Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make  you mad.                                      Aldous Huxley

In 1995, Alan Duncan MP published Saturn's Children, a call to limit  the
power of the state. By the time the paperback edition was due to  be
published, he had just been promoted to shadow health minister.  He
removed a chapter calling for the legalisation of drugs under  pressure
>from William Hague. He has now published the suppressed chapter  on his
web site:

http://alanduncan.org.uk/  [Media  Zone / Saturn's Children]

The Legalisation of Drugs - a chapter from  Saturn's Children

In the meantime, it is pointless to persist with the  conventional
responses to the increase in crime. More police, more prisons  and more
effective judicial procedures are clearly not working, except in so  far
as they satisfy a patent public thirst for retribution. No  present-day
criminal can be unaware that undetected crime is rising while the  number
of convictions is falling. Deterrence is an increasingly empty  threat,
and nobody seriously believes that a spell in prison is capable  of
reforming or rehabilitating the criminal character. A criminal  record
only makes it harder to re-enter normal civilian life, turning  a
significant minority of people into career criminals and so making  crime
an even more intractable problem.  The sensible way to tackle crime  is
to treat not the symptoms but the causes. One cause is the  demoralised
condition of young people in many inner cities today, and the  lack of
any culture of self-help and self-improvement in those parts of  society
where the majority of people are dependent on State hand-outs in  both
cash and kind.

Reversing welfare dependency and the accompanying  sense of helplessness
is the task of the various measures outlined in this  concluding chapter.
By their nature, they will take many years to come to  fruition. But
there is one cause of crime which can be tackled immediately:  drugs. The
international trade in illegal drugs is now thought to be worth  $500
billion a year. Policing a global industry of that magnitude, in  which
organised gangs are prepared to resort to violence to protect  their
markets, is a major problem in itself. But the craving of consumers  for
drugs has also created an epidemic of theft, burglary and muggings  by
addicts desperate to acquire the money they need to feed their  habits.
The costs - in terms of time and money wasted by the police and  Customs
and Excise and rising security and insurance expenditure by the  private
sector, to say nothing of the personal distress caused by theft  and
violence - are unquantifiable, but undoubtedly run into billions  of
solution before it gets completely out of control. Yet it is  presently
being tackled in exactly the wrong way.

The conventional  solution to the problem of drugs is to reduce the
supply. This is attempted  through a variety of methods, including crop
substitution, customs seizures,  the imprisonment and fining of drug
traffickers, measures to reduce  money-laundering, the interdiction of
drugs in transit and the seizure of  assets earned in the drugs trade. In
some countries, drug traffickers even  face the death penalty. Since
President Bush launched his ill-fated war on  drugs five years ago, with
the stated ambition of reducing the amount of  cocaine reaching the
United States by half within four years, American  taxpayers have spent
$30 billion on fighting drugs. But the industry is still  booming. The
drugs war may even have encouraged the drug barons to improve  their
business organisations. Repressive measures merely act as a tax on  the
trade, and so vastly increase the risks of involvement in it. To  justify
taking such risks, the rewards have to be correspondingly high.  Legal
supplies of pure heroin, for example, cost the National Health  Service
£6 a gram. But, on the streets, a gram of heroin of 40 per cent  purity
has a value of £40. That translates into a price of about £200 for  a
gram of pure heroin, or thirty-three times the price paid by the  Health
Service. Similar effects are observable in the markets for cocaine  and
crack cocaine. The price of a kilogram of pure cocaine rises  two
hundred-fold between the coca farm and the streets of North America  and
Europe. 'The most hazardous of all trades, that of the smuggler,'  wrote
Adam Smith, 'though when the adventure succeeds, it is likewise the  most
profitable." [15]

On the supply side, the drugs trade is a  high-risk, high-reward business
dominated by criminals who have a substantial  financial inducement to
exclude competition. Their exclusion strategies  routinely include
corruption and violence, and occasionally demand  assassination. In the
United States, half of all murders are drug-related -  and there are over
20,000 murders a year. In this country, the intimidation  of witnesses
already makes it extremely difficult to prosecute a drug  trafficker
successfully. The consumers of drugs, on the other hand, are  addicted.
This means their demand for drugs is not sensitive to the price. If  it
was, the exceptionally high price of drugs on the streets would  already
have reduced consumption to modest proportions. As Samuel Brittan  has
observed:

Given a high-risk, high-price market for products with  an addictive
quality, one would expect present worldwide restrictive  legislation to
encourage criminal activity. The addicts steal to pay for  their drugs;
and suppliers will stop at nothing to maintain an enormously  lucrative
trade. [16]

This is exactly what has happened. A vast  international smuggling
operation is in train, which the authorities in both  Europe and North
America are manifestly unable to contain. For suppliers, the  rewards are
so high that it is worth killing people to retain a franchise.  For
consumers, the costs are so high that it is necessary for many of  them
to steal and mug people to obtain the money to buy their  supplies.

