Drugs: cracking down on middle-class users

“Few would disagree that Britain has a drugs problem,” said The Daily Telegraph. There are now more than 300,000 problem drug users in England – and according to the Government, they are responsible for around half of all thefts, robberies and burglaries; almost half of homicides are linked to drugs. Deaths due to illicit drugs exceeded 4,500 last year in England and Wales, and the societal cost is estimated at nearly £20bn a year. So it’s good that the Government is determined to do something about it. Its “ten-year drugs plan” was published this week, promising an extra £780m for treatment and recovery, and a crackdown on both “county lines” drug supply operations and recreational users. The latter will face “escalating sanctions” such as curfews or the temporary removal of a passport or driving licence. The nagging doubt remains, though, that this will be merely “the latest in a long line of initiatives over the years, most of them promising much the same thing”.

Cracking down on recreational drug users is long overdue, said Brendan O’Neill in The Spectator. They are the “real culprits” here. Their demand feeds an entire network of violence and exploitation, comprising brutal traffickers, desperate mules and working-class kids who get caught up in drug-dealing. It’s right that affluent users should face “the consequences of their habits”: police, for instance, will have the power to go through drug dealers’ phones and warn clients about their behaviour. On the contrary, said Henry Hill on CapX: even by the “abysmal” standards of the war on drugs, the plan to crack down on “middle-class drug users” is particularly pathetic. If ministers want to tackle the social harm caused by drugs, they need to focus on the drugs that attract problem users: primarily crack and heroin. Given the limited resources available, it would be a complete waste of time to focus on “perfectly functional users (middle-class or otherwise)” who don’t commit other crimes – and, perhaps more to the point, “rarely get caught”.

Fifty years on from the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, it must be clear that “ever fiercer punishment is no deterrent and no solution”, said Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. Working-class communities have been devastated; drug fatalities per million are at three times the EU rate; prisons are full of drug users. And clubs and pubs – and even, according to a recent report, the lavatories of Parliament – are still awash with narcotics. Other democracies have acknowledged their failures, and are looking for new solutions such as decriminalisation. “The time has surely come for research and piloting, not a retreat into yet more tabloid authoritarianism.”