Prohibition Never Left
The Earth has many issues, mainly because her occupants have a lot of baggage. We spend lifetimes on how to save the Earth from global warming, famine and disease. How do we save ourselves? We are a moralistic society, not a rational one; we preach dogma, not ethics. So what? Well, maybe it’s just not working.
Richard Brunstrom, the Chief Constable of North Wales, advocates an end to UK drug policy based on “prohibition”. Yes, he means making heroin, crack, cocaine and marijuana all legal and regulated. Is it crazy, preposterous or just plain logical?
In his radical analysis, which he will present to the North Wales Police Authority today, Mr Brunstrom points out that illegal drugs are now cheaper and more plentiful than ever before.
The number of users has soared while drug-related crime is rising with narcotics now supporting a worldwide business empire second only in value to oil. “If policy on drugs is in future to be pragmatic not moralistic, driven by ethics not dogma, then the current prohibitionist stance will have to be swept away as both unworkable and immoral, to be replaced with an evidence-based unified system (specifically including tobacco and alcohol) aimed at minimisation of harms to society,” he will say.
Mr Brunstrom indicates that there is a growing mood for change. He cites the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology, which criticised the Government for failing to switch to an evidence-based policy approach. The report also includes quotes from former home secretary John Reid, admitting “prohibition” doesn’t work, and the Olympics minister, Tessa Jowell, conceding “it drives the activity underground” . There is also supportive evidence from former Chief Inspector of Prisons Lord Ramsbotham, a retired High Court judge, and Scotland’s Drug Tsar, Tom Wood.
As well as hitting the country hard in economic terms – class A drug use in England and Wales costs the country up to £17bn a year, 90 per cent of which is due to crime – there are also a series of socially damaging knock-on effects, he says.
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