It’s your human right to take drugs
Junkies could use privacy law to avoid jail say MPs
DRUG users have a ‘human right’ to take banned substances and even grow their own cannabis, MPs and peers say today.
The group – made up of exsenior police and lawmakers – says human rights legislation could be used as a defence against prosecution.
People caught with illegal drugs such as skunk, ecstasy and cocaine would be able to argue they have a right to a private and family life, their report claims.
And, because they do not ‘injure’ others, possession, purchase or even growing drugs should not be a criminal offence.
Experts say the report is now likely to spark a test case brought by a drug user. This could then open the ‘floodgates’ for people using Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights to fend off criminal action.
The argument has been put forward by the influential All
‘This is diabolical’
Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy Reform, which has almost 100 members.
The group claims the ‘blanket prohibition’ approach has failed and new rules are needed which focus more on human rights.
Its findings are likely to be seized upon by pro-drug activists, given the seniority of the group’s members. They include ex-Met Commissioner Ian Blair, former Justice Secretary Lord Falconer and ex-Labour leader Lord Kinnock.
The report says: ‘The ECHR, in particular Article 8, could be invoked in support of the argument that possession or purchase (or cultivation of drugs for personal use) do not injure other people’s rights and therefore should not be criminalised.’
However Mary Brett, from charity Cannabis Skunk Sense, said the thinking behind the conclusion was flawed.
She said: ‘This is diabolical. Of course drugs injure other people. People can get psychotic when they take cannabis and can get really violent. We see the harm it does to families. Also, people steal to get money to buy drugs. That injures others.’
Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee, said that using human rights laws as an argument in favour of decriminalisation was the wrong approach.
‘This is novel as far as decriminalisation is concerned,’ he said. ‘One exemption, though minor, could open the floodgates. Human rights legislation is not designed to be used in this way.’
The report conceded that harm to third parties could arise, such as incidents involving drug driving, but it said this was no different to people drinking alcohol.
It also calls for the Government to introduce a market for the legal sale of cannabis.
The report said there was a need to introduce an ‘experimental ethos’ in an approach which has ‘less focus upon prohibition, and greater emphasis upon human rights, public health and social welfare’.
The inquiry’s joint-head, Baroness Meacher, said licensed premises could sell tested cannabis. She said it would be ‘wonderful if our government would trial a regulated market’.
The European Convention is enshrined into UK law by Labour’s Human Rights Act. If British judges rule an existing law is incompatible with the HRA, it is accepted by ministers that they must change it.
Critics say that, in effect, the HRA is capable of trumping all other legislation. A Government spokesman said: ‘This Government has no intention of decriminalising or legalising drugs.’