04 - The solution
It must be fucking obvious by now. Legalise, regulate and tax. Save the money on the policing and the theft and put that money into harm reduction measures and whatever else that a dirty grubby government of shysters spends its money on. Anyone who can't see that after 50 years of losing a war is wilfully ignorant.
When going through this solution, I am talking about the majority of drugs, both currently legal and illegal. Is alcohol in there? You bet your fucking arse the most dangerous drug known to humanity is in there. Does poppers make the list? Yep, despite being legal and generally safe there are some tricks to that one. The ones I am going to make exceptions of are the dangerously addictive ones - nicotine (tobacco), crack and heroin. I will discuss them near the end.
Should things like caffeine be in here? Probably not. In the concentrations we use it in it does not really cause problems to the user or society and most people know how to handle it safely by the time they reach their teenage years. I am not going to pretend to be the ultimate scientist on this issue - far from it - so what goes in the list or not should ultimately be decided by the medical profession. Remember those people Blair? The ones who used to sit on the ACMD before you got rid of the requirement for it to contain a vet and a GP and you then stuffed it with your political crony boot-lickers? Yeah. Medics. With degrees in medicine. And science.
I think we have come to the point where drugs are too important of an issue to be left to the politicians.
From now on, decisions on what drugs are available should be made by medics only. They should also realise that if a substance is banned, then there will be a black market for it. The job of harm reduction is to try to stop a dangerous behaviour and replace it with a less risky one. Want to try crack? How about some MDMA instead? Your teeth won't fall out and it feels just as good. Bad cough on a smoker? Try a vape. It's like smoking, but without the combustion products going straight into your lungs.
Legalisation and supply
At this point, pretty much the only way to beat the black market is to out-compete it. There are couple of ways to do this, easily.
One is to just make drugs legal, regulate strength and quality but leave it up to the existing market structures to arrange the supply. Then tax the shit out of it.
Another is to make the drugs only legal if supplied through a government shop. Again with the regulation and quality. You can easily undercut the black market on price and deliver a guaranteed quality.
Letting the market get on with it is working well in places like Colorado for weed. The government supply works well for alcohol in some Nordic counties. Take your pick of the economic systems.
Getting the produce into the hands of the punters
Currently the system we have of legal drug distribution is a bit ... lacking. In the UK anyone can walk into any store on their 18th birthday and buy a big bottle of vodka and a pack of cigarettes, no questions asked. No questions like "do you know you should probably water down the vodka, like a lot, on your first go?" Or "why the fuck are you sleepwalking into a nicotine addiction? Don't do that!"
We as a society already accept government intrusion into our lives when our behaviour might put others at risk. We accept that we need to be tested and licensed to drive a car, and accept that the police can pull us over for any reason and ask to see our insurance. This is the level of intrusion that we accept in order to keep everyone else safe. There is absolutely no reason why we cannot do the same with drugs.
At the moment the education about drugs - the real education, not 'drugs are bad, mmkay' - is left in the hands of the peer group, or if you are incredibly lucky the cool parents of a friend who would rather you did it in their house than out on the street or in the woods.
Since the medics are now in control the education can be better, and formalised. If you want to try a new drug - of any kind, including alcohol - you would need to report to your local drug licensing centre and ask to be allowed that drug. This is the first touch-point. The medics there can then assess you - if you are asking for powerful stimulants such as speed or cocaine then a simple EKG should be the minimum. They can check your current physical fitness and see if there are any pre-existing risk factors that could cause complications. They can also give the safety briefing about the substance you are interested in, how it reacts with other substances you are licensed for and tell you what the danger signs are and when to seek help. If a group of friends is presenting together then even better; the group can be briefed together and told what the danger signs look like in other people so they can look out for their mates.
The presumption of all of this is that the person is then licensed for the substance and allowed to consume it, if they so wish. Anything else is how we end up with black markets, money going into criminal structures and grenades landing in the doorway of blocks of flats.
