While the world moves towards an evidence-based approach, the UK government is still stuck in the past
For Oscar Wilde, the tragic paradox of Victorian philanthropists was that their “remedies do not cure the disease … Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.” He could easily have been talking about the British government’s approach to drugs. This week, the government announced its new 10-year strategy “to combat illegal drug use”, with the prime minister claiming that “it’s been a long time since the government said drugs are bad and dangerous”. Shamelessly dressed up as a cop to announce the new strategy, Boris Johnson’s message to drug gangs is that there is a new sheriff in town. These bold proclamations appear a little overblown when considered against the fact that this is at least the sixth new drugs strategy that a UK government has announced in the past quarter of a century.
This purportedly groundbreaking new drug strategy admits that the current policy is not working, and then promises to continue heedlessly with its failed vision. Despite umpteen millions being thrown into enforcing prohibition over the decades, it recognises that “the global availability of drugs is higher than ever before” and that we are registering record levels of drug-related deaths. But the prime minister refused to even consider suggestions that the UK learn from more radical models of drug policy reform being implemented across the world, dismissing talk of decriminalising drugs by saying there is “no evidence that that’s the right thing to do”. He must be receiving his global drug policy information from the same source that told him there was no need for a lockdown in early 2020, despite the rest of the globe shutting its borders.
Dr Kojo Koram teaches at the School of Law at Birkbeck, University of London
