Why Ban Drugs? Part VI: The "English Model"
Peter Hitchens was the first public intellectual I had ever encountered willing to defend the prohibition of drugs. That should have been a red flag for me, if something that was deemed an "establishment" position was never publicly proclaimed by any politician or thinker, surely it can't really be the establishment position. Peter Hitchens has produced a history of the development of drug culture in the UK called The War We Never Fought. I have only found one academic who seriously tackles the questions provoked by Hitchens, and while I disagree with him, he was kid enough to help me with my research, so I won't be dealing with him here.
What follows is a history of the development of the drug policies of the United Kingdom through the 20th and 21st century. It does not cover the broad flavour of the culture like Hitchens's book does, but it shows the mechanism of decisionmaking, and demystifies the goings on, in what to all external appearances is a strict regime, but is in reality anything but. It is the story of an elite class weakening the protections of society to shelter their own bourgeois hedonist indulgences, and promoting a view that the rest of society has now come to accept - that drugs ought not to be prohibited. Government tends to move inexorably towards liberalisation, pausing when the public objects, and moving when they look away. However, in recent years, attitudes have begun to shift under the pressure of a relentless propaganda campaign, so we may see a final break with the upkeep of appearances altogether within a few years.
While the Netherlands engaged in drastic, speculative reforms, the United Kingdom proceeded far more gradually in its Harm Reduction schedule, and started much sooner, with several major elements recognisable to modern Harm Reduction advocates appearing in the first decades of the 20th century. Starting in the Egyptian colony following native pressure, British authorities attempted to ban narcotics, emphasising the dangers of refined “white” (heroin, morphine, cocaine) drugs over “brown” (opium, hashish)[1]. This can be seen as a precursor to the modern hard/soft distinction. The Rolleston Report of 1926, composed of a group of British medical professionals, proposed a ban on the possession of drugs without prescription, and handed the power to prescribe white drugs to doctors[2]. The report designated addiction a disease, and recommended a policy of “maintenance”: the addict would be supplied with their drug of choice, to reduce disruption to their lives, a central strategy of most Harm Reduction programs today[3].
The provision of heroin to addicts was prevalent throughout the 20th century by doctors, but until the 1970s, unlicensed possession of heroin, cannabis and cocaine were punished with imprisonment, with no difference of schedule. Cannabis, like heroin and cocaine, were forbidden under the 1928 Dangerous Drugs Act. The system of addiction maintenance was referred to as the “British System”, since it was unique at the time. Until the late 20th century, and from early on, most of the patients of this program were in fact medical staff. This reflected a failure of the regulatory attempt in 1922 to prevent doctors from prescribing drugs to themselves[4]. The period since Rolleston was a period of relative regulatory inactivity, when doctors were the only source of drugs, and arrests for breach of policy remained roughly 50 per year, except for a brief spike during the Second World War[5]. But as the number of addicts tripled between 1955 and 1965 as the new counterculture emerged following access to cannabis from American soldiers, legal reform was demanded.
Thus, the government moved towards a more closely controlled clinic system, where patients could be monitored. Doctors prescribed a wider variety of maintenance drugs, including heroin, but switched to methadone in 1970 , restricting service to a limited catchment area, and turning away first time users. This was driven by a belief that the increase in addiction was caused by an increase in supply rather than a shift in culture. Yet the number of addicts registered, quality of drugs seized, and arrests made all doubled in the following decade, leading to increased concern that the clinic system was failing[6].
The first methadone replacement therapy and syringe exchange open to the public on a non-prescription basis was founded in the Merseyside (Liverpool) clinic in 1986[7] and in several other locations from 1987[8]. Like the Dutch program, the new liberalisation of the English program was aimed at tackling the HIV epidemic, and most of the early patients reported this as the reason for their attendance[9]. This led to the first International Conference on the Reduction of Drug Related Harm held in Liverpool in 1990, which was a watershed for the program globally[10]. In 1995, the government set up a special research panel, which delivered optimistic results for the program[11].
