fullspate

The police response

A senior police officer in London provoked a huge public outcry when he casually announced that he wasn't interested in arresting people who just smoke cannabis, take ecstacy or cocaine at the weekends. He was denounced by other police officers and condemned by many commenators in the press. Seldom has an announcement of such a harmless policy caused such a sensation.

He was referring to people who buy "drugs with money they have earned legitimately and use a small amount of them, mainly at weekends. This has no adverse effect on the society around them - they go back to work on Monday morning and are unaffected for the rest of the week."

Repeatedly the press has tried to claim that drug use amongst the middle classes poses a grave threat to the nation. Finding evidence for this is always a struggle. Young executives risk losing their judgment and blowing their bonus; students may underachieve in exams and pop stars might make inferior albums on account of their Cocaine Hell. Undesirable though this may be, it doesn't justify a national panic.

Commentators have increasingly inclined towards a "what if" scenario to support predictions of disaster. Their theory goes that if more people are taking cocaine at the weekends now, it won't be long before they are taking harder drugs on a daily basis, ruining their health, destroying their lives and bringing the country down with them as they tear the social fabric to pieces.

This scenario assumes that if people take one drug for recreational purposes, they will inevitably proceed to another that is more destructive. However, this just isn't the case for many people with good jobs or places at university who feel confident about themselves and optimistic about the future. These people have a clear view of a bright future and will generally avoid anything that could destroy it. The people who end up being addicted to harder drugs like crack generally do so because they feel hopeless - their lives are in trouble and they are desperately looking for a way to escape.

Consequently, it's not worth making a fuss over middle-class recreational drug use. In any case, both the police and the courts already acknowledge this. Instead of arresting people who possess cannabis, for instance, the police increasingly simply give them a verbal warning on the spot. Similarly, the number of cases in which fines are given by the courts has dropped from 60% in 1976 to 20% today. Middle class users, in particular, rarely get arrested, and if they do end up in court they invariably get away with it. Most of them produce splendid character witnesses who make touching appeals on behalf of their future prospects and the courts let them go.

In the long run, the relaxation of laws on recreational drug use is inevitable because it refers to a phenomenon that has been blown out of all proportion. In a liberal society the antics of advertising executives snorting coke on a Saturday night shouldn't really be a focus of concern for the forces of law and order. Much more serious is the plight of addicts who are trapped in poverty and end up stealing to fund their habit. The issue here is how society should respond to the problem. Will we help people in situations like that by arresting them and imposing stiff fines or long jail sentences?

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