It is generally agreed that cannabis does little harm. It is also generally agreed that the other major illegal drugs can do a great deal of harm. They include heroin, cocaine, crack cocaine, amphetamines and LSD. So should they continue to be illegal? Should the users be locked up in prison? How effective is treatment for drug addiction?
The debate is based on two intersecting arguments: first, that these drugs ruin the lives of users and their families, so supplies should be stopped from reaching present users and potential users; secondly, that our society should be protected from the damaging consequences of individual use.
If you want to prevent people from using drugs, you try to cut off supplies. You try to tackle drug dealing at source (in other countries), or at entry into Britain (through customs investigations) or in the country (through special police 'drug squads'.) Our police and drug squads have had considerable success in catching the smugglers but they know they can never stop this international trade so long as it is profitable. Once they have the drugs on the streets of Britain, it is in the interests of the drug smugglers to create addicts. Addicts then become criminals because they need money to buy the drugs. They steal from people in the streets, they rob houses, and many of them get involved in organised crime such as running illegal groups of helpless prostitutes. Therefore many people including members of police and political committees, social workers, health officials and other experts believe that the legalisation and regulation of all drugs is the best solution, because it would put an end to the criminal trade and would enable the government to control the quality and price of the drugs being sold. After all, the government now controls the quality and quantity of alcohol in any particular bottle. The problems of drug addicts rather than drug users could then be tackled by building special clinics and treatment centres.
But there are also members of the police and political committees, social workers, doctors and health workers and other experts who believe that these drugs should remain in the illegal category. One of their worries is the availability of legalised drugs to children, and another is that addiction to crack and cocaine especially can come very quickly. That it is a crime to use them acts as a deterrent to most young people. Nobody worries much if a young teenager makes himself sick by experimenting with alcohol, because the effects are likely to persuade him not to drink until he is older. But heroin may trap for life the inquisitive child who thinks he is simply playing a game. So the consequences for children must be considered.
That is a generous and sympathetic argument which raises another issue. Should we construct our laws on the basis of what children need? Are we in danger of living in an infantilised society.
Opponents of legalisation sometimes take a religious view: 'God has not given us our bodies for us to abuse them. Therefore all drugs are wrong.' (Painkillers? Sweets? Coffee?) On the other side is the libertarian argument. 'I think that all drugs should be legalised, because I don't think people should be prohibited from doing what they want to do to themselves. It is not feasible, and not morally desirable to tell people what they should or shouldn't do to their own bodies.'
All British governments for thirty years have debated these problems about illegal drugs. At present, we seem to be in a paradoxical situation: two long-term government policies are apparently leading in opposite directions. Although smoking tobacco is still legal the government has banned smoking in public places; although injecting, smoking or swallowing 'banned substances' is illegal the government is trying, very hesitantly, to help those who turn to drugs for pleasure or need. The use of 'clean needle' exchanges and of 'safe houses' where drug users can inject in a clean environment already exist in parts of Britain; everyone wants to prevent groups of drug addicts gathering together in public places and infecting each other with dirty needles which they then leave behind for children to pick up. But the existence of such schemes illustrates the government's ambivalence about drugs. If it is illegal to inject oneself with heroin, how can it be legal to exchange dirty heroin-and-blood-stained needles for clean ones?
It looks as if this confused situation will continue. Committees have examined evidence, courts have imposed sentences, official reports have offered different solutions. In a democracy the government will study all this information and then look nervously towards public opinion. Politicians know that if they even suggest changing the law about illegal drugs many of the tabloid newspapers will declare that This is a criminal government, out to destroy our children's lives!' They fear that voters will react in the same way. Perhaps politicians are correct in fearing public outrage at more liberal laws. Yet the majority of the population were certainly sympathetic to legalising cannabis, and perhaps a majority would favour regulated legal sales of these drugs. In 2009 we do know that nobody is going to vote for a political party simply because it advocates legalising drugs, while some voters would certainly vote against such a party. So, since we live in a democracy, we shall have to change the culture, as we did with smoking, before any effective full-ranging polices are introduced to look afresh at drug abuse.
Part 7. Britain and the World
Heathrow Airport, just outside London, is the busiest international airport in the world. Millions of people, citizens of every country, queue, shuffle, hurry and drag luggage through it every year. At its busiest, planes fly off to one or another part of the world every ninety seconds. Anyone who spends much time in one of its five terminals quickly learns that London is just one city among thousands, the United Kingdom just one of the one hundred and seventy or so independent states of the world. 'How exotic to be in Britain,' exclaim uninitiated Russian visitors as they pass the immigration desk and step on to British territory. They are wrong. 'Exotic' is out there in Arkhangelsk or Samarkand or Bangkok or Nairobi. 'Britain' is home, the centre, the place from which to view the rest of world. In this chapter I try to describe what the British see when they look out from their offshore island. How do we relate those other countries and their people to us? And how is the situation changing?
When I wrote the first edition of Understanding Britain the world was changing rapidly. The Cold War had come to an end, the Soviet Union was on the point of collapse leaving America with unchallenged power, the eastern European countries were sorting themselves out, and Mandela was about to take over in South Africa. Looking at all these changes from our point of view, it seemed clear to many others besides myself that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (Northern Ireland still tearing itself apart) had specific and complex relationships with the British Commonwealth, the United States of America and the European Union. The British Commonwealth was of fading significance, but historically gave us connections to many distant parts of the world; with the USA we had a supposed 'special relationship'; and we were reluctant but committed members of the European Union. Nearly twenty years later, all those relationships have acquired ironic and unexpected implications, while the worldwide use of computers and the internet has changed our expectations of 'connection'. Nevertheless we can begin with those three political groupings.