Students for Sensible Drug Policy UK

SSDP UK conference call out

2012-02-21T18:39:00.004Z

Call for Papers/Presentations: Students for Sensible Drug Policy UK annual conference 2012

“Building Leadership in the Drug Policy Reform Movement”
School of Oriental and African Studies, London.
20-22nd April 2012
frequently justify the millions of pounds spent on fueling The War on Drugs as a means of protecting our youth from drug harms. For many young people, especially those from ethnic minority backgrounds, the reality of punitive drug policies mean increasing amounts of police harassment, surveillance and unnecessary criminalisation.

How does drug prohibition impact on young people today?

What role do young people have to play in fighting against drug prohibition?

How can we empower young people to become leaders of our movement?

Every year SSDP UK hold a conference to bring together activists, academics and young people from across the UK and Europe to mobilise against the drug prohibition. This year our conference will focus on practical ways to empower young people in our movement.

A non-exhaustive list of issues we are interested in:

- The impact of punitive drug laws on young people, particularly those from ethnic minorities

- The impact of discriminatory policing practices, particularly in a post-riot social landscape

- Practical and innovative ways to create a space for young people to be empowered

- How should the drug law reform movement organise?

- The role of Cannabis Social Clubs, Drug Users Unions, Students societies and community groups in mobilising against drug prohibition

We welcome proposals for papers, presentations, videos, workshops, art pieces, on a variety of subjects (be creative!). Due this year’s conference location in London, we are especially interested in hearing from London based activists, artists, academics, young people, and youth workers who can give the local angle, but don't let that put you off getting in touch if you are from elsewhere :)

Please email levent.akbulut@ssdp.org.uk or education@ssdp.org.uk with your ideas by Wednesday 7th March.

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Student Elections

2012-02-13T16:15:00.002Z

Yes, its this time of year again - where student politicians start gearing up to convince the student body that they are the best candidate to vote for in the upcoming student elections.

At SSDP, we reckon that it can be really quite useful to get SSDP activists involved in student unions politics. Sabbatical officers can ensure students are getting unbiased and relevant harm reduction information and are well placed to advocate on behalf of students facing eviction from halls of residence for drug use.

If you are interested in standing in your union elections and you want some advice on what policies around drugs and welfare that could be good to include in your manifesto then please get in touch at education[at]ssdp.org.uk

Even if you aren't interested in standing in students union elections, emailing the candidates during the campaign period and asking them what their stance on drug policy reform and providing harm reduction information within unions is a great way of ensuring that drug policy remains a relevant issue on campus. If you publicly publish the answers within your facebook group and through your mailing lists than your members can also have a better idea of which candidates to vote for.

Research on mephedrone

2012-01-28T21:29:00.004Z

G Jones summarizes some new research on the effects of mephedrone.

The research done here indicates that there is no neurotoxicity caused by mephedrone to the dopamine systems in the brain. Amongst other things, these systems affect reward, learning, motivation, sexual gratification and attention span, and the fact that even in doses resembling significant binges (1-3g for a 70kg person) there is no damage here is very reassuring. That said, there is evidence which shows that mephedrone causes significant and persistent serotonin deficits, similar to MDMA.

Read the papers exploring mephedrone's effect on serotonin and dopamine. If you are a current student, it is likely you can read the papers by logging in through your university's VPN client or through Athens, or alternatively check it out at the library.

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Statement regarding Peter Reynolds and CLEAR

2012-01-23T17:24:00.004Z

It has come to our attention that the current leader of CLEAR (Cannabis Law Reform), Peter Reynolds, has in recent weeks come under fire for his allegedly homophobic, racist and sexist blogposts.

Drug prohibition affects us all. Yet discriminatory practices in policing, healthcare and wider society mean that young people and minorities are often disproportionately impacted by the War on Drugs. Students for Sensible Drug Policy UK has long enjoyed good relationships with BME people, young people, disabled people, LGBT people and women based on solidarity and friendship, and we hope this situation will continue.

We feel that BME people, young people, disabled people, LGBT people and women are and should be actively involved at every level of our organisation and the wider movement, and as such we cannot risk this alienating commentary to go unchallenged. We unreservedly condemn racism, ableism, sexism and homophobia, particularly from within our own movement.

On the formation of the Cannabis Law Reform party, SSDP UK welcomed endeavours to re-engage the cannabis community with grassroots drug law reform activism, and what we have witnessed overall was largely very positive. Recently, however, we have been greatly disappointed by the reported inappropriate, unprofessional and discriminatory behaviours of a few individuals. We believe that public figures have a responsibility to the movement when they chose to make their private views known in public forums - and they should not be unprepared to be criticized where these are offensive to the vast majority of activists, or descend into petty ad hominem attacks on individuals. We believe that all activists within our movement should behave in an appropriate manner, and condemn any attacks on individuals' private lives.

SSDP UK feels that the mismanagement of this issue by CLEAR is potentially damaging for the wider movement's credibility and reputation. It is for this reason alone the Board has refrained from making this statement or its concerns public to date.

We do not wish to interfere in the running of other organisations, but as the executive board of SSDP UK we have a responsibility to our members to ensure that our movement is a safe space for them to organise. As such, we feel that the actions of the CLEAR leader has made a working relationship untenable and we cannot allow SSDP UK to be associated with CLEAR until we feel that their leadership demonstrates it understands the seriousness and problematic nature of recent events, and takes appropriate steps to remedy the situation.

We hope that we are able to maintain and strengthen our good relationships with the committed cannabis activists who share our values of solidarity and equality.

UPDATE: This post has been edited on 29/01/2012 to include the phrase: "We believe that all activists within our movement should behave in an appropriate manner, and condemn any attacks on individuals' private lives."

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The Junky's Christmas by William Burroughs

2011-12-25T00:27:00.009Z

In the spirit of the holiday season, we would like to wish all of our members and supporters a very Merry Christmas!

When you sit down during the holiday season, and reflect on the recent successes towards a sensible drugs policy and the many steps that must be treaded, take some time to watch William Burrough's narration of the Junky's Christmas with claymation.

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International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

2011-12-15T11:24:00.002Z

Today is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. Find out more about sex worker rights at the Sex Workers Open University

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How long would it take you to score drugs?

2011-11-28T15:01:00.004Z

Our friends at knowdrugs.net ask Londoners how easily they could score cannabis and cocaine.

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Letter writing campaign: HIV in Russia

2011-11-23T18:31:00.007Z

This World Aids Day, SSDP is supporting the International Network of People who Use Drugs'campaign for harm reduction policies to be implemented in Russia.

Russia has about 1.7 million injecting drug users with only 70 needle exchanges. In 2008, UNAIDS estimated that just 7% of injecting drug users had access to these services. Learn more about the situation in Russia here.

We are asking SSDP activists to take the time around World Aids Day to write to the Russian embassy to call for change. There is a model letter below, but feel free to change it if you like. Maybe your chapter could run an Amnesty International style letter writing session? Let us know if you get any interesting replies, by emailing education[at]ssdp.org.uk

Dear Ambassador,

In most of the developed world, HIV/AIDS is successfully fought using a variety of harm-reduction and health-led approaches, as recommended by UNAIDS, the WHO and the UNODC. On average, countries adopting such approaches have HIV rates among 5% amongst injecting drug users.

However, over a third of Russia’s 1.7million injecting drug users are HIV positive, a number which continues to rise through the lack of access clean needles or opioid substitution therapy.

I request that Russia considers the implementation of the following measures:

· Increase the provision of life-saving programmes such as opiod substitution treatment and needle exchange programme

· Provide free access to antiviral therapy for all HIV positive people, including those who inject drugs.

· Cease persecuting Russian activists and organisations that are calling for the introduction of harm reduction programmes and for a drug policies based on scientific evidence and human rights.

· Recognise that people who use drugs must be at the forefront of designing drug policies and programmes.

· Cease criminalising the possession and use of drugs, which is a major barrier for people who inject drugs to access the harm reduction services available.

I trust that you will take action to reduce the harms associated with drug use in Russia.

Believe me, My Dear Ambassador,

Yours sincerely,
[NAME]

[SSDP Chapter or Area]

Send your letters to: His Excellency Alexander Vladimirovich Yakavenko, The Russian Ambassador, 6/7 Kensington Palace Gardens, London, W8 4QP. Call +44 (0) 20 7229 6412, + 44 (0) 20 7229 7281 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7727 8625. Email: science@rusemb.org.uk

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What are you doing for World Aids Day?

2011-11-18T08:33:00.007Z

World Aids Day on December 1st is a chance to remember those we have lost to HIV/Aids and to mobilise around harm reduction campaigns. Drug users as a group continue to be effected by HIV/Aids and its important that grassroots organisations like SSDP get involved in organising events and campaigns to support those living with HIV/Aids and to campaign for harm reductionist policies. There are plenty of things that SSDP activists can do on their campuses and in their communities to observe the occasion, we have come up with a short list of ideas of things to do but it is in no way exhaustive. We have also tried to ensure that we have ideas that both activists in chapters and without chapter support can organise.

1. Run an event!

Run an event which highlights some of the issues around HIV/Aids on your campuses and in your communities. Perhaps join up with other groups and societies who might also be interested (charity groups, LGBT Societies, human rights groups, etc.) Many student unions now have groups like Universities Allied for Essential Medicines or Student Stop Aids who do a lot of work on advocating for increased access to HIV/Aids medicines, and who are usually very informed and might be up for a joint event. Perhaps you can get an external speaker from a charity or campaign in during the week around World Aids Day, or read up about the situation in Russia where about 60% of new cases of HIV are IV drug related and give a presentation or run a discussion group about the issue. If you can, film it and send us a copy of the video!

2. Write an article for this blog / your student paper / your local paper

For the week around World Aids Day we will be trying to get articles specifically focused on HIV/Aids out to you via this blog - if you want to write something please get in touch by emailing education[at]ssdp.org.uk. Writing articles for your local student/community paper is also really important in raising the profile of SSDP and creating awareness around not just how drug users are effected by HIV/Aids, but some of the past activism and solutions the drug using community have developed, such as community ran needle exchanges.

3. Run an event to a local HIV/Aids vigil

Nearly every city will have a local candlelit vigil to commemorate those we have lost. Why not bring your chapter along to one? Think about bringing a banner, placard or flyers to raise awareness of how HIV/Aids affect drug users, but make sure you get in contact with the organisers of the vigil for permission first as it might not be seen as appropriate. And if you don't have a local vigil - create one! Get in touch with other groups who might be interested (charity societies on campuses and in communities, LGBT societies, etc. ) and get something going!

4. Run an SSDP stall which fundraises for a local HIV/Aids campaign/charity

Running a stall on campus or in your communities is a great way to improve the profile of SSDP, and to recruit new members. Why not use the opportunity to fundraise for a local HIV/Aids campaign or charity as well? Make sure you check out our guide to running a stall before you set out!

5. Write a letter to the Russian Embassy

This year SSDP will be running a letter-writing campaign all throughout December in solidarity with people who inject drugs in Russia, where the rates of HIV infection within this community is shockingly high. We will be supporting the International Network of People who Use Drugs campaign on the issue, and launching a letter writing campaign a few days before World Aids Day. Perhaps you could hand out copies of letters to the Russian embassy at any events you organise or take people along to, or organise a letter writing session on your campuses or communities.

6. Join the online vigil

Take a photo of yourself with a candle and a sign saying "World Aids Day 2011: Remember those who we have lost, Campaigning for Harm Reduction" which can be found here (or make your own customised sign) and send it to education[at]ssdp.org.uk to take part in our online vigil. Once you have made the sign, why not go round and get friends/family/members of the public to join in and send in their pictures too? Remember to take around a mailing list as you do incase anyone is interested in future events. An example of how it should look:

It is good practice at any of the events in person or on facebook events, flyers, etc. to give information to your members and members of the public about where the local places you can get tested for HIV are. You might also want to mention Sex, Drugs and HIV, a fundraising project for various charities working on aspects of HIV issues, including our friends at Release.

Finally, don't forget to tell us what you are up to, email education[at]ssdp.org.uk with stories and photos of what you have done to commemorate World Aids Day.

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Viv Ahmun on Drugs and Race

2011-10-28T16:59:00.000+01:00

Viv Ahmun, the former CEO of In-Volve speaks at SSDP London's event - No Justice, No Peace: Drugs, Race and Growing Up on the 20th October. Thanks to KnowDrugs for filming.

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Former Mexican President holds America responsible for drug deaths

2011-10-20T12:32:00.003+01:00

Vincente Fox, the former President of Mexico (2001-2006) has told the BBC that he holds the United States responsible for the drug-violence in his country.

My Favourite Cannabis Music

2011-10-19T10:53:00.005+01:00

Manchester SSDP activist and blues musician Tyler Hatwell takes us on a journey through some of his favourite cannabis music.

Musicians take drugs, not all musicians obviously, but the good ones. The link between musician and drug is a relatively strong one (as Bill Hicks put it; "the musicians that made all that great music that's enhanced your lives throughout the years were real fucking high on drugs. The Beatles were so fucking high they let Ringo sing a few tunes.").

Not only does it often act as a large influence but also, occasionally, the artist deems it necessary to write a song celebrating their love of the drug. Here I have compiled my favourite songs celebrating the usage of cannabis, and as an added bonus not one of them is by Snoop Dogg.

King of Chicago Blues and all round cool guy Muddy Waters with Champagne and Reefer

Scat-singing Goddess of Swing Ella Fitzgerald with When I get low I get high

Dancehall legend Barrington Levy with Under mi sensi

Singjay Jamaican Reggae-master Eek-A-Mouse with Ganja Smuggling

Ultimate hipster icon (if Andy Warhol is busy) Bob Dylan with Rainy Day Woman

Psychedelic sixties songstress Janis Joplin with Mary Jane

Zoot-suit wearing 30's jazz troubadour Cab Calloway with The Reefer Man

And if we haven't convinced you that songs about cannabis can be cool, we can at least convince you that some anti-cannabis songs are not. Take it away Ringo...

Tyler Hatwell is the co-host of the weekly funk, soul and blues radio show - The Mess Around.

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Mat Southwell - Nothing about me without me [video]

2011-10-10T15:11:00.002+01:00

Nothing About Me Without Me from Matthew Southwell on Vimeo.

