The absolute sheer stupidity of officials in the UK trying to tackle problem drug use is completely astounding. I was almost shouting at Radio 5 at lunchtime when I heard an official from Westminister City Council saying that they want to tackle an epidemic of usage of the drug 'Spice' (which is now an umbrella term for various drugs which mimic certain effects of cannabinoids, but which are many many times more harmful) by re-classifying the drug from Class B to Class A. I mean, are you f*cking kidding me? Their argument is something like: The drug 'Spice' is illegal already, but usage is still increasing, so we will solve that issue by essentially making it more illegal! If anybody seriously thinks this is a valid solution then they are beyond deluded, and would probably decide to try and dig themselves out of a hole by digging deeper.
The legal status or the classification of a drug will have little, if any, impact on its usage. Spice is already illegal and people are abusing it, so why will they stop because it's a class A instead of a class B? Have people stopped using Heroin, Cocaine, Crack, Crystal Meth, MDMA etc because they are class A drugs? Obviously the answer is no. Furthermore, people turned to Spice because it was originally legal whilst Marijuana was illegal. Marijuana has negative effects on health for sure, but is many times safer than Spice, and had it been legally available and regulated, we may well not be seeing a wave of problem drug usage of Spice. I really cannot state this enough, or more passionately - criminalization of drug use DOES NOT WORK to prevent drug use or to eradicate health issues caused by problem drug use.
We have to move away from trying to tackle problematic drug use as a criminal matter, and treat it as a health and social issue. Furthermore, we should be asking why are people making themselves semi-unconscious on Spice? It's an over-simplification, but the answer is because they are unhappy and in pain. People tend to fall into patterns of problem drug use because they want to nullify the pain of existence. We live in a society which values GDP over personal happiness, a materialistic society imbued with a winner-takes all attitude that is increasingly marginalizing the poor and less fortunate. So many people in modern society are becoming isolated, cut-off, undervalued or ignored - they are growing up from wounded children into wounded adults, and when nobody is there to support and care from them, they turn to any substance that takes the edge off their difficult existence. Drug addicts are often demonised (not infrequently by people who use alcohol or tobacco very liberally) but this in itself is perpetuating the problem, because addicts are very often victims of a heartless and demanding society and they need our help. In terms of drug use, this isn't even touching on the fact that the majority of drug users do not proceed into addiction.
If the money spent on arresting and prosecuting non-violent drug offences was instead put into drug harm-reduction and rehabilitation schemes, then we would soon see a beneficial impact throughout society. There is evidence that such an approach is effective and sensible, for example in Portugal they moved from criminalizing non-violent drug users to a focus on harm-reduction and rehabilitation in 2001, and have seen very positive outcomes (for a quick overview see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal).
People responsible for drug policy need to wake up now, and completely change their approach. It is as clear as day that this simply must happen, and I really hope that in my lifetime we will see a move in this direction.
Thanks for reading.
