I know, it’s a real surprise. An absolute clanger. It would seem that prohibition and the hardline-hardline and more hardline approach to drug trafficking and abuse is still not remotely effective. Anyone would think we needed to change our thinking and strategy. What? La revolution? Something tells me the right-wingers will have the say for a long while to come lest they be typecast as “soft on drugs”. “Soft” is what i would classify as persueing the same stupid, irrational and ineffective policy over and over again even thought it’s been proven time and time again not to work.

The UK Drug Policy Commission have had quite a fanfair on the wires today after publishing their very interesting report entitled “Tackling Drug Networks and Distribution Networks in the UK” complete with some fascinating statistics.

• Latest figures (for 2003/04) estimate the size of the UK illicit drug market to be £5.3 billion and is considered to pose the single greatest organised crime threat to the UK.
• About one-quarter of the total cost of delivering the drug strategy has been dedicated to reducing supply (£380 million in 2005/06).
• Drug markets have proven to be extremely resilient. They are highly fluid and adapt to law enforcement interventions.
• While the availability of controlled drugs is restricted by definition, it appears that additional enforcement efforts had had little adverse effect on the availability of illicit drugs in the UK.
• The available evidence suggests that street-level drug law enforcement should focus on forging productive local partnerships and not rely solely on police crackdowns.
• The authors were unable to locate any comprehensive published UK evidence of the relative effectiveness of different enforcement approaches. They were also not able to identify any published comparative cost-benefit or value-for-money analysis for different interventions within the UK.
• Enforcement can have a significant and unintended negative impact on the nature and extent of harms associated with drugs and this should be recognised and minimised.

Here’s some very interesting food for thought. £6BN market in the UK? Just get governments together to buy all the illegal drugs being produced from the funds being used to buy arms (trillions of dollars PA), and get the investment back through the savings in treatment and enforcement.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/…-move-to-legalise-poppy-crops-442807.html

BBC summary:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7531860.stm

Full report:
http://www.ukdpc.org.uk/resources/Drug_Markets_Full_Report.pdf