Efforts can be made to reduce demand by educating people about  the
dangers of taking drugs - predictably, lessons on the perils of  drug
addiction are now a part of the national curriculum - but a large  part
of the attraction of taking drugs is, paradoxically, their  social
unacceptability. The analysis of the economics of the drugs trade is  too
compelling to ignore. Logic suggests that the only completely  effective
way to ameliorate the problem, and especially the crime which  results
>from  it, is to bring the industry into the open by legalising  the
distribution and consumption of all dangerous drugs, or at the  very
least decriminalising their consumption. This is not the drastic  or
revolutionary step which many people believe it to be. The police  have
long since ceased to prosecute casual users of cannabis,  and
increasingly prefer not to arrest heroin addicts but to encourage  them
to seek treatment.

Two senior police officers - the secretary  general of Interpol and the
Chief Constable of West Yorkshire - have  expressed in public their
support for the decriminalisation of drugs, which  they rightly see as a
social, moral and health problem rather than a matter  for the criminal
law. Nor are drugs a particularly threatening health  problem. Heroin
kills about 200 people a year, solvent abuse another I50,  ecstasy a
handful, and LSD and cannabis nobody at all. Each of these deaths  is an
individual tragedy but, compared with the number of deaths  associated
with drinking, smoking or motor cars, the numbers are  insignificant. In
the case of alcohol, tobacco and motoring the case for  dissuasion within
the law is already broadly accepted, except by small  minorities of
fanatics.

Draconian laws against drug trafficking and  consumption are anyway of
relatively recent origin. Thomas de Quincey  published his Confessions of
an English Opium Eater in London in 1821, after  consuming the drug for
nearly twenty years without interference from the  State. In the i83os
and again in the i850s the Royal Navy effectively  supported opium
traders against the efforts of the Chinese authorities to  stamp out an
illicit trade in the drug.  Gladstone's sister, Helen, was an  opium
addict, as were a fair number of otherwise respectable  Victorians.
George Orwell's father, Richard Blair, was for nearly forty  years
employed in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service.  It
supervised a state monopoly of opium production for export to China,  a
trade which at one time accounted for a sixth of the total  government
revenues of British India. There was no legislation against  the
consumption of the drug in England until the passage of the  Dangerous
Drugs Act in 1020. Legislation against the opium trade was  not
introduced in South East Asia until after the Second World  War.

There is no reason to suppose that the number of consumers  would
increase if dangerous drugs were legalised. A sensible  legalisation
would retain strict official control over the distribution and  quality
of drugs, and perhaps include the establishment of a register of  users
of hard drugs. Evidence from Holland and the United States,  where
experiments in the decriminalisation of soft drugs are taking  place,
suggests consumption tends not to rise but drug-related crime does  tend
to fall. Almost everybody is sufficiently aware of the  dangerous
side-effects of narcotic abuse to avoid taking dangerous drugs  for
precisely that reason. But a minority will always prefer to take  the
risk, just as smokers continue to consume tobacco despite  overwhelming
evidence of the damaging effect it has on their health. Although  the
democratic State has a constant urge, as de Tocqueville forecast, to  act
as an 'immense, protective power which is alone responsible for  securing
their enjoyment and watching over their fate', it is  perfectly
respectable to believe that people are the best judge of their  own
interests, even if they choose to consume harmful drugs. Consumption  of
dangerous drugs might even fall if the thrill of the illicit  was
removed. 'Stolen sweets are best,' as Colly Gibber put it.  Those
irredeemably addicted to nannying people could still take comfort  from
the fact that decriminalisation would at least save people from  the
worst consequences of their addiction. The high price of illegal  heroin
encourages injection, which is the most economical way to take the  drug
but also the most hazardous. Injection is not only  intrinsically
dangerous, but encourages addicts to share needles and so  spread
disease. Decriminalisation would solve that problem at  least.

