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What is the single most curable evil afflicting community life in London? The answer is the criminalisation of drug use under the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act.
It blights half the capital's youth at some stage or other. It hovers as a black cloud over every neighbourhood, pub and street corner. It causes crime and gangland disorder. It packs the courts and fills the prisons. It costs billions of pounds in personal loss and public spending.
Needless to say, not one party in the current General Election is prepared to discuss it. As a result, London is about to be taught a lesson in social policy by, of all places, America.
As I whiled away last week waiting in Los Angeles for Her Majesty's Government to find an ash cloud policy, I decided to pop into one of many local cannabis “dispensaries” — strictly in the interests of research.
While the exteriors are carefully anonymous, the interiors are designed to cater for all whom “a doctor” has decided need the therapeutic benefits of a dose of “weed”. I could choose between Harmony House and Holistic Harvest. I could try Nature's Wonder or Mary and Jane's mobile delivery service. The Green Oasis chain offers “40 flavours” of cannabis, including Sour Diesel, Blue Dream and Woody Kush, plus a 1,300 square meter “vaporising lounge” to help things go swimmingly along. In most cases, the requisite chit certifying medical need is available on the premises, like club membership in a casino.
California now makes Amsterdam's drug laws look timid. Since the licensing of “medical marijuana” production and sale in 1996, California and 14 states across America have seen a blossoming of cannabis retailing. Some estimates are of more dispensaries (or “clinics”) in Los Angeles than Starbucks. The city authorities reckon they have at least 500 and possibly 1,000 outlets, meaning that in some areas there are more dispensaries than there are bars serving alcohol.
Since reliable figures are hard to find, it is impossible to discover whether the result has been an increase or decrease in the overall consumption of marijuana. Use of the drug has come out of the closet. There are certainly testimonials to the relief of pain delivered, and with it a reduction in need for conventional medicine. There is a corresponding reduction in pressure on law enforcement and imprisonment. Anecdotal evidence suggests that private growers are supplanting the criminal gangs who have long imported supplies from Canada.
More serious is the backlash against a spread of outlets that seem to cock a snook at the law, which restricts sale to those in medical need. Our old friend, stress, is so often cited as to render the restriction meaningless. As a result, two moves are now afoot. A Los Angeles city ordinance seeks to limit the number of outlets to 70. This would mean savage closures, in effect creating local licensed monopolies bound up in a tangle of red tape. But the effect would be clear, as the mayor has said, “to regulate the collective cultivation of medical marijuana” and to end the proliferation of operators who are currently “not inspected or analysed by the US Food and Drug administration”. In other words, the marketing of the drug under pseudo-medical conditions would be as legitimate as alcohol.
A more radical proposition, on which Californians will vote in November, is to legalise the consumption of marijuana as such and do away with the medical façade. It would be allowed to over-21s, who could grow their own and possess a maximum of one ounce per person. What is sold in shops would be inspected as pure. It would be approved and taxed, like alcohol. In a recent poll, half of Californians wanted to see the drug taxed, if only to relieve the state's crippling budget deficit.
Such legalisation would run contrary to US federal policy, as well as various United Nations protocols. But Barack Obama has already said he will not enforce federal policy against states that have eased marijuana controls. Pressure across America to end this form of prohibition is now growing from the bottom up, though as with the ending of alcohol prohibition it is unlikely to be everywhere or overnight.
For those like me who regard cannabis as a potentially dangerous substance for many young people, California's route to regulatory control and, if necessary, treatment is sane. Nor does it make sense to decriminalise use but criminalise supply, since they are part of the same market sequence. There is no point in removing the police from the front of the house merely to send them to the back.
Whether the same common sense can be extended to the greater curse of cocaine remains to be seen. No one reading the American press can be in any doubt of the horrendous cost to Latin American states of the continued criminalisation of coca products. It has reduced large parts of Mexico to a lawless jungle, as a result of the gigantic profits available from America's cocaine trade — said to be on a par with the oil industry. Heavily armed cartels are massacring each other daily in the streets. The policy is plunging half a continent into misery.
The encouraging sign is that, when Americans are asked what they would like done about a problem, they answer with the beginnings of a solution. When California has brought its cannabis use under control, perhaps it can start grappling with its far greater challenge, cocaine and heroin.
