The New Generation Society

James Macdougald

James Macdougald is an English Literature student at the University of York and a member of NGS York. In his article he examines the liberalisation of drug law to combat current redundant drug policies.

When it comes to crime, most governments will enact legislation in the interests of the many. Principally this involves criminalising murder, theft, fraud, rape, violence, gross negligence and any other instances of direct harm to one person by another. A conservative (small ‘c’) administration will always exceed these requirements; such a government will legislate not only for the public interest, but also for the public’s approval.

It is along such lines that drugs have been declared off-limits, and with such a justification that consecutive governments in both the UK and the US have piously re-affirmed their intention to eradicate illegal drugs. The consensus is that we, as a collective, disapprove of other people taking drugs and, consequently, taking drugs should be a criminal offence… At least, that must be the reason, mustn’t it?

It’s one reason, certainly. Ordinarily, it’s the last bastion of the closet social conservative who has spent the entire conversation pretending to be a tough-on-crime liberal. The last and greatest obstacle on the road to liberalisation will be the craven aversion to change, plain and simple. Some of us support the maintenance of civil liberties; others see virtue in the paternalistic state. But even if these two ideologies never meet, the pragmatic arguments for liberalisation stand alone.

First comes the guiding principle: if a problem cannot be solved, let it be controlled. And let me quell your doubts straight away; the problem of drug-use cannot be solved, not in this or any other country. It is estimated that in order to hurt a South American drug baron’s profits, the US authorities would have to intercept 75% of his heroin and cocaine shipments every year. At present the annual average is a sluggish 15%. In addition, the cocaine trade makes for its members twice as much money ($92b per annum) as the US government spends on the war against drugs ($40.5b) – a sum which is nevertheless grotesquely large. The war on drugs is not only a tussle with an illegal trade; it is also an attempt to defy economic theory. If this many people want something, and that many people want to make enormous amounts of money selling it to them, no amount of legislation will stand in their way. You might as well jump from a plane and try to ignore gravity.

I cannot pretend that liberalisation would effect a reduction in drug use, but let me be clear about how my sympathies are structured. First and foremost, I want to deliver the innocent bystanders from the drug market. I mean the people whose neighbourhoods are poisoned by drug-related crime and turf war, but who have no hand in the business. Second, and further afield, I want us to stop criminalising farmers in the Third World whose livelihoods depend on drug production. Finally, I want the government to stop wasting everyone’s time, money and prison-space on charging drug-offenders: a prison sentence is not corrective for addicts or dealers. Not only are drugs available within the prison walls, but you’d be hard-pushed to persuade an imprisoned drug addict that his crime was worth repenting for. If truth be told, it isn’t. Following the example of the Dutch model, which has seen the lowest annual number of drug-related deaths in Europe, drugs should be re-assigned from a criminal issue to a matter of public health. The best direction for the drug market is towards commercial regulation and away from exploitative criminals.

The focus of the drugs’ safety debate is – or if it isn’t, it should be – on heroin and cocaine. Everything up to and including Ecstasy on the ‘danger ladder’ should be legalised without hesitation. Ecstasy, supposedly a Class A drug, kills around 5 people a year in the UK so, statistically, fishing is more hazardous. I don’t think a comparison between that figure and the number of alcohol-related deaths a year in this country is even necessary.

We should never adopt a principled stance on problems that will always be with us. If ‘official disapproval’ fails – as it has done – to deter people from involvement in drugs, then the stance should be reviewed. There seems to be an idea that as long as we have laws against a particular societal ill, we have done all we can to confront it. This attitude is defective. We need to lay aside our ill-founded fears of a nightmare society where addicts shoot up at the bus stop and trip out in tea rooms, and relinquish the legislative interventions that have turned what is at worst a potentially harmful vice into a vehicle for unscrupulous, murderous criminal profiteering.