The only compelling obstacle to decriminalisation is that  legalisation
in one country would attract addicts from abroad. There is a  case for
multi-lateral action in this sphere, though it is hard to see how  this
could be agreed in advance. One country would have to pioneer  the
experiment and, if the results were gratifying, others would soon  follow
suit. The least convincing argument against legalisation is that it is  a
counsel of despair. It would be better if everybody could cope  without
needing dangerous drugs but, since some people will insist on using  them
whatever the law says, it is more sensible both for the addicts  and
their fellow-citizens if they can buy drugs of the requisite  quality
>from  legitimate and properly regulated suppliers at reasonable  prices.
It would put violent criminals out of business, reduce burglary,  theft
and other crimes, and generate a modest tax revenue which would  enable
addicts to be treated and supervised by qualified medical  practitioners.
For the truly inveterate addict, science might even be able to  devise
less dangerous methods of achieving the same effects.

Above  all, legalisation would save the taxpayer the many millions of
pounds the  police and the Customs and Excise spend on a war which they
not only cannot  win but which they are now actually losing, and at
considerable cost to the  ordinary people caught in the crossfire. The
collateral casualties, including  policemen and customs officers
themselves, are bound to increase. For those  still unconvinced, there is
one instructive historical parallel apart from  the notorious example of
Prohibition. In 1784 Pitt introduced his Commutation  Act, which lowered
the duty on tea from 112 per cent to 25 per cent. By doing  so he finally
admitted that an enormously expensive repressive apparatus -  public
executions, a massive increase in the number of Customs and Excise  men,
the occupation of coastal towns by Army units, coastal patrols by  the
Royal Navy and a series of pitched battles with smuggling gangs all  over
England - would never prevent smugglers supplying the needs of  consumers
so long as the tax system ensured that the trade remained  hugely
profitable. The eighteenth-century smugglers were defeated in the end  by
the price mechanism, not the machinery of State repression. The  same
fate awaits the drug barons and dope dealers, if the State has  the
courage to admit its own impotence.

[15] Quoted in Frank McLynn,  Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth
CenturyEngland, OUP, 1991, page 186.[16]  Financial Times, 7 April 1994--

Mark W. Lewis, Bristol (UK)
http://www.pericles.dial.pipex.com/
 

Cohen, Peter (2000), Tackling drug related crime. What can we learn from  our
partners in Europe? Keynote address at the Conference 'Partners in  Crime
2000', June 8 and 9, organised by Kent County Council, Ashford  International
Hotel, Kent, UK. Amsterdam, CEDRO Centrum voor  Drugsonderzoek.
© Copyright 2000 Peter Cohen. All rights  reserved.

Tackling drug related crime
What can we learn from our  partners in Europe?
Peter Cohen

The topic of my presentation I was  asked to give here is worded as a
question: "Tackling drug related crime.  What can we learn from our partners
in Europe?"

The answer is that  drug related crime is tackled nowhere in Europe in any
significant way, not  even in the Netherlands. In all European and
non-European countries, drug use  and drug distribution are related to a
sizeable proportion of crime. What  exactly this relation looks like, how is
it socially constructed is still a  topic of heated discussion for some. I
will give some of my insights into the  crime-drug connection below.

We know, however, that there is no one and  only relationship between drugs
and crime, but that the relationship varies  per country, period and type of
drug use. Although my profession is to  generate numbers, and to look at them
for trends, I will give you very few  numbers in this presentation. Often in
our political culture, these numbers  are used to feed rather boring
accusation matches, in the fashion of "your  drug policy is far worse than
mine". So, for my purpose now it is sufficient  to stress commonalities
within Europe, and show that the differences between  our countries do not
really make all this battling legitimate or productive.  I will end however
with some recommendations, asking for enough curiosity to  be willing to
look, and to learn, instead of an eternal repetition of the  'home grown'
drug policy mantras.

Why are we seeing, in all Member  States of the European Union, that 20 to
40% of all prisoners are convicted  for some type of drug related criminal
activity or another? The answer is  manifold:

In all our countries the use and distribution of cannabis and a  range of
other recreational drugs is criminalized. This criminalization had  its
origins in the tendency to criminalize the use of alcohol in the  19th
century that never really caught on in Europe. (Though it did - for a  short
time - in the USA). Instead, we criminalized recreational drugs that  were
alien to our culture and social habits, leaving legal the drugs that  were
already integrated into our western culture.

