Your say on Drugs

In July the Home Office launched it consultation on drugs 'Our Community, Your Say', which will then inform the Government's drug strategy. The consultation looks at the issue from a range of angles: public information and education, enforcement and punishment, and treatment and support – and there's also a section of the consultation about the international supply-chain.

The Government is quite proud of its record over the last decade and boasts of twice as many drug users in treatment and a reduction of 20% in drug-related crime.

Earlier this year a report by the RSA published a detailed report into the issue which you can download from the RSA website or read a summary on the NACRO site.

The report gives a thoughtful overview and advocates bringing all misused substances under one Act, and treating them as predominantly a health rather than a criminal problem – transferring overall responsibility for drugs strategy from the Home Office to the Department for Communities and Local Government. This would integrate drugs policy "into policies in such areas as social exclusion, housing and homelessness and regeneration". As Drugscope points out "One in three problem drug users are homeless or in need of housing support."

NAPO, the trade union for probation officers, told a 2001 select committee enquiry on drugs, "there is no evidence that punishment or imprisonment reduces drug misuse, but on the contrary that access to treatment reduces criminal behaviour. NAPO believes that drug misuse is nevertheless a health and educational problem and not a matter for the courts and criminal justice system". You can read the submission in full on the parliamentary website. You can read the contemporary views of probation officers on the NAPO discussion forum.

This may be seen by some as "soft on drugs". However, the Government states that "every £1 invested in treatment produces £9.50 of savings in health and criminal justice costs". Despite the acknowledged overall benefit to tax-payers of treating drug users, the Government consultation document also insists "resources are not limitless . . . our aim is to reduce overall [treatment] costs whilst improving effectiveness". So the Government is actually proposing decreasing funding despite their acknowledgement of its cost-effectiveness!

PCS, the trade union that represents prison instructional officers, is calling for "greater emphasis on stopping re-offending through alcohol and drug treatments and by equipping prisoners with the skills to get work". This also highlights that alcohol treatment is excluded from the consultation, except in the context of young people for whom alcohol is illegal.

This seems a major omission. Addaction points out that "in some parts of the UK people addicted to alcohol face waits of up to a year for treatment", and a report for the Howard League for Penal Reform found that "more young men are in prison because of alcohol than drugs".

It is implicit in the consultation that the Government is not considering the legal status of drugs – with the exception of cannabis, which the Government is considering reclassifying up to Class B from Class C. The Police Federation states "you do not need to change classification to change the way drug issues are policed. It's important that police officers have discretion to take account of all individual circumstances". Drugscope concurs, pointing out that since cannabis was downgraded, its use has actually fallen among young people. Rethink, the charity serving those with severe mental illness, is also underwhelmed - believing that a health campaign rather than harsher laws would be more useful.

The RSA report recommended that drugs education in schools must occur in primary schools too, and NASUWT, a teachers’ union, advocates an extension of random drug testing in schools.

On the international front, Oxfam is calling for "massive support for non-opium agriculture and rural livelihoods" in Afghanistan rather than aerial crop-spraying or removal by force.

The consultation document 'Drugs: Our Community, Your Say' can be downloaded from the Home Office website. The deadline for responses is 19th October 2007.