To begin with, the license could and should be for ... one month? Have a try, come back, talk to the medics about your experiences. This initial restriction is a great place to re-do the medical exam as well, to make sure that the substance isn't causing complications in the user. Rinse and repeat at three months. Talk about it, re-run the medical.
After that, the user should be considered fairly proficient and licensed for a year at a time. They still have to keep coming back in a year, talking and re-doing the medical. This constant contact with medics allows the physical and mental state of the user to be monitored. In the UK we are seeing heavy drinkers - completely legal right now - developing cirrhosis of the liver in their mid to late 20's. Under the current system, the first thing they know about this is when they go to the doctor for something else and it comes back as liver damage. Under the proposed licensing system they could have been talked to and tested maybe 10 times before this stage. If they know about it early and know what the consequences are then they have at least a chance to change their behaviour. Same with smoking and lung disease.
Sure, some people are going to continue to drink themselves into the ground, but that is their choice. Right now, it isn't a choice as they don't even know that they are causing such harm to themselves.
Dosage and strength should be a negotiation between the medics and the user. If the user wishes to take more of a substance the default choice should again be to allow, even to levels of harm because the alternative is a black market. The license should carry a quota, in terms of amount allowed per week or month. The medical testing is there to not only check for harm, but to check that the user is indeed using the substance themselves. If someone requests a license, requests a higher quota but isn't taking that level of substance themselves then it is obvious they are feeding a black market. The substance is then being sold to people without a license - either children or someone who doesn't have a license so isn't in contact with the support system.
Obviously, secondary supply and sales should remain illegal. If a user is caught by the police with a substance or quantity they aren't personally licensed for then the current criminal penalties should apply.
Licensing and data protection
Since this is now a medical function, the data for the licensing system should remain in the hands of the medical profession, not government at large and certainly not the police. It should be treated as privately as normal medical records. Note UK and US; in a proper functioning democracy that means that medical records are confidential, not sold off to any marketing scum that pays for it. You are failed states.
The police will require access from time to time. The purpose of having such a system is to ensure that people have access to substances while keeping them engaged with the medical profession, while destroying the black market. The black market will sell to anyone; especially minors. The police will need to continue to investigate illegal sale (resale) and supply. They should not have blanket access to the database, but should need to argue for a warrant from a judge. It is also possible to set up a specialist police unit within the medical database so the police can ask questions, the internal police can investigate the data (sales, quota sizes and signs of personal use) then balance what to release against the rights of the data subjects to privacy.
Be sure; this is not a 'free drugs for everyone' system, it is a way of controlling supply to people alongside education and regular health checks.
The license and buying
When you have your shiny new license you can now go out and buy drugs. The sellers should also be licensed, in the same way that places selling alcohol in the UK currently are. When the buyer wants to make a purchase they should insert their license into a card reader at the point of sale. The license identifier and the bill of sale should be transmitted to the licensing agency and the agency will return a simple 'yes' or 'no' response, based on what is being asked for and the user's remaining quota. That decision should not be made locally in the store. The reason for a 'no' should also not be transmitted. If the user wants to find out why they were refused then they need to go to the licensing agency and ask.
Like UK bar staff, the individual selling the items should bear criminal responsibility for making an illegal sale. They will need to be checked, in the same way that the police send children into corner shops trying to buy alcohol. An illegal sale would be the loss of a license to sell for the merchant plus whatever criminal penalties society deems fit. The UK has got pretty good with how it handles illegal alcohol sales and there is no reason this cannot work with drugs.
The benefits
These should be obvious by now.
For the user; a legal way to access known quality and quantities of the substance they currently source from the black market. They have their health checked and monitored in an ongoing way and any health risks can be spotted early and mitigated. Or not, but that is the choice of the individual. Maybe as a society we do decide that there is a point we stop allowing a person to harm themselves, but that is an ethics question beyond this framework. With this framework there is at least a way of making that decision while right now people can harm themselves into oblivion without any checks and balances.
