Addicts have a human right to take drugs, say peers

DRUG users have a human right to feed their habit, MPs and peers have said, as they claimed international conventions banning drugs need to be reformed.

The all-party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform said in a report that Article 8 of the European Conven- tion on Human Rights – the rights to “private and family life” – could be deployed by drug users who face prosecution.

Regulation of banned substances “needs to reflect the supremacy of human rights conventions”, the 30page study said.

It was the latest in a series of controversial proposals by the committee which two years ago said heroin and cocaine should be decriminalised.

“For European countries the European Convention on Human Rights, in particular Article 8, could be invoked in support of the argument that possession or purchase or cultivation of drugs for personal use, particularly in small quantities, do not injure other people’s rights either directly or indirectly and therefore should not be criminalised,” it said.

“The interpretation of the Drug Control Conventions must take full account of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the impact of current policies in human terms.”

The group is an informal parliamentary committee that enjoys cross-party membership, including Tories Lord Lawson of Blaby, the former Chancellor, and Lord Fowler of Sutton Coldfield, a former Conservative Party chairman. Baroness Manningham-Buller, ex-director general of MI5, is also a member.

The group said the UN conventions setting out how members must prohibit drug use and punish offenders – first drafted in 1961 – had “failed to reduce addiction worldwide”.