Drug user activist Mat Southwell talks about drugs user participation in services.

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Liberal Youth members on Drug Policy

2011-09-16T09:16:00.006+01:00

Liberal Youth members Cath Smith, Chris Ward and Sarah Harding explain why Liberal Democrat members should vote in favour of evidence based drug policy at the Liberal Democrat Party Conference this weekend.

When you’ve been on a diet for 40 years and haven’t lost any weight you change your diet.

The same is true of drugs policy in this country. The Global Report on Drugs Policy which included former UN Secretary Kofi Annan, concluded that the decades-old worldwide "war on drugs has failed”

On Sunday evening, Liberal Democrat conference have a golden opportunity to take the first step to righting this wrong, and introducing a fair, evidence based drugs policy. The motion proposed to conference calls for a scientific approach to drugs, drawing inspiration from best practise in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Portugal, as well as the findings of the 2010 drugs strategy consultation.

Drugs policy has long been a taboo in the political world. Our leaders don’t talk about treatment, for fear of looking soft. They don’t talk about the negative impact of criminalisation in case they are branded too liberal. They don’t even talk about the science, because the science points out such obvious inconsistency.

Each year worldwide drug use increases, criminality linked to drugs increases and the bill for the war on drugs increases vastly. The most important part of the motion is not what it says in the text, it’s the fact that a party of government is standing up and talking about it. If this passes it opens up the debate, it asks our politicians to look again and start talking about alternatives to the failed zero tolerance policy.

Young drug users must not be punished, when often they are victims of crime and poverty. The motion calls for the priority of these people to change from punishment, to rehabilitation and education. Often young people fall into drug use, are punished and are stuck in a vicous circle, with future prospects becoming closed of to them.

Drugs policy should never be based on outdated stigma's and stereotypes. The motion calls for a new approach to drugs policy in the United Kingdom, based on science. It calls for drug users to be treated as victims, not as criminals and puts more emphasis on education and rehabilitation.

Liberal Youth is one of the movers of the motion, and has a proud record of campaigning for a sensible attitude on drugs. We are proud to be supporters of this motion.

To coincide with the motion at conference, Liberal Youth is also running campaigns on an evidence based approach to drugs policy. Literature will be going out in our Freshers packs, and up and down the country we’ll be promoting how we should be talking sense on drugs. Please click here to order this material.

Drug Policy in Portugal: The benefits of decriminalising drug use

2011-09-03T16:47:00.006+01:00

A new report has been published by the Open Society Foundation covering the benefits of decriminalising drug use.

The report explores the last decade of drug policy reform in Portugal, where since 2001 the responsibility of reducing demand has been with the Ministry of Health, rather than with the Ministry of Justice. Defying convention, drug-dependent persons have been viewed as patients rather than criminals.

The report by award-winning journalist Artur Domoslawski, is available for download from the Open Society.

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Ineffective, costly and counterproductive - Tom Lloyd on the Misuse of Drugs Act

2011-08-27T00:01:00.005+01:00

Extract taken from an interview with Tom Lloyd, former Chief Constable and lead of the International Drug Policy Consortium's law enforcement project. The interview was conducted by SSDP's Education Officer Jess Bradley at our 2011 conference.

I was a police officer mainly in London for over 30 years and I have experience of the implementation of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act, from the start of my service in 1974 to the end in 2005, in both urban and rural areas. I came to the conclusion over that time that our implementation of the Misuse of Drugs Act has been ineffective, very costly and counterproductive.

Ineffective because in that time drug use has soared from a relatively low base in the very early 70s of 2000 heroin users to what is now estimated to be a quarter to a third of a million problematic drug users - some of them multiple drug users but certainly many of them addicted to heroin and crack cocaine. By any standards that has been a failure of a stated attempt and intention to reduce drug consumption.

It has been hugely costly and I have seen that cost at first hand in terms of the number of police officers and their equipment that have been used to enforce the drug laws. That amounts to at least £10 million a year spent by the criminal justice system enforcing the Misuse of Drugs Act.

And thirdly counterproductive, many people have unnecessary criminal convictions incurred as a result of their drug use. This does not help people deal with any problems that they may have with drug use, it hinders them. The fact that drugs are subject to law enforcement under the act means that people are actually discouraged from seeking help should they need it for their drug addiction.

What also happened is that a huge criminal enterprise has grown up on the back of the so called illegal drugs market. And it is estimated that criminals in the UK are profiting to the extent of £6 billion every year, internationally the figure is estimated to be US$320 billion, it is a huge criminal trade and the criminals can use that money to corrupt law enforcement officers and anybody else they need to in order to increase their profits and make sure that they evade prosecution.

I maintain the view that we should be enforcing the law in relation to serious and organised crime, even if drugs were controlled and regulated in the future and there was no profit in them there would still be serious and organised criminals active in them, in this country and elsewhere. We should be spending our money on pursuing them, not on pursuing users of the drugs that are currently prescribed.

We also have a problem of health being very badly affected by the fact that drugs are prohibited in this country and round the world. The state of the market which is uncontrolled, other than by criminals, is such that very little attention is paid to the purity or strength of a product. Which is why, in the UK alone, we have about a thousand deaths a year from accidental overdoses or from impurities. Recently there has been Anthrax contaminating heroin which has been on UK streets. Blood borne diseases such as HIV AIDS and hepatitis B and also transmitted, often through the sharing of needles and whilst many drug users might be aware of the health risks of sharing needles they are often driven to do that by their need to take the drug before they, for example, get arrested and have the drug taken away from them by the police.

So overall we have a situation where the drug price is high leading to criminality, theft, shoplifting, robbery, and of course the activities such as prostitution to pay for one’s illegal drug habit. We have health issues, we have extreme costs to the criminal justice system, there seems to be very little in favour of maintaining the status quo.

The most common argument is that many of the drugs which are used are harmful. This is a relatively weak argument as there are many other drugs that are seriously harmful, such as alcohol and tobacco, which are not subject to law enforcement - although they are subject to some control and regulation, unlike drugs like heroin, cocaine and cannabis.

The people who support the status quo will also argue that the law has a strong deterrent effect. Whereas if we moved to a system of control and regulation then a signal would be sent out which would result in a dramatic increase in the consumption of drugs. Surveys don't support that view and studies in a number of countries have shown that the main factors associated with drug use are cultural, societal and peer pressure and at most the fact that drug use is illegal may account for something like a 20% or a fifth of any deterrent effect. It is very difficult of course to quantify that absolutely and certainly in countries like Portugal where there has been de jure decriminalisation of personal drug use there has been no surge of increase in uptake of drugs many of the nay-sayers predicted.

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Glenn Greenwald on Drug Decriminalisation in Portugal

2011-08-21T10:48:00.003+01:00

Salon columnist and bestselling author Glenn Greenwald is the author of a new Cato Institute policy paper on Portugal's pathbreaking and hugely successful drug decriminalization program.

Greenwald sat down with Nick Gillespie to talk about the lessons from Portugal-and Barack Obama's decidedly disappointing performance so far on drug policy, executive power, and civil liberties.

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An Interview With a Cannabis Dealer

2011-08-18T15:40:00.008+01:00

Mainly due to my area of study and activities with Students for Sensible Drug Policy, I spend a lot of my time writing and talking about drugs, government policies, and the effects of these on societies in general. I do this with little first hand experience, I choose to keep my personal life separate from illicit drugs. So I thought I’d actually try meeting people involved with 'illegal' drugs. After making a number of phone calls, I managed to arrange to meet a cannabis dealer at a location that was neutral to us both.

I must admit, I was a little worried as I was travelling to meet them, I didn’t really know what to expect. When I arrived at the location I was met by “Joe” (named changed to hide identity), a rather friendly individual in their early 20s. For obvious reasons, at the beginning of our conversation Joe seemed a little reserved as they tried to gauge me, but after a while they began to be more open with me.

By their own admission, Joe is not your stereotypical drug dealer. They were brought up in a middle-class family and had started dealing cannabis whilst at university due to financial difficulties. I’m told they wouldn’t have been able to finish their course if they had done the usual 20-hour a week, minimum wage job, especially after having spent time working as a non-skilled worker which they had hated.

It all started for Joe when they thought that maybe they could sell a small amount of cannabis to cover the cost of their own use, just dealing to friends. “And for a while I didn’t make any money off of it” partly from being ripped off by the people Joe bought cannabis off and partly from simple mistakes that are made by someone doing something for the first time. Within a small number of months though, things seemed to have picked up for Joe, as friends passed on Joe’s number to other friends and is now struggling to keep up with demand. From what I’m being told it appears Joe rather enjoys this job, spending most of the day travelling round chatting and smoking with the people they deal to, and whom I’m informed are generally interesting folk.

What’s apparent from talking to Joe is that dealing cannabis is something that they have done as an active choice. It’s common to talk about those individuals, especially those from less privileged backgrounds, who have become involved in the drugs trade due to lack of alternatives. I personally like to use the phrase “drug dealing is the only equal opportunities employment in some places". However Joe’s story, where someone starts dealing to fund their own use but then it grows into something bigger is not one I’m unfamiliar with. This can have terrible consequences with addictive drugs where people try to encourage other people to use so they can pay for their own addiction.

As time has gone on, the paranoia that comes from working in a black market has built up on them. “I do have nightmares about getting caught, dreams where my place gets raided or I’m in court.” Most people have a story about someone they know who used to deal drugs and they got caught by police or attacked by rival drug dealers, and I get a real feeling of worry from Joe as they tell me about these stories being recalled to them.

We also discuss the ethics of being a cannabis dealer. Despite for all intents and purposes Joe seems a good person they’re fully aware that higher up in the drug ladder some less nice people will be operating. Joe insists that cannabis is not a damaging drug like heroin or cocaine, and that they would feel awful if they were dealing drugs like those to people who were ruining their lives through drug use. “I’m not a criminal, I would consider myself a good person, I try to live my life in a good way…”

It’s at this point Joe’s phone rings, makes their excuses and leaves.

Stop Torture in Healthcare (video)

2011-08-15T09:52:00.003+01:00

Video from The Campaign to Stop Torture in Health Care. Some viewers may find this video upsetting or triggering.

Venta needed treatment for his drug problem. Instead, he was tortured.

In all corners of the world, people who use drugs are forcibly detained in "rehabilitation" centers where they may be subjected to beatings, forced labor, medical experimentation, denial of basic health care (including evidence-based drug treatment), and other severe human rights violations.

Like Venta, thousands of people throughout Southeast Asia are locked away in so-called drug rehabilitation centers where they are regularly beaten, abused, and denied access to medical care.

The Campaign to Stop Torture in Health Care is working worldwide to put an end to human rights violations and abuses in health care settings.

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Job Vacancy: Volunteer Web Developer

2011-08-12T17:31:00.002+01:00

Students for Sensible Drug Policy UK is recruiting...

Web Developer Job Description

An opportunity has arisen to help develop the web presence of a new youth driven organisation working to reform drug policy. The developer will be responsible for the creation and design of the website according to specification.

Duties and Responsibilities.

To design and develop the website ensuring strong functionality and optimisation.
To providing training to volunteers on how to update and maintain the website.
To help develop and evaluate our online strategy.

Skills/Attributes Required.

Proven Web and Database Development experience.
Knowledge of PHP and MySQL is desirable.
Web/Graphical Design skills would be desirable.
A flexible attitude with proven experience of working in a small team.
Excellent communication skills and attention to detail.
Dedication to ending the War on Drugs.

Benefits

The opportunity to work within a developing dynamic network of drug policy reform advocates. Travel expenses and lunch will be covered when visiting the head office.

In order to apply send your CV to Levent Akbulut at levent.akbulut@ssdp.org.uk.

The Fiscal Significance of Drugs

2011-08-11T19:04:00.003+01:00

Reblogged from the Beckley Foundation, with thanks.

These past ten years, the war on drugs has led to repeated demands from academics and economists (including 3 Nobel Prize winners) to change the current flawed strategy that seems to ignore the laws of supply and demand. Milton Friedman has long advocated the legalization of drugs; indeed, the world famous economist even said that “if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That’s literally true.” And he isn’t the only one defending this point of view: Gary Becker (Nobel-Prize economist), George Shultz, the U.S. Secretary of State from 1982 to 1989, or National Humanities Medal winner Thomas Sowell have also endorsed the liberalization approach.

It has become clear that the war on drugs is not only ineffective, but expensive too, as a lot of money spent by governments is used to catch the people who buy or sell illegal drugs, to prosecute them in court, and to send them to jail. In the US, under current rules regarding parole and probation, a positive urine test for drugs can send a parolee or probationer to prison, regardless of the original offense. Over $100 billion is spent globally each year on enforcing the war on drugs[1] – the following figures are indeed quite thought-provoking:

Between 1919 and 1933, alcohol was illegal in the United States; historians believe that the decision to end prohibition on March 23 1933 was partly fuelled by the desire to raise tax revenue in the 1930s when the depression started. Today, the risk of a double-dip recession is very high, and cuts are necessary in many parts of the world. Yet the President’s Fiscal Year 2011 Nation requests $15.5 billion to reduce drug use in the United States. This represents an increase of $521.1 million (3.5%) over the FY 2010 enacted level of $15.0 billion. In the European Union, state expenditure on the drug problem costs about €34 billion [2] – in other words, an incredible amount of money that could be saved and used to address the economic difficulties faced by Western countries nowadays.

The illicit drug market, on the other hand, seems to be doing very well. According to the UN World Drug Report (2007), the market was estimated at $322 billion, and that despite the seizures and losses, the value of drugs increase substantially as the move from producer to consumer[3]. A study of drug dealers in Washington in the 1980s concluded that they could earn up to $30/h – compared with the $7/h average from legal employment.[4] Robert Neild, a Cambridge University professor, asserts that third world states are often “undermined, sometimes destroyed” by the violence and corruption that goes with this lucrative market. Clearly the war on drugs affects not only the economy of Western countries, but the stability of many developing countries as well, especially in South America. A regulated and legal market would “fix” many of these problems.

Legalisation is now more than ever necessary, and it is important for governments to address the problem in order to avoid other long-term socio-economic risks such as the “cyclic creation of permanent underclass”, as theorized by Eric Blumenson and Eva S. Nilsens[5]. The CATO Institute’s “The Budgetary Impact of Ending Drug Prohibition” estimates that drug legalization would yield tax revenue of $46.7 billion annually; assuming legal drugs were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco.

