Drug Abuse

UK Drug Policy Report by
Barry Shaw QPM. BA. (HONS)
To The Cleveland Police Authority

 

Barry Shaw QPM, BA. (Hons) Chief Constable TO:   THE CHAIRMAN AND MEMBERS OF THE CLEVELAND POLICE AUTHORITY FRIDAY 10 DECEMBER

DRUGS

1.      INTRODUCTION

 

Following discussion in a number of forums, including Police Authority Seminars and at public meetings, members requested that a paper be brought forward to a Special Meeting of the Authority so that a public debate could be held. This paper fulfils that request.

2.      RECOMMENDATIONS

 

1.       That the Authority re-affirms its commitment to strongly and actively  support the government's current drugs strategy as set out in "Tackling Drugs to Build A Better Britain" [1998]
2.       That the Authority fully debates the issues arising from this paper and takes whatever decisions it feels to be appropriate.

3.      GOVERNMENT STRATEGY

 

3.1       Current UK Government Strategy is found in the document "Tackling Drugs to Build a Better Britain". This sets out a 10 year strategy to tackle the drugs menace, and the forward by Tony Blair actually contains the phrase "the fight against drugs", thus setting the tone for the entire strategy.

 

3.2       The strategy has four major elements:

 

•  young people - to help young people resist drug misuse in order to achieve their full potential in society
•  communities - to protect our communities from drug-related anti-social and criminal behaviour
•  treatment - to enable people with drug problems to overcome them and live healthy and crime-free lives
•  availability - to stifle the availability of illegal drugs on our streets.

 

3.3        This is powerful stuff, and the increasing focus on health and treatment,  rather then pure enforcement, is very welcome. A great deal of effort  and energy is now going into rehabilitation, into education, into harm reduction and a whole range of practices and procedures which emphasise the need to treat drug misusers as victims as much as offenders. The 10-year strategy has and deserves the full and active support of the Cleveland Police, and this will continue. It deserves the strong support of the Police Authority.

However, underlying all of this is the prohibition style approach. As a  result the success of the strategy relies to a very large extent on restricting availability through proscription and enforcement. Members may wish to consider whether, in the light of the evidence presented, they feel that this is a realistic prospect.

4.                CLEVELAND POLICE STRATEGY

 

4.1                  Cleveland Police Drugs Strategy deliberately mirrors very closely that of the Government, and the force is a very active participant in the local Cleveland Drugs Action Team (DAT) which is itself well regarded locally and nationally.

 

4.2                   The force leads on enforcement action within the DAT. Results are impressive as the two charts below illustrate:

4.3                  Cleveland Police has one of the best enforcement records in the country, and is comfortably exceeding its Policing Plan targets (7.65% increase in arrests in 1998/99, against a target of a 5% increase).

 

4.4                 The force is also actively involved in a whole range of non-enforcement activity some of which is regarded as national best practice:

 

•    the Drugs Education Team (funded 20% by police, 35% by Health, 30% by Safe in Teesside and 15% by Probation) is deployed in our local schools with the intention of trying to change the attitude of our young children to drugs.
•    the Arrest Referral Scheme Bid by the Police Authority has just (02.12.99) been awarded funding of £365,000 to provide drugs counselling and access to treatment for prisoners in police custody.
•    the MUSIC Initiative (Managing Unlawful Substances In Clubs and pubs was shortlisted for the 1999 National Crime Prevention Awards and is the first initiative of its kind to require a licensee who holds a Public Entertainments Licence to produce a Drugs     Policy with their  application for renewal. In some circumstances these policies must include the provision of free drinking water and the attendance of  qualified First Aiders.

 

4.5                  The Police Authority is therefore in a very strong position - the force is performing well across all aspects of the Government's Drugs Strategy and in some key areas is one of the best in the country. It is actively and deeply committed to partnership working, and has the results to  show for it.

 

 

5.                AVAILABILITY

 

5.1                  Recreational drugs have been used by humans across the world for thousands of years. Current UK policy (proscription) dates from the  Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and is clearly based upon American experience. The UK government is also signatory to international treaties rendering the drugs trade illegal worldwide.

