To my critics on the subject of drugs - I was Right and You Were Wrong

Beneath a strangely changeable headline (I shall return to that), the Guardian has today confirmed what I have long said. Cannabis possession is no longer treated as a crime in this country, in all but a few exceptional cases.

 

The article, as published in the paper, is now available on the web only in this form:

 

 

http://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-guardian/20151019/281496455129010/TextView

 

with the headline : Cuts force police to give up targeting cannabis use���

 

This is also the headline on the version on page one of the actual printed version of the newspaper.

 

But it was originally published (the previous afternoon, the Guardian generally does this) with a different (and in my view much more accurate) headline

 

���Steep fall in cannabis offences points to silent relaxation of drugs policy���

The introductory paragraphs are also significantly different. 

 

The later version, in the paper but no longer on the website says :'Shrinking police budgets have led to a creeping unofficial decriminalisation of cannabis possession as official figures suggest forces are prioritising more serious crimes��� .

 

The earlier version, on the website but not in the paper

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/oct/18/steep-fall-cannabis-possession-offences-silent-relaxation-of-drugs-policy

 

says: ���The number of cannabis possession offences in England and Wales has plummeted since 2011 as forces divert shrinking budgets into tackling more serious crime and officers rein in stop and search.���

 

For my money, the first headline suits the second story better, and vice versa. And the strange gulps and ���all perfectly normal��� noises I got when I rang the ���Guardian��� gave me the strong impression that something had gone wrong.

 

It���s interesting anyway. I tend to think the ���unofficial decriminalisation��� is the better explanation���. And claims of ���prioritising other crime��� or ���manpower shortages��� or ���shrinking budgets��� are so much bunkum, which wouldn't be swallowed by anyone who knew any history (a small and shrinking number, but there).

 

I���ll explain why. The main reason, of course, is that the Police of England and Wales, by comparison with 50 years ago, have far more officers, both in raw numbers and per head of the population. They have been freed of the statutory duty to secure commercial premises (done by private security now), no longer have to enforce parking laws(done by councils) , no longer have to organise prosecutions (the CPS took that over years ago) and they (still) have thousands of non-uniformed back-up staff, obtained in recent years,  to cope with a lot of the paperwork which they didn���t have 50 years ago. It seems to me they have also more or less given up the old-fashioned road and motorway patrols, handing this function over to speed cameras, which of course don���t deter drunken, drugged or plain bad driving the way those patrols used to do.

 

When they don���t do something, it���s because they don���t want to.

 

If the police want to do something (and I���m sure my more observant readers will have noticed this) then huge resources are available for it, plus noisy processions of high-visibility vehicles, and the police���s private air force of helicopters.

 

As for why they don���t want to do things, anyone can understand why plodding the streets in the cold and the rain on your own isn���t attractive, compared with a nice warm car or an even warmer desk.  Plenty of excuses for that (I���ve heard them all, don���t bother).

 

In the case of drugs, I suspect the reason is a mixture of two things ��� the growing number of funky ���progressive��� police officers and police chiefs, who don���t actually disapprove of drugtaking or believe in the law; and the tiny penalties imposed for cannabis possession when it is prosecuted. Why plunge yourself into months of paperwork and witness duties for a ��50 fine that probably won���t get paid? Especially when confiscating an illegal substance is itself a complicated and difficult job, laying officers open to all kinds of risks if they don���t follow the rules to the letter. But deep down, the main reason is that the police have realised the government and the courts (which are heavily influenced by the government through ���guidelines���; and ���training���) don���t care about cannabis possession, and don���t want to see offenders brought before them. So they don���t. 

A couple of years ago I was more or less howled off the stage for suggesting that the ���war on drugs���, of which we hear so much, had never actually existed in this country, and that England had covertly and quietly decriminalised cannabis, the main technically illegal drug.

 

The Guardian���s story is just the next stage in this 45-year saga.

 

Why was this simple and accurate factual history of real events so unwelcome?

 

Because bogus claims of a mythical and draconian ���war on drugs��� were essential to the powerful, influential and wealthy campaign for full drug legalisation, now nearing success in many Western countries. The next step (for them) is the cancellation of the international treaties which still forbid the open commercial sale of cannabis, heroin and cocaine.