“A monetary tax on a legal good could cause a greater reduction in output and increase in price than would optimal enforcement, even recognizing that producers may want to go underground to try to avoid a monetary tax. This means that fighting a war on drugs by legalizing drug use and taxing consumption may be more effective than continuing to prohibit the legal use of drugs”. – Gary S. Becker, Kevin M. Murphy and Michael Grossman, “The Economic Theory of Illegal Goods: The Case of Drugs”.

It is thus clear that money is being spent excessively, ineffectively and sometimes even dangerously. The billions of dollars spent by governments each year fail to address economic realities, and ignore the exponential demand for policy change.
– Sebastien Krier, Amanda Feilding

Sources/Notes:
UK:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/the-big-question-is-the-war-on-drugs-really-making-the-problem-worse-881271.html
http://oldfraser.lexi.net/publications/books/drug_papers/UDStevenson.pdf
http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2009/4/7/the-cost-of-drug-laws-16-billion
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/apr/07/drugs-policy-legalisation-report

Australia:
* Annual enforcement costs based on 2008 figures by researcher Timothy J Moore.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-cost-of-the-war-on-drugs-20091002-ggiw.html

USA:
http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/policy/10budget/index.html
National Drug Intelligence Center, “National Drug Threat Assessment 2010,” - ------(Johnstown, PA: February 2010), p. 1.
Jeffrey A. Miron – “Making an Economic Case for Legalizing Drugs”

France:
http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2011/08/02/cannabis-ce-que-la-legalisation-rapporterait-au-fisc_1555169_3224.html

Canada:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2007/01/15/drug-strategy.html
http://www.politonomist.com/the-economic-argument-for-legalization-002525/

References:

[1] Transform Drug Policy Foundation estimate, 2011: cf. ‘Estimating global spending on drug enforcement’ – http://www.countthecosts.org/seven-costs/wasting-billions-drug-law-enforcement
[2] Annual Report 2008: “The State of the Drugs Problem in Europe,” European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2008), p. 21.
[3] Drug War Facts, 6th Ed. – Common Sense for Drug Policy
[4] The Economist, July 28th – August 3rd 2001 (The case for legalising drugs)
[5] Blumenson & Nilsen – “How to construct an underclass, or how the War on Drugs became a war on education“

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New Book: Children of the Drug War, available for free

2011-08-10T14:26:00.005+01:00

'Children of the Drug War' is collection of original essays that investigates the impacts of the war on drugs on children, young people and their families.
It asks a series of questions, addressing production and trade; race, class and law enforcement; families and drug policy, and drug use and dependance:

What have been the costs to children and young people of the war on drugs?
Is the protection of children from drugs a solid justification for current policies?
What kinds of public fears and preconceptions exist in relation to drugs and the drug trade?
How can children and young people be placed at the forefront of drug policies?

The book is published by the International Debate Education Association (iDebate Press). It is available for purchase in hard copy from Amazon and other outlets. The book has a dedicated webpage here which includes a downloadable pdf of the full book, and pdfs of each of its four sections. It can also be read online.

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Breaking the Taboo (video)

2011-08-09T18:08:00.002+01:00

'Breaking the Taboo' - A film in search of solutions for the failure of the war on drugs.

"If you can't control drug use in a maximum security prison, how can you control drug use in a free society?" - Tony Papa

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Petition the Government to Discuss Drug Law Reform!

2011-08-05T14:32:00.010+01:00

The UK government launched its new e-petition site this week to give citizens and residents a chance to petition the government to discuss certain issues. If a petition reaches 100,000 or more signatures, parliament will then discuss the issue.

We remain skeptical of whether the government will respond positively to sensible proposals for reforming drug policies through an online petition. Meanwhile, there is much media fanfare about a petition calling for the return of capital punishment, although another petition against such proposals currently has more signers.

Nonetheless, we feel that drug policy reformers should make use of this opportunity to show the government and media that the public does indeed have an appetite for reform.

We have identified two drug policy reform petitions that seem to be doing well, one calls for the legalisation and regulation of cannabis, the other calls for the decriminalisation of drug possession and supply. We hope that both will be interpreted as calling for control and regulation.

Please sign these petitions and urge others to do the same!

Legalise Cannabis

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/29

Decriminalise Recreational Drugs

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/58

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Greek Government to move towards Decriminalisation

2011-08-04T13:25:00.002+01:00

Proposals have been made by the Greek Justice Minister Miltiadis Papaioannou to the Greek Committee on Social Affairs which notably include decriminalisation of personal drug use, as long as the drug use only impacts the behavior and condition of the individual drug user.

Under the reforms possession of drugs personal consumption will be classed as only misconduct so long as it is used for only private use, and the cultivation of cannabis will be tolerated if only for personal use. The bill also proposes to guarantee the right for drugs treatment to all who request it, including drug users incarcerated. The reforms will not legalise the supply or trafficking of drugs, these actions will still be considered offences under Greek law.

Currently 40% of all Greek prisoners are incarcerated in drug related offences.

See also: Bolivia to withdraw from the UN single convention

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Release launch new ThinkingDrugs Website

2011-08-03T12:41:00.006+01:00

A new website aimed at exploring and developing opinions on the international drugs trade has recently been launched. ThinkingDrugs, a collaboration between our friends at Release and the New Economics Foundation, utilizes statistics, personal perspectives and arguments from both sides of the debate as tools to help the user develop opinions on specific aspects of the international drugs trade.

Users of the website can create argument "pathways" for 4 specific areas of interest: drug policy in the UK, the impacts of the transnational drugs trade in the US and Mexico, public health support for drug users in Russian and the effects of tolerating drugs sales in Dutch coffee houses.

Rupert George from Release said "we are really excited about ThinkingDrugs, it offers us a whole new way of engaging the public with the issues. We have really enjoyed working with the New Economics Foundation on this project, they bought something really interesting to the project with their existing work around argument maps and some fresh eyes on the issues”

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2500 plants, 13 bears, a dog, a pig and a raccoon (video)

2011-07-27T11:34:00.002+01:00

A Russian news-reader has trouble keeping a straight-face in this video which shows the sometimes bizarre nature of drug prohibition.

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Russell Brand on Amy Winehouse and the Nature of Addiction

2011-07-25T08:41:00.003+01:00

An extract from Russell Brand's blogpost about the recent, tragic death of jazz singer Amy Winehouse.

..."When you love someone who suffers from the disease of addiction you await the phone call. There will be a phone call. The sincere hope is that the call will be from the addict themselves, telling you they’ve had enough, that they’re ready to stop, ready to try something new. Of course though, you fear the other call, the sad nocturnal chime from a friend or relative telling you it’s too late, she’s gone.

Frustratingly it’s not a call you can ever make it must be received. It is impossible to intervene...

...Not all addicts have Amy’s incredible talent. Or Kurt’s or Jimi’s or Janis’s, some people just get the affliction. All we can do is adapt the way we view this condition, not as a crime or a romantic affectation but as a disease that will kill. We need to review the way society treats addicts, not as criminals but as sick people in need of care. We need to look at the way our government funds rehabilitation. It is cheaper to rehabilitate an addict than to send them to prison, so criminalisation doesn’t even make economic sense. Not all of us know someone with the incredible talent that Amy had but we all know drunks and junkies and they all need help and the help is out there. All they have to do is pick up the phone and make the call. Or not. Either way, there will be a phone call."...

Rest In Peace, Amy.

The Other Side of the Coin: MS and Medical Cannabis

2011-07-21T12:41:00.005+01:00

Clark French from Action4MS talks about his experiences with medical cannabis.

For the majority, the letters M and S next to each other has no other connotations than to remind them of a not-so-unknown British high street shop. For me, however, things couldn't be more different. I was diagnosed with MS in August 2010. My mother and late step-father both suffer/ed from the disease so I was aware of MS and its effects on people from a very early age. "But what does this have to do with SSDP?", I hear you proclaim! Well, Drug Policy Reform is of course what brought me to the table, my efforts are focused on cannabis because it is my medicine. I work with Clear - a UK political party dedicated to ending the prohibition of cannabis, I also help out with SSDP and I run my own small charity Action4MS.

Being diagnosed with MS at 24 years old was a bit of a kick in the face. At the time of my most serious relapse - the one which I was diagnosed from, I was in my final year of my degree in Ancient History and Archaeology at Reading University. It really felt like my future had been taken from me, and to an extent it had. I have always been a cannabis smoker, preferring to relax with my friends than go out and get drunk, a fact confirmed with a record two nights out to the Students' Union in my whole time at University - it just wasn't my thing! Being an MS patient - I have no choice but to ingest cannabis on a regular basis, the problems with the police in this country make my life much harder to lead. Imagine if you faced being arrested, just for wanting to feel better. Cannabis gives me a life where MS took it from me.

Never have I really thought about the problems and issues I face on a daily basis more than I did on a recent trip to California. As many of you will know, in 1996 Proposition 215 was passed, giving patients with a doctor's recommendation the ability to purchase, consume and even grown their own cannabis all legally. I was instantly struck with the difference, cannabis is everywhere in California. If I was a resident I would have no problem obtaining a doctor's recommendation, and therefore would not face potential prosecution for using a plant to treat my symptoms. The British Government fobs people with chronic conditions off with the ruse which is Sativex. Make no mistake, the cannabis in Sativex is real and is grown in this country, yet our government continues with the lies that cannabis has "no known medical benefits". Meeting people involved with SSDP across the pond was a great experience, I got to share some of the horror stories printed in the Daily Mail with them. They couldn't believe the headlines such as "Cannabis kills 30,000 a Year". During my stay in California I got to visit a number of dispensaries and see the ins and outs of how this new, booming industry works.

Although it is far from perfect, the system in California means that people with serious illnesses like myself have access to the medicine we need. Cannabis prohibition on all levels is wrong, but I think medical cannabis is the first step along the road to the end of prohibition, a spear-head if you will. For me, cannabis means life, I feel morally obliged to try and spread the truth about its medical benefits and I hope that you will read this and just take a look at the amount of illness's that cannabis is proven to help with. It is unlikely that you, the person reading this, will get MS, especially if you have no family history of it, however in our lives it is almost certain that as we age we will start to develop problems, and it is also likely that some of those problems will be alleviated by using cannabis medicinally.

We need to stand together, and use every weapon at our disposal, talk about medical cannabis with people you know are "anti drugs" - you will be surprised just how many will agree once it has been explained properly!

See also: Canadian Drug User Activist on Self-medication, Harm Minimization and Pleasure Maximisation

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Hilarious look at anti-drug advertising (video)

2011-07-16T13:29:00.002+01:00

"InfoMania," a program on American Current TV, does a funny and informative piece about the US government's "anti-drug" ad campaign which costs $100 million per year. This piece has been found via our friends at Students for Sensible Drug Policy (US), click here for more information about their advertising campaign.

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European Commission Recommends Regulated Sale for "Legal Highs"

2011-07-12T17:18:00.012+01:00

Duncan Scott of Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform examines European Commission's recent statement on drug policy in this guest post.

Here's a statement from a press release from the European Commission (emphasis mine):

The Commission is considering various ways to make the EU rules more effective, such as alternative options to criminal sanctions, new ways of monitoring substances that cause concern, and aligning drugs control measures with those for food and product safety. In the autumn, the Commission will present a series of options in this respect.

These words are music to this drug policy reformer's ears. What is being actively considered here is a legal framework for the supply of new recreational drugs.

The problem of 'legal highs' is growing, with 115 new substances being identified in the EU over the last 5 years. Our hopeless drug laws can't keep up with criminalising more and more chemical compounds at an ever increasing rate. The drugs are typically sold as 'not for human consumption', even though they are produced with human consumption in mind. Clearly the current legislation is farcical.

No one denies that drugs can be dangerous, and each drug brings its own unique set of challenges for the health of the user and the wider effect on society. When talking of 'food safety' regulations, I hope the EC mean tighter rules than those covering, say, tinned tomatoes. The regulations should be modelled on those covering alcohol and tobacco as a bare minimum, to reflect the dangers of a drug.

The EC report also fails to consider what is causing the big increase in new pschoactive substances entering the market. The demand for legal highs is created by the illegality of more 'traditional' recreational drugs such as cannabis, ecstasy and cocaine. The scientific understanding of traditional drugs is also stronger, at least when compared to a brand new 'legal highs'. We therefore could have a situation where there is a proper legal framework for supplying less well understood recreational drugs, whilst well-known drugs remain criminalised. It would be more successful if legislation were designed to fit around the best understood recreational drugs.

If the EC successfully produces legal high supply regulations, I would expect that some of the first drugs to make use of the regulations will see a reasonable number of users, which could steal the recreational drug market away from both criminal dealers and the unregulated 'legal high' traders.

It is also interesting to note the language used by the EC in its press release. It promotes a non-criminal justice approach with the familiar rhetoric of populist drug policy: "tougher action", "protect our children", "rules must be strengthened", "make sure young people do not fall into the trap" etc. The communications staff at the EC may well have figured that the "tough" rhetoric will be needed to sell what is actually a pragmatic policy approach which faces up to the reality of a demand for recreational drugs. As long as the legislative outcomes are to be a success, I'm happy for the politicians to sell it to the press and public however they can.

Finally, it must be said that there's a long way to go with this yet. This is a highly emotive topic, and the EC has many political hurdles to jump. I can imagine the Daily Mail having kittens over this - EU SECRET PLOT TO PEDAL KILLER DRUGS TO OUR CHILDREN seems an inevitability. Nevertheless, we are seeing pragmatic, non-dogmatic drug policy being actively considered by governments at all levels. Reformers are slowly winning the War on Drugs Policy.

Read Duncan Stott's regular blog here

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Steven Levitt: Why do Crack Dealers live with their Moms? (video)

2011-07-09T10:23:00.004+01:00

Freakonomics author Steven Levitt presents new data on the finances of drug dealing. Contrary to popular myth, he says, being a street-corner crack dealer isnt lucrative: It pays below minimum wage. And your boss can kill you.

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See also: The impacts of prohibition on young people (video)

Drug Interactions - Are patients being put at risk?

2011-07-07T11:50:00.006+01:00

Doctors are used to providing information on the risks and side effects of the medications they prescribe, but often patients are not informed of the interactions between their prescribed medication and any recreational drugs they are taking. Greta Friedlander and Jess Bradley investigate.