In the post-war period, the consumption of cannabis increased exponentially. The number of arrests under the strict Preventive laws, which was 185 in 1959, had increased to 2 393 by 1967, with seizures of 300lbs. This caused concern among legislators who, in a curious parallel to the Dutch, also commissioned a report into drug use. Published in 1969, this Advisory Committee report was generally called the Wooton Report after its chair, Lady Barbara Wooton. It advised, largely on the concerns of the member Michael Schofield to not prosecute first-time offenders or possessors of small amounts of cannabis, and recommended that sale or supply should not be punished with anything more severe than a £100[12]. Michael Schofield was a principled classic Liberal, who advocated for tolerant attitudes on most modern social issues, and was an ardent campaigner for the decriminalisation of homosexuality, which until 1965 was illegal. Since little was known about cannabis at the time, Schofield managed to convince even the most hard-line conservative members to see the issue differently, that the entire philosophy around substance abuse needed to change[13].
Another significant figure is Steven Abrams. A member of a legalisation advocacy group called SOMA[14], which posted a front-page advertisement [pictured at the head of this article] funded by Paul McCartney in the Times newspaper calling for the Wooton commission to debate the scheduling of cannabis separately to LSD, to avoid people conflating the widespread fear of LSD with that of cannabis; a successful effort[15]. Following the suggestions of this report, the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act made a distinction between possession and wholesale trade, and while it allowed for a sentence of up to six months, the Lord Hailsham instructed the Magistrates Association, when the law received Royal Assent in 1973, to enforce the legislation only in the case of large-scale trafficking[16]. The powers to imprison were curtailed further in 1976, placing a maximum sentence of three months for offenses regarding cannabis, and two subsequent Advisory Councils, in 1979 and 1982, suggested the abolition of prison sentences, which were taken on board by the Thatcher administration’s policies which instructed police to rather issue cautions and small spot fines. By the 1990s, prison sentences for offenses involving cannabis were rare, and the law was “all but unenforced”[17].
The 21st century saw a confused policy. Attempting to reschedule cannabis to a less serious category in 2002, the former Chief Constable in charge of drug policy resigned in protest. The government received widespread ridicule, since not only did this come in the midst of Tony Blair’s “tough on crime” policy, but the government flipped, and reversed the rescheduling[18]. The reason for the downgrading is that sentencing guidelines did not consider class C (the lowest tier) an arrestable offense. The compromise reached afterwards encouraged warnings rather than police cautions, to avoid permanent records. This was popular with police, saving them hundreds of thousands of man-hours in the filling out of new, dense regulatory paperwork[19].
However, after the introduction of the targets-based New Public Management system of the New Labour era, police were required to meet arrest quotas, which they filled with superfluous, low-priority crime investigation, resulting in an increase in arrests for drug offenses, which often took the form of superficial profiling and an increase in class and racial tension in the large cities[20].
The British state has never operated under mandatory minimum sentencing, and generally prefers flexibility, and “proportional” responses. Sentencing was significantly liberalised under the Liberal-Conservative coalition government in 2012[21], abolishing prison sentences for up to 6kg of cannabis[22]. This policy aimed at lenience to drug mules, leading to only 10% of trafficking charges resulting in prison sentences longer than a year since then[23]. This continues a falling trend in the number of prison sentences for drug trafficking, which dropped from 1654 in 2002 to 458 in 2013[24]. The flexibility of sentencing in general is very wide, in keeping with the Common Law tradition, which aims to take individual circumstances, community interest and common morality into consideration in case law. Judges have discretion to apply anything from a small fine up to 14 years in prison for the trafficking of drugs beneath the most severe category. However, recommended sentencing for Class A drugs (heroin, meth) is 16 years, and allows sentences up to life imprisonment[25]. This government also introduced the first “drug driving” legislature in 2013. This period saw many reorganisations of the drug treatment program administration, eventually consolidated into Public Health England[26].
