Transform Drug Policy Foundation
Today we have published our new report:

A Comparison of the Cost-effectiveness of the Prohibition and Regulation of Drugs

The full pdf is here:
http://www.tdpf.org.uk/TransformCBApaper.pdf

It looks at heroin and cocaine only (due to data limitations) although
other drugs are discussed.

It has achieved significant media attention including the Guardian (news
and a comment piece from us), Financial Times, and Telegraph, a number of
tabloid newspapers have also run with it and we have had broadcast
interviews on the BBC flagship Today program (I was sat next to out Home
Secretary), and a range of other TV and radio outlets. It has also
prompted a lame response from the Government (see media). There is
definitely something in the air - this would never have got this sort of
attention a year or two back.

There is collection of media links on our blog here:
http://transform-drugs.blogspot.com/2009/04/transform-publishes-comparative-cost.html

Or http://tinyurl.com/ccz8vo

Any feedback on the report would be much appreciated (offlist unless it
is important to share)

Summary:

"The benefits of. [legalisation/regulation] - such as taxation,
quality control and a reduction in the pressures on the criminal justice
system - are far outweighed by the costs and for this reason, it is one
that this Government will not pursue either domestically or
internationally."

Home Office Briefing, 2008

* Despite the billions spent each year on proactive and reactive
drug law enforcement, the punitive prohibitionist approach has
consistently delivered the opposite of its stated goals. The
Government's own data clearly demonstrates drug supply and availability
increasing; use of drugs that cause the most harm increasing; health
harms increasing; massive levels of crime created at all scales leading
to a crisis in the criminal justice system; and illicit drug profits
enriching criminals, fuelling conflict and destabilising producer and
transit countries from Mexico to Afghanistan. This is an expensive
policy that, in the words of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, has also
created a raft of negative 'unintended consequences'.

* The UK Government specifically claims the benefits of any move
away from prohibition towards legal regulation of drug markets would be
outweighed by the costs. No such cost-benefit analysis, or even a proper
Impact Assessment of existing enforcement policy and legislation has
ever been carried out here or anywhere else in the world. Yet there are
clear Government guidelines that an Impact Assessment should be
triggered by amongst other things, a policy going out to public
consultation or when 'unintended consequences' are identified, both of
which have happened with drug policy in recent years.

* Alternative approaches - involving established regulatory models
of controlling drug production, supply and use - have not been
considered or costed. The limited cost effectiveness analysis of current
policy that has been undertaken has frequently been suppressed. In terms
of scrutinizing major public policy and spending initiatives, current
drug policy is unique in this regard.

* The generalisations being used to defend continuation of an
expensive and systematically failing policy of drugs prohibition, and
close down a mature and rational exploration of alternative approaches,
are demonstrably based on un-evidenced assumptions.

* This paper is an attempt to begin to redress these failings by
comparing the costs and benefits of the current policy of drug
prohibition, with those of a proposed model for the legal regulation of
drugs in the UK. We also identify areas of further research, and steps
to ensure future drugs policy is genuinely based on evidence of what
works.

* This initial analysis demonstrates that a move to legally
regulated drug supply would deliver substantial benefits to the Treasury
and wider community, even in the highly unlikely event of a substantial
increase in use.

Steve Rolles
Head of Research
Transform Drug Policy Foundation
www.tdpf.org.uk
office: 0117 941 5810
mobile: 07980 213 943
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