According to the 2005/06 British Crime Survey, just over a third of adults admit to using illicit drugs at somepoint in their lifetime, this figure increasing when considering just young people. Despite this, pharmaceutical companies and doctors often fail to provide information on the interactions of prescription drugs with illicit recreational drugs, where it is commonplace for information to be provided on a drugs interactions with alcohol.

We spoke to one student, Anne, who has been prescribed with a low dosage of Nortriptyline, a triclyclic anti-depressant. Anne is an occasional user of recreational drugs, and had not had any negative drug experiences prior to starting on her medication. Recently she decided to take some space cakes with a few friends and discovered an unexpected interaction with Nortriptyline, which had not been explained by her GP or within the information leaflet the medication came with. Anne describes her experiences below:

“I suffered nearly 24 hours of vivid hallucinations, which were far more intense than I have previously experienced on much stronger hallucinogenic drugs. I had vivid flashbacks, synaesthesia and paranoia, none of which I have never experienced on any other drugs. I spent the entire trip being terrified, the whole world became reduced to pixels of colour and I felt like the walls were moving in to crush me. At the start of my trip I watched TV for a while and believed all of the people on screen were people who I knew and were talking directly to me. I saw my own reflection and shadow trying to murder me. I had eaten space cakes a few times before, in similar quantities, and never experienced anything like this.”

“It hadn't occurred to me that my prescription drugs might interact with cannabis, although I had been avoiding alcohol on the GP's advice. I am now angry that I was not provided the information I needed by my doctor to make an informed decision about my drug use.”

Websites such as Erowid, which act as a depository for information on the interactions between different drugs and our bodies, have been created to meet the need of providing information on drug interactions in the absence of a coherent, unbiased information service by health professionals - a service which is lacking due to the drugs legal status. Many of these websites provide "trip reports", collections of experiences from drug users, which act as useful resources even though they are anecdotal in nature.

The lack of information provided to patients on the interactions between prescribed and illicit drugs is just one of many unintentional negative consequences of the drug prohibition - and one that particularly effects the most vulnerable patients.

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See also: Harm Minimisation, Self-Medication and Pleasure Maximisation (video)

Milton Friedman on The War on Drugs

2011-06-29T20:55:00.004+01:00

Libertarian economist Milton Friedman on Drug War

See also: Anita Krug on the impact of prohibition on young people

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June 30th: Supporting the Strikes

2011-06-28T13:25:00.006+01:00

On the 30th of June, thousands of education and public sector workers in four trade unions will be out on strike. Jess Bradley from Manchester SSDP argues that drug law reformers should support the strikes, demonstrations, actions and occupations happening around the 30th.

A few months ago at conference, SSDP delegates from chapters across the country voted in favour of motion calling for a national campaign against cuts to education and health services, particularly those which disproportionately effects vulnerable groups and those more likely to be harmed by the 'War on Drugs'.

Trade unions representing teachers, lecturers, and job centre workers have all voted overwhelmingly in favour of taking strike action in response to cuts to pensions, but have made it clear that their actions are broadly oppositional to the recent agenda of cuts to frontline services.

It has long been said that the most important part of the services we access are people who deliver them, in this case the workers in the education and health sectors. In supporting the workers as they fight for better pay, conditions and pensions, we support the services themselves – because a teacher who is struggling to make ends meet is not a teacher who is fully focussed on providing the best education to those who need it.

Why is it important for drug law reformers to support the strikes on Thursday? Because drug users, both problematic and non-problematic, disproportionately rely on the services that are being defended. Valuable research on the harms of drugs, or different aspects of drug policy, may no longer be undertaken if academics in University departments are priced out of working in education institutions because the pay in industry is so much better, and the money available for funding diminishes.

Pastoral services, such as drug and sex education in schools may be overlooked as teachers struggle financially, and class sizes rise as less people are able to enter teacher training. Problematic drug users may find it harder to get back into work or education if services at Job Centres, schools and colleges are cut.

As activists aware of the spiralling cost of funding an unnecessary and harmful War on Drugs, it seems clear that, regardless of your opinion on whether the current cuts are necessary, we are wasting vast amounts of money on pursuing a failed drug policy at the expense of funding education and health services.

What can we do? Get involved in your local anti-cuts campaign by joining demonstrations and pickets at your institutions, job centres, and workplaces. Take a banner or a placard linking the rising cost of prohibition and the increasing levels of cuts to services that drug users rely on. Go to your local meetings and talk to activists about drug law reform. Remember to send pictures of you supporting demonstrations and pickets to education[at]ssdp.org.uk

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Bolivia to withdraw from UN Single Convention

2011-06-24T14:51:00.003+01:00

The Bolivian government has approved a Bill of Complaint filed by President Evo Morales’ to withdraw Bolivia from the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs over its prohibition of the personal use, consumption, possession or cultivation of the native coca leaf. The withdrawal will come into effect in 2012, and although the complaint over the coca leaf ban will technically withdraw it from Convention compliance, Bolivia has stated it intends to continue complying with the drug trafficking and narcotics control sections of the Convention.

The Bolivian government has publicly stated its support for developing a legal global market for coca products, including coca-based tea, soft drinks and pharmaceuticals, which it argues would reduce demand for cocaine.

This action comes in the wake of growing support for protecting the cultural heritage of coca use amongst the Bolivian people, a popular movement which arguably lead to the election of President Evo Morales on the basis of his actions defending coca-growers against US-lead eradication programmes.

In 2009, Bolivia began a process to amend Article 49 of the Convention, which prohibited consumption of the coca leaf from 2001. Its proposal for amendment was formally opposed by 17 other Convention signatories, including the United States, U.K., France, Japan, and Russia.
The Chinese government has been supportive of Bolivia's actions, comparing a ban on chewing coca in Bolivia to a ban on drinking tea in China.

See also: 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. Happy Birthday?

Drug lords girlfriend thanks UN for prohibition (video)

2011-06-20T10:30:00.006+01:00

A (fake) drug lords girlfriend thanks the UN for 50 year of prohibition in this video made by our friends at the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union.

See also: 3 days, 3 anniversaries; Youthful rebellion against the Drug War
YouthRise and the impact of prohibition on young people

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SSDP supports SlutWalk; marching against sexual assault

2011-06-14T18:04:00.008+01:00

Students for Sensible Drug Policy activists took to the streets to support Manchester SlutWalk on Friday 10^th June. The SlutWalk protests have sprung up after a policeman in Toronto misguidedly advised a group of female students to “avoid rape by not dressing like sluts”. This caused outrage as it was seen to place the blame of rape onthe rape survivor and not on the rapist themselves.

SSDP Education Officer, Jess Bradley, was part of the organising collective behind SlutWalk Manchester; “We recognise that not everyone wants to reclaim the word 'Slut', but the central message that rape is not the fault of the survivor, whatever they are wearing or however inebriated they are, is one worth getting behind”. The marches come as Justice Secretary Ken Clarke has been widely criticised for trying to categorise some sexual crimes as “serious rape”, implying that other sexual crimes are less serious.

SlutWalk Manchester organiser Greta Friedlander said; “There is a prevailing attitude of taking sexual assaults less seriously if the survivor had been drinking, taking drugs, or engaging in sex work. This attitude is disturbing as it somehow implies that some people are more deserving of rape than others”.

Won't Legalising Drugs Increase Use?

2011-06-07T19:42:00.005+01:00

This series of blog posts will be discussing the social aspects of drug use. It’s taken in the main from Jock Young’s 1971 seminal work The Drugtakers: The Social Meaning of Drug Use. Each post will cover questions commonly encountered whilst campaigning for drug law reform, hopefully it’ll be useful for when you yourself are out talking to people. This post’s question is: “Won’t drug use increase if we legalise drugs?”

Now, we could argue the merits of the term “legalise drugs”, that wouldn’t address the concerns of the people posing the question. The majority of people believe that the current drug policies do stop people from using drugs, and that any attempt at “legalising” or “liberalising” drug-users would result in increased drug use. We can quote countries with punitive drug laws and high drug-use such as the USA and the UK, comparing them to countries with “liberal” drug laws and low drug-use such as Portugal and the Netherlands. Unfortunately I’ve had this simply discounted by “It might work there, but I don’t think it’ll work here”, or the prohibitionists favourite of Sweden with punitive drug laws and low drug use.

An underlying issue of the posed question is that drug use is seen in a negative light. Trying to overcome 50 years of prejudice is a difficult task, and will take more work than the few minutes you get to talk to someone. But what is commonly ignored is the extent to which drug policies or our approaches towards drugs may actually encourage use.

Last time I discussed how people of different values and cultures use different drugs for effects that are more appropriate to those factors. For those who support prohibition, it is these values and cultures that are considered so removed from social acceptability that criminal sanctions are deemed necessary. To justify such actions prohibitionists highlight these values of the drug user. By doing this they place the values they deem negative not just on the user, but also on the drug in question in an attempt to deter people from its use.

To some extent this does work, many people do not use certain drugs because they view them in a negative way or because of the punitive law surrounding them. Indeed, I know a number of people who no longer use certain drugs because of the risk of prosecution. However, this isn’t what happens in every case, for the drug user these values are, unsurprisingly, not seen as negative but actually as superior to those values to which the mainstream mass media push as socially acceptable.

In the face of society’s disfavour, the drug user may increase use of their drug of choice as a way of reaffirming their values. Some drugs may also be seen as attractive to people who wish to adopt or develop these values. Adolescents, who are at a stage of their development where experimentation with personality is common, are particularly likely to be interested in the values and cultures of drug use. The individuals who view drugs so negatively are unwittingly creating the environment to which drug use becomes appealing.

Activists will mark 40 years of British Drug War outside the Home Office.

2011-05-31T14:30:00.002+01:00

Press Release

Contact: Levent Akbulut

Tel: 020 7324 2987

Email: press@ssdp.org.uk

Web: www.ssdp.org.uk

Tuesday 31st of May 2011

For Immediate Release

Another Bloody Birthday: Activists mark 40 years of British Drug War

Youth activists hold a 40th birthday party for Misuse of Drugs Act calling for a more evidence-based approach.

At 12:00PM on Thursday the 2nd of June, a group of activists will gather outside the Home Office to call for evidence-based drugs policies to coincide with the release of a report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy. This week marks 40 years since the adoption of the Misuse of Drugs Act into UK legislation. The demonstrators will be holding a ‘birthday party’ to remember the impact this single piece of legislation continues to have on life in the United Kingdom.

Activists will sing Happy Birthday to the Misuse of Drugs Act before delivering a Birthday Card to the Home Office.

The event is a witty and comical way of mocking the government’s intransigence on this very serious issue. The group hopes that by highlighting forty years of failed drug policy, the Home Office may take the Commission’s report seriously.

The demonstration is being called by “Students for Sensible Drug Policy UK” - a network of students and young people campaigning for better drug policies. Students for Sensible Drug Policy first came to prominence when they campaigned against the sacking of Professor David Nutt from the drugs advisory council.

Levent Akbulut, a spokesperson for the organisation said; “In the last 40 years we have seen increased addiction, the expansion of organised crime and the complete inability of the government to control the flood of legal highs onto the market - it is clear our drug laws are not working. We call on the government to look very seriously at the findings of the Global Commission’s report and embrace evidence-based drug policy”.

Students for Sensible Drug Policy UK cordially invites all individuals concerned about British drug policy to attend the birthday party outside the Home Office at 12-2pm on Thursday the second of June. Come and show your support for evidence-based drug policy!

12PM, Thursday the 2nd of June, Home Office, Marsham Street, London SW1P 4DF.

Nearest Tube stations are Westminster and St James Park.

Please confirm your attendance on the Facebook event:http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=222278087802242

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The 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act: Happy 40th Birthday?

2011-05-27T20:32:00.001+01:00

Levent Akbulut explores the impact the Misuse of Drugs Act has had on British society and touches on recent developments in drug policy reform.

As days pass through history, their meaning and relevance can become lost in time. Anniversaries and birthdays give us a chance to reflect on noted events and their impact on humankind. Today we reflect on the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act achieving Royal Assent and becoming law, this piece of legislation embodies the British role in the global drug war and marking its 40th birthday we have to ask - what have we done?

The Act has the noble aim of classifying drugs based on relative harm with the goal of protecting society by criminalising the possession, production and supply of certain drugs.

“A drug free world” has been touted as an achievable and desirable goal by a well meaning population who concerned about the advent of a of new psychoactive drugs into British life.

However, birthdays are usually a time of celebration, a time to remember the successes of the great and the good around us - the Misuse of Drugs Act has certainly had its mark on life in the United Kingdom and arguably around the world.

Those old enough to remember will recall when back in the sixties, harmful drugs like heroin, cocaine and amphetamines were available on prescription to a small number of addicts numbering no more than a couple of thousand. The number of heroin addicts in the UK has now increased by 2000% and has resulted in lost generations as well as an obscene increase in petty crime committed by these vulnerable individuals simply doing their best to avoid the horror of opioid withdrawal. One may say that these individuals inflicted it upon themselves, but it is worth considering that a lot of these people will have been the victims of childhood abuse or some kind of trauma earlier in life. We recognise alcohol addiction as a social problem, yet for some reason we put other drugs in a separate category. There is no more shocking example of how prohibition actually encourages the spread of harmful behaviour with drugs than what has happened with heroin in this country.

Then there has been the massive increase in criminalised individuals, for some people the recreational use of some drugs is nothing more than a youthful indiscretion - just like for say, David Cameron. But if you’re poor, from an ethnic minority and live in an inner city there is a much greater chance you will be stopped and searched then prosecuted if they find anything on you. There are hundreds of thousands of people prevented from entering many careers just because they got caught when young. While others make it to Downing Street or even the White House.

And then there’s the drugs trade. The impact it has on people living in communities where dealing happens and those where they are produced. The United Kingdom has the greatest demand for cocaine in all of Europe - yet no amount of pesticide being dropped on developing nations in Latin America has stopped its flow to this country.

Regular readers of this blog will have figured that we do not think our drug laws are working - only last week when the UK Drug Policy Consortium published a report showing how our current drugs legislation could not possibly keep up with the rise of the legal highs phenomena, the Home Office simply retorted that they felt our current system was working just fine. SSDP members who campaigned against the sacking of Professor David Nutt back in 2009 will remember how strongly we feel about evidence-based drug policy and how disinterested successive governments seems to be in the matter.

Next week leading individuals across the globe from former to current heads of State will be launching a new report from the Global Commission on Drugs that describes the global drug war as a failure and calls for a paradigm shift in global drug policy. If you feel as strongly as we do about supporting evidence-based approaches to drug policy and that our current laws have had their day, then join us outside the Home Office on Thursday the 2nd of June at 12PM for a birthday party marking what will hopefully be the beginning of the end of the global drug war.

Stay posted for more details!

Drug War Birthday Party

12PM, Thursday the 2nd of June, Home Office, Marsham Street, London SW1P 4DF.

Global Commission on Drugs

Former Presidents of Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Switzerland, Prime Minister of Greece, Kofi Annan, George Shultz and Paul Volcker Call for Paradigm Shift in Global Drug Policy

Add Students for Sensible Drug Policy on twitter

Canadian Drug-User Activist on Self-medication, Harm Reduction and Pleasure Maximisation

2011-05-24T13:38:00.004+01:00

A long term drug user and now harm reduction activist, recently diagnosed with bipolar disorder, talks about the intersection of drug use and mental illness. She discusses how there is little space for dialogue on the pleasurable aspects of drug use in the mainstream harm reduction field.
Via TalkingDrugs

See Also: Mat Southwell talks about drug user activism

Avaaz Petition, and a Historic Moment.

2011-05-24T02:13:00.007+01:00

For too long the failures of the War on Drugs have been highlighted, and over and over again they have been ignored by those in power to do anything about it. It’s commonly accepted by many in the field of drug law reform that politicians know that the system needs to change, yet in public they’re too scared to raise their heads and call for what needs to be done. Even David Cameron knows this, when he was a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee he voted in favour of calls for the UN body on drug policy to look at regulation of drugs.

A historic moment is the coming. “In days, a global commission including Kofi Annan and five other senior statesmen will break the taboo and publicly call for a move from prohibition towards decriminalization and regulation of drugs.” This will be the first time a (former) Secretary-General of the United Nations has called for an end to the UN conventions on drugs of 1961, 1971, and 1988. The UN conventions mean that any country, regardless of what their governments believe, cannot legally regulate the control of drugs in a way that shall reduce harm to our society.

To coincide with this, Avaaz.org is currently collecting signatures for a petition that shall be presented to world leaders, but only if enough people sign it! Lets stop letting the politicians get away with saying that we, the public, do not want this horrendous policy to continue. Go to “End the War on Drugs!” petition now.

“We call on you to end the war on drugs and the prohibition regime, and move towards a system based on decriminalisation, regulation and education. This 50 year old policy has failed, fuels violent organised crime, devastates lives and is costing billions. It is time for a humane and effective approach.“

Make your voice count. Share the petition with family and friends.

Second image: Mexico drug war murders: Federal police officers take suspects into custody after a shooting in Tijuana. Photograph: Shaul Schwarz/Getty Images (guardian.co.uk [14 January 2011])

See also: Why should I get involved in SSDP?
Add SSDP UK on twitter

Sexuality and Drug Use: No place for homophobia in the ACMD

2011-05-20T14:15:00.006+01:00

Dr Hans Christian-Raabe, the fundamentalist Christian GP who was sacked from the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) is launching a legal bid to get his job back. The Manchester based GP was fired after the press discovered his earlier writings for a Christian health organisation advocating controversial “gay-cure” therapy and linking homosexuality with paedophilia, drug use and disease. Dr Raabe says he is a victim of liberal drug campaigners who dislike his strong views on the subject but the Home Office said he was fired because he failed to mention the controversial past work in interviews. Jess Bradley explores some of the issues around drug use, sexuality and the ACMD.

The LGBT community does indeed have a strong link to drug use; many of the “party drugs” are pioneered in the gay scene before filtering out into the wider population, LGBT people are more likely to take drugs, and much more likely to experience a problematic relationship with them than their straight/non-trans counterparts. What Dr. Christian-Raabe fails to realise are the reasons behind this link – it is not, as he would have us believe, some form of direct consequence of their sexuality or gender identity, but rather a consequence of the homophobia, biphobia and transphobia which is sadly still endemic in society.

The gay-rights charity Stonewall reports that two thirds of gay pupils in schools are subject to homophobic bullying, a figure that rises to three quarters in faith schools. Trans people are regularly denied access to essential healthcare. Homophobic, biphobic and transphobic hate crime is still a common experience, and most LGBT experience some level of street harassment. This undoubtedly takes its toll on the LGBT community - with 1 in 3 LGBT people being known to attempt suicide, and levels of self-harm and eating disorders within the community is significantly higher than the population as a whole. The link between mental health issues and drug use is well documented so it comes as no surprise that LGBT people are more likely to do drugs. Of course, not all LGBT drug use is motivated by mental health issues, but when a group is ostracised from society for breaking of norms around sexuality and gender, it seems likely that that group would also be more likely to break other social norms as well.

The appointment and subsequent firing of Christian-Raabe is just another controversy in a line of resignations since the last Labour government sacked the then chair Prof. Nutt for his criticisms of punitive drug policies. The Coalition government, in appointing the strict prohibitionist Christian-Raabe to the council, seems to be continuing the trend of treating the ACMD like a talking shop for polarised views instead of a council of academics and professionals providing evidence based analysis of drug policy. But unfortunately for us, the government will continue to treat the ACMD like a soap opera for as long as at it serves as a distraction to the fact that their own punitive policies are fundamentally failing to protect communities from the harms associated with drugs.

Hopefully, Dr. Christian-Raabe's legal challenge will be unsuccessful as his views on both homosexuality and drug policy are part of the problem not the solution, and will lead to the increasing unnecessary incarceration of LGBT people. We need to send a strong message about how prohibition disproportionately impacts on the community, and recognise the fact that the oppression of drug users and of other marginalised groups can only be meaningfully fought against if we fight together.

To find out more about our LGBT and drugs workshops, please email education[@]ssdp.org.uk Follow Students for Sensible Drugs Policy on twitter and subscribe to our blog on the right.

Mat Southwell talks about Drug User Activism

2011-05-18T04:14:00.006+01:00

Drug User Activism SSDP from Matthew Southwell on Vimeo.

Mat Southwell, organiser for the West Country Respect Drug User Rights group and the International Network of People who Use Drugs (INPUD) gives a history of drug user organising in the developed world and describes the current state of drug user activism in the UK, as well as talking about issues of “coming out” as a drug user activist.

Follow Students for Sensible Drugs Policy on twitter and subscribe to our blog on the right.

3 Days, 3 Anniversaries: Student Activism, Bicycle Day and 420 Day - Youthful Rebellion Against the Drug War

Why should I get involved in SSDP?

2011-05-16T15:03:00.003+01:00

Levent Akbulut talks about why you should start a chapter of SSDP and what you get out of being involved.

Why do I matter?
I am just one person, what good could I possibly do to change the drug laws?
This is perhaps one of the first questions people ask themselves before they decide to get involved in SSDP. The answer is often simpler than people expect and it is to do with the fact that you interact with other people.
In some circles the support of drug policy reform may seem like a fringe issue or have an element of stigma attached to it, you can make a difference to the people around you by simply being vocal about your views. The art of being an effective reform advocate is very much down to being able to introduce conversations about drug policy reform in groups and settings where it has not been approached. There are of course many ways to get people to think about the issues other than talking to people in person or getting people to show up to your events and these will be discussed in later blogposts.
Remember that you won’t necessarily change someone's mind straight after talking to them, give them space and get back to them later.

Ok, I’ll become an activist!
So you’ve decided to become an activist, congratulations! You’re entering a world full of idealism and hope. You have chosen to become a fully participating citizen exercising their democratic right to call for a better world and taking responsibility for it too!

Activism does not mean you have to recruit an army of volunteers to run a local campaign or canvas your entire town on drug policy reform, although it does help if you have the motivation and patience to develop a local team of campaigners. Sounds daunting? It needn’t be. You can still make a difference by ensuring the debate is occurring in circles where it has not yet made an appearance. You will make friends with all kinds of people with similar views and as with any good activist team you will spend time socialising with these people - every year you will also meet new people who will join your group and get more involved. You will also meet many more likeminded people nationwide at our annual conference and at other national events. You will get into the mindset of acting when you are not happy about things happening around you. You will be inspired and you will inspire others. You are all leaders of the drug policy reform movement.

What responsibilities will I have?
If you want to make a difference and start a local chapter then do so and do not waste time. It doesn’t matter if it’s just you at the beginning as there is so much you can do - simply making drug policy reform visible has an impact and will make it easier for you to recruit members. Drag your friends to help you get a society affiliated as early as possible, go out and ask people to put their names to agree to the formation of your society. Get all the forms filled in. Make sure you understand how your student union works and that you have applied for funds when they are available and that you have a stall at the welcome fayre. When people contact you, reply to them swiftly and make sure you actually plan for the year ahead. Getting involved in other groups can help you pick up the skills to run your society but make sure you have time for SSDP. By the way, we can help you with all of this if you hit any obstacles or need advice.

What do I get out of this?
You mean other than the satisfaction from knowing you did what you could to make a difference? Over time the work you put into developing a good campaign group will motivate others to do the same and improve on the work you did, and even though groups will go through periods of being less effective than previous times you can rest assured that your work planted the seeds for many more people to get involved. Think of the spread of information like a vine, first you plant the seed and then a shoot emerges from the ground, this shoot then branches off into different directions, with some branches stronger and bigger than others but so long as there are the right conditions all will yield fruit eventually.

You can then turn around and say I did that. One may be thinking this is very well and good if one wants to make wine but I need to use my time studying as usefully and effectively as possible. And possibly have time to drink some wine too...

Campaigning for drug law reform may seem like a radical minority pursuit but actually you will develop transferable skills along the way which will place you in good stead for a wide variety of careers. While you and your friends may currently associate drug policy as a fringe interest, of youthful idealism, there are already a growing number of high profile advocates for reform such as Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, the former head of the Royal College of Physicians, Nicholas Green QC, Chairman of the Bar Council for England and Wales and many more prominent scientists. Even the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister have both called for some kind of reform in the past. It is only a matter of time before someone high profile with influence calls to make positive changes to our drug laws.

The skills we will help you develop as an activist will not only empower you to be an effective advocate for reform and help you make your contribution to change but will make you more employable. At the very least, to get through your degree and run an effective local group you will have to get good at planning and multitasking. Depending on what role you have decided to fulfill, you are most likely still going to have to develop communication and negotiation skills. A group which is well known on campus or locally almost certainly has avid networkers on board and a well thought out advertising strategy. You may also have to manage a budget or become a fundraiser, you are an events organiser and a political strategist. Do not forget you are running a policy group too! So, I guess that makes you a leader? Can you think of anything else? And yes we will give you a reference.

Whatever kind of experience you want out of getting involved in SSDP we are here to support you and help you develop your full potential as an activist and a student.

If you are interested in starting a local chapter or simply want help with your current one, do not hesitate to get in touch with myself or any board member.
Follow Students for Sensible Drugs Policy on twitter and subscribe to our blog on the right.

YouthRISE and the impact of prohibition on young people

2011-05-12T12:28:00.001+01:00

Anita Krug from YouthRISE talks about the impacts of drug prohibition on young people worldwide outside the 54 Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) on March 21st, 2011.
Follow Students for Sensible Drugs Policy on twitter and subscribe to our blog on the right.

NUS LGBT Campaign to fight against drugs stigma

2011-05-09T11:28:00.007+01:00

This weekend (6-8th May), the National Union of Students' Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans (LGBT) Campaign voted to continue to work with SSDP in campaigning for specialist treatment programmes for LGBT people and against the stigmatisation of drug users. The policy, submitted by SSDP activists from the University of Manchester Students Union, also calls for LGBT awareness training for drug and alcohol counsellors.

Alan Bailey, NUS LGBT Officer (Open Place), said; "Its great that NUS LGBT and SSDP are campaigning together for LGBT specific drug and alcohol services. LGBT people, whilst more likely to use drugs, are less likely to get the help they need in a society where both drug users and LGBT people face stigma and oppression"

Last year, the NUS LGBT campaign voted to affiliate to the SSDP network and to call on the Home Office to produce an impact assessment of drug prohibition and how it effects the LGBT community.

Vicki Baars, the NUS LGBT Officer (Women's Place), said; “"Its fantastic that we have this policy to help fight against the unnecessary criminalisation of LGBT people, and for a more coherent understanding on how the war on drugs is effecting LGBT people."

To find out more about how drug use effects the LGBT community or about our workshops about drugs use aimed at LGBT societies and community groups, email education[at]ssdp.org.uk

Follow Students for Sensible Drugs Policy on twitter and subscribe to our blog on the right.and subscribe to our blog on the right.

Illegal Drugs Do Not Exist

2011-05-05T13:49:00.006+01:00

Recently I posted the first in a series of The Social Meaning of Drug Use blog posts. It was based around the question of why people take drugs, highlighting why different drugs can be used by different people for different purposes, according to various differing social situations. Darryl Bickler, a founding member of the Drug Equality Alliance read the article and was unhappy with the terms ‘illegal drugs’ and ‘illicit drugs’, which conveys a misunderstanding to the reader. As such I’ve asked him to write a short blog to explain why ‘illegal drugs’ do not exist.

"We have been led to believe in their being a ‘War on Drugs’, and even that this is against suppliers of ‘illegal drugs’ and some activists complain that it is irrational to exclude certain ‘legal drugs’. This way of thinking is the result of a prohibitionist propaganda coup; even talking about drug law in these customary terms means that we are starting in the wrong place.

Reformists of drug law are consistently using the enemies’ fake constructs and dogma. Perhaps because drug users are ‘fair game’ in the media, and have suffered for so long, almost anything we imagine being ‘on message’ will do for many. The Drug Equality Alliance focuses on errors in understanding the law before any discussion on policy and how that goes on to affect us all unequally and unfairly. The same errors of legal construction I am referring to here also pervade the activist movement, and that is why many are unwittingly being counter-productive with their communications.

