All parties must see that the drugs war has failed
Bob Ainsworth is not alone in craving a rational debate
Editorial
The Observer (UK)
Sunday 19 December 2010

It is clearly expecting too much of Westminster that, when a recently
retired cabinet minister calls for mature debate on drugs policy, a mature
debate might actually follow.

Bob Ainsworth was hardly a high-profile figure in the Labour government,
but he has served in the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence, from
which perspective he concluded that the "war on drugs", as currently
organised, is unwinnable. Safely out of office, he last week expressed the
politically delicate but entirely sensible proposition that the current
consensus around drugs prohibition is flawed and that it is time other
measures were considered. Those might include decriminalisation of less
harmful substances and allowing doctors to provide addicts with legal,
clean supplies of drugs such as heroin that, when bought on the streets,
are more toxic and fuel crime.

It is only a pity no politician can find the courage to raise the same
questions while actually serving in government.

The Observer has called for just such a debate in the past. That is not to
deny the harm that drugs do. Quite the contrary. It is because Britain's
drug problems are so pernicious and costly that an evidence-based quest
for solutions is so badly needed. And the evidence is that the current
approach has failed.

The goal is to stop people taking drugs and to punish those who profit
from the trade. The outcome is a flourishing market in which anyone can
get hold of a banned substance at any time of day and to the enormous
financial advantage of vast criminal organisations. An additional feature
of the current regime is that ordinary users are recruited into crime,
steered away from mainstream society and into prison where their chances
of rehabilitation diminish.

Meanwhile, this whole edifice requires that the UK advocate at
international level a policy of forcing governments in opium and
coca-producing areas into futile military confrontation with drug
exporters. These dirty civil wars, raging across Latin America, west
Africa, south-east and central Asia have had no measurable impact on
consumption in the west but have cost millions of innocent lives. The UK's
own military endeavours against the Taliban in Afghanistan are intertwined
with that country's status as a narco-state. Throughout the war, it has
continued to provide, scarcely disrupted, the vast majority of heroin used
on British streets.

What lower depth of abject failure must a policy plumb before it comes up
for review?

The current government has no strategy to curb drug use other than more of
the same on a tighter budget.

Mr Ainsworth is clearly not alone in craving a rational debate; that
appetite is felt across the political spectrum. Amid much recrimination,
one of few supporting voices came from Peter Lilley, a Conservative
cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher and John Major. But party leaders
still fear engagement with reforming ideas for fear that their opponents
will resort to populist jibes about "softness". This stalemate is
crippling policy innovation.

Some overtures must be made between the main parties so that a truce can
be declared. Failure of the current approach might then be publicly
acknowledged and non-partisan work towards a different solution begun.
--