Since the use of  culturally alien recreational drugs is often associated
with people living  more or less deviant lifestyles, (thieves, artists,
homosexuals, homeless,  ravers), this class of people is exposed to a higher
than normal level of  scrutiny by the forces of law and order, making their
chances of being caught  in some sort of illegal act larger than the rest of
the population. This  expands the image of a nexus between drugs and
deviance/crime.

Since  the early dawn of the prison system, the probability that poor people
are  being caught and imprisoned is much larger than for richer strata of  the
population. Our jails are not filled for the most part with the  successful
high level money launderers, smugglers and 'Euro-subsidy' crooks.  Except for
serious violent crime, prison is the poor man's fate, the fate of  the petty
criminal roughly speaking the likelihood that poor people are  caught for low
level drug use and drug distribution activities is greater  than for others.
Poor people also have more reason to use and trade drugs in  ways that help
them adjust to adverse conditions, than richer people. Opiates  for instance
are a good downer, helping one to feel less social and mental  pain - much
better than alcohol can do that. Trading heroin provides some  income for
those who find no productive position in the labour market.  Summarizing, the
drug crime nexus is partly constructed via poverty, and is  therefore related
to more general issues of wealth distribution.

So,  drugs are related to crime for a series of reasons, that are not  tackled
easily. These reasons are deeply embedded in our cultures and  economies, and
we can only hope to modify the connection between drugs and  crime in a
series of (small) steps.

Let us look at two countries that  have vastly different systems of wealth
distribution, the USA and the  Netherlands. In the USA around 50% of the
gross national income is  distributed over 20% of the population, according
to the Worldbank, in a  political system that leaves a third of the
population near the poverty line  or below, and without any health insurance.
Unemployment or workers  disability benefits are very low and force people to
accept even very menial  jobs making crime a viable alternative for income
generation. In the  Netherlands, around 40% of the gross national income is
distributed over 20%  of the population, still very skewed, but less unjust.
However, health  insurance covers all of the population, like a decent
insurance against  unemployment and disability. This enables people to stay
unemployed if  attractive jobs are not available, making crime a less
attractive income  generating activity.

These vast structural differences are reflected in  the rates of
incarceration. In the US the present incarceration rate is  around 800 people
per 100,000, against 75 per 100,000 in the Netherlands (and  versus 120 in
the UK). Drug use is somewhat higher in the US than in the  Netherlands, but
not very much. As an illustration: last month marihuana use  in the Dutch
population is about 3%, versus 6% in the US (1997 data). You  see, we speak
about very small minorities that use drugs with any  regularity.

I already said what I want to say: the structural economic  and political
factors that determine levels of poverty, wealth and care  distribution have
such a large impact on levels of crime, and the way some  drug-crime nexus is
built up, that any simple measure in the drug policy area  may seem almost
trivial. But, we can do a series of things that, even leaving  the structural
factors untouched, can change the relation for some people  between drugs and
a criminal status. If we do enough of those small steps, we  can realise a
real and perceptible impact on the severity of the drug-crime  nexus.

To begin with, we can do as the Germans. The Germans used to  marginalise
heavy drug users to a high degree, making them into some kind of  fugitives
in their own country, now, in the larger cities, provide these much  harassed
people with so called user rooms. They now can go somewhere, where  they have
some status, where access to health care and a shower is easy, and  where
their drug use is turned into something accepted. This will change  the
exposure to police, and thus to prison. If the Germans would add a  decent
and easy access heroin and or methadone distribution system, as the  Dutch
and the Swiss (and the Brits) already have in place somehow, and add  social
work to the treatment system as is done in the Netherlands, the  Germans
would greatly influence the drug-crime nexus for a small but highly  visible
part of the drug-using population. It would then change the  perception of
drug use, quite probably away from it being a  problem.

The UK, like Italy, arresting and cautioning thousands of people  each year
for simple use, distribution or possession of marihuana or  other
recreational drugs, should look at the Dutch police. In the Netherlands  the
police does not bother to suppress individual drug use or small scale  drug
distribution, unless it creates unsafe areas or housing estates. If  UK
police were to follow this example, the work load of the UK police would  be
a lot lighter, their prisons less populated and their drug use levels  would
not increase.