Progress will not come until the intellectual basis of the whole project is factual, coherent and understood. I find myself having to defend what are the facts, and such facts that expose government policy for being irrational, illogical and unsupported in law. The term ‘Legal drugs’ sets up the most obvious concern for us, their corollary, ‘illegal drugs’; both of these expressions are legally meaningless and mask the central untruth behind drug law administration.

The law does not create any such category of ‘legal drugs”. It is entirely misleading claiming that alcohol and tobacco are ‘legal drugs’, as it supports the idea of policy being consistent with law. It is not, despite the jurisdictional facts being made out regarding the harmfulness of these drugs, Government abandoned their powers over drug misuse (and thus the public’s) by declaring them to be involved with ‘legal drugs’. I’m not saying they must ban alcohol at all; the whole starting point is wrong - given that the law is concerned with misuse, then we must assert that an individual’s drug interests in alcohol or any drug are entirely private; the state regulates producers and suppliers of drugs where necessary to ensure safe production and distribution. If a person becomes a problem, and this is through drug misuse, then their drug rights are subject to scrutiny.

To support the myth of ‘illegal drugs’ not only misleads the public that the current regime is mandated in primary law (when it is not), but also obscures that the primary law is already a regulatory instrument intended to steer persons away from drug misuse. Government is blind to this possibility due to the mistaken belief that the law makes some drugs illegal. It confuses people about what is primary law and what is law created through policy. It’s important to remember that using a drug is not illegal in the UK (except opium); this is because the law is an instrument to regulate use through the control of drug property to target misuse.

Consider the talk about new drugs, coining expressions like ‘the soon to be illegal legal highs that aren’t really legal now anyway’. The tensions that seem to arise around the legalisation / regulation / prohibition debate are meaningless discussions from the perspective which activists seek to engage people with. The ground rules are wrong and pervasive. If the core principles of prohibition are not exposed, then anything less builds greater problems in understanding and only perpetuates the stagnation we experience. I would go as far as to say that they actually communicate the opposite of reform by reinforcing the problems we need to overcome.

You simply cannot regulate drugs; laws control people. Wars against illegal drugs do not happen, wars are fought against people. Policy is sold on a lie based upon what is lost in translation when we talk of ‘illegal drugs’ or even legal ones. The artificial divide between different users of different drugs is not only arbitrary, but actually inconsistent with the primary law – a law where ‘legal drugs’ and ‘illegal drugs’ is unknown."

I’d like to say thank you to Darryl for this, and I hope that we can start to get our heads around some of the finer details of why Illegal Drugs Don’t Exist.

*Disclaimer* The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of SSDP UK or it's members.

Why would people take drugs?

2011-04-25T01:19:00.007+01:00

Now, this isn’t actually a question in the conventional sense, however it is a question in the form of a statement. I shall cover this aspect in a later post. But it is something that we do actually need to consider whilst discussing drug law reform. For some, drug use is too easily dismissed as people having reckless fun or a result of social problems, and both are used by prohibitionists to maintain their position.

Throughout history humans in every society have used drugs with different cultures using different drugs, the only exceptions are puritan religious movements. Every day we are presented with social problems. These are not the awful situations we automatically imagine, but rather simple even mundane scenarios. Clothing for seeing the grandparents, travelling miles to get to work, etc. Whereas with these we’d buy smart(ish) clothes or get a train, we use drugs in very much the same way.

For instance caffeine, a stimulant, is used in a morning to increase alertness and reduce the feelings of tiredness. Tobacco is used as a way of reducing stress and relaxing. Alcohol, a depressant, used to decrease stress built up during the day, reducing inhibitions so for conversation to be made more freely.

Caffeine, tobacco, and alcohol, are all social ascribed. They are considered useful, more accepted and encouraged, for an individual to navigate the pressures and requirements of society. Such to say, society has attributed values to the legal drugs.

But what of illegal drugs? As a society these drugs are considered to cause problems, not be useful tools. However, the reality is that some people do not find that the prescribed drugs of society are effective for their situations and may be in complete contradiction to their own personal values. We live as a society of many diverse cultures and values, thus it is unreasonable to presume that everyone’s social requirements will coincide with the solutions of socially acceptable drugs.

Further more to this point, we are actively participating in a consumer society. We create our identities by saying I am not one of “them”. To do this we buy products that have been enshrined with values. By purchasing it and using it, we consume those values. So as a society we place values upon drugs, and as an individual we consume those values. What these values mean vary from individual to individual, from drug to drug.

For the prohibitionist, the problems and values of illicit drug users are considered so outside that of social acceptance that the individual has to be victimized to the point of being criminalised. Whist we must understand that drugs are used to solve social problems, just as we eat food to solve hunger which can lead to obesity, drug use can create unintended problems. The problems created by illicit drug use however are so often made worse or even possible by the current policies of our governments.

For any further explanations, questions, or objections, please contact me at ashley.bullard@ssdp.org.uk

Three days, Three anniversaries: Student Activism, Bicycle day and 420 Day - youthful rebellion against the values of the drug war.

2011-04-23T14:45:00.000+01:00

Levent Akbulut explores the cultural significance of observing anniversaries and touches on their potential to build a strong social and political movement.

Anniversaries and symbolic dates are a great way to build a sense of self-awareness as a cause or movement and to highlight the significance of events in history.
This year is of particular importance in the drug policy reform and anti-prohibitionist movements.

Fifty years ago, member states of the United Nations signed the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1961). The convention was very much born out of the values of the American temperance movement of earlier decades and the increasing globalisation of American culture in the years following the Second World War. These phenomena owe their relevance to the growth of the United States as a major world power, and while more recently America has slowly been losing its iron grip on the internal politics of dependent territories, for the last fifty years the drug war has been a trademark of US hegemony in the international arena.

This year is also the 40th anniversary of when Richard Nixon symbolically called for a war on public enemy number 1, drugs. As the narrative goes, the drug war is supposedly fought to protect young people, or perhaps more likely the progeny of the socio-economically advantaged. This is the case although the availability of drugs is still neither controlled or restricted, rather the policy inevitably leads to a shift in scenarios where the youth get exposed to gang culture or have to consider the underground drugs trade as a career path. Richard Nixon almost certainly had the young long haired anti-war protestors sitting in front of the White house lawn in mind when he ignored the findings of the Shafer Commission and chose to push for a tougher line on the idealistic pot smoking youngsters.

Just weeks before Nixon made this declaration, the United Nations tightened the first convention and the UK’s own Misuse of Drugs act achieved Royal assent and became law. This is the Act of Parliament that is supposed to classify drugs based on relative harms but suggests cannabis is more harmful than ketamine and that ecstasy is on a similar level of harm to cocaine and heroin while excluding alcohol and tobacco from classification. So symbolically powerful is this unholy trinity of drug war anniversaries, the drug policy reform movement has made this a major theme of the work we do this year and was even adopted by ourselves as the narrative for Students for Sensible Drug Policy UK’s second annual conference where we invited students from all over Europe to attend and share their experiences as reformers.

As we in the UK enjoy the holidays of the next couple of weeks, some remembering or celebrating events of spiritual and cultural significance, others are just spending this time with friends and family. It is worth knowing that there were three dates this last week of significance for the student drug policy reform movement in the UK and especially to the youth culture for which our group seeks to provide representation.

Out of America’s cannabis obsessed war on drug users, 420 day has become a symbol of youthful rebellion against a pointlessly punitive prohibition. For some reason or another, North American cannabis culture has adopted the 20th of April and specifically at 4:20pm as a time to celebrate the consumption of the flowers of the cannabis plant.

Rumour has it the term was originally coined by a group of teenagers in San Rafael, California who used to meet at 4:20pm to go on an expedition to find an abandoned cannabis crop that they heard about. Since then, 4:20 evolved into a codeword that they used to refer to cannabis smoking generally and has gained wider social use in the English speaking world, though most notably in North America. It should be noted that different groups make different claims on the origin of the significance of the number.
Some North Americans even ritualise their use of cannabis to not start sooner than 4:20pm each day. Most significantly it refers to what is now a counterculture holiday which in many cases has a political message such as to call for the decriminalisation or legal regulation of cannabis. Why cannabis has such a culture is worth further discussion but not for this blogpost.

The date has increasingly been adopted to organise such politically motivated gatherings in the United Kingdom. The forerunners of Students for Sensible Drug Policy UK organised a 420 day rally in Leeds back in 2008, just days after voting to form Students for Sensible Drug Policy UK. This year a few of our members from London and the South East took to Hyde Park in London for the 420 day celebrations and handed out literature about our movement as well as stickers
and bustcards.

I gave a speech on why young people should become activists just after Peter Reynolds, the leader of the newly formed Cannabis Law Reform party, Clear, called on the people to become politically motivated. Independent activist, Ed Green then gave a brief background on the historical origins of cannabis prohibition.

The event was very peaceful, we were able to engage a lot of young people and everyone seemed to be having a good time. Just as we were entering the evening, some kids who seemed to be in rival gangs started throwing around glass bottles and attacking each other. One even narrowly missed my head. The violence scared a lot of the young people and you could see a swarm of heads standing up and running to leave the park, despite the pleas of their peers for the fighting to stop the few troublemakers carried on hurting each other until the police arrived.

Some have said that I should not be mentioning these incidents which took place towards the end of what was a very successful and peaceful event, but lest we forget that it is our drug laws and our social policies that have encouraged the growth of this youth gang culture. 420 day need not have lost its political and social significance as a creative reaction against cannabis prohibition.

The day earlier, the 19th of April is observed by an even smaller subculture, the psychedelic movement as “Bicycle day”. Legend has it on the 19th of April 1943, Swiss chemist, Albert Hoffman, deliberately ingested 250 micrograms of LSD. Three days earlier he noticed marked psychoactive changes while handling the substance. His intention was to predict a threshold dose. An hour later he experienced sudden and intense changes in perception. He asked his laboratory assistant to take him home. Due to wartime restrictions that prevented driving with motor vehicles, they took a bicycle home. He later wrote of his experience with LSD:

"... little by little I could begin to enjoy the unprecedented colours and plays of shapes that persisted behind my closed eyes. Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating, variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles and spirals, exploding in colored fountains, rearranging and hybridizing themselves in constant flux ..."

The events of the day, now known as ‘Bicycle day’ proved to Hoffman that he had made a significant discovery. This date is remembered by some people in the psychedelic subcultures, including music scenes. While official events are rarely called for, invitations to observe the event now get sent out on Facebook.

These dates are not just a reaction against the cultures we live in but exist due to the social settings that these subcultures exist within. The parallel with the drug war anniversaries lies in the reasons that they hold significance. They represent important dates in the social ritual consumption of certain prohibited substances, while these drug war anniversaries remind us of the absurd and always socially ruinous policies that seek to legislate otherwise victimless human behaviour and criminalising those the worst affected.

The 18th of April 2008 was the date a small group of student cannabis law reform activists at the University of Leeds voted to form Students for Sensible Drug Policy UK.
For years we had wondered why there were campaigns to join covering almost every social problem, but none to talk about how harmful our prohibitionist drug policies had become. Yet the constituent members of the National Union of Students would quite happily regularly celebrate the consumption of alcohol, one of the more toxic of the commonly used recreational drugs while ignoring the social and health harms caused by our current drug policies. This year in 2011, the NUS lost it’s battle to stop the government trebling top up fees from £3K a year to £9K. At NUS annual conference this year, no one was quite sure what the next step was but they all pledged to carry on. This year we are many more in number and more confident on the campuses where we organise.

These holidays when you sit down for dinner with friends and family, or whether you just use the extra time to study, remember this week as the start of a UK youth and student movement for drug policy reform. This week might even be the week you decided to get involved and become an activist...

You can start a local group of Students for Sensible Drug Policy UK at your university or college or even in your local community. Contact us through the chapter start up form on our website for more information on getting involved.

Challenging Prohibition: Is Prohibition Effective?

2011-04-18T14:56:00.013+01:00

References:
1. Lenke, L. & Olsson, B. (1999) “Swedish drug policy in perspective”, i Derks, J., van Kalmthout, & Albrecht, H.-J. (red.) Current and future drug policy studies in Europe, Freibourg.
2. Centralforbundet for alkohol- och narkotikaupplysning, "Drogutvecklingen i Sverige 2006" Report number 98.
3. Transform Drug Policy Foundation, "What is the true cost of prohibition? Why we need an audit" from http://www.tdpf.org.uk/Policy_Economics_WhyWeNeedAnAudit.htm

Mexico Fights Back Against the Drug War

2011-04-13T20:53:00.003+01:00

Levent Akbulut considers the recent rallies in Mexico against the drug war and suggests what they mean for our movement.

Just last week something amazing happened in Mexico. Tens of thousands of Mexicans took to the streets to call for an end to President Calderon's War on Drugs.

Since 2006 when Mexican authorities decided to crack down on the growing illicit drugs industry by bringing in the army, the violent reaction of the drug lords and their minions has skyrocketed. It turns out that people are willing to fight and commit horrendous acts when they live in poverty and there are few lucrative job options available. There are now over 30,000 Mexicans who have died since the conflict flared up and the murder rate does not seem to cease.

Mexico is a key transit and production point in the global underground illicit drugs trade. The demand of Northern countries for drugs in an unregulated market coupled with readily available weapons from the North and the violent reaction of the authorities to a growing market have all made their contribution to the bloodshed. When corruption is rife, and the people live with few options and then there is an easy source of cold hard cash the unintended consequences of the drug war make sense. More and more mass graves are found every week in this country and when at first children were usually exempt from the firing line of the drug wars and increasingly they are now targets. The only more shocking fact is the complete intransigence by many of the world’s leading powers to even consider the legal regulation of drugs.

In February last year, we joined our partners across the globe to highlight the murder of young people at a house party in the world’s most dangerous city, Ciudad Juarez,
Candle light vigils were held at university campuses, cities and in homes everywhere from Toronto to Mexico City to DC and to London. These actions were picked up by the world media, including the Guardian.

The answer to the problem may not be as simple as legalising drugs, but it must at least be considered as part of the solution. It is the failure of our societies to regulate drugs that has contributed to this plague of violent crime that has been crippling producer and transit nations for so many decades.

Is it moral for us to expect the people of Latin America to continue dying, to continue having their economies and lives destroyed? All to perpetuate this false impression of protecting the kids of Northern countries from the harms of drug use.

