Just when did the EU sign up to this?

Beer Moth

A Europe on drugs will be much easier to bring to heal than one which is awake.

Whatever else we might say about it, our enemy is good at what it does.

Rob

"What is the EU’s top drug policy official doing sharing a platform with drug legalisers?"

Perhaps because they realise drugs are never going to go away. The reason people believe the war on drugs is winnable is because deep down they believe drug use is a historical aberration - a passing fad that will eventually go away. It's not and it won't. The historical aberration is the war against drug users over the past century, that has netted extremely bad men lots of money. By the time they get round to legalising drugs - in no doubt a hundred years or so - the cartels will have so much money they'll be buying up whole countries, not just judges.
It will only be when the violence that is plaguing producer countries reaches the US (who ultimately decides the barking 'world wide' drug laws) that the drug warriors will 'begin' to contemplate the possibility of legalisation.

Frank P

Beer Moth

"A Europe on drugs will be much easier to bring to heal [sic} than one which is awake."

Was that a typo or a clever double entendre?

Agree entirely with your last sentence.

Maturecheese

Whilst I like a lot of what you write, I cannot agree with you on this one. The 'war on drugs' itself, has caused the majority of the misery that we see today. How many more prisons are you going to build to house an even greater 'crackdown' on drug users. Turning people into criminals doesn't help them one iota, giving them hope does. When a person has something to strive towards and a chance of achieving that end, they will usually moderate their intake of substances themselves. We should concentrate on bringing bad people to justice and we generally know who they are and not the weak or unfortunate of this world.

roger

Nice slip there Beer Moth. Freud would have jumped on that one. Some so-called 'drugs' do in fact 'heal'. But I guess you're not interested in that.

Steve Rolles

Transform are calling for an Impact Assessment of drug policy at domestic and international scales - as I hope the blog and linked documents, makes clear, IA is an established mechanism for evaluating the efficacy of policy interventions and comparing it to a range alternatives - one that is embedded in the policy development/evaluation framework of the UK government, the EU and the UN. It is a call for evidence, not advocacy of any policy position.

Here is the background paper for the meeting produced by the IDPC: http://bit.ly/d6DQm9

I would be interested to know Melanie, which part of this you find objectionable.

UN and EU officials, quite rightly, engage with a range of civil society groups, indeed they are required to do so under various charters. That they share a platform with an organisation does not mean they endorse their views, and Edwards is attending that meeting to speak to the issue of IA evaluation and evidence in EU drug policy, not to endorse Transform or anyone else. The meeting has been organised as a satelitte meeting for the Un Commission on Narcotic Drugs at which numerous officials and NGOs attend, and at which many formal and informal dialogues take place representing a diverse range of opinion.

Transform was, for the record, awarded UN ECOSOC special consultative status in 2007, after a 3 year application process.

Tom Lloyd

Thank heavens officials are engaging in dialogue with organisations that care about the problems associated with the illegal drugs market - death, disease, crime, addiction, corruption - rather than burying their heads in the sand. Would that the UK government had the courage to engage in open debate.

Rachael

"Thank heavens officials are engaging in dialogue with organisations that care about the problems associated with the illegal drugs market - death, disease, crime, addiction, corruption."

Talking to everyone, in fact, apart from the parents who lose their children to overdoses, addiction, mental asylums and all the other joyful benefits of street drugs.

This is what their spiteful definition of 'consultation' amounts to - ignoring whosoever holds an opinion they don't like.

Rachael

Tom Lloyd's druggy utopia:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1256894/Caught-CCTV-The-moment-wicked-teenage-girl-threatened-knife-terrified-great-grandmother.html

No doubt granny cares - a great deal more than Tom's organisations that purport to 'care' - but those selfsame ghastly organisations won't give a damn for what granny thinks.

Rev Priest

Hopefully doing what any EU policy official should be doing: Listening to opinions of everyone from all over the policy spectrum and finding the best solution to the problems everyone notes.

Danny Kushlick

Rachael, I don't know where you're getting your information from, but some bereaved parents support organisations like Transform precisely because they recognise that making drug production, supply and use illegal leads to a higher likelihood of overdose and criminality.

See: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/drugs/story/0,,780581,00.html

for more

Yours Sincerely
Danny

Rachael

"some bereaved parents" - that's not all bereaved parents, is it, Danny?

I can't see that grandmother asking for legalisation - even with a drug addict's knife at her throat.

Tom Lloyd

Rachael,

While I do not belong to any organisation I devote a lot of my time to supporting any organisation or individual who wants to reduce the harms caused by the illegal drugs market, and I also advocate change from our current, failed, policies.

It's precisely because we foster a system where desperate drug addicts rob people to feed their habits that we need to change. 40 years of persecuting drug users has not worked.

