Pubdate: Tue, 27 Jan 2009
Source: Times, The (UK)
Copyright: 2009 Times Newspapers Ltd
Contact:  http://www.the-times.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/454
Author: Andy Hayman
Note: Andy Hayman was Assistant Commissioner for Special Operations 
at Scotland Yard

THE STREETS DON'T CARE WHAT CLASS DRUGS ARE

Upgrading Cannabis And Downgrading Ecstasy Will Make No Difference To 
Policing Their Misuse

Cannabis was reclassified yesterday from C to B. The Advisory Council 
on the Misuse of Drugs is preparing to give its recommendation to the 
Home Secretary soon that Ecstasy be downgraded from A to B.

I'm never sure which is more arbitrary - the fashion for uppers or 
downers that changes wildly with each generation of drug-users, or 
the fashion in policy-making circles for downgrading one year and 
upgrading the next. We need to scrap the whole classification process 
- - it is outdated, not understood by the public and utterly irrelevant 
to life on the streets.

I used to serve on the council in my capacity as the leading police 
officer on drugs policy. By the end of my stint I felt that its 
detachment from grassroots reality had eroded its credibility. Its 
purpose seemed to be to generate endless rounds of meetings and 
glossy reports to send to ministers.

Up to 70 members - made up of representatives from all sorts of 
government and voluntary bodies - attended the unwieldy full 
meetings, which were supported by a plethora of smaller working 
groups and sub-committees. I was always struck by how the experience 
of those living in the thick of the drugs problem got lost among the 
grey suits having highbrow technical and medical discussions. 
Although street-workers are represented, the actual men and women who 
work closely with dependent users do not attend.

The council would be horrified to learn that its recommendations on 
drugs classification are not taken seriously. But that is the case. 
The public either don't understand the process or are not interested 
in it. For the police, the advisory council is a sideshow; officers 
prefer to apply their professional discretion on whether to caution 
or arrest suspects.

Put bluntly, how a drug is classified doesn't help police officers in 
their day-to-day duties. The first thought of an officer confronted 
by a user of an illegal drug is to weigh up whether the possession 
warrants anything more than a caution. To make an arrest and charge 
doesn't guarantee a prosecution so it may be simpler to deal with it 
on the street. That decision is made regardless of the classification 
of the drug involved.

For the courts, categorising a drug does help to provide a tariff for 
punishment. But even that idea has become dated as the Crown 
Prosecution Service now tends to apply its own prosecution 
guidelines. In practice, the classification of a drug does not 
significantly change how the courts or police deal with drug offenders.

This is well illustrated by the moves to reclassify cannabis and 
Ecstasy. The upgrading of cannabis is presumably intended to trigger 
a tougher enforcement policy towards its users and dealers.

Conversely, the downgrading of Ecstasy sends a message to encourage a 
more relaxed approach. But past evidence suggests that life on the 
streets and in the courts will not change.

Cannabis is so prevalent that how it is policed is dictated by 
manpower and resources - there is simply not enough time for the 
police or the courts to push high numbers of offenders through the 
system. Regardless of the advisory council's rulings, the police and 
courts take a more lenient view towards users of cannabis because 
they deem it as less harmful than other drugs. I expect those same 
people will judge Ecstasy to still be a dangerous drug. 
Reclassification will change nothing

It is time to abandon any form of categorisation - regardless of 
their classifications, they are all illegal drugs and the powers of 
the police to deal with each type hardly differ. To varying degrees 
each category carries the power to arrest and search a suspect or 
premises. If the minor differences were ironed out and police were 
given the same powers to deal with all drug offences this would be a 
simple message to convey to the public.

Setting the tariffs for punishment is even simpler. The courts 
already apply their own criteria for sentencing across a range of 
drug offences. Each case is considered on its own merits, aligning 
the crime with the punishment. If the courts required help in setting 
a tariff, a medical guide could be provided. This does not require 
the protracted and expensive classification process conducted by a 
large committee working at public expense.

After all, no equivalent body to the advisory council meets to 
provide technical advice to the courts for other types of criminal offending.

The classification of drugs matters only to the council and 
politicians - it is an irrelevance to the police and to other drug 
agencies. The decison by Jacqui Smith, the present Home Secretary, to 
reverse David Blunkett's downgrading of cannabis hints more of a 
political ping-pong match than anything more serious. More effort is 
directed towards debating how a drug should be classified than to 
trying to stem the misuse of drugs.

Rather than soldiering on trying to make a classification process 
that was designed in 1971 work in 2009, we should drop the pretence 
that classification matters.

Andy Hayman was Assistant Commissioner for Special Operations at Scotland Yard
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart