Ineffective, costly and counterproductive - Tom Lloyd on the Misuse of Drugs Act

Extract taken from an interview with Tom Lloyd, former Chief Constable and lead of the International Drug Policy Consortium's law enforcement project. The interview was conducted by SSDP's Education Officer Jess Bradley at our 2011 conference.

I was a police officer mainly in London for over 30 years and I have experience of the implementation of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act, from the start of my service in 1974 to the end in 2005, in both urban and rural areas. I came to the conclusion over that time that our implementation of the Misuse of Drugs Act has been ineffective, very costly and counterproductive.

Ineffective because in that time drug use has soared from a relatively low base in the very early 70s of 2000 heroin users to what is now estimated to be a quarter to a third of a million problematic drug users - some of them multiple drug users but certainly many of them addicted to heroin and crack cocaine. By any standards that has been a failure of a stated attempt and intention to reduce drug consumption.

It has been hugely costly and I have seen that cost at first hand in terms of the number of police officers and their equipment that have been used to enforce the drug laws. That amounts to at least £10 million a year spent by the criminal justice system enforcing the Misuse of Drugs Act.

And thirdly counterproductive, many people have unnecessary criminal convictions incurred as a result of their drug use. This does not help people deal with any problems that they may have with drug use, it hinders them. The fact that drugs are subject to law enforcement under the act means that people are actually discouraged from seeking help should they need it for their drug addiction.

What also happened is that a huge criminal enterprise has grown up on the back of the so called illegal drugs market. And it is estimated that criminals in the UK are profiting to the extent of £6 billion every year, internationally the figure is estimated to be US$320 billion, it is a huge criminal trade and the criminals can use that money to corrupt law enforcement officers and anybody else they need to in order to increase their profits and make sure that they evade prosecution.

I maintain the view that we should be enforcing the law in relation to serious and organised crime, even if drugs were controlled and regulated in the future and there was no profit in them there would still be serious and organised criminals active in them, in this country and elsewhere. We should be spending our money on pursuing them, not on pursuing users of the drugs that are currently prescribed.

We also have a problem of health being very badly affected by the fact that drugs are prohibited in this country and round the world. The state of the market which is uncontrolled, other than by criminals, is such that very little attention is paid to the purity or strength of a product. Which is why, in the UK alone, we have about a thousand deaths a year from accidental overdoses or from impurities. Recently there has been Anthrax contaminating heroin which has been on UK streets. Blood borne diseases such as HIV AIDS and hepatitis B and also transmitted, often through the sharing of needles and whilst many drug users might be aware of the health risks of sharing needles they are often driven to do that by their need to take the drug before they, for example, get arrested and have the drug taken away from them by the police.

So overall we have a situation where the drug price is high leading to criminality, theft, shoplifting, robbery, and of course the activities such as prostitution to pay for one’s illegal drug habit. We have health issues, we have extreme costs to the criminal justice system, there seems to be very little in favour of maintaining the status quo.

The most common argument is that many of the drugs which are used are harmful. This is a relatively weak argument as there are many other drugs that are seriously harmful, such as alcohol and tobacco, which are not subject to law enforcement - although they are subject to some control and regulation, unlike drugs like heroin, cocaine and cannabis.

The people who support the status quo will also argue that the law has a strong deterrent effect. Whereas if we moved to a system of control and regulation then a signal would be sent out which would result in a dramatic increase in the consumption of drugs. Surveys don't support that view and studies in a number of countries have shown that the main factors associated with drug use are cultural, societal and peer pressure and at most the fact that drug use is illegal may account for something like a 20% or a fifth of any deterrent effect. It is very difficult of course to quantify that absolutely and certainly in countries like Portugal where there has been de jure decriminalisation of personal drug use there has been no surge of increase in uptake of drugs many of the nay-sayers predicted.

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Drug Interactions - Are patients being put at risk?

Doctors are used to providing information on the risks and side effects of the medications they prescribe, but often patients are not informed of the interactions between their prescribed medication and any recreational drugs they are taking. Greta Friedlander and Jess Bradley investigate.

