War on drugs lost

Today (26 June) is World Drug Day and the UN has released a report finally acknowledging that the global effort to address the many and complex issues of drug misuse have tipped far too much toward law enforcement and away from treatment and prevention.

At the risk of ‘them a cumin for me with the pitchforks at dawn’ I am going to stick my head on the block and say it is time that we began discussing our own overly heavy emphasis on the law enforcement part of tackling drug misuse here and our serious lack of commitment to treatment and sensible prevention. The war on drugs has failed everywhere, prohibition has not worked, and while the rather ’radical’ idea (to some) of legalising recreational drug use may seem beyond the pale, the evidence of success and the arguments for this as a solution are mounting.

The concept of legalising drug use as a way of tackling the problem is not new. The arguments have been around for a long time and those arguments are not merely about personal freedom but are based on sound economic and social principles. The arguments are multifaceted but they are logical; sadly, when it comes to drugs, people carry very biased and emotional opinions which prevent them from seeing the logic of the arguments.

Consequently, over the last four decades those putting forward the legalisation argument have been seen as depraved, liberal or extremists because drugs are bad, right? Yes, they are, but so are trans-fats, sugar, caffeine, whiskey, tobacco, rum, heavy cake, tequila, chicken dippers, vodka and, well, a lot of other stuff that people like. What people find particularly upsetting about drugs — and essentially alcohol which is the only thing we allow that does this — is the mind changing bit.

Yetman himself has sought to imbibe mind warping substance since he dropped out of the trees, so denying the human desire to get a little tipsy is itself rather strange. Ironically, the one drug we allow is one of the worst. (I suspect we allow it because of its biblical connections. If Jesus had turned the water into opium, who knows…).

For many people with a tendency to misuse drugs, alcohol is very bad as it makes many people violent compared to other drugs such as extacy or ganja, which by and large do not.  Yet here in Cayman the use of both those drugs will see you serving at Her Majesty’s pleasure just for touching them, whereas you can drink till you fall over, bash your wife and crash your car and, unless you do something seriously bad (bashing your wife not serious enough apparently), you are unlikely to end up in jail.

The issue with drug use is that, for some, using drugs is a part of their lives and, aside from the obvious personal health risks, their lives are none the worse for it, while for others, their lives are ruined by the use and drive to get their fix at all costs. If we were to be honest with ourselves, we know that we probably have a considerable number of people going to plush offices on Monday mornings working for leading firms here that probably spent the weekend high on illicit substance, but because they were discreet, paid good money that they had not stolen and didn’t beat anyone up they turn up for work on Monday without having placed any undue burden on the local society.

On the other hand, during the same weekend a teenager from a broken home who has emotional difficulties already, no job or hope may well have had to break into a house, fight a few people and generally cause a nuisance before he scored enough crack for his pipe.

Drugs are entrenched in our community and so is the crime that goes with it. If we really want to address the problem we must change our view of drugs as evil and look at them as another commodity that needs to be controlled, like alcohol or tobacco. But above all society needs to take these dangerous substances from the hands of the criminals and put them in the hands of the community and make them legal to buy, sell and use. Right now when the two major manufactures of cola go up against each other to sell their goods, the sales representatives don’t shoot each other for the market share. They compete in a legal arena using pop stars and gimmicks. However, if the drink was prohibited they probably would start shooting because making cola illegal would not stop some people wanting it.

This was demonstrated by the prohibition of alcohol in America. The US government effectively created organised crime as a result of that prohibition. Once it was legalised again the hoods and gangs moved to drugs and have stayed there ever since, and it is now the second largest trade in the world after the arms trade.  

Legalisation gives governments control instead of the ruthless criminals; it enables governments to tax the goods and ultimately diverts funds. Drugs sold on a legal market would be a fraction of the cost and reduce the amount of acquisitive crime committed to buy them. But more importantly, and the biggest and most positive argument for legalisation is that the billions of dollars spent worldwide trying to fight the illegal trade could be spent on treatment and prevention.

Currently of those billions of dollars spent on law enforcement to fight the war on drugs a tiny fraction is spent on treatment and prevention. Here in Cayman if we compare the annual Drug Court budget with the Drug Task Force …….

Oh, yes! The Drug Court doesn’t have a budget. Well, there we are!