Unwittingly pre-empting the findings of a comprehensive six-year study into drug enforcement measures, published this week, the late comedian Bill Hicks said: "I know this is not a very popular idea. You don’t hear it too often any more but it’s the truth. I have taken drugs before and I had a real good time."
The UK Drug Policy Commission (DPC) — which, by way, is not comprised of stoner wasters but, rather, leading scientists, police officers, academics and experts — has recommended the decriminalisation of possession of small amounts of controlled drugs, saying such a measure would not, despite hysterical claims from some quarters, lead to a significant increase in use.
"Taking drugs does not always cause problems, but this is rarely acknowledged by policy makers. In fact most users do not experience significant problems and there is some evidence that drug use can have benefits in some circumstances," it said.
It may have taken the UK’s expert group six long years to form that opinion but anyone visiting a District Court in Ireland would rapidly come to the same conclusion within a matter of hours. Every day, all over the country, scores of predominantly young men are hauled before the courts and charged with possession of risibly small amounts of drugs, usually cannabis, with disastrous implications for their future employment and travel prospects.
The inanity of the current zero-tolerance approach is apparent in the irrational nature of the prosecutions, many of which progress as if weighing scales had not yet been invented. Young defendants are routinely accused of having enough cannabis to roll X number of joints because, evidently, it is beyond the capabilities of the criminal justice system to simply weigh the offending lump of cannabis and give an objective measure of the quantity of the drug.
Instead, the State, when prosecuting these young people, prefers to leave that calculation up to the vagaries of individual gardaí and their subjective opinion of how many joints a small chunk of cannabis would hypothetically create. The fact that it’s completely ludicrous for courts to rely on the testimony of gardaí to haphazardly estimate the quantity of drugs, a measure which can go a long way to determining the ultimate sentence, seems to be lost on everybody involved. Once charged and summoned to appear before a court, a process that can take up to two years in some overburdened districts, the outcome of cases is largely dependent on whether defendants have the means to hire a solicitor.
Because most of those who appear in court charged with petty drug offences are not at risk of a custodial sentence, legal aid is not an automatic entitlement, and many will simply plead guilty without any attempt to convince the court they should be offered the benefit of a second chance by way of the probation act or deferred sentencing. The net result of this is that many offenders, even those appearing before courts for the first time, walk away with a permanent criminal record, permanently blighting work and travel opportunities for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, those with the means to hire solicitors, to plead their cases in front of judges, often emerge from court proceedings with their good names relatively intact.
This is not an abstract problem that affects a small cohort of people. Last year, the number of drug offences dealt with by district courts increased by 5%, from 16,939 to 17,715, and involved almost 12,000 defendants. Instead of criminalising these people, this week’s DPC report has recommended that a system of civil penalties, like fines, attendance at a drug awareness session or, if needs be, a referral to a drug treatment programme, should instead be introduced.
The recommendation mirrors an appeal made by the former head of the MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, when last year she called on politicians to dispassionately appraise the wealth of evidence, which states that criminalisation simply does not work, and introduce progressive policies. "I think we need to look to the evidence. The Czech Republic and Portugal have decriminalised possession and use of small quantities of drugs. They have lower levels of problem drug use, lower levels of use of these drugs among young people, lower cocaine use and lower heroin use," she said.
Regrettably, for purely political perception reasons, it’s unlikely these entirely sensible evidence-based recommendations will be implemented any time soon.
Speaking a couple of months ago, former Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke baldly admitted the UK was "plainly losing the war on drugs" while, at the same time, stubbornly insisting the government intended to continue to pursue the same failed ineffectual policies that, implicitly, formed the basis of his complaint. "I have frankly conceded that policy has not been working. We are all disappointed by the fact that far from making progress it could be argued we are going backwards at times.
"But my own purely personal view is that I would be worried about losing the deterrent effect of criminalisation of youngsters who start experimenting," he insisted.
For many politicians, in Ireland as well as the UK, it doesn’t matter how many experts, or peer-reviewed studies, recommend the decriminalisation of drugs, they simply won’t accept the evidence for fear of being perceived as weak on drugs.
Source: Colette Browne, Irish Examiner, 17/10/12
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