allenlovesgreen

'Phoney' UK drug war criticised
The government's battle against UK drug use has been condemned as a "phoney war" in a report by a think tank.
5/18/09|BBC News| by Delen Goldberg

The Centre for Policy Studies document called Labour's £1.5bn-a-year anti-drugs policy an "expensive failure".

It said the UK's policy of spending most of its drug budget on treatment was less effective than spending more on prevention and enforcement.

The Home Office said the report "inaccurately portrays the impact of the government's drug strategy".


The report's author referred to Soca as a failure.

According to author Kathy Gyngell, spending on methadone increased threefold between 2003 and 2008, as the government switched focus from combating illegal drug use to dealing with addicts.

She argued that this "harm-reduction approach" had failed, instead leaving 147,000 people in "state-sponsored" addiction.

The author also said Class A consumption and "problem drug use" had "risen dramatically" during the past 10 years, with drug use spreading to rural areas and the age of children's initiation into drugs falling.

The report for the right-wing think tank claims more than 10% of 11-year-olds have taken drugs, while 41% of 15-year-olds had done so.

Turning her attention to the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) , Ms Gyngell said the agency - which was set up in 2006 - had been a "failure" in its bid to tackle the drugs trade in the UK.

The report's author said the UK's drug policy should bear down on the illicit use of all drugs and feature a tougher enforcement programme to reduce the supply of drugs.

"Labour's War on Drugs has not, despite the rhetoric to the contrary, been fought. It has been a phoney war - and an expensive failure," she said.

"While the UK spends the majority of its drug budget on its so-called treatment programmes, both the Netherlands and Sweden spend most of their drugs budget on prevention and enforcement.

Drug seizures

"Their drugs problems are a half and a third of the size of the UK respectively."

Her comments come just days after Soca said at least 5,000 criminals were now in the sights of the agency after a 75% rise in operations.

Of the 287 cases that reached court, 266 - or 93% - ended in a conviction, according to the agency's annual report.

The Home Office rejected the claims made in the think tank's report.

A spokesman said overall drug use was at its "lowest level" since measurements began.

"Record numbers are entering and staying in treatment and recorded acquisitive crime - to which drug related crime makes a significant contribution - has fallen by 28% since the introduction of the Drug Interventions Programme," he said.

The spokesman also referred to figures showing that, in 2007/08, police and HM Revenue and Customs made 216,792 seizures of drugs in England and Wales - an increase of 17% since 2006/07 and the highest since records began in 1973.

Hashishi

Firstly, it's worth putting the political biases of the author in perspective: this woman is a vocal eurosceptic and has devoted the past decade of her career to undermining New Labour policy.

The report can be found here. It's claims are spurious:

What's being said is that the methadone maintenance programs which Keighley singles out for particular criticism have retained a static number of participants. That's pretty much what I'd expect form a methadone maintenance program.

She makes valid points about an overall drop in the amount of the budget being spent on enforcement and the consequent drop in seizures and arrests but neglects to account for the drastic decrease in purity in some drugs which in turn evidences fluctuations in a market which is far more complex than she gives credit for.

It gets downright frightening when she lays out her platform for a solution, with the following jarring irreconcilably with her advocation of the Dutch and Swedish models:

The Dutch and Swedes are recognised internationally as the pioneers of harm reduction, regardless of whether or not they veer towards tougher, better budgeted enforcement policies. Indeed, methadone maintenance has been all but discontinued there in favour of diacetylmorphine maintenance and buprenorphine treatment; amongst others. The UK's continued reliance on methadone treatment (which is changing in line with the aforementioned approaches) could also account for the higher death rates amongst heroin users in the UK which she criticises the government for due its comparably long half life and cumulative contribution to respiratory depression when taken alongside other opiates. This report is looking less and less like a comprehensive review of New Labour's drug policy and increasingly like a hatchet job from a right wing think tank in the wake of parliamentary turbulence and the prospect of change in the EU and at home.

I may or may not continue this, but as things stand I'd take this report with a pinch of salt and let the right wing press have their circle jerk with it. I'm the last person you'll find defending New Labour's drug policy, but the criticism leveled in this POS isn't standing up to scrutiny, as far as I can tell.

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Victor_vicious

I talked with Jim Watkin, a Leap Speaker, that works in Canada for a non-profit that works on the drug problem and has been for, I think he said, 16 years. They will supply anything other than the drugs. It took awhile for Law Enforcement to understand, now they do.
He said Methadone Treatment is a 4 to 5 year program. It takes a long time to get off of Methadone. How can any 'Think Tank' judge a Methadone Program in 3 years?? VV