 

5.2                  It can be argued that there is no logic to the current pattern of illegality. Some drugs (alcohol, nicotine) are freely available despite very clear evidence of their harmful effects. Others such as cannabis can not be proscribed with their possession being subject to severe penalties,  despite the fact that they are perceived by many medical scientists to be less harmful than alcohol. The illogicality of this approach (which seems to be based upon no more than historical accident) leads many young people in particular to level charges of hypocrisy at `the establishment'. This is a very difficult argument to counter.

 

5.3                  There is overwhelming evidence to show that the prohibition based policy in place in this country since 1971 has not been effective in controlling the availability or use of proscribed drugs. If there is indeed a `war of drugs' it is not being won; drugs are demonstrably cheaper and more readily available than ever before. The same picture can be seen
in the USA and elsewhere.

 

5.4                  In order to illustrate this point it will be instructive to consider a few facts
and figures gathered from a variety of sources:

•    About 0.3% of the EU population is now addicted to opiates

•    UK has the highest level of cannabis use in the EU

•    In 1996 UK Police and Customs made 122,000 drug seizures, yet
the market price of drugs fell

•    In 1970 there were 9,000 convictions or cautions for drug offences in
the UK, and 15% of people had used an illegal drug. In 1995 these
figures were 94,000 and 45% respectively.

•    Recent research shows that nearly half of 15 - 16 year olds have
used an illegal drug

 

•    UK cocaine related arrests have risen from 1100 in 1994 to 4500 in
1998
•    UK cocaine users up from 250,000 in 1994 to 500,000 in 1998
•    Current evidence suggests 29% of 16-24 year olds have taken an
illegal drug in the last year - this equates to 6,000,000 users.
•    Teesside Probation Service estimates 36,000 Teessiders using
drugs every month
•    The number of babies born to heroin addicted mothers in Cleveland
is increasing year on year and is expected to reach 50 in the near
future.
•    Between 1987 and 1997 there has been a tenfold increase in UK
drugs seizures
•    In the USA 30% of population have used cannabis, 10% cocaine.
•    Teesside Addictive Behaviour Service runs a needle exchange -
numbers of needles issued is rising dramatically, to 20,000 per
month at present.
•    The number of deaths in the UK attributable to the misuse of drugs has
risen from 1399 in 1993 to 1805 in 1995.

 

5.5                  This list of figures could be extended almost indefinitely. Illegal drugs
are freely available, their price is dropping and their use is growing. It
seems fair to say that violation of the drug laws is endemic, and the
problem seems to be getting worse, despite our best efforts. As
delegates at the 25th European Drugs Conference heard earlier in the
year "the drugs trade is exploding".

5.6                  It seems that the laws of supply and demand are operating in a textbook
fashion. The market for drugs is demand led, and millions of people are
involved in this country alone. Because of the covert nature of the trade
it is impossible to be sure of the scale of the problem but an estimate
made by customs and police some years ago was that about 20% of the
flow of imported drugs into the UK was intercepted. The net result of
this seems to be a rise in the street price of heroin to something like 80
times its manufacturing price (of which more later). It also follows that
80% of the trade was reaching the users. If police and customs were to
double their efforts (a most unlikely event) it might be possible to
intercept 40%. This would mean that 60% would still reach the users -
but at a higher price. Viewed in this way increased enforcement effort
while possibly utterly sound on a point of principle becomes counter-
productive on pragmatic grounds.

5.7                  Members may wish to ask themselves whether we have learned the
lessons from alcohol prohibition in the United States in the 1920's, from
Gandhi's civil disobedience campaign in India in the 1940's and from the
Poll Tax here in the UK in the 1980's. If a sufficiently large (and
apparently growing) part of the population chooses to ignore the law for
whatever reason, then that law becomes unenforceable. A modern
western democracy, based on policing by consent and the rule of law
may find itself powerless to prevent illegal activity - in this case the
importation and use of controlled drugs.

6.                DRUGS & CRIME

 

6.1                  By current definition any possession or trade of certain drugs is illegal.
As a result of this illegality their market price is very high indeed, as the
suppliers carry significant risks.

6.2                  This situation causes three major types of criminality:

 

•    the organised importation, distribution and sale of illegal drugs

•    the commission of crime by users to support expensive drug habits

•    the criminalisation of all users, by definition.

 

These three types are worth looking at individually.

