By ONLINE REPORTER
March 08, 2007
COMMENT ON THIS STORY
ILLEGAL drugs can be “harmless” and should no longer be “demonised”, a wide-ranging two-year study concludes today. The report says Britain’s drug laws are “not fit for purpose” and should be torn up in favour of a system which recognises that drinking and smoking can cause more harm.
The RSA Commission on Illegal Drugs, set up in January 2005, also called for the main focus of drugs education to shift from secondary to primary schools and recommends the introduction of so-called “shooting galleries” – rooms where users can inject drugs.
The report, compiled by a panel of academics, politicians, drugs workers, journalists and a senior police officer, also calls for the Home Office to be stripped of its lead role in drugs policy.
It recommends that the Misuse of Drugs Act be scrapped in favour of a wider-ranging Misuse of Substances Act abandoning the current ABC classification system in favour of an “index of harms”.
The system, it says, is “crude, ineffective, riddled with anomalies and open to political manipulation”, while existing drugs education is often “inconsistent, irrelevant, disorganised” and “delivered by people without adequate training”.
Current laws, the panel claims, have been “driven by moral panic” with large amounts of money wasted on “futile” efforts to stop supply rather than going after the criminal networks behind the drugs on British streets.
At the heart of the report is a call for an end to what the panel call the
“criminal justice bias” of current policy in favour of an approach treating addiction as a health and social problem rather than simply a cause of crime.
The report, which aims to influence a Government review of drug strategy next year, also calls for jail sentences to be given for only the most serious drugs-related crimes and for addicts to be given jobs and housing as part of treatment.
