Pubdate: Wed, 03 Jul 2013
Source: Belfast Telegraph (UK)
Copyright: 2013 Belfast Telegraph Newspapers Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/42
Author: Fionola Meredith
Page: 29

WHY WE SHOULD PUNISH THE PUSHERS, BUT NOT DRUG USERS

Drug taking comes second only to the spectre of paedophilia in its
ability to get the public in a panic. Both evoke a murky, squalid
underworld populated by depraved ghouls intent on getting their kicks.

And when illicit drugs cause a spate of sudden deaths - eight people
have lost their lives over recent weeks in Northern Ireland, in
apparently drug-related circumstances - the fear and loathing is
cranked up still higher. Who to blame? Who to punish? Which shadowy
figures can be dragged forth into the daylight and held to account?

The official response, so far, seems to be that the police should
shape up and catch the "nasty people", as health minister Edwin Poots
helpfully describes the paramilitary drug-dealers who may be supplying
these deadly little green pills.

Other than that, our leaders have no answer to the problem other than
the usual old pointless, paternalistic message: "Don't do drugs, kids".

I can imagine the scenario: it's 1am in a Belfast nightclub, and a
young clubber is about to pop a pill. But as he lifts it to his lips,
a vision of Mr Poots shaking his head in sad disappointment, appears
in the young man's mind. So he takes the pill and, with a sigh of
relief and a warm glow of inner piety, flushes it down the nearest
toilet. Phew, saved at one stroke from crime and degeneracy.

Yeah, right. How about we start living in the real world? To my mind,
it's time for a radical rethink of society's approach to hard drugs.
Instead of baying for retribution, like a medieval crowd looking for
someone to slap in the stocks, we should be looking for smarter
answers, informed not by heated emotion but by evidence-based science.
Moral opprobrium has no place in this strategy, and neither does
woolly statements of official disapproval.

So, as a first step, how about we do the unthinkable and decriminalise
the possession of drugs for personal use? I know, I know, it sounds
like lunacy, doesn't it? Fearful instinct suggests that the streets
would be awash with madeyed junkies and their dirty, discarded needles.

But while decriminalising drugs may seem frightening and
counter-intuitive, the fact is that it has been shown to work.

In the years since Portugal decriminalised the use and possession of
all illicit drugs, in 2001, studies have shown that young people
growing up there actually use fewer drugs, and deaths from heroin have
fallen.

It's a similar story in the Netherlands, where cannabis is (famously)
decriminalised: young people living there are less likely to use the
drug than their counterparts in Britain or the United States, where
users are regarded as criminals.

Why not go a step further, and allow certain drugs to be regulated and
even made available on prescription? Again, it sounds bonkers, but
experts

who work with addicts know that this makes good, rational
sense.

Regulation also cuts the link between users and unscrupulous dealers,
whose primary objective is to get their customers hooked on the most
addictive drugs, such as heroin and crack cocaine.

Treating addicts as patients, not as criminals, requires a fairly
substantial shift in the public attitude to drugs, from punitive zeal
to informed compassion.

You can understand resistance to the idea: by allowing healthcare
workers to administer regulated drugs to users, it could appear that
the state is officially encouraging addiction.

But Professor David Nutt, former chief drug adviser to the British
government, points to a Swiss programme which allowed long-term
treatment-resistant addicts to take clean pharmaceutical heroin under
medical supervision.

Nutt says that the initiative has "stabilised chaotic lives, allowing
users to be socially reintegrated, getting homes and sometimes jobs...
as well as removing the health harms associated with polluted,
inconsistent street drugs." Few die, and some even make it to the
final destination of total abstinence.

As Nutt points out, it isn't just the addicts who benefit: "Crime fell
enormously once users could access heroin from the State rather than
profiteering dealers ... the expensive programme more than pays for
itself in healthcare and law enforcement savings."

Let's be clear, I'm not advocating some cuddly, dope- addled 'anything
goes' attitude to the sale and consumption of illicit drugs. By all
means, pursue and punish the dealers, the parasites who feed off the
all-too-human need for fantasy and escape.

But we must not extend that punitive approach to the users
themselves.

Drug addicts are sick people, not evil criminals, and that's the way
we should treat them.
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MAP posted-by: Matt