British Deputy PM Backs ‘Ending the Drug Wars’ Report

Today the London School of Economics’
Expert Group on the Economics of Drug Policy published a report
titled “Ending
the Drug Wars.”

Five Nobel Prize-winning economists, former U.S. Secretary of
State George Schultz, and British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg
are among the 21
signatories of the report’s foreword.

The foreword reads as follows:

The pursuit of a militarised and enforcement-led global ‘war on
drugs’ strategy has produced enormous negative outcomes and
collateral damage. These include mass incarceration in the US,
highly repressive policies in Asia, vast corruption and political
destabilisation in Afghanistan and West Africa, immense violence in
Latin America, an HIV epidemic in Russia, an acute global shortage
of pain medication and the propagation of systematic human rights
abuses around the world.

The strategy has failed based on its own terms. Evidence shows
that drug prices have been declining while purity has been
increasing. This has been despite drastic increases in global
enforcement spending. Continuing to spend vast resources on
punitive enforcement-led policies, generally at the expense of
proven public health policies, can no longer be justified.

The United Nations has for too long tried to enforce a
repressive, ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. It must now take the lead
in advocating a new cooperative international framework based on
the fundamental acceptance that different policies  will work
for different countries and regions.

This new global drug strategy should be based on principles of
public health, harm reduction, illicit market impact reduction,
expanded access to essential medicines, minimisation of problematic
consumption, rigorously monitored regulatory experimentation and an
unwavering commitment to principles of human rights.

In February
I noted that Clegg, who said “I don’t think we’re winning the
drugs war,” does not back drug legalization and has expressed
frustration with the Conservatives, led by Prime Minister David
Cameron, who he says are not willing to examine alternative drug
policies.

Indeed, Cameron thinks that the U.K.’s drug policy is working,
despite the fact that a Home Affairs Committee
report stated that Portugal’s decriminalization policy “is a
model that merits significantly closer consideration” and
recommended that “the responsible minister from the Department of
Health and the responsible minister from the Home Office together
visit Portugal in order to examine its system of depenalisation and
emphasis on treatment.”

Cameron’s stance on drugs does not correspond well with the
attitudes of much of the British public and supporters of his
party. Last year, a poll commissioned by the Transform
Drug Policy Foundation showed that 53 percent of the British
public and 50 percent of Conservative supporters are in favor of
“legal regulation or decriminalisation of cannabis” and that 67
percent of the British public and 70 percent of Conservative
supporters “want a comprehensive review of all policy options.”