Earlier this week, I was walking down the road with a couple of bags of Labour Party leaflets when a woman from a drugs project approached me with a clipboard. She asked me lots of questions about drug-related crime and drug-related violence and drug crime policing; she even asked me if I had a drink or drugs problem. Then she collected all the usual data about age and ethnicity and favourite sexual position. Most of my answers were “don’t know” because I didn’t know.
What was most surprising to me was that, when she ended by asking me what possible solution I would suggest to drug-related problems, I shocked her.
“License drugs,” I said.
She, a woman half my age, responded with a horrified (and non-scripted) “What? All of them?!”
“Yes,” I said, “especially the hard ones.”
Then I pointed out that almost all of her questions had had nothing at all to do with the effects of drugs themselves, but with the illegal activities of drug users and dealers, and that the only negative effects I had experienced had been the result of drunk people trying to pick a fight with me on their way from being kicked out of places serving booze, and that most of the drugs we had been talking about did not promote aggression in those who consumed them.
I should add that I don’t believe that the licensing of drugs would “solve our drugs problems”. I just think that its a possible solution to the worst of them. I also believe that the supervised legalisation of drugs would be, in one sense, regressive: the burden of such a change in the law would fall on the poorest and most disadvantaged—as it usually does before a mood-altering substance is prohibited. That is, those of us who are better off would have less of a problem with drugs; those of us who are worse off would have more of a problem with drugs. My instinct however is that the total problem would get smaller.
It’s not a policy that’s going to appear on a Labour Party leaflet any time soon though, and it’ll never appear on a Conservative one.
Licensing drugs would be even a better idea here in the states, since the prison industry has been the largest winner in the war on drugs. Even a lot of conservatives are beginning to see the folly of incarcerating hundreds of thousands of citizens over non-violent drug offenses.
Great idea…but it’ll probably never happen here or in the UK.
I agree. Licensing would not get rid of all the problems but it would cut out the criminal, possibly terrorist, involvement in supply and the flow of cash to them, the need to commit crime to support a habit and the added dangers of poor ‘quality’.
Good article.
I wonder how David Cameron feels on this sensitive little matter?
Anyway, some of the most dangerous drugs are already “licensed” for public consumption.
Gosh, I think I’ll nip out for a cigarette.
It’s not a policy that’s going to appear on a Labour Party leaflet any time soon though, and it’ll never appear on a Conservative one.
Given Labour’s campaigns against smoking, drinking, and junk food I’d probably put money on it appearing in a Conservative manifesto sooner than a Labour one.
I have to disagree, many drugs that effectively debilitate, including legal licensed ones such as alcohol, will eventually promote criminal behaviour as those who take them to the point of dependency wont be able to support a job that allows them to fund the habit, they will seek funding elsewhere, usually the easy way by taking it from someone else.
And I fail to see how licencing will eliminate the criminal profiteering, there is already far more money to be made on the black market in legal licenced drugs, even medicinal ones, than on illegal substances. The treasury lose over £3.5 billion a year in lost duty on smuggled booze and fags, to give an idea of the scale of the problem, and most of that is done by organised crime not daytrippers to Calais.
“Really? How much burglary takes place in this country by people wanting to buy a bottle of vodka?”
According to the BMA, 41% of thefts and 27% of burglaries are “alcohol related”.
Although this does not assume the theft was directly related to the purchase of alcohol as you surmise, in fact it is more likely the perpetrator had a spot of “dutch courage” before embarking on his venture, however, the relationship between alcohol dependency and loss of income is well documented, and theft (of all forms, including fraud) is one way of making up that income.
Admittedly, you can question whether someone is unemployed because they are drug dependent, or the other way round, or even that someone is a criminal because they are drug dependent, ot the other way round. Nevertheless, my argument stands, that licencing drugs will make no difference to the related crime.
According to the BMA, 41% of thefts and 27% of burglaries are “alcohol related”.
Dig into the details and what they said is that 41% of thieves had drunk within 4 hours of their arrest.
I could probably come up with some figures citing “Jeremy Kyle and Trisha-related crimes” using that sort of statistical abuse.
Ian Croydon,
You haven’t actually explained why it’s advantageous for narcotics to be selectively prohibited in the first place. You’ve merely argued that legalising them wouldn’t make any difference to the crime stats (which is debatable, I think) or attenuate the negative social aspects of drug abuse. That’s the point though, isn’t it? If spending millions on prohibition isn’t making a blind bit of difference either way, then what’s the use of prohibition? We might as well put an end to it and save the tax payer a few bob. Put it towards education instead, perhaps.
As you yourself state, people can quite happily eff up their lives on perfectly legal narcotics without fear of having their collars felt by the long arm of the morality police.