Dixon

Beer Moth, I am as anti Dhimi as it gets but I dont buy your conspiracy theory. "They" are as drug addled as "us". Especially the suicide bombers, which Israeli research suggests are pickled pink on cocktails of drugs as they carry out their "martyrdom mission".
Iran has the biggest heroin problem on Earth.

On the other hand, I disagree with MP on this front. The war on drugs is just a racket for the people who wage it to draw billions from the public blood-stream. There was no war on drugs tp be fought before they were banned. Why should I care one jot what misguided fools do to themselves. My main concern is that they dont need to burgle or mug me in order to raise the cash for the criminally inflated prices which their fix commands.

Moreover, the real war would be a lot easier if we could drop the "moral" objection to the most obvious tactics. We should be buying the Afghan opium harvest, thereby making everyone happy and denying support to the Talebs.

Indeed, it is we who should be undermining our enemies by ENCOURAGING the importation of every variety of addictive substance into places like Iran and Pakistan. It worked great in the 19th Century when we wanted to destroy the ability of the Chinese to resist us.

Rachael

Tom - neither has softly, softly worked, has it?

People get off with cautions for cocaine use these days. That's not a prosecution.

It's precisely because we foster a system that negates individual responsibilty that has led to people thinking they can take drugs, rob people and so forth and after all that somehow conjure the nerve to call themselves a 'victim'.

That's the problem.

Get rid of that culture and we might get somewhere.

Whig

Yes perhaps the official had a glass of wine too many. Oh wait, that's a drug too, maybe we should prohibit that as well because it worked so well in the 1920s? I'm sorry but it's quite clear that criminalising drugs only puts money and power in the hands of criminals and costs the state billions in fighting the drug trade!

Dixon

Rachael "it's precisely because we foster a system that negates individual responsibilty that has led to people thinking they can take drugs, rob people and so forth and after all that somehow conjure the nerve to call themselves a 'victim'"

Now you are contradicting yourself. Banning things only exempts people from individual responsibility. And I ask again, why should I give a monkeys what a fool chooses tp do to themselves?

tatjna

Taking their blinkers off?

Darryl Bickler

Really should be the other way round, why should reasonable people who seek the rational implementation of harm-reduction policy compelled to share a platform with those who would continue the genocidal war on some people who use some drugs.

Melanie, the law in the UK is being entirely misapplied by government and the courts. Legalisers is the wrong expression actually as the law does not declare drugs as 'illegal', rather they are supposedly 'controlled', although that reveals the paradox of prohibition. Vitally prohibition is a vile policy that tramples on human rights and is not mandated in primary law, but the policy government choose to implement through secondary law, and they do so irrationally and discriminatorily. There is no excuse for avoiding alcohol and tobacco users from the protection of the criminal law and scape-goating peaceful drug controlled drug users (almost 4 million) in Britain who are denied the protection of consumer law.

Tom Lloyd

Neither harsh nor "softly-softly" law enforcement approaches "work" in the sense that they contain drug use. Culture, social issues, education, etc., are the key determinants of drug use. That's where we should be working, not persecuting users.

If your child was found in possession of an illegal drug would you want them to be arrested, charged and convicted (and often sent to prison) or guided, supported and treated if necessary?

steve

Rachael: You're actually making a case for legalization and regulation. True conservatives like Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley long ago called for drugs to be legalized.

Darryl Bickler

What's really behind this is a Calvanist holier than thou attitude of abstainers, alcohol users and prescription pill poppers over controlled drug users. I think reformers should not be appologetic about drug use, but only acknowledge that it is drug misuse (across the board to include alcohol) which is of concern. There is an inherrent moral posturring about using controlled drugs without any justification in general. many contolled drugs are probably prefereable to alcohol and tobacco and far more pleasurable (heaven forbid), less addictive, less toxic and many drugs herald great benefits and possibilities for people and human-kind. End the policing of the chemistry of the mind, bring in the discovery of the possibilities of chemical enhancement. At teh end of the day, we are only chemicals constantly changing moods and states of consciousness with or without drugs. MP is on such a pious trip and is denying the human potential and failing to address drug abuse to boot.

Daniel Heslop

Rob: "Perhaps because they realise drugs are never going to go away"

Neither is violence Rob.

Kristian

"What is the EU’s top drug policy official doing sharing a platform with drug legalisers?", if you have any intelligence Melanie (I very much doubt you do), you will understand that your question is as ridiculous as "What is the EU’s top drug policy official doing sharing a platform with drug prohibitionists?",

Rob

"Neither is violence Rob"

Yes, but I think it's wrongheaded to place drug use in the same moral sphere as violence.

David Raynes

Tom Lloyd.

It is remarkably difficult to get "sent to prison" for simple personal use possession of any illegal drug in the UK. More so for a first Offence. Your ignorance of the facts and your promotion of this myth is inexcusable. (I might agree we need some smarter sanctions but that is not what you argue).

