UK Drugs Policy Commission responds to Melanie Phillips

David Raynes

This explanation would be much more convincing if the hearings between the ACMD & UKDPC were in public, they have not been. It is disingenous to claim that everything is available on the UKDPC site. Given the record of both Ruth Runciman and Roger Howard in relation to drug policy, she chairing a group which reccommended downgrading cannabis with silly proposals for changes to the law on "social" dealing, he heading DrugScope when elements there were covertly helping organise the European Drug Legalisation movement & campaigning for changes in the UN Drug conventions, (specifically against the policy of the UK Government, DrugScope's main paymaster) we are entitled to be suspicious. Let us have absolute transparency about who & what is influencing the ACMD. Let us have transparency about what is said. Let indeed ALL of the hearings of the ACMD be in public and all the evidence presented to them be made avilable on the web. When challenged about more openess by one questioner, the Chairman Sir Michael Rawlings gave a very unconvincing explanation of his policy. Frankly he made excuses which seemed made up on the spot and hardly hold water. UKDPC should have no special access or status. Parliamentary Select Committees mostly hold their proceedings in public, when pressure groups seek to influence them the public can find out & challenge. There is no doubt the association between some of the people who have sought to influence UK drug policy is too cosy. Arguably UK drug problems have got much worse as some of those seeking to influence policy have had their way. Private hearings between one drug policy pressure group & the ACMD are against the mood of the times and against the public interest.

Steve Rolles

Unusually I find myself in agreement with some of what David Raynes says here. I agree that UKDPC's privileged position regards access to the ACMD is anomalous given the fact that the same access is not granted to other similar organisations in the drugs field. I also can also see no good reason for any evidence to be presented to the ACMD in secret (although I do recall the sci-tech select committee not making some evidence public that had not been published - re the Nutt / Blakemore harm rankings paper, although that did later appear in the Lancet and it was made clear that it would).

One good reason to take the positive steps the ACMD has made in the last year (regards openness) one step further(making its proceedings fully public) would be to stop the kind of daft conspiratorial nonsense that Melanie Phillips has produced from filling the void created by any continued secrecy.

That said, in ten years in the field I have never heard or read any comments from Howard or Runciman to suggest they support moves towards legalisation/regulation of currently illegal drugs (indeed both have made public efforts to intellectually distance themselves from such a view).

Neither does support for changes in penalties for cannabis possession / classification rankings, or discussion of a new social not-for-profit supply offence (as distinct from conventional profit seeking dealing/trafficking offences) suggest support for such a position.

Transform Drug Policy Foundation - that openly advocates moves towards legal regulation of currently illegal drugs - would argue that attempts to reduce the harms created by prohibition - and the violent unregulated illegal markets it creates - by moderating some of the extremes of enforcement, are symptomatic responses that whilst delivering benefits, ignore the primary cause. Tweaking policy to reduce harms within a legal framework that maximises them can never be a long term solution, and closing down discussion of entire avenues of policy options (re: regulatory alternatives to prohibition) because they are politically taboo is cowardly and irrational. It can only lead to marginal and short term solutions. The work UKDPC does is first class, but they fight shy of asking certain key questions, and that is a great shame.

Suggesting, as Raynes does, that promoting a debate on policy alternatives to the status quo has contributed to the drug problems we face today is ridiculous buck passing for the failures of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act and the Governments that have overseen its enforcement.

As a final comment; Given the long term systemic failings of our punitive prohibitionist drug policy, the suggestion that anyone who challenges it is morally reprehensible is offensive and intellectually absurd. Calls for pragmatic reform of our failed punitive drug policies (including legalisation/regulation) have come from many across the political spectrum, in academia, policy making, the clergy and the media, and are neither extremist nor marginalised. There is no conspiracy, just a positive, growing, welcome and long overdue debate about policy alternatives. Phillips attempts to demonise any who diverge from her ill-considered anti-science absolutist moral grandstanding will achieve nothing other than the perpetuation of a disastrously failing policy for a little longer.