During the course of the election campaign it is my aim to write a blog (almost) every day. Posts will be a combination of reflections on the course of the campaign and my own suggestions for policies the next government, whatever its complexion, should adopt.
Former UKIP Leader, Nigel Farage, recently called for a comprehensive review of drugs policy and suggested legalising all currently controlled substances. On Radio 4's Any Questions, the UKIP leader said: 'prohibition in this whole area simply isn't working...I think we need a full Royal Commission on drugs...I think there is an argument that says that if we decriminalised it [drugs], we'd make the lives of millions of people far better than they are today'.
Whilst Mr Farage's support for the decriminalisation of all drugs is a view to which I am not totally unsympathetic, I agree with him entirely that we need a Royal Commission to review current drugs legislation in the United Kingdom. Our current drugs laws - dating to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, that created the current Class A, B, C, system - simply aren't working.
Current classifications do not represent the true risks involved in using different types of drugs. The fact that ecstasy is in the same category as heroin when the medical effects of each are totally different (the effects of ecstasy are far less severe) demonstrates the level of confusion in drugs policy at the moment. Labour and the Conservatives need to break the taboo on drugs and think outside their usual mantra of being 'tough on drugs' (even though nobody knows what that means).
A Royal Commission need not lead to the legalisation of any drug that is currently illegal in this country. But it would give us a chance to evaluate the scientific evidence behind each substance currently covered by drugs laws and find a new system that reflects the real medical and social impacts of different drugs and determine appropriate responses from the state for possession and supply of such drugs. The Royal Commission should not simply concentrate on scientific evidence; the Professor Nutt row has proven that drugs policy is as much about the social, moral and economic issues around drugs as the scientific issue. It should take evidence from doctors, scientists, politicians, those who work with drug addicts and drug users themselves.
A Royal Commission would give Britain the chance to adopt a drugs policy that actually deals with the nations' ever-present drugs problem rather than the hopeless excuse of a drugs law we have at the moment.
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