War on Drugs fails - Official!

Following on from Sunday's post, today the Guardian reported the parts of the report that were originally suppressed by the govt under the FoIA 2000, the actual report is here (PDF).

It says that the traffickers enjoy such high profits that seizure rates of 60-80% are needed to have any serious impact on the flow of drugs into Britain but nothing greater than 20% has been achieved.

The study concludes that the estimated UK annual supply of heroin and cocaine could be transported into the country in five standard-sized shipping containers but has a value which at a conservative estimate tops £4bn.

Among the data suppressed... is a table... showing average street prices for various drugs. It estimates the average cost for a heavy user at £89 a week for cannabis and £525 for crack cocaine - information that is presumably at the fingertips of every hardcore drug abuser and dealer in the country.

Emphasising the inadequacy of seizure rates, the study says the result over the past 10 to 15 years has been that, "despite interventions at every point in the supply chain, cocaine and heroin consumption has been rising, prices falling and drugs have continued to reach users". [i.e. we have an admission that prohibition doesn't work]

It concludes that even if the government succeeded in reducing the availability of drugs, that could backfire because the most addicted, "high harm" users might commit more crimes to fund the purchase of ever more expensive drugs.

Here's my favourite part:

An economic model made for Downing Street shows that the profits per kilo for a major Afghan trafficker into Britain carry a profit margin as high as 58% - higher than Louis Vuitton's margin of 48% or Gucci's 30%.The actual report gives a list of how damaging to society & health various drugs are (p. 19):

• Most damaging - crack & smack


• Little damage - methadone, grass, coke, speed, E


• No damage - LSD

P. 24:

• LSD/grass/E are unlikely to cause significant health damage & use is unlikely to cause crime, but may affect the ability to care for others/work;


• Coke/speed may lead to cardiac problems (i.e. it's your risk when you take 'em), and may affect ability to work/care for others [it'd explain why it's popular with yuppies/rock-stars/other wankers!] Does this also explain our Dear Leader's "heart problems"?

If so, why are they illegal? From this list you'd think that the classifications would be altered:

• Class A (highest): crack & smack (both already Class A)


• Class C (lowest): methadone (available on prescription, but Class A); grass (already Class C)?; coke, speed & E (all Class A)?


• Legal/decriminalised: LSD, grass, E (?)

There's no real harm in doing these! But when the govt panders to the Daily Mail, common-sense/rational thinking goes out of the window...

• Page 23: drug-related crime costs the country approx £19 billion/yr, compared to approx £12 billion for booze related crime.


• Page 29: £16 billion (87%) is due to crack/smack addiction.

If drugs were legal (sale/available from a doctor/heroin clinic), this amount would almost certainly drop dramatcially as you wouldn't have people robbing your house, or committing muggings to to pay for their fix...P. 35:

• LSD - low risk to self & others


• E/grass - low risk to others, slightly higher risk to self than LSD


• Coke/speed - middle on both (speed slightly less risk to others)


• Methadone - Mid-high risk to self, same risk to others as speed


• Crack - High harm to others, mid-high risk to self


• Smack - High harm to self & others

P. 80:

Price of coke (£/g) (taking into account increases in purity):

• 1990: 280;


• 2002: 140,

Price of smack (£/g) (taking into account purity increases):

• 1990: 310


• 2002: 160

i.e. despite the "War on Drugs", the actual price of coke has halved in 12 yrs, while smack has almost halved (crack has remained stable at approx £110/g)! This fact is actually admitted on p. 91.

Overall this report is saying that the current prohibition-based drug laws are a complete failure. Hopefully, this will lead to a change in policy; however, the fact that this report was suppressed for 2 yrs (it was originally published in 2003) & the fact that only half of it was originally released via a Freedom of Information Act 2000 release (the rest being held back for reasons of "national security", & was only made available to the public via a leak to the Guardian) would suggest otherwise. This is also suggested by the passing of the Drugs Act 2005, which outlaws the sale of magic mushrooms (which are available in Manchester - I might go & buy some when I go there tomorrow; are they worth £15/30g bag? I dunno...) as of Monday 18th July 2005.

The report also says that there's too big a marketplace & too much of a supply for the drug laws to ever be effective. It's time for legalisation of all narcotics to happen, whether for sale in a specially-licenced shop (equivalent to an off-licence), a chemist, or for prescription from a doctor or heroin-clinic.

See also Transform for their comments.