A blanket ban on psychoactive substances makes UK drugs policy even worse

It is a truth under-acknowledged that a drug user denied possession of their poison is in want of an alternative. The current 'explosion' in varied and easily-accessible 'legal highs' (also know as 'new psychoactive substances') are a clear example of this.

In June 2008 33 tonnes of sassafras oil - a key ingredient in the production of MDMA - were seized in Cambodia; enough to produce an estimated 245 million ecstasy tablets. The following year real ecstasy pills 'almost vanished' from Britain's clubs. At the same time the purity of street cocaine had also been steadily falling, from over 60% in 2002 to 22% in 2009.

Enter mephedrone: a legal high with similar effects to MDMA but readily available and for less than a quarter of the price. As the quality of ecstasy plummeted (as shown by the blue line on this graph) and substituted with things like piperazines, (the orange line) mephedrone usage soared (purple line). The 2010 (self-selecting, online) Global Drug Survey found that 51% of regular clubbers had used mephedrone that year, and official figures from the 2010/11 British Crime Survey estimate that around 4.4% 16 to 24 year olds had tried it in the past year.

Similarly, law changes and clampdowns in India resulted in a UK ketamine drought, leading to dabblers (both knowingly and unknowingly) taking things like (the once legal, now Class B) methoxetamine. And indeed, the majority of legal highs on offer are 'synthetic cannabinoids' which claim to mimic the effect of cannabis. In all, it's fairly safe to claim that were recreational drugs like ecstasy, cannabis and cocaine not so stringently prohibited, these 'legal highs' (about which we know very little) probably wouldn't be knocking about.

Still, governments tend to be of the view that any use of drugs is simply objectively bad, so the above is rather a moot point. But what anxious states can do, of course, is ban new legal highs as they crop up. However, even this apparently obvious solution has a few problems— the first being that there seems to be a near-limitless supply of cheap, experimental compounds to bring to market. When mephedrone was made a Class B controlled substance in 2010, alternative legal highs such NRG-1 and 'Benzo Fury' started to appear. In fact, over 550 NPS have been controlled since 2009. Generally less is known about each concoction than the last, presenting potentially far greater health risks to users.

At the same time, restricting a drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 requires evidence of the harm they cause (not that harm levels always bear much relation to a drug's legality), demanding actual research as opposed to sensationalist headlines. Even though temporary class drug orders were introduced in 2011 to speed up the process, a full-out ban still requires study, time and resources. Many have claimed the battle with the chemists in China  is one lawmakers are unlikely to win.

And so with all of this in mind, the Queen's Speech on Wednesday confirmed that Conservatives will take the next rational step in drug enforcement, namely, to simply ban ALL OF THE THINGS.

In order to automatically outlaw anything which can make people's heads go a bit funny, their proposed blanket ban (modelled on a similar Irish policy) will prohibit the trade of 'any substance intended for human consumption that is capable of producing a psychoactive effect', and will carry up to a 7-year prison sentence.

Somewhat ironically for a party so concerned with preserving the UK's legal identity it wants to replace the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights, this represents a break from centuries of British common law, under which we are free to do something unless the law expressly forbids it. This law enshrines the opposite. In fact, so heavy-handed and far-reaching is the definition of what it is prohibited to supply that special exemptions have to be granted for those everyday psychoactive drugs like caffeine, alcohol and tobacco. Whilst on first glance the ban might sound like sensible-enough tinkering at the edges of our already nonsensical drug policy, it really is rather sinister, setting a worrying precedent for the state to bestow upon citizens permission to behave in certain ways.

This law will probably (at least initially) wipe out the high street 'head shops' which the Daily Mail and Centre for Social Justice  are so concerned about. However, banning something has never yet simply made a drug disappear. An expert panel commissioned by the government to investigate legal highs acknowledged that a 50% increase in seizures of Class B drugs between 2011/12 and 2013/14 was driven by the continued sale of mephedrone and other once-legal highs like it. Usage has fallen from pre-ban levels, but so has its purity whilst the street price has doubled. Perhaps the most damning evidence, however, comes from the Home Office's own report into different national drug control strategies, which failed to find “any obvious relationship between the toughness of a country’s enforcement against drug possession, and levels of drug use in that country”.

The best that can be hoped for with this ridiculous plan is that with the banning of absolutely everything, dealers stick to pushing the tried and tested (and what seems to be safer) stuff. Sadly, this doesn't seem to be the case - mephedrone and and other legal and once-legal highs have been turning up in batches of drugs like MDMA and cocaine as adulterants, and even being passed off as the real things.  Funnily enough, the best chance of new psychoactive substances disappearing from use comes from a resurgence of super-strong ecstasy, thanks to the discovery of a way to make MDMA using less heavily-controlled ingredients.

The ASI has pointed out so. many. times. that the best way to reduce the harms associated with drug use is to decriminalise, license and tax recreational drugs. Sadly, it doesn't look like the Conservatives will see sense in the course of this parliament.  However, at least the mischievous can entertain themselves with the prospect that home-grown opiates could soon be on the horizon thanks to genetically modified wheat. And what a moral panic-cum-legislative nightmare that will be...