According to the 2005/06 British Crime Survey, just over a third of adults admit to using illicit drugs at somepoint in their lifetime, this figure increasing when considering just young people. Despite this, pharmaceutical companies and doctors often fail to provide information on the interactions of prescription drugs with illicit recreational drugs, where it is commonplace for information to be provided on a drugs interactions with alcohol.

We spoke to one student, Anne, who has been prescribed with a low dosage of Nortriptyline, a triclyclic anti-depressant. Anne is an occasional user of recreational drugs, and had not had any negative drug experiences prior to starting on her medication. Recently she decided to take some space cakes with a few friends and discovered an unexpected interaction with Nortriptyline, which had not been explained by her GP or within the information leaflet the medication came with. Anne describes her experiences below:

“I suffered nearly 24 hours of vivid hallucinations, which were far more intense than I have previously experienced on much stronger hallucinogenic drugs. I had vivid flashbacks, synaesthesia and paranoia, none of which I have never experienced on any other drugs. I spent the entire trip being terrified, the whole world became reduced to pixels of colour and I felt like the walls were moving in to crush me. At the start of my trip I watched TV for a while and believed all of the people on screen were people who I knew and were talking directly to me. I saw my own reflection and shadow trying to murder me. I had eaten space cakes a few times before, in similar quantities, and never experienced anything like this.”

“It hadn't occurred to me that my prescription drugs might interact with cannabis, although I had been avoiding alcohol on the GP's advice. I am now angry that I was not provided the information I needed by my doctor to make an informed decision about my drug use.”

Websites such as Erowid, which act as a depository for information on the interactions between different drugs and our bodies, have been created to meet the need of providing information on drug interactions in the absence of a coherent, unbiased information service by health professionals - a service which is lacking due to the drugs legal status. Many of these websites provide "trip reports", collections of experiences from drug users, which act as useful resources even though they are anecdotal in nature.

The lack of information provided to patients on the interactions between prescribed and illicit drugs is just one of many unintentional negative consequences of the drug prohibition - and one that particularly effects the most vulnerable patients.

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See also: Harm Minimisation, Self-Medication and Pleasure Maximisation (video)

June 30th: Supporting the Strikes

On the 30th of June, thousands of education and public sector workers in four trade unions will be out on strike. Jess Bradley from Manchester SSDP argues that drug law reformers should support the strikes, demonstrations, actions and occupations happening around the 30th.

A few months ago at conference, SSDP delegates from chapters across the country voted in favour of motion calling for a national campaign against cuts to education and health services, particularly those which disproportionately effects vulnerable groups and those more likely to be harmed by the 'War on Drugs'.

Trade unions representing teachers, lecturers, and job centre workers have all voted overwhelmingly in favour of taking strike action in response to cuts to pensions, but have made it clear that their actions are broadly oppositional to the recent agenda of cuts to frontline services.

It has long been said that the most important part of the services we access are people who deliver them, in this case the workers in the education and health sectors. In supporting the workers as they fight for better pay, conditions and pensions, we support the services themselves – because a teacher who is struggling to make ends meet is not a teacher who is fully focussed on providing the best education to those who need it.

Why is it important for drug law reformers to support the strikes on Thursday? Because drug users, both problematic and non-problematic, disproportionately rely on the services that are being defended. Valuable research on the harms of drugs, or different aspects of drug policy, may no longer be undertaken if academics in University departments are priced out of working in education institutions because the pay in industry is so much better, and the money available for funding diminishes.

Pastoral services, such as drug and sex education in schools may be overlooked as teachers struggle financially, and class sizes rise as less people are able to enter teacher training. Problematic drug users may find it harder to get back into work or education if services at Job Centres, schools and colleges are cut.

As activists aware of the spiralling cost of funding an unnecessary and harmful War on Drugs, it seems clear that, regardless of your opinion on whether the current cuts are necessary, we are wasting vast amounts of money on pursuing a failed drug policy at the expense of funding education and health services.

What can we do? Get involved in your local anti-cuts campaign by joining demonstrations and pickets at your institutions, job centres, and workplaces. Take a banner or a placard linking the rising cost of prohibition and the increasing levels of cuts to services that drug users rely on. Go to your local meetings and talk to activists about drug law reform. Remember to send pictures of you supporting demonstrations and pickets to education[at]ssdp.org.uk

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