6.3                  Organised crime. Jack Straw, in a speech to the Centre for European
Reform in October 1999, stated that the illegal drug trade was now a
multi-billion pound industry, estimated by the UN Drug Control
Programme in 1997 as having a turnover amounting to a staggering 8%
of the total of all international trade. This amounts to over £400bn-the
same as the global trade in oil and gas. Organised crime is involved in
this trade for two reasons (i) vast profits can be made and (ii) legal
businesses are excluded by definition. The profits to be made are truly
enormous - the pharmaceutical price of heroin is less than £1 per gram,
but the street price in the UK is about 80 times higher. At these sort of
profit margins it is well worth while buying a gun to protect your
investment - and a third of all firearms incidents committed in Cleveland
in 1998 are demonstrably drug related. Organised crime gangs are
every bit as difficult to stamp out as are terrorists, once they have taken
root, and provided the market continues to exist. The best example of
this is the mafia in the USA whose development was given an enormous
boost by alcohol prohibition.

6.4                  Commission of crime. Many prohibited drugs are very strongly
addictive, as well as expensive. A serious heroin user needs to find say
£50 per day to fund their habit, in cash. This sort of money is difficult to
obtain by legitimate means, so they have to turn to crime. Nationally
about 30% of persons arrested by the police are dependant upon one or
more illegal drug, and about 32% of the proceeds of crime seem to be
geared to the purchase of heroin, cocaine or crack. About 50% of
arrestees who use drugs state that their drug use and criminal
behaviour are connected. In Cleveland we arrested more than 32,000
people in 1998. Our estimate, based on our custody handling system,
in line with national research, estimates that 30% of these arrests
were drug related. The main crimes committed are shoplifting (by far the
greatest), selling drugs and burglary, (see figure 5). One research
project has shown that 1,000 addicts committed 70,000 criminal acts
during a 90-day period prior to their intake for treatment. It is clear that
the very high cost of drugs is caused by their illegality, and that these
high costs are causing large amounts of acquisitive crime. Is this
acceptable?

 

6.5                  Criminalisation. Most drug users seem not to commit significant
amounts of crime - their only offence is to choose to use a drug which is
technically illegal. The best example of this is cannabis (the UK has the
highest rate of cannabis use in Europe, higher even than in the
Netherlands which has a tolerance policy). The illogical pattern of
proscription causes people who abuse alcohol or nicotine to be treated
purely as victims, whereas those who abuse cannabis become
criminals. If caught they face a criminal record and social exclusion.

 

7.                DRUGS AND HEALTH

Health costs associated with drug misuse are very difficult to quantify
and at present there is only very limited data available on the research
and evaluation processes.

The strongest link between illicit drug use and health damage is
amongst injectors. Drug injectors are significantly more likely to contract
blood-borne diseases such as AIDS.

7.3                  Rates of HIV amongst drug injectors are in decline in the UK, largely as
a result of harm reduction policies put in place by the Government's
drug strategy. AIDS/HIV rates in the drug misusing community in the
UK have dropped and are at far lower levels than in any other
EU country (1.65% in 1995).

7.4                  A study by the National Treatment Outcome Research Group which
tracked 1,000 addicts over 5 years showed that treatment did lead to
improved health, and a reduction in the use of needles which had
implications for the reduction in the spread of HIV/Aids. It also showed
that every £1 spent treating heroin and cocaine addiction saved £3 in
the cost of crime.

7.5                  A recent Drug Prevention Initiative Paper, `Arrest Referral - Emerging
Lessons from Research' shows a significant reduction (30%) of
intravenous drug use by addicts accessing treatment.
7.6                  The illegal nature of the trade undoubtedly causes further unnecessary
risk of harm to drug users, as in a black market economy the user faces
great uncertainty over the quality and purity of the drugs used. Heroin
for instance is `cut' (mixed) with additives such as lactose, glucose,
chalk dust, caffeine, quinine, procaine, boric acid, paracetamol or talcum
powder.

 

8.                DRUGS AND THE ECONOMY

8.1                  The total cost of drugs to the economy is unknowable because of the
clandestine nature of the trade. An estimate has been made that
cocaine use alone costs the US economy $20bn per year, and the UK
anti-drugs co-ordinator has estimated the cost of enforcement alone in
the UK at £1.4bn per year. The crime caused as a result has been
estimated to cause victims loss of at least a further £1.5bn per year.