Marijuana legalization in Colorado: One year on

It's been a year since Colorado became the first US state to permit the commercial sale of marijuana for non-medicinal purposes, and statistics which hint at the impact of legalization have just started to emerge. With these come two conflicting reports— one from the pro-legalization Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), and another from the anti-legalization Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM). The two together make for an interesting read. Unsurprisingly, there’s been an increase in the amount of cannabis consumed in Colorado, as well as in Washington, where it has also been legalized.

Both states already had a higher than the US average use of marijuana, but between 2011/12 to 2012/13 the percentage of over-18s who had used marijuana in the past year rose from 16.1% to 18.9% in Colorado, and from 15.3% to 17.6% in Washington, compared to a national increase from 11.6% to 12.2%. Past monthly use of marijuana by 18-25 year olds in 2012/13 was 29.1% in Colorado and 25.6% in Washington, compared with a 18.9% US average.

Of course, an increase in marijuana use isn't in and of itself a bad thing; what matters are the other costs and benefits to society and individuals that legal and increased use creates. Predictably, the two reports paint very different pictures of these.

The DPA point out that Marijuana possession rates in Colorado have fallen 84% since 2010, from over 9,000 arrests a year to under 1,500. However, SAM's report claims that citations for the public display of marijuana have rocketed - from 183 in 2013 to 668 in 2014 in Denver alone.

Both violent crime and property crime fell in Denver in 2014. Violent crime was down by 2.2% in the first 11 months of 2014, compared with a 1.1% decline the year before. Burglaries were down 9.5%, and overall property crime 8.9%. This, the DPA say, is evidence of legalization’s success. However, at the same time, SAM report that drug violations in Denver are up 12%, disorderly conduct up 51%, and public drunkenness up 53%.

SAM also report that the number of citations given for driving under the influence of marijuana in Colorado have risen markedly between 2013 and 2014. However, despite concerns that marijuana legalization would result in an increase in traffic fatalities, the DPA point out that Colorado saw a 3% fall in the number of fatal accidents in 2014, continuing a 12-year downward trend.

SAM’s report contains a handful negative incidents which can be directly attributed to legalization, including a rise in the number of children in ER from the accidental consumption of marijuana edibles, and an increase in people attempting to make hash oil and setting themselves on fire. However, perhaps the most interesting claim of the report is a quote from a Colorado policeman that legalization has ‘done nothing more than enhance the opportunity for the black market’.

A potential reason for continued underground dealing is that, with taxes, legally-purchased weed is up to twice the price of that on the street. However, the market demand for legal weed has far exceeded earlier estimates, including those of the Department of Revenue’s. Unsurprisingly, there’s also been a huge increase in the amount of marijuana which has been stopped from leaving Colorado for other states — a 400% rise between 2008 and 2013, SAM claim. This has resulted in neighbouring Nebraska and Oklahoma suing Colorado for the flow of marijuana across state lines. However, whilst this might present a nice new business for criminal gangs or college students, it seems unlikely that it would increase the black market's size or power compared to pre-legalization.

Of course, it’s also very difficult to know if  other reported stats like falling violent crime can actually be linked to marijuana legislation, and even things like a rise in disorderly behaviour arrests could be down to other factors. But there are a few stats we can be certain about, and these come down to cold hard cash.

Retail marijuana sales raised $40.9m in tax for Colorado between January and October 2014, and that’s not including revenue from medical sales, licenses or fees. Of the revenue collected, $2.5m has been directly set aside to fund more health professionals in Colorado public schools, many of whom will focus on mental health support and drug use education programs.

Legalization has been great for entrepreneurship, too. 16,000 people have been licensed to work in Colorado's marijuana industry so far, and unemployment is at a 6-year low. A study of two marijuana dispensaries by the University of Denver’s economics department found that they generated $30m of economic output and 280 jobs between January and July 2014 – and whilst paying ten times the amount of tax of a typical restaurant or store.

Though we can measure things like tax intake, both the DPA and SAM’s reports highlight the need for much more high-quality data, which can help unravel the effects of legalization, and quantify their impact.  This is something which will likely to emerge with time, but without reliable facts and evidence campaigners on both sides will cherry-pick stats to confirm their existing views — which is no good for the policymakers elsewhere who are watching this experiment closely. (It's certainly a shame that Theresa May is not one of them....)

Nevertheless, a year on and we can tell a couple of things. Legalization is obviously a learning curve. To avoid serious backlash, marijuana users should stop lighting up where they shouldn’t (at school, in public places, before driving, etc), whilst the green industry should probably do more to provide information on the strength and dosage of new products, and particularly edibles.

However, it’s also clear that legalization is a major boon to the public coffers, takes millions of dollars of business out of the hands of criminals and into legitimate businesses, and is a major win for liberty.

SAM may be concerned about the 100 kinds of marijuana gummy bears out there, but these THC-ripened snacks are also testament to the creativity and entrepreneurship that flourishes when the state gets out of the business of deciding what peaceful activities adults are allowed to partake in, for recreation and for profit.