The independent panel of scientists argues that various illegal drugs are less harmful than legal ones, or even horse riding. The chief gets sacked by the home secretary, and apparently the rest of the panel are considering their positions.
So why doesn’t the home secretary appoint a panel of independent economists to advise on drugs policy instead? At the moment drugs policy seems to be authored by a coalition of tabloid headline writers and frightened politicians.
An economic take would be a forensic and brutal assessment of some unpalatable trade-offs.
Despite illegality in almost every nation, the UN estimates 8 per cent of world trade is illegal drugs. It’s a massive number. It is as yet unclear how that held up during the post-Lehman collapse in world trade.
So the first point is that, despite the tens of billions spent on the “war on drugs” around the world, there’s little evidence that it is effective. According to the UNODC, between 1994 and 2008 opium production has surged from 5,000 to 8,000 metric tonnes per year (due to Afghanistan), and global cocaine production has stayed pretty constant at around 900 metric tonnes.
However much is being seized, there is a much greater capacity to produce. So the legitimate question here is whether or not the war on drugs is cost effective.
Drugs can ruin healthy lives. The UN estimates that there are between 18 and 38 million problem drug users in the world. Interestingly though, that is a small proportion of the 250 million who have used in the past year without it becoming a problem, according to the UN.
The big unknown is how much a more liberal drugs policy would increase usage and therefore health costs. If illegal drugs were legalised and then taxed – as argued by economists like William Buiter – there is a chance that the exchequer might not lose out. There’d be at least £1bn in VAT.
That is not to say that there would be no pain for families and some communities where use goes up. But this brings us to the elephant in the room: crime.
Home Office figures show that the UK illicit drugs market is worth between £4bn and £6.6bn. Class A drug use generates an estimated £15.4bn in crime and health costs. Crucially, between a third and a half of all “acquisitive crime” – that’s mugging, burglary, stealing – is drug related. That is an awful lot of pain.
I’ve seen it for myself in my hometown. No-one would want to be behind policies that led to an increase in the zombied frenzy of crack addiction. Nonetheless, by far the most painful manifestation of the drugs trade are the pensioners, young mothers and families who are harrassed, robbed and knifed by drug addicts looking for the money for their next fix.
So it is conceivable that there exists a drugs policy that minimises the costs of this type of crime, or even wipes it out altogether.
Economics is about trade-offs, about cost-benefit analyses. It is possible that different approaches to drugs policy could lead to less pain in communities afflicted by problem drug use, than the current approach.
But any move in this direction would require some mental dexterity currently absent in our politics, an ability to see beyond the binary world of being “soft” or “hard” on drugs. I can’t imagine a policy area where the frank assessment of independent experts, whether scientists or economists, is more necessary. But I’m not holding my breath.
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I’ve been saying this for years, but there’s a knee jerk reaction against it. There’s also the detail that decriminalising it would make access to treatment and help easier, and might make it less cool.
Good post Faisal. I’m not sure what the answer is. Legalising substances that are potentially harmful seems daft, but (as you say) if these things are illegal it fuels the black-market and crime. And as we’ve seen in Afghanistan and South America, it is nigh-on impossible to wipe out the production of the these substances at source.
Perhaps the answer is to allow some Public Houses a licence that permits Cannabis to be sold and used on the premises, but no car-parking whatsoever and strictly no admittance to under 18’s.
Might as well legitimise prostitution in the same sort of way, whilst we are at it.
Then we could have several flavours of public house;
i) Food and drink only
ii) Food, drink and tobacco
iii) Food, drink, tobacco and wacky baccy
iv) Food, drink, tobacco and loose women…
I’d only ever go into i), maybe ii) if I was with a smoker but I could tolerate the existence of the other two provided the activities were confined to the premises, they didn’t spill out into the neighbourhood and they were very strictly managed/monitored…
I don’t really see any difference between that idea and having a sex-shop on your local high-street..