As for your "open debate". Where have you been? How CAN you understand so little?

There has been a robust open debate in the UK for over ten years on drug legalisation supported quite often by media and user advocacy.

I have been arguing with Danny Kushlik and Steve Rolles in the media for nearly as long.

The tide of public opinion has moved ten percentage points against their position in that time. They are losing the debate. They know it.

Legalisation is a dead issue in the UK. It died when cannabis was re-classified.

Transform's cry for an IA is just another sad attempt to get their way but coming from a differrent direction.

How about a "likely impact assesment" of their legalisation nirvana and long term plan for normalisation of all the illegal drugs?

What would be the unintended consequences of that? I have seen Danny asked that question and unable to answer.

Absolutely stumped. Apparently the question had not ocurred to him.

There is a hint for him in the world wide harms of tobacco and alcohol.

Wherever there are legal or social taboos against use, total harm from either substance is much much lower than elsewhere.

Transform keep on with their ridiculous assertions, one of which is legalisation would take the criminal profits out. Nothing could be further from the truth. Criminality loves use-reinforcing substances and behaviours, even legal ones. That is why so much of the worldwide tobacco market is smuggled and or counterfeit.

That is why there is so much criminal profit from illicit traficking in legal pharamceuticals.

Darryl Bickler

David Raynes

You are right that most cases of drug possession do not result in custody, but it doesn't really make any point against the force of Tom's position - this is because the prisons are FULL of drug property offenders.

I cannot speak for Danny at Transform, but it strikes me that I would also appear stumped by your likely impact assessment question - probably speechless by the utter banality of it. If the penny hadn't dropped sometime over the last ten years for Danny, doubtless it just did at that point.

PS What on earth is an 'illegal drug'? See http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/group.php?gid=457158190466

Darryl Bickler

David Raynes - you made your rather unpleasant repost to Tom's post I think 2 days ago, and as he hasn't replied, you describe him as being 'in the woodwork'. What a peculiar and odd world you live in, and to think that he might have nothing better to do than to discuss an issue with yourself (obviously pointless after ten years of Transform's efforts). The point he was making is simple; drug laws will create tens of thousands of prisoners out of the nation's youth. As possession is criminalised and there is a complete absence of consumer protection, all arrested possessors of controlled drugs will have a criminal record, many will have problems starting from this absurd process, leading to further problems with the courts and ultimate incarceration. Prohibition leads to all kinds of other health and criminal activities for many. These problems as Tom is seeking to explain to you could be dealt with outside the criminal justice model from the start, as social/health issues - he is asking which would parents prefer.

Also knowing the truth about drugs would go a long way to ameliorating harm. As some kind of zealot against some drugs (but apparently not others) you cannot understand that recreational drug use can be part of a good society. It's not drug use that is the problem, it's drug misuse. I doubt that if drugs were regulated sensibly, that they would be associated with the problems you cite with a hopelessly broad brush - sweeping all drug use togther as one huge problem.

It's hard to decipher some of your incoherrent sentences in this last post (despite my having had a lot of experience of moderating a drug user forum) - it does sound like you are accusing the Transform organisation of encouraging young persons to use cannabis - I don't think they do that at all. Quite obviously the paradox of so-called 'controlled drugs' (and please stop calling them illegal or legal drugs) is that they are actually sold without any controls to anybody, whereas what Transform want is a regulated market with far more actual controls over access to all drugs. I'm sure in 10 years of arguing you must have grasped this basic fact.

Darryl

Looks like David Raynes' post I was responding to is no longer there which makes my last post partially redundant in this thread.

Steve Rolles

David

The debate is not dead, much as you might wish it to be - it has had a higher profile in the last two years than in the past ten combined, as well you know. Transform's ever growing profile and support, and high level engagement are further testament to that. Cannabis classification had nothing to do with that debate, and was not a debate about legalisation anyway (it was about changing penalties for possession from 5 to 2 years) you seem a bit confused on this.

As for our 'nirvana', that's your silly mis-characterisation of our position, not anything we have ever said. We have said the situation would improve and said why we think that - we have been clear that it is not a panacea.

As for unintended consequences of reform - we have written about this too, indeed I emailed you a couple of weeks ago with a section from 'After the war on drugs, blueprint for regulation' (which you have) in which it is discussed - one of many places. You didn't reply (Please also consider the very obvious unintended consequences of prohibition - even the UNODC have been willing to detail these).

Blueprint also contains a detailed discussion of alcohol and tobacco policy. Which you have also apparently ignored because it doesn't fit with your world view, whatever that may be.

Please try and come up with something new, or better. These points you make are old, tired, and useless, rather like prohibition. And stop claiming we have never responded to them - when we have done, repeatedly.