Thanks Bob, maybe now we'll get an informed debate about drugs and prohibition

Every now and then a politician says something that opens up debate by breaking a taboo. Today, in his clunky, slightly ill-informed way Bob Ainsworth, a former Labour cabinet minister, did just that by says drugs should be legalised. Well nearly – what he actually said was that drugs should be medicalised which isn’t quite the same thing.

"I am not a libertarian. I don't believe that you should buy heroin on street corners and get yourself zonked out. But we have to treat this as a medical problem."

But what matters is that a politician actually broke ranks and challenged the dreadful – killing – orthodoxy about drugs.

“Prohibition has failed to protect us. Leaving the drugs market in the hands of criminals causes huge and unnecessary harms to individuals, communities and entire countries, with the poor the hardest hit. We spend billions of pounds without preventing the wide availability of drugs. It is time to replace our failed war on drugs with a strict system of legal regulation, to make the world a safer, healthier place, especially for our children.”

Of course the reaction has been just as we might expect with current ministers and Bob Ainsworth’s ineffectual party leader condemning his for saying such a terrible thing. After all think of the children:

Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said today that the legalisation of drugs would send out "the wrong message" to young people as he distanced himself from a Labour backbencher's calls for a "grown-up debate" on the issue.

So no grown-up debate from Red Ed then! However, the genie is out of the bottle – us politicians are able to speak out on the subject (rather than, as my father did, waiting until retiring to declare that drugs should be legalised). For what it’s worth here’s a few thoughts from me:

1. I see no good reason to keep drugs such as cannabis and ecstasy (plus mushrooms of course) illegal – millions of people use them (mostly without causing anyone any bother at all) and the drugs are produced here in the UK. I am happy to listen to contrary arguments but my feeling is that this single act of decriminalisation would have a hugely beneficial impact on crime and disorder

2. For drugs imported from other places – chiefly heroin and cocaine – there’s more of a problem since we would be bringing the drugs in from a place where growing and producing the substance is still illegal. Liberalisation can only work if it is co-ordinated internationally

3. The liberalisation agenda is not well served by the denormalisation of smoking and drinking – high levels of duty and distribution controls are creating new criminal enterprises

4. The medicalisation of drugs (and for that matter tobacco) is, in reality, only a marginal improvement on prohibition – probably right for heroin but not for less harmful drugs

5. I may be completely wrong – the only answer might be violent repression, the death penalty for possession and more intensive searches. My feeling however is that if that’s the answer we’re asking the wrong question

Whatever comes of the debate – the fact that we now might start to have one that isn’t conducted exclusively with the Daily Mail’s op ed page in mind is very welcome. I hope some other MPs jump off the “war on drugs” juggernaut and begin to examine how liberalisation might actually reduce the harm and damage drugs do to our communities.

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Professor Nutt wants to control alcohol not liberalise drugs.

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There are various ways in which we might look at Professor Nutt’s pronouncements on the UK’s drugs policies and, in particular, that part of the policy framework concerned with the classification of drugs. And we should note, of course, that Professor Nutt is an “expert” in such matters having chaired the Government’s (name of drugs advisory board). Plus of a course a hero of “evidence-based policy-making” because he resigned from said advisory panel during the heated debate about miaow-miaow or some other such ‘legal high’.

Looking at Professor Nutt’s comments brings one of two responses:

1. Our drugs classification system – indeed the entirety of our drugs policy – is based on prejudice, ignorance and misunderstanding rather than on “the science”. The good professor is saying to public authorities that the system needs reform amd, of course, reform means liberalisation

2. The problem with our drugs policy – and its medicalisation – is that some drugs are outside of its remit. And alcohol is by far the more significant of those drugs (although nicotine, caffeine and other ‘legal’ highs are also partly outside the influence of the medical/pharmaceutical industry’s control).

To understand which of these positions most typifies Professor Nutt, we need to look at what he has said – both in this instance – and on other occasions.

Prof Nutt had sparked the controversy earlier this week by attacking what he called the "artificial" separation of alcohol and tobacco from other, illegal, drugs. He also repeated his claim that the risks of taking ecstasy are no worse than riding a horse.

Firstly, Professor Nutt is very clear that he wants any reform to be about bringing alcohol (and tobacco but not caffeine) within the remit of the drugs control system. The intention of prohibitionists like Professor Nutt is not to prevent people having access to drugs but to ensure that any access is moderated through the aegis of the medical profession.

