Options for UK Drug Policy: Opening Up the Discussion for Rational Debate

This paper published by DrugScience addresses the failings of current drug policies and discusses the options available for change. The options are discussed from a data driven public health perspective, without moral biases.

These options include:

1. Keeping laws as they are
2. Extending current laws to include alcohol & tobacco
3. Decriminalising some or all currently legal drugs (ie downgrading from criminal to civil offences)
4. Legalisation and regulation of all drugs

The purpose of this paper is not to provide definitive guidance for future policy. Instead, the aim was to provide the options and open the discussion for debate. This is in the understanding that the current drug policies in the Uk are doing more harm than good.

However, the authors do conclude that "our only way out of the public health and criminal justice crises that have been driven by drug policy globally is to adopt the more contentious option of legalisation and regulation of all drugs commonly used non medically".

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ABSTRACT

"This paper investigates options available to policy makers responding to the challenges of drug use in modern society, focussing on the UK. It investigates the failings of prohibition policy that has driven historic reactions to drugs, drug use and drug users globally, nationally and locally.

This policy paradigm has been largely destructive and counter-productive. It has also led to a whole host of health and social problems. The authors have approached their investigation from a public health perspective, free from moral biases that have driven many policy initiatives until now. Many countries and regions of the world are rejecting prohibition as they move towards public health models in opposition to criminal justice responses, and this trend is continuing.

Four policy models are examined; prohibition as the status quo; extension of prohibition to include alcohol and other drugs; decriminalisation; legalisation and regulation of all drugs. Each of these policy options are contested; none have universal support. However, given careful consideration, this paper proposes that our only way out of the public health and criminal justice crises that have been driven by drug policy globally is to adopt the more contentious option of legalisation and regulation of all drugs commonly used non medically."