We know that the demand of drugs does not predominately correlate with their availability. People use illicit drugs for much the same reasons they use legal drugs like alcohol, because they can be fun, they use them to escape and when they use them to escape they are more likely to be socio-economically disadvantaged or damaged in some other way.

This is where our challenge lies- the Mexican people have started calling for an end to the War on Drugs. Like pro-reform advocates either side of the Atlantic, they are not so sure what the end goal should look like but that ultimately it would involve fewer lives being lost, less harms caused by drugs and the freedom to live in a society without having to worry about being shot in a gangland shooting.

On our campuses, in our communities and every opportunity we have we must tell people what our drug policies are doing to the people of Mexico and all other nations and communities caught in the crossfire of this dreadful war. Students for Sensible Drug Policy UK will continue to campaign alongside our allies across the globe for the right of the Mexican people to be free from drug war violence, which we believe will most likely be achieved when prohibition is ended.

Whether you are a member of SSDP, personally affected by the drug war or just a concerned citizen, tell you friends and family about it. Tell your member of parliament what our policies are doing. Let them know that you do not share the views of papers with a prohibitionist agenda. So that one day it will be acknowledged that the young people of Mexico and the young people of the UK caught up in gang violence were all victims of the War on Drugs and that we will never repeat the same mistakes again.

Conference, Congratulations and Challenges

2011-04-10T11:37:00.001+01:00

Jess Bradley reflects on what we have learned during SSDP conference.

Whilst cleaning up after the recent SSDP conference, I had a bit of a realisation. Taking down the posters, and tidying away all the flyers, leaflets and other bumph from the conference, I was amazed at just how far our movement has come, and just how much out organisation has matured. After all, it wasn’t too long ago that I attended the first national meeting of SSDP UK in a cupboard-cum-office in the University of Bradford Students Union, where three or four students decided to turn international drug laws on their head without any real plan, resources or funding.

Bringing together youth and student activists from all across Europe for a conference is no mean task and our success at this is one measurable way to show how far we have come. Even comparing it back to last years conference shows how well we have matured as an organisation. Much like this year, last years conference pulled in a good range of big-name speakers, useful workshops and activists from the student movement. But our success should not be simply measured by the pedigree of the keynote speakers, but on all the smaller details; how smoothly the conference runs, the food provided, and the democratic structures in place and how we engage with them. Seeing as the food provided was more than cuppasoups and teas like last year, we have definitely come a long way.

But, as our keynote speaker Deborah Peterson Small pointed out, we still have far to go as a movement. Besides the fact that international drug laws are far from being reformed, our movement is far from engaging the vast majority of people on a meaningful level, which is something we are going to have to do if we are going to get anywhere near changing the law around drugs.

And of course, the speakers we invited are invariably the same old faces who tour the same conferences talking at each other every year. The reason why most of them a so keen to come to SSDP conference is because our status as a youth and student organisation at least brings some new faces into an otherwise largely stagnant movement.

Even our organisation, which has the most scope for engaging a mass movement for drug law reform is far from diverse. Looking around conference, it seems our movement is dominated by white middleclass straight men; the demographic who aren’t exactly considered the most vulnerable or most affected by the War on Drugs.

Deborah set us a challenge. A challenge to broaden the movement beyond the movement and in effect, to fundamentally change the movement itself by ensuring it is a movement created by and for those most marginalised by the War on Drugs; the services users, gang members, ex-gang members, women, queers, medical users, people of colour and people struggling under poverty.

The fact of the matter is that we are the organisation best placed to take up the challenge of creating a diverse and democratic mass movement for drug law reform. Students, when not struggling with deadlines, have the time and young people have the energy to breathe new life into a movement which really needs it, as long as we are serious about stepping out of our comfort zones (and off our campuses). The question remains: are you with us on this?

Leeds Metropolitan - Leading the way on Student Union Drug Policy (part 2)

2011-03-31T20:37:00.004+01:00

For the lead up to this, if you haven't read already, please see the story so far.

As you may be aware, a policy motion was submitted to Leeds Metropolitan Student's Union, achieving 83.27% in favour at the referendum in March. However, due to low voter turn-out the policy was not automatically accepted and was to be taken to the Student Representative Council (SRC).

The policy motion, if adopted would mandate the union;

To commit to a full, open and honest debate about drugs with as much of the membership as possible.
To involve relevant agencies in our decisions.
To seek to influence decision makers to review and radically overhaul the way the country views and controls these substances.
To campaign to decriminalise the possession of substances for personal use.
To oppose any cuts to primary health services which would be prejudicial to the public health.

On the 29th of March the SRC convened to discuss issues surround the running of the Union, including the two policy motions that received majority support at referendum. I had prepared a little speech for the meeting, however, due to the policy motion being discussed twice before at SRC, it was decided not to discuss these motions and to go straight to a vote.

I have to be honest, I wasn't too sure that the policy would pass. It's usually such an uphill struggle for institutions to accept what is commonly seen as a radical proposal. I was bracing myself for it to fail. Those in favour were asked to raise their hands first, a good number raised their hands but not enough to ensure it passing. Then followed those against, and for a few fleeting moments a real panic struck me as the first few hands started to raise. Luckily, after the initial few hands, none more followed.

The policy PASSED!

I have the great joy of being able to announce that after everything I've done to make this happen, Leeds Metropolitan University Student's Union is the first Student's Union in the country to accept the War on Drugs is a War on People and to oppose the victimization of millions of people every year. When I finish my time at university, and I still have at least two years left to achieve more, I can proudly say I made some level of a difference in trying to change our system in what can sometimes feel like an endless war.

I'd like to give a special thank you to Jo Johnson (Community and Well-being officer at LMUSU), and those at Leeds Metropolitan who've supported me over the last couple of months.

Love, peace, and all things nice,

until next time,

Ashley. x

SSDP UK Conference to be held at the St Thomas Conference Centre in Manchester

2011-03-10T14:22:00.000Z

The European Student Drug Policy Reform Conference: Another Bloody Birthday will be held at:

St. Thomas Conference Centre
Ardwick Green North,
Manchester,
M12 6FZ

25-27th of March 2011

There is only just over a day left for students to apply for free accommodation at conference.
Register here now and apply for accommodation here!

Otherwise, the conference is open to all members of the public who want to be better drug policy activists!

See you there,

Lev
National Coordinator

Leeds Metropolitan - Leading the way on Student Union Drug Policy

2011-03-05T21:45:00.001Z

Elections for University Union Exec. and Policy Referendums are some of the most important dates in a student activist's calendar. It's your chance to influence how your Union is run, and the direction it takes on important policy issues.

I'm currently studying at Leeds Metropolitan University, trying to get Leeds Metropolitan SSDP up and running on the campus, and have had good success running joint events between Leeds Met and Leeds Uni. Unfortunately I've found the task of setting up a LMSU SSDP a difficult task; the union does not share LUU's strangely political environment. But I've not been deterred in trying to make an impact upon the union politics, having become chair of the Unions' Drugs Forum, and got involved with other areas of campaigning where I can find the time.

As the chair of the Drugs Forum I have a seat on the Union's Council and I seconded a policy motion to go to Union Referendum. The Controlled Substance Policy would mandate LMSU to campaign for the decriminalisation of drug use, oppose any cuts to drug related health services, and have an open and honest debate about drugs on campus. Taking on the role of the Yes campaigner for the motion, I spent several days travelling around the University to open up the discussion about drugs on campus, collecting over 200 e-mail addresses whilst I was at it.

I received a mixed reaction from people, as always, with some just not being able to accept that anything other than banning drugs could reduce harm to society. No matter of explaining that the most harm that comes from drugs is where they're acquired, how they're taken, and how we as a society treat them. I was also able to get an article published in the student paper, here is an altered copy for a national audience;

The Losing War Against Drugs

The results of the referendum;

Yes

83.27% (418 votes)

No

16.73% (84 votes)

So a victory for sensible drug policy! Except it isn't... The Union has rules stating that referendum motions need 700 votes cast to be recognised. Which seems fair, until you learn that not a SINGLE policy has passed due to this factor. Luckily for me because the result was in favour, and by a big margin, it shall be brought to the next Union Council Meeting where I shall have to convince the Union it should enact the policy motion despite not reaching the bench-mark.

I'll let you know how it goes. :)

You can read the full policy at: Controlled Substance Policy

To see how things went, please see the next part.

European Student Drug Policy Reform Conference

2011-03-05T16:34:00.000Z

European Student Drug Policy Reform Conference: Another Bloody Birthday

Drug War Revisited

Students for Sensible Drug Policy UK’s Second Annual Conference

25th-27th of March 2011

On the weekend of the 25-27th of March 2011, activists from across Europe will meet in Manchester to mark the many drug war anniversaries that will take place this year. In 1961 member states of the United Nations signed the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs aiming to tackle the availability of certain substances.

Ten years later, Richard Nixon declared an all out War on Drugs. Since then the world has seen untold horrors in the struggle between those who wish to take drugs and those who wish to eradicate all use. Do we really need to wait another 40, 50 years to resolve this issue with compassion and reason?

Do not miss Another Bloody Birthday, a conference for students and activists from across Europe and beyond to share experiences as activists and learn about the failed global war on drugs. The event is open to the public and all people interested in becoming better activists.

We're Concerned about Frank

2009-10-01T17:39:00.000+01:00

Talk to Frank, the government sponsored drug awareness organisation, alongside the National Union of Students and Mixmag, have recently launched a campaign warning of the dangers of so called ‘legal highs’ – called, rather unintuitively, The Crazy Chemist. This campaign focuses on the dangers of currently legal drugs such as BZP (an amphetamine-like drug), GBL (similar in chemistry and effect to GHB) and Spice-type products (herbal smoking mixes sprayed with synthetic cannabis mimicking chemicals).

This is if course, a run-up to the Government’s plans to ban these three substances within the next few months. Frank raises some certainly genuine concerns about the harm that these substances can cause, but the main thrust of the campaign is to highlight that these drugs are produced in clandestine labs by dodgy chemists (so you don't know whats in them), and have little history of human use, (so we don’t know what the long term effects are).

Now warning the public, especially young people, about the dangers of drugs, both legal and illegal is very important, and something SSDP very much supports. Warnings about legal drugs are especially important, as the discrepancy in the treatment of legal and illegal drugs can lead users to think that legal drugs (including alcohol and tobacco) are safer because of their legal status.

And it is certainly true that these drugs pose unknown risks. Because the companies that produce them are entirely unregulated, they often lie about the contents of their products, or are dishonest about the doses or effects. Should their products be used and cause an adverse reaction, it would be very difficult to hold the producers of these drugs to account, because they market their products ostensibly not for human consumption – instead implying they should be used as incense, as room odoriser, or even laughably as plant food. However none of these concerns will be addressed by banning the products.

When these drugs are banned one of two things will happen. The first possibility is that these substances go underground and start to be produced on the black market. We unfortunately have extensive global organised crime networks to the value of $300 billion that already specialise in producing and distributing illegal drugs. Synthetic cannibinoids particularly could see a rise as a more profitable (and dangerous) alternative to cannabis production – it could well be easier and cheaper to produce synthetic cannabis extracts in small labs, as opposed to growing herbal cannabis in vast grow-ops, and the finished product would be much easier to move in a clandestine fashion.

The other possibility is that they will vanish entirely. On the surface this sounds like a positive thing, however the demand for these products will still exist and this will lead to users either buying their drugs on the black market, or switching to a new generation of untested and potentially dangerous legal drugs. Unfortunately for those trying to regulate drugs, there are literally hundreds of possible chemicals, natural or synthetic, that could potentially be used and abused recreationally.

Either way, users will still be getting their drugs from crazy chemists. The only way to drive these dangerous criminals out of the drugs business is to regulate it. Produce drugs in government monitored laboratories. Test their purity. Launch extensive studies into the harm they cause. Sell them in licensed venues with mandatory ID checks for anyone who wants to come in. Place heavy taxes on their production and invest the revenues in extensive education campaigns to warn people that they are dangerous, and treatment programs for those who experience problems with their health or with addiction. What won't help is giving the crazy chemists an even greater market share.

So why are we concerned about Frank and this campaign? Frank claims to be an independent source of information on drugs. If they run campaigns to support government policy, then this seriously calls into question this claimed independence. Educating drug users is very hard - they are by definition a marginalised part of society that is difficult to reach with education campaigns. By getting so directly involved in politics, Frank is certain to alienate this group from its information even further, and make the very important message on the dangers of drugs much harder to get across.

Obligatory Disclaimer: The opinions posted are those of the poster, and not of SSDP

Rebutting the Home Office

2009-05-15T18:37:00.000+01:00

by Andi Sidwell

I recently read a short quote from a Home Office spokesman:

"Drugs are controlled because they are harmful. The law provides an important deterrent to drug use and legalisation would risk a huge increase in consumption with an associated cost to public health. The legalisation of drugs would not eliminate the crime committed by organised career criminals; such criminals would simply seek new sources of illicit revenue through crime."

I guess to a lot of people the statement above seems pretty straightforward, even obvious. I don't think it is (and took it as a cue to write a facebook note about it, possibly demonstrating my own self-righteousness). The very first sentence — "drugs are controlled because they are harmful" — sounds innocent enough but within it is the entire failing and failed model of international drug law.

In what way are drugs controlled? Is their price controlled? No. Are there age restrictions on who can buy drugs? No. Are the profits from drugs in any way taxed? No. Is the purity of drugs controlled? No. Is their general availability controlled to certain areas or shops, or by a licence? No.

Alcohol can be said to be controlled in all of the ways above. Drugs cannot. It is easier for a fourteen year old to get weed than it is for them to get alcohol— is that what the government means by "control"? The reality is that yes, drugs are controlled, by people who live and work totally under the radar, and not by the government. But the people who control them do so not because they are harmful, but rather because they are profitable. There are dealers out there who sell drugs to get people high rather than to make money, but they are in the vanishing minority; the vast majority of the drugs trade is done soley to make money.

The other fun thing about the statement "drugs are controlled" is that bringing drugs under a regulatory system actually controls drugs more in all the ways listed above, and not less, which is not how the government portray it. They portray moving control of drugs from illegal, unregulated markets to legal, regulated ones as a form of losing control, which I'd hope is fairly obvious that it's not.

