Bruce Bisset: Positive moves to legalisation

Bruce Bisset.

Some people would say we're growing up, others that we've given in, but regardless it seems the world is finally admitting that the 45-year old "War on Drugs" (WoD) has failed. Which should not surprise, since it was based on a lie in the first place.

Former US president Richard Nixon's chief of staff, John Ehrlichman, admitted in an interview that the concept - launched in 1971 with great hype and pursued with relish around the globe - was not aimed at lessening drug use at all. Instead, it was a ploy to undermine Nixon's enemies: black people and critics of the Vietnam War.

"We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black," Ehrlichman said, "but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalising both heavily, we could disrupt and vilify those communities. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

Those segments of society whom Nixon targeted have since felt the heat of the harsh drug policies much of the world adopted: In 2013 in the US only 1 per cent more blacks (10.5) than whites (9.5) used illegal drugs, but the arrest rate for blacks was nearly three times that of whites.

New Zealand's statistics are similar, especially when comparing rich users with poor.

Now a comprehensive report by Johns Hopkins University and the medical journal The Lancet says "compelling" evidence from more than 20 countries that have brought in forms of decriminalisation shows significant public health benefits, cost savings and lower incarceration - with no significant increase in problematic drug use.

Experts in the study argue the prohibitionist policies of the past 50 years have "directly and indirectly contributed to lethal violence, disease, discrimination, forced displacement, injustice and the undermining of people's right to health".

Yes, the drug war has stopped some usage, mainly by pushing the price of hard drugs like cocaine up by as much as 10 times. But with increasing legalisation of marijuana in the US there were 7500 (about 30 per cent) less murders in Mexico - where warring drug cartels are the norm - last year than four years before. Because they're being put out of business.

There are many steps on the path between prohibition and full legalisation, including a range of prevention and treatment options - not least provision of sterile needles and clinics to use them in.

A dear friend of mine who died last year from contracting hepatitis C 35 years earlier would still be with us if he hadn't shared a needle on the one occasion he tried mainlining. Of course there are drugs we might still wish to crack down on, like methamphetamine ("P").

Turn around the mythic WoD mantra about soft leading to hard; decriminalising marijuana for example could shift P users on to a softer, legal, alternative.

There's good money - and taxes - to be made, too. Legal pot in the US is already a multi-billion-dollar industry. Pour the tax money back into health-focused programmes and you have a very cost-effective solution for dealing with more addictive substances.

So word this week from Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne of a review of the Misuse of Drugs Act to make drug offending be primarily seen as a health matter, with an official approach based on "compassion, innovation and proportion", is timely and welcome.

Certainly we need to stop locking people up for the victimless "crime" of sharing a natural herb. Even Nixon might now grant that much.

That's the right of it.

- Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.