News Focus
6 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| July/August 2016
For the stories behind the news
GOING PUBLIC
Reports advocating the decriminalisation of
drugs come along fairly regularly these days
,
but opponents of changing the law are usually
able to say that it’s just the ‘usual suspects’
making the call.
Last month’s
Taking a new line on drugs
report, however, was more unexpected in that
it’s the work of the Royal Society for Public
Health (RSPH) with the support of the Faculty
of Public Health (FPH) (see news, page 4). The
document gathered some favourable media
coverage, including a front-page story in the
Times
, but some people might still be taken
aback that organisations like this want to see
drugs decriminalised.
‘I don’t think it should be a surprise,’ RSPH
spokesperson and the report’s co-author, Ed
Morrow, tells
DDN
. ‘In the UK we’re quite
behind the debate if we look at what’s
happening internationally. That’s the way the
wind is blowing, with very positive and
encouraging results in some places. We’ve now
seen the World Health Organization, which is
historically quite a conservative public health
body, actually coming out and publicly saying
that too much of a focus on a criminal justice
approach is counter-productive and that we
should be focusing far more on public health.’
The
Times
editorial went further and said
that decriminalisation should be the first step
to full legalisation. Is that something RSPH
would back? ‘At the moment the reason we’re
calling for decriminalisation, as distinct from
legalisation, is that that’s where the evidence
lies,’ he says. ‘That’s where we’ve seen the
approach tried internationally with positive
results. We’re aware that there are potentially
strong arguments to be made for full
legalisation of certain substances, especially
around having a product where people know
what’s in it, and taking supply out of the hands
of criminal gangs. We think the evidence for
that should be kept under review and we’d be
interested to see what emerges internationally,
but we think that what there is the evidence
base for now is decriminalisation.’
As a public health body, however, what
would they say to people who argue that it
would mean increased levels of use, and
therefore of harm? ‘Well I think we just have
to look at the evidence internationally, look at
where it’s been tried. We’ve seen no
significant increase in use, and what we’ve
seen go down is the number of problematic
users and the number of people in their late
teens and early 20s using drugs.
‘I think we have to be pragmatic and
acknowledge that no matter how hard we try
to prohibit drugs, some people will always be
unwilling or unable to stop using them,’ he
continues. ‘We have to deal with the world as
it is, rather than how we wish it was, and
make sure that if people are going to be using
substances to any extent then the amount of
harm being done is absolutely minimal and
that our health services aren’t having to pick
up the pieces later down the line.’
The report doesn’t just focus on the legal
framework, however. It also wants to see
responsibility for the country’s drugs strategy
moved to the Department of Health so that
it’s more closely aligned with the alcohol and
tobacco strategies, and for ‘evidence-based
drugs education’ to be a central, mandatory
component of Personal, Social, Health and
Economic (PSHE) teaching in schools.
While education is a ‘hugely important’
part of the equation, says Morrow, provision
has been ‘very patchy’ and often not grounded
in evidence. ‘We know now that a “just say
no” approach doesn’t work and that young
people don’t tend to respond very well to that.
It’s much better to have a frank, open
discussion about drugs and what the harms
are, and that includes legal drugs as well. We
think all young people in this country really
have the right to that through PHSE education
instead of putting themselves into dangerous
situations by using drugs in some of the
riskiest ways. Some parents who’ve tragically
lost children to drugs have come out and
expressed a wish that their children had been
better educated about the dangers.’
The report contains much on drug-related
harm and its impact on public health.
However, many treatment providers have said
that, since responsibility for public health was
moved back to local authorities, drug
treatment is simply not a priority for their
local director of public health and that they’ve
been sidelined when it comes to dividing up
the money. What can be done to address that?
‘This is part of a wider picture that goes
beyond drugs,’ he states. ‘We know that
funding is severely under threat and being
constrained for all kinds of public health
services at a local level, and we’ve been saying
and lobbying on a national basis for a long
time that this is a complete false economy
and that it ends up costing more in terms of
the health services picking up the pieces in
the long-term. We acknowledge that there is
an issue with funding and we’re still doing all
we can at a national level to say that these
services need to be funded properly.’
Report at
‘We have to deal with the
world as it is, rather than
how we wish it was’
EDMORROW
SPOKESPERSON, ROYALSOCIETYFORPUBLICHEALTH
The UK’s public health bodies have added their voices
to the call for decriminalisation