And London? It has the toughest drug laws and the worst drugs problem in Europe. We jam our courts and our prisons with young people, to no beneficial effect and at vast cost. I imagine that Londoners might indeed vote for a California-style proposition to license and regulate marijuana in the capital, to reduce the power of the gangs, help the young cope with drugs and raise revenue.
But I cannot imagine any national politician allowing it, certain not at election time. We still have a long way to go to democracy.
Reader views (6)
I couldn't agree more about marijuana. As a recreational drug, it is far less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. A sane government that really wanted to protect the health of its citizens would legalize it as a safer alternative.
Cocaine and heroin are a different story. Both are dangerous, addictive, and potentially fatal. While I agree that prohibitions are never very effective, fewer than 2% of USA voters polled would favor legalizing these substances, making it a political impossibility. Medical marijuana currently polls at 78%. Recreational marijuana currently polls nationally at 49% and 56% in California, where marijuana legalization will be on the November ballot.
- Buzzby, Cleveland, Ohio, USA, 24/05/2010 00:06
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Simon,
I'm ashamed of you. If you had helped withdraw suffering addicts for 23 years as I have, you wouldn't be sucked in by Californian dumb answers to a serious problem.
Ever since it commenced Holland has done nothing but backtrack on its liberalisation policies for the simple reason that they dont work to the benefit of the society.
Alaska found out the same hard way.
However, there are sensible workable policies which (according to the National Audit Office, an HoC Select Committee and Glasgow University) could save our taxpayers some 17 BILLION a year - something we desperately need rather than continuing to keep addicts on benefits, etc., etc., every day of the years.
Not enough space here to fully respond, so ring me on 01342 810151 if you would like to know more.
Regards,
Kenneth Eckersley, Former Magistrate and Retired J.P.
CEO Addiction Recovery Training Services (ARTS),
A not-for-profit Community Support Operation.
- Kenneth Eckersley, Sharpthorne, England, 29/04/2010 17:21
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I have lost all hope in our politicians to even use their common sense to reduce hard drug addiction. The reason I say this is that this present government through senior civil servants in the Home Office over a period of 18 months were made aware of a Vietnamese curative treatment and never even bothered to look it up. Now this humane treatment where there is no cold turkey is part of the Vietnames health system curing tens of thousands of hard drug addicts annually.
Therefore I have no faith whatsover in our so-called UK drug addiction experts, senior civil servants or cabinet ministers (David Blunkett knew all about this treatment)as it appears that there definitely is a vested interest in methadone treatments et al, even though millions are indirectly suffering in this once great country and the cost to the economy is counted in tens of billions. These people are complete idiots or are receiving very nice brown envelopes on a constant basis. It must be one or the other?
I have one piece of advice, spend around £400 for a return flight to Hanoi and go and see this treatment for youeself. But this will never happen for the above reasons. The whole sorry story of addressing drug addiction in this country stinks and the people of Britain should clearly understand this. Rely on outr politicians, no chance is my verdict over the last 10 years of trying to make ministers listen !
Dr David Hill
Executive Director
World Innovation Foundation Charity
Bern, Switzerland
- Dr David Hill, Bern, Switzerland - Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, 29/04/2010 16:35
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A very large chunk of our debts could be wiped off within a few years ,if only the powers to be would legalise cannabis, lets face it, millions of people a week are smoking it, i was on the bus last week and the school boys on the top deck stunk of it.I know many people who would have no problem giving all of their details to some government quango then travelling to a warehouse in darkest Lincolnshire to buy it ,if it was legal. But why go down this route when they can continue to hammer the cash cow motorist.
- Leonard Lillywhites, Tottenham, 28/04/2010 18:47
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Simon clearly hasn't thumbed through the Green Party manifesto. The de-criminalisation of canabis has been a policy since 1979.
Prohibition has never been shown to work since the US first banned alcohol in the 1920s. You cannot effectively control a substance in high demand with the supply chain in the hands of criminals. Prohibition serves only to keep prices high generating vast tax-free profits for criminals - and great harm. It is remarkable that we continue with this madness.
- Maddox, Wimbledon, UK, 27/04/2010 21:17
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Cannabis shouldn't be illegal it should be mandatory!
- Bill Hicks, Heaven Hempstead, 27/04/2010 14:25
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