Making a hash of drug policy, UK style

There's an interesting — and lengthy — post at Ministry of Truth about the complete failure of British drug policy. Well worth a read:

[. . .] this is hardly an innovative story, as the reference to last year's row over the classification of cannabis indicates. Most of what passes for official policy on drugs, not just in the UK but globally, bears little or no relationship to the actual health risks associated with particular drugs, which is why supplying adults with the two drugs which play some part in the largest number of deaths on a year-in, year-out basis, tobacco (an estimated 500,000+ deaths annually) and alcohol (200,000+ deaths), is perfectly legal, while supplying ecstasy, which is implicated in less than 50 deaths a year carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. When you put in those terms and compare the annual number of deaths associated with particular drug (legal and non-legal) its impossible not to think that there's something altogether a bit perverse about a system which generates billions of pounds in sales (and tax) revenues from the use of drugs which actively contribute to hundreds of thousands of deaths every year while, at the same time, outlawing other drugs which, at most, account for 30-50 deaths a year. It just doesn't seem rational — and it isn't.

[. . .]

By the early years of this century, a mere twenty years after joining the 'War on Drugs', the UK's original black market of a few hundred London-based registered addicts had turned into a market of 300,000 'chaotic' heroin users with a battery of associated health problems, including HIV, hepatitis, septicaemia, etc., some of whom had become heavily involved in crime and prostitution to finance their habit to the extent that an internal Downing Street report, leaked in 2005, estimated that black market drug users were responsible for 85% of shoplifting, 70-80% of burglaries and 54% of robberies.

There's a pretty obvious lesson here. Prohibition not only doesn't work but under the right (wrong?) conditions it can actually turn a relatively minor social issue into a major problem of near epidemic proportions, and this really shouldn't come as any real surprise to anyone. In fact, pretty much everything you need to know about prohibition and its impact on society was neatly encapsulated in a single paragraph, written by the wealthy industrialist (and support[er] of prohibition) John D Rockefeller in a letter reflecting on the failure of alcohol prohibition in the US.

When Prohibition was introduced, I hoped that it would be widely supported by public opinion and the day would soon come when the evil effects of alcohol would be recognized. I have slowly and reluctantly come to believe that this has not been the result. Instead, drinking has generally increased; the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has appeared; many of our best citizens have openly ignored Prohibition; respect for the law has been greatly lessened; and crime has increased to a level never seen before.

H/T to Francis Turner.