8.2                  Jeffrey Mirron (Chair, Dept. of Economics, Boston University) has stated
that in terms of pure economic analysis legalisation of drugs would be a
far more effective policy than prohibition. In the USA he has estimated
that tax revenues of at least $3bn and perhaps as much as $17bn could
be raised by a regulated and taxed drugs trade. Together with the
virtual elimination of expenditure on enforcement a net improvement on
the US federal budget of some $24bn could be expected. These are
very large sums of money indeed.

 

9.                ALTERNATIVES

 

9.1                  There is only one serious alternative to the proscription policy - the
legalisation and regulation of some or all drugs. Any debate about such
an approach must raise and then deal with fundamental questions about
the societal effects. What would be the health and social impact?
Would the use of drugs increase or decline? What would be the impact
on crime? The potential consequences are very significant indeed - are
they to be countenanced?

9.2                  Since legalisation and regulation for the currently proscribed drugs has
never been tried properly anywhere in the world there is little hard
evidence available. However there are many legal drugs, regulated to a
greater or lesser extent, freely available in our society. Nicotine and
alcohol are the two best examples, and members will be able to draw
upon their own experiences of these. It is demonstrable that alcohol
and nicotine have very considerable health impacts if abused, and a
Government approach to this based upon education and an engineered
shift in social acceptability has had significant effect - but only over a
long period of time.
9.3                  In Europe the Netherlands has gone furthest to date with a policy,
especially for Cannabis, of tolerance as opposed to legalisation.
Enforcement for personal use has to all intents and purposes ceased.
The Netherlands now has a lower incidence of cannabis use than does
the UK.

9.4                  Some European cities (notably Geneva and London) have
experimented with radical solutions by issuing heroin under prescription.
A number of studies have now demonstrated crime reductions as a
result (in some cases startling ones). Heroin users previously caught up
in a cycle of drugs and crime started to lead reasonably stable lives,
some holding down jobs and a `normal' family life. These experiments
(whose results have not always been clear cut) have not been continued
largely because they were to the detriment of maintained methadone
programmes which are the currently `approved' method of reducing
addiction.

9.5                  There is also contrary evidence. Defacto legalisation is in place in parts
of South America where the drugs trade is out of any control. The
effects are quite frightening. However this is without any effective
regulation, and without the health improvement and harm reduction
programmes which seem to have been so successful in the UK (even in
the limited fashion seen to date).

 

10.                CONCLUSIONS

10.1                  A number of tentative conclusions can be drawn from the available
evidence:

•    attempts to restrict availability of illegal drugs have failed so far,
everywhere
•    there is little or no evidence that they can ever work within
acceptable means in a democratic society
•    demand for drugs seems still to be growing, locally and nationally.
The market seems to be some way from saturation
•    there is little evidence that conventional conviction and punishment
has any effect on offending levels
•    there is, however, growing evidence that treatment and rehabilitation
programmes can have a significant impact on drug misuse and offending
•    there is some evidence that social attitudes can be changed over
time, by design. The best example available to date is drink-driving,
but success has taken a generation to achieve
•    if prohibition does not work, then either the consequences of this
have to be accepted, or an alternative approach must be found
•    the most obvious alternative approach is the legalisation and
subsequent regulation
of some or all drugs
•    there are really serious social implications to such an approach
which have never been thought through in a comprehensive
manner, anywhere.

10.2                Members will therefore wish to consider their position as an Authority.
In doing so it may be helpful to consider some key questions:

Proscription

The evidence suggests strongly that this is not effective in reducing
availability of or demand for controlled drugs, and may even be counter-
productive.



•    Is this therefore the right policy for the longer term?
•    Is there an acceptable alternative?

 

Harm Reduction/Health Improvement

 

There is growing evidence that these can be effective in changing
behaviour and ameliorating the consequences of drug abuse
•    Is the Authority satisfied that it is doing enough in this area?
•    Is there an impact on the Policing Plan?

 

Debate

Some of the issues in this paper are not receiving effective debate at
national level, despite the emerging evidence
•    Does the Authority wish to see a further debate, at local or national level?
If so, what form should this take?
•    Does the Authority wish the Cleveland DAT to debate its position?

BARRY SHAW
CHIEF CONSTABLE