And by not even fully investigating what happens if slightly less ’scary’ drugs like MDMA, XDA and cannabis are downgraded to the same level as alcohol and taxed accordingly we miss (yet again) another opportunity to put a big dent into organised crime.
Real clinical tests over long periods have never happened in this country, but what is clear is that the current ‘head-in-the-sand’ attitude cannot continue.
The other side would be the added revenue from taxation and any Labour government would be happy fro some more money to spend.
Labour is testing the effectiveness of providing legal heroin to addicts who want to give it up in an effort to reduce exactly this kind of drug-related crime. It’s a bold move, which the tabloids hate and the Conservatives have promised to end if they come into power.
This doesn’t sit well with the notion that government drug policy is set by “a coalition of tabloid headline writers and frightened politicians”.
I have every respect for the scientists and understand that they inform politicians on toxicity , addictiveness of drugs and so on.
In a social setting though there are other factors which do not apply to the laboratory or random samples for research.
Researching drugs needs a healthy sample of people who meet certain criteria.
Research in laboratories is accurate , but does not meet individual physiology which we are all subject to.
Surely when considering the danger of certain drugs politicians, scientists need to think about co morbidities, availability of drugs, purity of drugs, an individuals response to certain types of drugs, ethnic variation in reponse to drugs ,interactions with any other drug or medication and much more
Any sort of drug is not natural, but we do need a lot of them to fight suffering, Perhaps we ought not to paint over society in a blanket way expecting communities of beings to have a fixed standard as a ‘normal physiology in a normal social setting’
An excellent, thought provoking article and one I think everyone should read. I have duly passed it on to as many people as I can, who don’t read the daily mail…
It’s no doubt an unpopular view, but simply prescribing drugs to drug addicts could eliminate almost all crime that is a result of drug abuse.
No more dealers, no more income for organised criminals, no more muggings or robberies by desperate junkies, no more overdosing, no more dirty needles, no more drugs cut with unknown harmful chemicals…
Of course, it’ll never happen in this country, because the public would never accept their tax money going towards feeding an addiction. Even though that addiction already costs them far more, just in more indirect ways.
The war on ” drugs ” is lost – ask the US police chiefs . Who benifiets most from the fact that some drugs are illehal – The criminals – they would like Toothpaste to be illegal – the more illegal produtc – the more money they make -. If drugs were leaglised – - first there would be even less deaths / injuries from their use – as they would be produce under supervised conditions – same as legal drugs – alcohol and Nicotene – so that would be one benifiet – the price would decrease – so there would be less crime . The politicians seem in genral to be a spineless lot – too cowardly to go with scientific eveidence – juet listening to waht seems to be an illinformed public – who increasingly apparently are turning from Science to non sceintific rubbish eg ASstrology etc .The politicins are running scared – but if we throw logic , reason and Evidence out the window – we are regressing fast .
There are three aspects to drugs.The producer,the supplier, the user.
The user is the easiest. Legalise .
The supplier.Government supply through authorised distribution points.
The producer.Make it illegal to produce except for supply through authorised government distribution.
To prevent the illegal production and supply Have zero tolerance and extortionate penalties
I think there is evidence of the legalisation of a dangerous drug – alcohol. If some of these other drugs really are safer than this stuff, then it makes practical sense to end prohibition given that prohibition seems to be causing such a high percentage of crime and profitable marketeering.
I suspect that the reality is that if drugs were legal you would get a lot more people drinking coca tea, but less crackhead muggings.
The war on drugs is clearly more an anthropological thing than a practical policy response. Would you really take someone as seriously if they were pro-choice on drugs, probably no, hence political stance making. Can you really stand there while vulnerable adults, possibly depressed, go to buy hard drugs that could ruin their lives, again it is difficult to not to want to intervene.
Our moral system is at odds with rationality, that is the real problem. We need to discuss how we would know whether we have the correct policy on drugs before we discuss what that policy should be.
Rationality possibly means that the government ought to try and develop a Soma better than all drugs and safer than a pint of beer and hand them out free.
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