Will a New Study Force Changes in Drug Law?

http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/49159/

Will a New Study Force Changes in Drug Law?

By Bruce Mirken, AlterNet. Posted March 15, 2007.

A two-year study from a British commission is recommending a reality-based approach to drug law, rooted in science and focused on reducing harm. Americans should take note.

On March 8, a high-powered British commission recommended tossing that country's law on illegal drugs onto the scrap heap and starting over again. Given that the U.S. Controlled Substances Act parallels the British Misuse of Drugs Act in important ways, the suggestion deserves attention in America as well.

Indeed, it would be a fine start if Americans could simply begin the sort of rational, thoughtful debate on drug policy that the British seem to be having. If we could manage such a thing, we might start changing illogical and unscientific laws that now lead to more U.S. arrests for marijuana possession than for all violent crimes combined.

The RSA Commission on Illegal Drugs, Communities and Public Policy, was convened by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, a respected think tank with a 250-year history. After two years of research, this panel of experts and laypeople came to a number of conclusions so sensible and so obvious that it's astonishing how consistently our elected leaders have avoided confronting them. In particular:

* The notion of a drug-free society is "almost certainly a chimera. ... People have always used substances to change the way they see the world and how they feel, and there is every reason to think they always will." Therefore, "he main aim of public policy should be to reduce the amount of harms that drugs cause." A policy based on total prohibition "is bound to fail."

* The concept of "drugs" should include tobacco and alcohol. "Indeed, in their different ways, alcohol and tobacco cause far more harm than illegal drugs." These substances should be brought into a unified regulatory framework "capable of treating substances according to the harm they cause."

* The heart of this new regulatory framework must be an index of substance-related harms. "The index should be based on the best available evidence and should be able to be modified in light of new evidence."

* We need a new way of evaluating the efficacy of drug policies. "In our view, the success of drugs policy should be measured not in terms of the amounts of drugs seized or in the number of dealers imprisoned, but in terms of the amount of harms reduced."

more...

on the idiotic drug war and there are too many violent young men who glory in pushing the rest of us around via the DEA to expect any rational laws any time soon. People in this country want simple solutions to complex problems, and those simple solutions generally require bludgeoning the Bill of Rights and all the citizens it's meant to protect into a pulp.

Fear is behind all of it, the fear that little Johnny or Susie will experiment with evil pot and turn degenerate or just the fear that somebody out there is having a sort of fun that their grim faced Calvinism denies all the good people.

The only way to overturn oppressive laws is through massive civil disobedience, and that means the laws have to be bad enough that people are willing to risk prison over disobeying them.

I just don't see that happening here, not yet.