Thus the moral jeopardy here is not the ancient jeopardy – the sin of drinking – but a modern jeopardy - the sin of ill-health. In the view of people like Professor Nutt, behaviour that threatens our health is itself a pathology – an illness. People who smoke, who drink more than an extremely modest amount, who eat too much or the wrong food and who fail to exercise enough are all in need of treatment and support.

In many ways this is a less threatening attack on lifestyle choices than the classic prohibitionist attack. Who, after all, can argue with the good doctors and their friends in the drugs companies when they say they just want to help us to be healthier? Even when the medicalisation of behaviour results in a further extension of treatments within the health industry – each of which carry a cost. And, of course, Professor Nutt – by distancing himself from the Government’s drugs policy – appears to be on the side of the liberal view. This makes his views still more dangerous.

Others will – I’m sure – remind us of the poor science involved here. The conflating of individual and social “harms”, the selective list of these “harms” and the careful choice of data on which to adjudge the “harms”.

I merely want to point out the moral hazards implicit in Professor Nutt’s position including the way in which the ‘New Puritan’ controls create a new criminal opportunity, further marginalise drug use thereby increasing abuse and increase the pressure on health resources by creating new “illnesses” where there were no illnesses before. Our behaviour – including seemingly irrational behaviour such as drug use – is not in most cases a pathology to be managed through the medical profession but a set of choices that we make freely as individuals.

There is a debate to be had about the degree to which “society” (however we choose to define it) can act to limit and control behaviours that damage that “society”. In making this assessment we have to judge between proximate problems such as the drink driver running down a child or the junkie mugging an old lady and ultimate problems (in the aggregate) derived from the estimation of ‘costs’ – be they healthcare, crime or other costs – and the identification of moral hazards such as the ‘corruption’ of children or transferable (‘second-hand’ or even ‘third-hand’) health concerns. Put simply the illness must be contagious – or at least appear that way.

It seems to me very difficult to justify – in a liberal society – measures to control behaviour founded not on the risks to another individual but on the basis of ill-defined “costs” to society in general. Yet this is the basis on which people such as Professor Nutt proceed – the justification for their controls and for the medicalisation of lifestyle choices. That and a wholly rational (and possibly selfish) view that the medical profession and its outriders know better and should be allowed to exercise such controls in the “interests of society”.

There is more moral hazard in Professor Nutt's proposals than you think. He is a very dangerous man.

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Friday Fungus: Pleospora papaveracea and the war on drugs

My mycological fascination button was activated by this little posting from Al Jahom about research into using Pleospora papaveracea (and other mold-like fungi) as a biological agent to control opium poppy production back in 2000. And recent reports on a serious fungal infection of Afghan poppies! Some of the research abstracts are here and one concludes that:

In the field, P. papaveracea was more consistent in its effects on opium poppy from a local seed source designated Indian Grocery. P. papaveracea caused higher disease ratings, more stem lesions, and equal or greater yield losses than did D. penicillatum on Indian Grocery. The late-maturing opium poppy variety White Cloud was severely damaged by disease, regardless of formulation or fungal treatment. P. papaveracea was the predominant fungus isolated from poppy seed capsules and the only fungus reisolated from the field the following year. These studies provide a better understanding of the infection process and the differences between these two pathogenic fungi and will be beneficial for the development of the fungi as biological control agents.

There is no doubt that P. papaveracea is effective against opium poppies – especially when the plants are young and the Afghan growers’ description of the disease affecting their crops is consistent with a mildew-like fungal infection. P. papaveracea is a natural parasitic fungus of poppies native to central Asia – not the product of genetic engineering or manipulation.

However, there will always be concerns about the deliberate introduction of biological agents – even naturally occurring ones – to a given environment in terms of secondary effects as well as impacts on human health. There is no confirmation that the Afghan reports are the result of deliberate human action and it could be a natural outbreak of an existing fungus. Indeed, the outbreak could be effectively controlled (I suspect) through the use of the aerial spraying techniques used to control fungal and pest threats to less controversial crops.

Similar fungal agents are being developed to control coca and marijuana production and recently Peru has passed a law banning the use of biological agents in coca eradication. Also – as has been the case with apples and roses – breeding programmes are likely to result in disease resistant varieties.

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