 

These treaties are barely enforced ��� the US Federal Government does nothing to suppress the open defiance of them by several states in the USA, and the covert defiance of them by this country, which simply doesn���t enforce its own laws, and hasn���t for decades.  But for full effect, they want the treaties, and the resulting laws,  wholly gone.

 

Imagine the vast profits to be made in such a legal trade, aided by advertising and the internet.

 

Imagine the huge taxes which could be raised by increasingly debt-plagued national treasuries. No need to imagine those, see

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11927949/Leaked-Ireasury-report-reveals-legalised-cannabis-could-be-worth-hundreds-of-millions-to-the-Exchequer.html

 

 

 

Essential to this bogus case was the claim that there had been a serious attempt to suppress drug abuse through legal sanctions which was to blame for the mess in which we now find ourselves.

 

Also essential was the equally bogus claim that this phantasmal ���war��� had a) failed and b) was ruining the lives of thousands with its brutal penalties.

 

Although the main source of my facts was a man called Steve Abrams (now alas no longer with us), perhaps the single most effective campaigner for the relaxation of cannabis laws who has ever lived, my book and my attempts to defend it were met with a hailstorm of invective, personal attacks and a sort of verbal spume designed to draw attention away from what I had actually said. None of these attacks questioned my facts, which I thought interesting.

 

Decriminalisation began in 1969 with the Wootton Report,   the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act which followed most of that report���s recommendations - and was hugely empowered by Lord Hailsham���s 1973 instruction to magistrates to cease jailing offenders for cannabis possession. But it took even clearer shape after the Runciman report, commissioned in 1997 but not  delivered until 2000.

 

Dame Ruth Runciman (like everyone invited by the government to report on this subject, a reliable social liberal) admitted that the supposed penalties against cannabis possession were rarely if ever imposed, though noted that there was too little consistency about this and sought to achieve *more*consistency. Crucially, she also pointed out that, within international conventions, *the Government has great room for manoeuvre in how it applies the law*.

 

Almost all Western governments, some more slowly than others, have grasped that they can fulfil their obligations by maintaining official illegality, but not in practice enforcing it. On paper, Britain���s regime looks draconian, as drug propagandists are quick to point out. But the maximum penalties prescribed are virtually never applied, or even approached, and most of those who break the law are not even arrested, let alone proceeded against. The one exception among modern law-governed advanced societies is Japan, which still applies a strict law and has much lower cannabis usage. A recent Home Office report suggested these facts were not really connected, and that Japan���s lower drug use resulted from ���cultural��� factors. Maybe so, but weak laws undermine cultures. Strong laws preserve them. Britain's culture was pretty anti-drug before the long decriminalisation began. 

 

 

Soon after the publication of the Runciman Report, the Association of Chief Police Officers(ACPO), without consulting Parliament, altered the law of England and began adopting the ���cannabis warning��� as the preferred response to an arrest for possession. ACPO is now defunct and has been replaced by the National Police Chiefs��� Council, whose spokesman told the ���Guardian��� ���Cannabis possession has never been treated as a top priority���.

 

Let me just repeat that with my emphasis on a single word : ���Cannabis possession has never been treated as a top priority���. Quite - and after the ���warning��� has let everyone know the police���s real attitude,  the next stage is plainly just to do nothing at all, so it drops out of the statistics altogether, like so many other things that used to be crimes and aren���t (car-theft, bike theft,  burglary, vandalism, shoplifting etc) even if we���re still fool enough to think they are.

 

Well, that���s the truth, and no mistake, and the blethers about concentrating resources on wicked dealers , ���hard��� drugs ( as if cannabis weren���t hard as nails) etc are ( as I show in my book) just that,  blethers. The numbers prosecuted for these offences vary little from year to year, and the penalties are pretty feeble. Users of supposedly more wicked heroin and cocaine get off just as lightly as cannabis users.

 

It���s nothing to do with cost or manpower. It���s because they don���t want to pursue the matter, because they know the government  (while it pretends to be firm and ���tough��� in public) privately doesn���t want them to. Cannabis, as a former head of the Flying Squad, John O���Connor, said in February 1994 ��� has been a decriminalised drug for some time now���. Why wouldn���t he have known?

 

Now, to all those who smeared and mocked my book, how about an apology? I was right. You were wrong. It couldn���t be clearer. But I know you won't say sorry, and I know why not, too.