When in the Netherlands responsible medical  abortion was tolerated, a period
of around 20 years before it became legal in  the eighties, illicit
abortionists vanished, and the abortion-crime  connection disappeared
completely, never to return. For drugs this ideal end  state is impossible,
because even with drugs totally decriminalised, drugs  (among which alcohol)
are so much part of everyday human life and culture,  that a proportion of
all activities, among which criminal ones, will always  be undertaken while
under the influence of drugs. For instance, an alcohol  intoxicated driver is
potentially dangerous, although less so than a driver  using pharmaceutical
tranquillisers mixed with alcohol. The connection with  crime is not
difficult to imagine. Driving while high on marihuana or cocaine  is less
dangerous, and even quite doable, albeit still not really wise.  Mistakes are
made, so crime always lurks around the corner of drug use, licit  or illicit.
But, as I said, it is very well possible to lessen this nexus and  make it
less strong, less threatening and less automatic by selecting certain  drug
related life events as no longer being criminal. I will not use my time  here
to give all possible little steps into that direction. In the UK there  are
enough people who know.

In a speech last March, Gerry Stimson, one  of the UK's prime specialists on
drug policy, deplored the new emphasis on  the drug crime nexus, which he
thinks will deemphasize the drug problem as a  health issue and a culture
issue. I agree with him. The present Government in  the UK seems to ignore
the fact, that very much of the drug crime nexus is a  socially constructed
one, dependent on the degree to which drug use is  depicted as deviant, and
then criminalized.

In the Netherlands a large  group of city mayors (just over 60) have proposed
to decriminalise the  growing of marihuana plants, and trading marihuana to
cannabis shops. This  very important lobby towards decriminalising a sizeable
portion of what is  now considered as crime, is opposed by the Dutch
Government. It argues that  international agreements, and the governments of
allied nations like the UK,  or France, would create enormous problems for
the Dutch. This is of course  partly right. But, here in this audience could
be people who argue: "why not  let the Dutch try that, and run an interesting
real life experiment for us,  so that we can see what would happen! The Dutch
already showed that allowing  uncluttered consumer access to a large choice
of marihuana and other cannabis  products did not raise use levels, or did
not raise problematic use of any  drug over the levels of other countries. It
left use levels even lower than  those in the UK, or the US and the same as
in Germany or France. Let these  bold Dutch run some more experiments that
for us are difficult, and let them  show that their thinking on
decriminalisation is sound." This would imply,  that some countries are
undogmatic enough to allow themselves to really learn  from other countries
in Europe.

At the moment, most countries are  against learning from other countries. The
reason for this is, among others,  that drug policy is much more an arena for
politicians in which they show off  their "sound" value systems, than their
problem solving capabilities.  Politicians use the drug problem for a sort of
'value exhibitionism' and for  the purpose of showing a strong political
identity in a time of economic or  cultural fears. Problem solving, they seem
to think, we do in other  areas!

We do not have to educate large parts of the public about drugs;  most -
except the Swedes - know they are dangerous or non-dangerous as licit  drugs,
and like those, consumed in moderation by most users. In the  larger
metropolitan areas of our countries, occasional drug use among people  of 40
years and younger has become normalised, structured and accepted.  Access to
all illicit drugs is well organised, easy, and less costly all the  time.
Drugs are used at particular times, for particular kinds of  recreational
activity, in well integrated social settings. Preparing for the  future means
that we will have to regulate drug use instead of continuing our  Victorian
and futile attempts to stamp it out. We should educate our  politicians, ask
them to choose other ways for value identification or  suggesting to us they
are 'strong, tough and reliable'.

I want to  conclude with the following: Leaving intact my remarks about the
importance  of wealth and care distribution for the development of the drug
problem, I  emphasize that as long as drugs are left unregulated, and as long
as the  issue is a main stage for conservative political bravado tough talk
and war  mongering, drug policies will not tackle - even marginally - the
drug-crime  connection. On the contrary, the connection will flourish.



--
"One has to multiply thoughts to the point where there aren't  enough
policemen to control them" - Stanislaw Lec
--
Shug
http://www.ukcia.org - The UK Cannabis  Information Website
http://www.lca-uk.org  - The Legalise Cannabis Alliance