘The thing is that because it is illegal, people are frightened to go and get help.’
The penalties are severe. In the UK, possession of a Class A drug, such as heroin, cocaine, ecstasy or LSD, is punishable by a seven year prison sentence and/or an unlimited fine.
Machon points to the method instituted by the Swiss government when faced with the high criminality, increasing numbers of drug-related deaths and AIDS epidemic of a massive heroin problem in 1994. ‘They made it legal in clinics.’ The change was a ‘win-win’ for Switzerland. ‘No-one has died of an overdose in Switzerland since then.’
As for ‘soft’ drugs, being caught with cannabis, a Class B substance, could land you in jail for five years. So if the 6.8% of people aged 15 to 64 in England who use cannabis were arrested and charged, the prison population could be swelled by well a good million or two.
Law can hardly be enforced on that kind of scale, and cannabis offences are low on police priorities. Yet 42,000 people are sentenced under cannabis laws every year, and 160,000 are given warnings. Many people have questioned whether this 41 year old legislation, and the money spent on policing it, still makes sense.
Smoking a joint may be a socially accepted past time amongst millions. But the mind- altering experiences of cannabis and other drugs have been linked to a number of long term mental health problems, which include schizophrenia and depression. Some people worry that decriminalization would encourage more people to experiment with drugs, potentially causing an epidemic of psychological disorders.
‘We need to be aware of the harm issues inherent in it,’ says Machon, highlighting the reductions in smoking that have come with better education about its damaging effects. But for her, drug taking is a matter of personal freedom, a choice to be made by individuals.
Illegality still fails to put people off choosing to use drugs, or prevent access to them. Machon believes that many children would confirm that it is easier to get hold of cannabis than it is to buy alcohol or cigarettes.
‘At the moment it’s a free for all,’ she says, ‘What we’re discussing is strict regulation.’ She thinks that only by legalizing and strictly regulating the sale of drugs can you properly impose age limitations (although it could be argued that the age limitations used to regulate alcohol consumption are easily dodged by savvy sixteen year olds anyway).
As the report by UKPDC shows, the arguments put forward by groups like LEAP and UKPDC are gathering legitimacy.
‘More and more senior politicians have realised that talking about the war on drugs is not a third rail which will electrocute them,’ says Machon. ‘I think there has been a sea change in the tone of the debate. But every day we delay, more innocents are killed around the globe.’
For her, this war is ‘hysterical, it’s hyperbolic and it causes more damage than it stops.’
Bloodshed is an inevitable part of war, and the war on drugs is no different. American intelligence was this year used to justify the shooting down of two suspected drugs planes over Honduras. But it is unclear whether there were actually drugs aboard, and both incidents constituted violations of international law.
And in the six years of US military action in cracking down on supply from Mexico, 62,000 Mexican civilians have been murdered, and 20,000 have disappeared. Civilians are caught between brutally territorial cartels and the apparently indiscriminate authorities.
In 2011, 150,000 Mexicans marched to raise awareness of their plight. And a ‘Caravan for Peace’, made up of Mexican victims caught in the cross-fire, travelled through the US this summer to protest against the continuing violence.
This looks like an increasingly inaccurate and dirty war, a waste of both financial resources and human life.
‘I think it’s just going to get worse,’ sighs Machon. ‘It’s such a lucrative trade…And the kind of violence we’re seeing in South America and North America will transfer into Europe.’
So, strike criminality from drugs use, and remove the drugs trade from criminals. The anti- prohibition argument is an attractive one. Over ten years, LEAP has gathered 80,000 supporters, and is represented by senior law enforcers from ex-intelligence professionals like Machon, to former chief constables. It remains to be seen whether the Home Office will take the UKPDC proposals seriously and ‘loosen up’ drugs laws. But with Portugal leading the way, as the first European country to completely abolish criminal sanctions for possessing drugs in 2001, the decriminalization movement is gathering pace.
