Description

Despite the billions spent each year on proactive and reactive drug law
enforcement, the punitive prohibitionist approach has consistently delivered
the opposite of its stated goals. The Government’s own data clearly
demonstrates drug supply and availability increasing; use of drugs that cause
the most harm increasing; health harms increasing; massive levels of crime
created at all scales leading to a crisis in the criminal justice system; and illicit
drug profits enriching criminals, fuelling conflict and destabilising producer
and transit countries from Mexico to Afghanistan. This is an expensive policy
that, in the words of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, has also created a raft
of negative ‘unintended consequences’.
· The UK Government specifically claims the benefits of any move away from
prohibition towards legal regulation of drug markets would be outweighed by
the costs. No such cost-benefit analysis, or even a proper Impact Assessment
of existing enforcement policy and legislation has ever been carried out here
or anywhere else in the world. Yet there are clear Government guidelines that
an Impact Assessment should be triggered by amongst other things, a policy
going out to public consultation or when ‘unintended consequences’ are
identified, both of which have happened with drug policy in recent years.
· Alternative approaches - involving established regulatory models of
controlling drug production, supply and use - have not been considered or
costed. The limited cost effectiveness analysis of current policy that has been
undertaken has frequently been suppressed. In terms of scrutinizing major
public policy and spending initiatives, current drug policy is unique in this
regard.
· The generalisations being used to defend continuation of an expensive and
systematically failing policy of drugs prohibition, and close down a mature
and rational exploration of alternative approaches, are demonstrably based on
un-evidenced assumptions.
· This paper is an attempt to begin to redress these failings by comparing the
costs and benefits of the current policy of drug prohibition, with those of a
proposed model for the legal regulation of drugs in the UK. We also identify
areas of further research, and steps to ensure future drugs policy is genuinely
based on evidence of what works.
· This initial analysis demonstrates that a move to legally regulated drug supply
would deliver substantial benefits to the Treasury and wider community, even
in the highly unlikely event of a substantial increase in use.
1 2008 Home Office briefing on responding to media enquiries about ‘legalisation and regulation’ – see
http://transform-drugs.blogspot.com/... .).
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Research aims and parameters
The Government has made clear and repeated commitments to evidence based and
cost-effective policy making. The Treasury states that: “…no policy, programme or
project is adopted without first having the answer to these questions: (1) Are there better ways to achieve this objective? (2) Are there better uses for these resources?”
These principles provide the rationale and starting point for this paper which is an
attempt to compare the high level costs related to drug use under prohibition
(specifically heroin and cocaine), and compare them to costs under a speculative,legally regulated model. This exercise is methodologically complex and there are significant gaps in the available data and analysis that require exclusions and assumptions to be made. These shortcomings are acknowledged and we emphasise that this paper is a discussion document, intended to move the debate forward on a more rational and pragmatic footing, help develop a credible methodology for future analysis, and stimulate more work in this area – particularly by the Government
agencies responsible for ensuring policy is cost-effective.
Benefits of prohibition vs. regulation
The key benefit cited by