The Myth Of A War On Drugs
We are persistently informed, by members of the political and media establishment, that the ‘war on drugs’ has failed. One has to ask though, when was this supposed war actually fought?
This question cannot be answered because, in truth, we have never fought such a battle. If only we had. Instead, we have been sold a myth – a lie if you will – about a supposedly dogged pursuit of drugs, their users and suppliers by the various arms of the state. The reality is sadly rather different.
In response to my above assertion of there never having been a war on drugs, Joshua Lachovic wrote on his blog:
And you haven’t noticed the war on drugs? You haven’t noticed that the global prohibition kills thousands each year? You haven’t heard practically every politician of the past thirty years refer in some way to the ‘war on the drugs’? You haven’t heard any policeman who refers to the war on drugs? You haven’t noticed the £1.5bn that the UK spends yearly on the war? Nor have you noticed the time spent by every police force in the country trying to fight this war on drugs?
All the while, there are still drug users (as there will forever be), people still die because of drugs and people’s lives are still ruined because of drugs. Relaxing the enforcement and governing of banned substances? I suppose you hadn’t noticed mephedrone be criminalised because of media hysteria last year. I suppose you hadn’t noticed magic mushrooms be criminalised earlier this decade. Nor had you noticed that with a police force such as the one in Sussex, over the past decade crime has fallen, while drug crime has increased. To imply that we aren’t fighting a war on drugs is frankly naive, to say the very least.
Unfortunately for poor Joshua, he makes a number of glaring errors in his argument. To begin with, what he calls the ‘global prohibition’ of drugs (which doesn’t exist, because it is not prohibition) does not kill thousands each year. Drugs kill people; ‘prohibition’ does not.
Even if certain politicians, sections within the media and parts of the police ‘service’ refer to a ‘war on drugs’, this does not mean we are actually fighting one. Repeating a lie or a mistruth enough times still does not make it the truth.
If we were really fighting a ‘war on drugs’ then we would be locking up drugs users for long periods of time, or fining them heavily, or raiding University campuses. But we are not. Instead, most drugs users, if they are even bothered by an unlikely visit from the police, are given a caution (which essentially means being let off) or at most a suspended sentence (again, being let off). So very rare is it that a person is sent to prison for using drugs, even with multiple previous convictions. Does that sound like a ‘war on drugs’?
As for the magic mushrooms and mephedrone Joshua mentions, what of them? Adding extra drugs to a list of banned substances means very little when the ban remains largely unenforced. As it is, we’ve seen a less than half-hearted attempt to pay even lip service to the existing laws, and a law is only as good as its enforcement.
The pro-legalisation rabble within the media and political class find it incredibly convenient to pretend we are having a real ‘war on drugs’. This allows them, coupled with the continual undermining and weakening of the law and its enforcement, to claim said ‘war’ to be lost, with the consequence as the pursuit of legalisation.
However, where Joshua is correct is when he says there will always be drug users. Most laws are not one hundred percent effective, but the purpose of enforcing a real ban on certain substances is to discourage as many people as possible from their use. Let us not forget, these are extremely harmful substances, whose effects on brain chemistry, behaviour and the human body are still not fully understood. They cannot be taken safely or indeed more safely as the harm reduction lobby would have us believe.
Your Comments:
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- Moho316
I think that some of the points here are very misleading. It is absolutely clear that the UK is fighting the war on drugs. However, this is unfortunately with the limited resources that we have to police it. It is virtually impossible to have a policeman on every street corner and realistically targeting every drug user in the country in the UK really would be a ‘losing’ battle. Therefore the UK strategic approach is very much to target the ‘drug dealers’ who sell the drugs and the ‘drug suppliers’ who get drugs into our country, and for which both groups if successfully convicted virtually always do get a custodial sentence.
Although there are quite rightly examples of how the UK could be argued to be losing the war on drugs there are also some huge success stories which you seem to ignore. Only today we learn of the record breaking £300 million seizure of Cocaine – the haul would have been equivalent to seven million street deals – a third of the UK’s entire annual cocaine market. This is a perfect example of how we are ‘winning the war’ on drugs. In addition every day, every police force across the country has officers investigating drugs, carrying out raids and attempting to ‘win’ the battle.
In comparison to many other countries who are doing far less or nothing at all we are certainly making progress. Whilst you will never eradicate the problem at least it is being kept on top of. As mentioned earlier the country does not have the resources to do much more… this does not mean we are losing the war but simply being realistic and living in the real world.
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Sorry Moho316, but the UK really is not fighting ‘a war on drugs’ at the moment. It is not necessary, as you say, to have police on ‘every corner’ – although a return to beat policing certainly is necessary should we actually fight a real war against drugs.
As I pointed out to Mr Lachovic on his website, one would not need to lock up or personally target every single drug user, just a reasonably high number of arrests to begin with, along with a few high profile celebrities of which to make public examples. That is what a deterrent is and how it works. Many people would stop taking drugs if they believed they might be caught and the punishments were severe enough. As I said previously, we could not stop absolutely every single person from taking drugs, but we could certainly put off the vast majority and prevent thousands of lives being blighted by these poisons. At the moment, there is no real deterrent against drugs consumption, so of course demand will increase – and as even a very basic understanding of economics will tell us, supply rises to meet demand. Thus, targeting supply without also targeting demand is an utterly pointless exercise.
I’m not sure how you can suggest we are making ‘progress’ on the fight against drugs? Drugs use in Britain is increasing, and so is crime relating to it. I would not call that ‘progress’. Do the Police really have such limited resources as to prevent us properly dealing with the drugs problem? Last year we spent £33.4bn on policing, the courts and the process of law. I expect it will be even higher this year. While we are undoubtedly overspending on total UK government spending, if we cut out a lot of the rubbish we do fund, and spent the rest more productively, it would lead to a much better response. Furthermore, it is not so much the amount of money the Police have, but how they spend it and the manner in which they tackle the drugs problem.
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- Moho316
That maybe one view but the reality is there are just as many examples to show the UK is ‘winning’ the war as there are examples that could be used to show we are ‘losing’ the war.
You also need to put it into context somewhat. When you compare the UK to many other countries it actually shows we are not doing that bad of a job. When you read an article like this you really then get to appreciate what ‘losing’ the war on drugs actually looks like. In that Mexican town the police have effectively given up and given in to the organised crime gangs dealing drugs. When you look at the number of other countries where police corruption is rife again they really are fighting a losing battle.
In terms of police spending, when I referred to limited resources I meant with relation to the fact that the scope of policing the UK is absolutely huge. I am not saying they need to put more resources into that because it will simply mean resources are taken away from elsewhere. It would seem pointless to solve one problem only to create another.
I am also very surprised by your comments around beat policing. The nature of policing has changed and a beat policing model is no longer appropriate for many parts of the UK namely inner cities and more urban areas. Beat policing would have no ‘real’ impact whatsoever on our drugs problem and this has been proven time and time again. There are very few people who actually take drugs out on the street other than a bit of weed. Under beat policing models you will reduce offences such as robbery and burglary and possibly get a few cannabis detections however this will by no means solve the drugs problem. In order to do this you need to target the dealers and those who bring drugs into the UK which is what most efforts are now being put into.
