on Monday, 18 May 2009 08:53
In The Phoney War on Drugs, (PDF available here) published today by the Centre for Policy Studies, author Kathy Gyngell shows that the UK has one of the most liberal drugs policies in Europe, combined with one of the worst enforcement and drug use records.
A successful drug policy would in contrast:
- bear down on the illicit use of all drugs, not the harms caused by drug use;
- abandon the harm reduction approach;
- focus treatment on abstinence and rehabilitation;
- include a tougher, better-funded enforcement programme to reduce the supply of drugs.
There is detailed coverage of the report in the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and on the BBC News website. Kathy Gyngell has written an op-ed article in the Daily Telegraph.
The report was featured as one of the top four political news stories on the PoliticsHome website and is also covered in The Sun and the Daily Express.
Ray Lewis, the founder of the Eastside Young Leaders' Academy, has written an article about the report for the Guardian website.
Shaun Bailey, CPS Research Fellow and co-founder of the charity MyGeneration, has also written for the Evening Standard on Kathy's pamphlet - 'The Government's given up the war on drugs'.
To post your comments on the report, visit the CPS blog