Let's legalise cocaine

Let's legalise cocaine

14 Nov 2006

Why now?

Drug addicts and alcoholics who turn down treatment run the risk of having their benefits taken away from them after a recent Home Office paper on the government’s drug strategy suggested taking a tough approach. As things are, in England, there are around 3 million drug users, 300,000 people classified as problem users, and 200,000 who are in touch with treatment agencies. The government wants to shift spending priorities and make complete cure from any addiction the measure of success of its drugs policy. More problem users should go into rehabilitation and fewer should be provided with substitute addictions like methadone.

Even amongst drug-liberalising hedonists, there are no defenders of addiction as a way of life. However, the “tough love” approach seems to be going against the grain of much recent expert opinion. The fashion in the academic and medical communities has been to emphasise legalisation and destigmatisation. Sir Ian Gilmore, the outgoing head of Britain’s Royal College of Physicians – the professional body representing doctors – used his last email to all UK medics to argue that prohibition was doing more harm than good. The independent UK Drug Policy Commission published a report this week recommending the destigmatisation of addiction: “’Junkie’ and ‘addict’ have become pejorative shorthand for perceived social decay, conveying a sense of anxiety out of proportion to reality, but such hostile attitudes only add to the barriers of escape from drug dependence. ”

Do we want a state that, in prohibiting drugs, takes the burden of self-control away from the law-abiding but weak-willed? Or does that set us up for too much criminality, too many narco-states and unacceptably bad lives for addicts?

The panel debate the motion: Let's legalise cocaine. Chaired by Dame Joan Bakewell.

Arguing in favour of the motion are Rosie Boycott, Jamie Whyte and Camilla Cavendish.

Rosie Boycott states that the government's war on drugs has not worked, with the number of drug addicts and drug-related crime on the increase. Making cocaine illegal has driven the drugs trade underground, which exposes users to drugs of fluctuating strength and dubious origins and has fuelled the increase in crime.

Jamie Whyte suggests that we need a political philosophy that tells us when something we do is illegal. He points to John Stewart Mill's On Liberty as a pioneering example, before embarking on his own liberal proposition that the benefits of taking cocaine outweigh the costs, since it gives great pleasure to the individual.

Camilla Cavendish then claims that spending billions of pounds on law enforcement is clearly not working. She points out the difficulty of fighting against both the human desire to have a good time, and an unparalleled opportunity to make money.

Arguing against the motion are Dr Mark Collins, Julie Lynn-Evans and Joe Studwell.

Dr Mark Collins begins by outlining the history and science of cocaine use and it effects. He notes that cocaine has been shown to have the highest hit-rate of addictive problems, and irreversibly alters brain structure and function.

Julie Lynn-Evans draws on her experience as a child psychologist to suggest that legalisation of cocaine would both make the country more unsafe and increase its use by individuals.

Joe Studwell suggests that the proposition for legalisation turns on a liberal fallacy that if an individual is presented with drugs, and correct information, then they will reject their use. He says that people take drugs because they work.

First Vote: 262 For, 243 Against, 198 Don't Know

Final vote: 255 For, 389 Against, 90 Don't Know

The motion is defeated by 134 votes.