SCIENCE AND NON-SCIENCE IN UK DRUG POLICY

Kalant raises a number of important issues [1]. I suppose the easiest one to put to bed is that drug classification is neither science nor politics; unregulated drug/alcohol use is almost inevitably likely to produce greater harms and problems than we have currently and would go against the principles of regulating human behaviour that have underpinned all human civilizations.

So, then, is it one—the other—or both?

Science can, indeed, I would argue must, be the prime mediator of policy if we are to minimize the harms of drugs, both medical and social, but science cannot deliver policy because that is the realm of politics. What scientists can do—as I have done—is insist that where science is taken to support a political decision it must be the best science. Even more importantly, politicians must not be allowed to hide moral or worse, petty political, motivations regarding drug legislation behind a smokescreen of science. This has happened in the United Kingdom recently with the explanations given for the government decisions to increase [cannabis] or maintain the harshest [3,4 methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)] controls for two of the least harmful drugs.

Society could decide that the role of the drug laws is not primarily to reduce drug harms but to serve some other moral or political purpose, as the United Nations narcotics conventions seem to do. In that case, then I suppose scientists will have to argue their case at the ballot-box alongside the rest of society. Hopefully, this is an outdated concept of drug regulation that will not gain influence again.

The idea that politicians are more in tune with public feeling on drugs is one that—at least in the United Kingdom—we have evidence to refute [2]. The Home Office's own MORI poll found that more than two-thirds of Britons wanted the penalties for cannabis possession to stay as for class C (2-year maximum prison term), yet the government ignored this when they reclassified it to B (which attracts up to 5 years' imprisonment and also allows people caught in possession to be arrested, held in custody and have their homes searched). There is also the influence of the media which, in the case of the UK tabloids, purports to represent the public view but in fact attempts to manipulate it for reasons that are to do with sales, political influence and possibly even mischief.

So where now? My view, gathered from working with politicians for more than 10 years, is that they know that the only sensible way forward is to adopt the current scientific approach to drug classification propounded by the UK Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs [3] and most other expert groups. However, few current politicians have the courage to pursue this approach, especially in the United Kingdom in an election year. Hopefully, as the new generation of politicians with more drug experience take office (cf. Obama's disclosure of cannabis and methylamphetamine exploration), a more sensible and science-based attitude to drug legislation will emerge.

Declaration of interests

None