Since drugs are now legal then there is also a benefit to the user in emergency situations. I was brought up to lie to the police all I wanted, but to damn well tell the medics the truth. Sadly under a regime where drugs are outlawed you don't stop people taking them, but the illegality might cause people to lie to medics. Consider the following scenarios;
"What has he taken tonight?"
"A gram of speed and 3 of these *hands over a pill* "we were told they were molly, but I'm not so sure what's in them."
"What has he taken tonight?"
"Nothing mate, just had a bit too much to drink."
The difference in those answers can be the difference between life and death when talking to a medic. When drugs are legal the medics also have access to the person's license, so they can see what they are licensed for and what their last couple of purchases were. Constant known strength substances will also aid in diagnosis and treatment.
For society; drug supply is taken out of the hands of criminals. The cost to society is vastly reduced (remember that £24bn in theft?) and law enforcement can drastically scale back. There are no violent turf wars for supply and innocent people stop dying. There are no grenades thrown in capital cities.
Because the police are now not worrying about legal use, they can turn their spare resource to the illegal supply that remains. Minors are still going to want to get their hands on things they shouldn't and there will still be a (vastly reduced) black market.
Since the criminal penalties for simply being caught with drugs are now also removed, any drug users in society are not under threat of prison, job loss and loss of their home simply because they like something other than alcohol. They will not be randomly plucked from functioning society and turned into a criminal by the current criminal-creation machine. This means less disruption in the job market and overall a more stable and productive economy.
What this system is not
This system is not a panacea. It will not remove all of society's ills in one go. The black market will still exist. Minors will still get access to things they shouldn't. Some people will be distrustful of government and the licensing scheme and will prefer to buy products of unknown quality and provenance, simply because the sale is anonymous.
The main benefit is that these things will be in a much reduced capacity and harder to do. Access will also cost more as the economies of scale work on the smaller black market.
Heroin, crack and ... tobacco?
I have left these until last as I don't know what to do with them. Part of me that wants the black market gone says that all substances should be available, on request, once the user has been medically tested and briefed on the dangers.
Another part of me says that these ones are special. They are so destructive because of the level of addiction.
Denmark has recently considered plans to restrict tobacco sales not by age, but by birth year (EU question, and answer). This would allow current smokers to continue buying it, but drastically reduce the number of new smokers each year. I'm OK with this. I think that the public health outcomes overcome the imposition on individual freedom. From the answer given it seems the EU is also OK with this, on the grounds that health outcomes can override discrimination law in certain cases.
Just recently, the new government in New Zealand has rolled back a similar law. From reading that article it appears that in order to form a coalition government, repeal of the law was a requirement for some of the parties involved. Since the major party was absolutely determined to push through tax cuts for the well-off, they needed to raise revenue somewhere and tobacco ended up being the thing they need to keep the money flowing. The key thing here is that only 1 of the parties involved campaigned to repeal the law and that party only won 6% of the vote. This should serve as a shining example of how a minority viewpoint that is counter to public health can still win, via the grubby nature of politics. When I say politicians have blood on their hands this is exactly the sort of thing I am talking about. They have condemned future generations - mainly of poor people and minorities so that's OK - to a future of early deaths and diseases simply so that rich people can pay less tax. Utter cunts.
I think if someone wants to take up tobacco and become a new user, part of the training needs to be a week volunteering on a ward looking after elderly people with lung disease.
As far as heroin and crack go - the producers of between a third and half of all theft - I think the Swiss have it right. All existing users should be allowed free government drugs, provided they do it in a safe location with a medic present. It is simply cheaper to society and has better health outcomes for the individual.
The thorny point is should society allow new heroin and crack addicts to be created, simply because they wish to try it. Personally, I would say no, but that is driving people who really want to try it straight into the hands of the black market again. I would hope that most people would be satisfied with choosing the safer substances on offer, especially once they know the risks of the dangerous ones. Still, I am not the final arbiter of this. Thankfully. I'll leave this one as an open question for society to answer.
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