And "drugs are harmful". Are all drugs harmful, in even the tiniest measure? No. The government makes paracetamol legal even though it is often used in suicides, yet in small amounts it is amazingly helpful. The government sanctions medical use of morphine, but does not sanction non-medical use (we call it heroin). The blanket statement the Home Office offers belies a complicated reality, where things are not so simple as "drugs are illegal because they are harmful".

For one thing, we have to distinguish between problematic and non-problematic drug use, something the Home Office is not fond of. We know for a fact that there is non-problematic drug use, because 30% of the population of the UK has tried an illegal drug at least once[1], and they're not all suffering major health problems, reefer madness or insanity from it.

Let me ask a few questions. Is someone who smokes a spliff a couple of times a year problematic? Is someone who does couple of lines of cocaine about once a month problematic? Is the person who takes ketamine every couple of nights instead of drinking problematic? Is the heroin user who mugs someone to keep their income up problematic?

These four situations have different answers, probably differing on who you are and your perspective on life, but the answer to all four is not "yes". The current government policy paradim denies there are non-problematic uses of drugs, because it insists that all drug use is harmful, when demonstrably, there is a lot of drug use that isn't. Or at least, isn't any more dangerous than a night of heavy drinking, horse riding[2], driving, living in cities, or being poor; and the governemnt doesn't rush to ban any of these.

Now, what are the main harms of drug use? Are they anything to do with users having no idea what is in the pills or the little packet of powder they get given—and so having no way to know what they're taking or whether it will kill them? Or because dealers have very little incentive to sell high-quality produce? In the case of heroin users, is it harmful because shared needles increase the risk of HIV, and dealers have no incentive to provide clean needles, and without needle exchanges there is no way to get take the drug even remotely safely?

These harms are not caused by the drugs— they are caused by the economic reality of an illegal and unregulated market. If the government regulated drug purity, drug deaths would drop dramatically. Needle exchanges already reduce HIV infection rates. In Portugal five years ago, personal possession of drugs was decriminalised, and the number of overdose deaths dropped by 110/year and the number of new HIV cases from dirty needles by 1000/year[3]. We cannot afford to be moralistic here. People die every day as a result of policies our government pursues, policies which cause the very harms that the government spins them to protect against.

I don't care if you have some kind of hierarchy of substances, whereby alcohol is OK to drink, or maybe cigarettes are, but trippy mushrooms aren't and cocaine is in some way evil, because this isn't about morality and individual tastes. This is about the people that are directly and massively impacted by the current worldwide drug policy, from the people in the countries destabilised by drug cartels and warlords, to the addicts on the street. Tell the people of Colombia, a country destroyed by drugs, that drugs are harmful— they know first hand, and they would benefit most if the trade was legal so their country could recover. Tell the drug mules that drugs are harmful, and remember that it is the illegality of drugs that caused the entire idea of drug mules to come about in the first place. And tell the addicts who die of poor quality drugs that they are harmful, because it is the impurities that kill.

People shouldn't use drugs, you say? Drug use is a reality, always has been, and always will be, and denying that reality and pretending we can make it go away is having massively adverse effects on significant portions of humanity. The moralising approach is killing people. It has to end.

Compare the situation to that of teenage sex. The Bush administration in the US put a lot of effort into promoting an policy of abstinence, where education about sex was minimal and condom use played down. This did nothing to reduce teenage pregnancies or prevent the spread of STIs. The parallel should be clear, since we are repeating the same thing in the drug war. Instead of telling people to stop screwing, we have to reduce the harm of people doing it. Tell them to stop screwing, sure, but don't deliberately stop them using condoms.

Screwing, like people wanting to take drugs, is a basic fact of human existence. We need to look at this dispassionately and compare numbers, not stories, and accept that if there is a massive demand for something, there will be a supply— and we should try and make sure both that the supply and the thing supplied hurt as few people as possible. Instead of thinking we can fundamentally alter human behaviour, we should be looking at how to work with it to stop so many people being harmed in its course.

Which isn't to say that a regulated drugs supply would be problem-free: it wouldn't. It would however effectively remove a lot of current problems. Yes, people could still get addicted, but in a world where you can openly seek help for that without worrying about the police, more people will. Yes, people will still overdose, but in a world where you can't be kicked out of your accomodation for taking drugs there, people will be more likely to seek help when it happens.

And when it comes to the "risk of a huge increase in consumption", ask yourself for a moment where those people would come from. The majority of people who want to try drugs already do, and most of them don't get hooked (remember that 30% statistic— that's how many people in the UK have used an illegal drug at least once). Do you know anyone who would seriously start taking drugs just because they were legal? Have you ever known such a person? In countries where drugs have been decriminalised, they have not found a massive increase in consumption, and in Amsterdam the average age of regular cannabis users is rising.

And if more people do take drugs, then because the police and counts aren't wasting their time and money on users and petty dealers, we will have the money to invest massively in drug research and treatment programmes. If there are serious health risks to taking certain drugs, we will have the money to fund, y'know, proper scientific research on them that isn't interfered with by the poor quality of today's street drugs, and enough money to do proper drug education that doesn't rely on lies or scaremongering.

Legalisation won't be easy and there will be mistakes and cockups and whatnot. Reasonable people can differ on how it should be done. It is, however, the only sustainable option: prohibition isn't. Locking people up and fining them because they take drugs is not the only solution, nor is it the best. The world is more complicated than "drugs are illegal because they are harmful".

So yeah, Home Office spokesman, take that. You're wrong, and I seriously hope you live long enough to see it.

[1] http://www.ic.nhs.uk/statistics-and-data-collections/health-and-lifestyles/drug-misuse/statistics-on-drug-misuse:-england-2008-full-report
[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7876425.stm
[3] http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=portugal-drug-decriminalization

Has the world gone drug-free?

2009-05-15T18:36:00.000+01:00

Sarah McCulloch investigates how the war on drugs has shaped the world, the international costs of the billion–dollar trade and attempts to combat it. (Originally printed in and also available at the Student Direct website)

“A drug-free world, we can do it!” was the slogan created by countries around the world when in 1998 they assembled at the UN to create a 10-year drug strategy. That strategy finished in 2008. Looking back over the past 10 years, the question must be asked: what has been achieved? Have the barons been beaten? Have drugs vanished from our streets? Have we now a “drug-free world”? Clearly the answer is no. In fact, the production, supply, and use of drugs have increased every year for decades, and the global drug trade is currently worth £160bn. Drugs now affect virtually every region of our planet.

The War on Drugs

The current “war on drugs”, as it has become known, began in America in 1969. Prior to this, drugs had been subject to varying degrees of regulation, with the US having a particularly restrictive drugs policy. As a result of the Opium Wars with China (1839-1842 and 1856-1860) and increasingly prohibitionist attitudes at home, America severely restricted the sale of opium, banned alcohol, restricted cannabis and began an international campaign for others to follow. By the 1930s, nearly all member states of the International Opium Convention had anti-cannabis laws. In 1969, to distract people from Vietnam, Richard Nixon declared a “war on drugs” and banned most of the drugs which remain illegal today. Efforts, both in America and across the world, to restrict the production and supply of drugs really took off in the 1970s and today billions of dollars is spent on law enforcement alone. However, the global drug trade has continued to flourish despite efforts to stamp it out; it is the third largest trade in the world, behind oil and arms.

America itself is the world’s largest consumer of drugs, as well as its harshest policeman, with over 40% of the USA’s 2.3 million prison population jailed for non-violent drug offences. Almost one in three black men have been through the criminal justice system because of this. The stigma was not helped by the Higher Education Act, which banned anyone with criminal convictions from receiving federal student loans, though campaigning by Students for Sensible Drug Policy USA has been partially effective: now only people convicted during their studies have their funding withdrawn. This has affected over 200,000 students. Worse still, Derek Copp, a student in Michigan, was shot in the chest by police in March during a drugs raid on his apartment – a small amount of marijuana was subsequently found in his possession

A Global Phenomenon

The American trend has been reflected worldwide. Afghanistan was invaded in 2001 in retaliation for 9/11. Unfortunately this backfired on the invading countries as opium, which had been banned by the Taliban, suddenly became much more lucrative than wheat, and production exploded. Afghanistan currently supplies more than 90% of the world’s heroin. Occupying forces have tried everything from destroying poppy fields, thereby fuelling support for the Taliban, to buying the crops up and then destroying them, which was expensive and resulted in even more farmers cultivating opium to cash in. No strategy has yet succeeded in reducing opium production in Afghanistan.

Colombia is similarly dependent on cocaine. The government has effectively been dismantled as drug money is used to bribe and corrupt in favour of powerful drug cartels. The US has taken to spraying coca crops with herbicides in an effort to destroy the trade but has only succeeding in reducing poor Colombian farmers to even greater poverty, as their cash crops and food crops are destroyed in equal measure. And this misery is all for nothing – coca crop production has actually risen by 23% since crop spraying began.

Breaking the habit

Once the cocaine is produced in Columbia, it is smuggled through the Caribbean to be distributed all over the world. British efforts to wipe out the gangs which operate there have had a devastating effect, with almost £3bn being poured into supporting anti-drug campaigns every year. However, as soon as a crackdown begins on one Caribbean island, the trade simply moves elsewhere, taking its turf wars, blood feuds and gang violence with it. Every so often, British-sponsored drug squads target and eliminate the gang kingpins, which results in mass homicides as the lieutenants fight it out to take over. Even though the local populace strongly support measures to end drug use and trade, the government’s strategies have simply resulted in more violence, more deaths, and greater profits to the crime lords.

A spreading poison

Nevetheless, drug dealers in the Caribbean are starting to feel the heat. The trade hasn’t been killed off however – it‘s simply starting to move elsewhere, to places such as Africa. Although some countries have been favourites for years (the UN estimates that Nigerian syndicates control 50% of the world’s heroin supply), gangs have begun to move into many other countries in Africa, such as the Ivory Coast, Ghana and Senegal in West Africa and Ethiopia, Kenya, Botswana and Zambia in the East and South. These countries have become new and burgeoning drug trafficking centres, with little legal consequence: civil strife, wars, poverty, crime and corruption are all major barriers to law enforcement and excellent conditions under which drug smugglers thrive. Africa Renewal, a UN publication, believes that “although in global terms Africa’s drug problem is insignificant, it is threatening to add another impediment to the continent’s development efforts.” It remains to be seen how Africa’s future will be affected by the global drug trade.

And so the drug wars continue to rage on all over the world. While the damage done by the misuse of drugs themselves seems to be limited to the individual and their immediate communities, the efforts to stamp out the drug trade are far more widespread, exacerbating existing problems associated with the trade as well as producing new ones. Prohibition of drugs, like the prohibition of alcohol, needs to be rethought if we are to have a real effect. The new UN drug strategy has wisely dropped any slogans, but has kept the same strategy, even though the drug trade has flourished under it. A drug-free world – did we do it? Nowhere near.

Prohibition: War without end

2009-05-15T18:28:00.000+01:00

A comments article written by Levent Akbulut for the Leeds Student Newspaper.

Fri 3rd Oct, 2008 - Fri 10th Oct, 2008.

Will revising governmental drug policies lead to a decline in related crime?

The US imposed policy of prohibition, the war on some people who use certain drugs, i.e. the War on Drugs has in my view not just been a catastrophic failure but a complete disaster for society.

Nations are being torn to shreds by policies which license the growth of essentially wild plants containing psychoactive compounds to one group of individuals to be sold to pharmaceutical companies, whilst systematically destroying the same crops being grown by other farmers under the false pretext of maintaining social order in consumption countries. The reality of the situation is of course that production nations are often consumers themselves and that exactly the same compounds found in coca leaves, opium poppies and cannabis buds, including many of the derivatives and analogues produced from the naturally occurring compounds are sold and licensed as medicines in the UK.
Coca, Opium and Cannabis are highly versatile plants with not only pharmacological properties but are highly valuable food sources. To put this into context, flavourings from Coca are still put in Coca Cola, poppy seeds are scattered over buns and cannabis (hemp) seed is seeing a revival as a more environmentally friendly and nutritious alternative to Soy.
In 1998 the UN's ten year drug strategy officially committed 150 nations (including the UK) to eradicating all coca, opium and cannabis from the planet by 2008.
What we are seeing all over the world is the establishment of an incredibly untenable bureaucracy where some of the most dangerous drugs are aggressively marketed as social lubricants or as stress management tools. It is as if they, alcohol, tobacco and the various tranquillisers prescribed like sweets by doctors are not drugs!
This is not a criticism of the activities of individuals making a personal choice which affects no one but themselves. But rather a cry out for a collective wakeup call to put things into perspective with regards to drug policy.
Drug policy should not be based upon populist sound bites but rather sound scientific evidence, something we are watching the government ignore over and over again.
So while we are poisoning and burning these fields of what are essentially weeds growing in South America, the Caribbean and Afghanistan- without due consideration to the environment, the individuals working on these farms and neighbouring communities, what are we actually achieving?
By creating a very lucrative market for some of the most dangerous substances on the planet without any regulation or controls, while the government claims these are controlled substances, we have gifted the supply and production of certain drugs to criminal syndicates. These gangs do not just exist in Columbia or Afghanistan, but involve an intricate network of individuals from the farmer to the smuggler to the street dealer to the user and within these unregulated structure we are witnessing the rapid growth of anarcho-capitalist communities. Whenever we remove a street gang several more dangerous gangs move in to fill the gap in the market. The government can not control a problem it has allowed to exist by going in all guns blazing, we have successfully reduced the number of smokers and drinkers through widespread public health campaigns but we are failing to get the message across with regards to illegal drugs. After all the activity the user is partaking in is illegal, would locking up an alcoholic really work? This is despite years and years of lobbying by the alcohol and tobacco industries.
Part of this so-called public health message is a Dob-in-a-Dealer campaign being tried out in Leeds at the moment, a separate campaign suggests that passing a joint to a friend for free counts as dealing. This only leads to building mistrust between individuals in a community. Drugs may be illegal but discussing a reform of drug policy should not be. In order to go back to the basic principles of the intention of drugs policy which has always been reducing the harm of drugs to society and to the user, we must subsequently abandon this irrational obsession of a 'drug-free' world and end our biblical preoccupation with prohibiting certain lifestyle choices.
With the world economy in turmoil and many individuals struggling financially we have to genuinely start reconsidering if prohibition is actually working and move towards an evidence based sensible drug policy.