{"id":99,"date":"2009-04-07T11:39:02","date_gmt":"2009-04-07T10:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/?p=99"},"modified":"2009-05-13T11:04:13","modified_gmt":"2009-05-13T10:04:13","slug":"drug-policy-transformed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2009\/04\/07\/drug-policy-transformed\/","title":{"rendered":"Drug Policy Transformed?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve spent the morning looking over the Transform Drug Policy Foundation’s consultation paper, A Comparison of the Cost-Effectiveness of the Prohibition and Regulation of Drugs<\/em>, which was published today.\u00a0 The full report is available as a .pdf here<\/a> (note the filesize – at 445k, it’s HUGE) – or there’s a summary on Transform’s blog, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The rather plain title of the document belies its content: it’s well worth a read, and is fairly fizzing with righteous indignation:<\/p>\n

Current approaches ignore the basic finding that the policy of prohibition itself is the direct source of what is perceived as ‘the drug problem<\/em>‘ – specifically the vast majority of drug-related crime – rather than drug use per se.\u00a0 The Government has also repeatedly failed to acknowledge that prohibition is a policy choice, not a fixed feature of the policy landscape that must be worked within, or around.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The political context of these analytical shortcomings cannot be ignored. Whether it is an ideological commitment to prohibition, investment in populist drug war posturing, or fear of the domestic and international policy implications of questioning the status quo, there are clearly substantial obstacles to mainstream policy makers moving forward on this issue that have nothing to do with rational policy analysis and debate. (p8)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve blogged on a similar theme before<\/a>, and my natural instincts are to agree with\u00a0a lot of Transform’s document.\u00a0\u00a0Whether or not you agree with\u00a0Transform, though, it does seem that there’s a good reason to take a long, hard look at current drugs policy.\u00a0 Prohibition might, in the end, turn out to be the best policy.\u00a0 But, at least at first glance, it doesn’t seem to work all that well, and there are probably probing questions that are worth asking.\u00a0 We shouldn’t be accepting prohibition on faith.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: Mark Easton’s BBC News blog has picked this up and analysed it in more depth<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve spent the morning looking over the Transform Drug Policy Foundation’s consultation paper, A Comparison of the Cost-Effectiveness of the Prohibition and Regulation of Drugs, which was published today.\u00a0 The full report is available as a .pdf here (note the filesize – at 445k, it’s HUGE) – or there’s a summary on Transform’s blog, here. […]<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[511,475,577],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news","category-politics","category-resource"],"yoast_head":"\nDrug Policy Transformed? - Journal of Medical Ethics blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2009\/04\/07\/drug-policy-transformed\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Drug Policy Transformed? - Journal of Medical Ethics blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’ve spent the morning looking over the Transform Drug Policy Foundation’s consultation paper, A Comparison of the Cost-Effectiveness of the Prohibition and Regulation of Drugs, which was published today.\u00a0 The full report is available as a .pdf here (note the filesize – at 445k, it’s HUGE) – or there’s a summary on Transform’s blog, here. 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