What can a German do but a Briton cannot? What can a New Yorker, a Chicagoan and a San Franciscan do, but a Londoner cannot? What can Canadians, Dutch, Portuguese, Chileans, Uruguayans, Maltese all do? The answer is they can legally smoke cannabis. In California there are now courses for cannabis sommeliers. In Britain they would be thrown in jail.
Half a century ago, Britons prided themselves on being in the vanguard of social progress. In such matters as health care, sexuality, abortion, crime and punishment, they considered their country ahead of the times. Now it limps nervously in the rear.
I don’t use illegal drugs, neither am I addicted to nicotine or alcohol or fatty foods. Having sat on two drugs-related committees, I accept that narcotic substances can, in varying degrees, cause harm to their users and, through them, to others. If after half a century of a “war” on drugs, banning had solved or even reduced this harm, I could see the argument for banning. It has not.
Roughly a third of adults in England and Wales aged under 60 have tried cannabis. Almost 8% use it occasionally and 2% regularly. Far fewer use hard drugs. But nearly one in five residents of English and Welsh prisons are estimated to have been jailed for a drug-related offence. Half of all homicides are drugs-related. In many prisons, more than half the inmates use drugs regularly. The authorities turn a blind eye for the sake of peace and quiet.
Successive home secretaries have a terror of even discussing the issue. Tony Blair delegated drugs – as so much of his policy – to the Daily Mail and the Sun. While other countries researched, experimented and piloted innovation, Britain simply shut down debate. When, in 2009, the government’s chief drugs adviser, Prof David Nutt, evaluated the relative harm of different narcotics, he was sacked.
Half of Britons are ready to see cannabis legalised, with only a third wanting it to remain emphatically illegal. The Liberal Democrats at the election came out for decriminalisation, and saw 72 MPs returned. Yet Labour dared not breathe a word on the subject. Five years ago, David Lammy, now foreign secretary, visited Canada and came out strongly in favour of legalisation. We can see why Keir Starmer would not let him near the Home Office. Starmer’s approach to penal reform appears to be “build more prisons”.
Were Britain to edge towards drugs reform, it would benefit from being a late starter and able to learn from others. When the state of Texas, which still uses capital punishment, faced similar prison overcrowding to Britain, its response was to hive off drug offences into special courts and prescribe treatment and rehabilitation. Reoffending rates fell by 30%, while the prison population has dropped by 15% since the scheme was first introduced in 2007.
The justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, is reportedly set to leave on an expedition to Texas to discover if this is really true. She travels with the air of Livingstone exploring the unknown Zambezi. Is Whitehall really so ignorant of reform elsewhere in the world? I do hope it also sends Mahmood to Norway, which is centuries ahead of Britain.
Almost half of US states have now legalised cannabis for recreational use, and these include most of the country’s biggest cities. But there is no question many are now having second thoughts on their methods of regulation. In 2020, the most progressive, Oregon, also decriminalised the possession of small amounts of hard drugs. But with chemical narcotics such as fentanyl more harmful and hardest to control, deaths soared and the social problems became a blight on downtown areas. Earlier this year, Oregon reverted to criminalisation.
Another liberal state, Colorado, has had a decade of experience with cannabis, its taxes adding $2.3bn to the state’s revenue since 2014. Drug abuse has not diminished, though drug tourism distorts its figures. Nonetheless, like most of the legalisation states, Colorado feels it must update its regulation. Likewise New York’s legalising of cannabis in 2021 has led to chaotic licensing and an eruption of illegal outlets. It reportedly has more cannabis outlets than branches of Starbucks.
Other countries, too, are pondering their reforms. British Columbia in Canada has seen a heroin epidemic replaced by a fentanyl one. The drug is so cheap that conventional illegal drugs such as heroin and cocaine are being sidelined. In the Netherlands, Amsterdam has grown averse to drug tourism. Even Germany’s tentative steps towards reform have been beset by bureaucracy over when and where it is allowed – such as not in beer gardens. That said, none of these places has reverted to a policy as prehistoric as Britain’s. Texan legislators are not racing to study Wandsworth jail. British prisons are the nation’s most intensive drug dens.
People often do themselves harm. They also harm themselves with alcohol, nicotine and food. These we handle with tolerance, advice and regulation. On drugs, Britain regards imprisonment as the solution. It is primitive, costly and cruel. The task of the new government should now be to learn from others who have had the courage to try harder.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