The United Kingdom drug policy regime is by no means the most liberal, but is characterised by a constant incremental liberalisation and escalation of liberalisation and harm-reduction policies, asymmetrically across departments. It has seen many shifts in its strategies, but a consistent feature is the gap between legislated sentencing and practical Sentencing Recommendations, which tend to be far more flexible, and trend over time to greater lenience. The United Kingdom has not engaged in strict Prevention since the 1960s. The discretionary approach to banking in London has made the prosecution of narcotics financing difficult, making the Bank of England a central money laundry unit.
The persistence of police activity in arresting or issuing spot fines creates inordinate hassle for police, especially since very few of the cases result in any meaningful punishment. This gives ordinary drug users the impression of being victims of the state without being given the severity of punishment required to discourage repeated violations, and encourages widespread resentment and arrogant rebellious attitudes. It is for these reasons, in my opinion, that the UK persists in being among the worst abuser of narcotic drugs in Europe, which puts it rather high in the word rankings. The drinking culture in England, which has recently (past 30 years) become one of aggressive binge drinking, replacing the slow-burn community pub drinking, which has created the lifetime habits inclining the population towards deliberate, barely restrained intoxication. The growing false belief that cannabis is a safe alternative to alcohol has hardly helped.
[1] Hallam, Chris. "Script Doctors and Vicious Addicts: Subcultures, Drugs, and Regulation under the'British System', c. 1917 to c. 1960." PhD diss., London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (2016): 80-84
[2] Riley, Diane, and P. O’Hare. "Harm reduction: History, definition and practice”. In. Inciardi & LD Harrison (Eds.), Harm reduction: National and international perspectives (2000): 5;
Hallam, 2016: 80
[3] Dole, Vincent P. "Implications of methadone maintenance for theories of narcotic addiction." Jama 260, no. 20 (1988);
Bart, Gavin. "Maintenance medication for opiate addiction: the foundation of recovery." Journal of addictive diseases 31, no. 3 (2012)
[4] Berridge, Virginia. "The'British System'and its history: Myth and reality." In Heroin addiction and the British system, Routledge, (2004): 14
[5] Hallam, 2016: 79-80;
Bennett, Trevor. "The British experience with heroin regulation." Law and contemporary problems 51, no. 1 (1988): 302
[6] Bennett, 1988: 303-307
[7] Riley & O’Hare, 1999: 2
[8] Stimson, Gerry V., Lindsey Alldritt, Kate Dolan, and Martin Donoghoe. "Syringe exchange schemes for drug users in England and Scotland." British Medical Journal (Clin Res Ed) 296, no. 6638 (1988)
[9] Stimson et al, 1988: 1718
[10] Erickson, Patricia G. "Harm reduction: What it is and is not." Drug and Alcohol Review 14, no. 3 (1995): 2
[11] Gossop, Michael, John Marsden, Duncan Stewart, and Tara Kidd. "The National Treatment Outcome Research Study (NTORS): 4–5 year follow‐up results." Addiction 98, no. 3 (2003)
[12] UK Advisory Committee on Drug Dependence, Cannabis (1969)
[13] Johnson, B. D., & Schofield, M. “The Strange Case of Pot”. Contemporary Sociology, 2, no. 5 (1973): 529
[14] Named either after the miracle pacifying drug in Aldus Huxley’s Brave New World, or else after the legendary magic sacrament of the ancient Hindus purported to provide divine insight by writings the Rig Veda.
[15] Abrams, 2008: 42 the article, whose headline, “the law against marijuana is immoral in principle and unworkable in practice”, was an extremely bold and controversial statement for the time.
[16] Abrams, Stephen. "Soma, the Wootton Report and cannabis law reform in Britain during the 1960s and 1970s." EMCDDA Monographs (2008): 47
[17] Abrams, 2008: 48
[18] Shiner, Michael. "Drug policy reform and the reclassification of cannabis in England and Wales: A cautionary tale." International Journal of Drug Policy 26, no. 7 (2015)
[19] Shiner, 2015: 6
[20] Flanegan, R. The Review of Policing: Interim Report, London: Home Office (2007);
Morgan, R., and Newburn, T “Youth Crime and Justice: Rediscovering Devolution, Discretion and Diversion”, in M. Maguire, R. Morgan and R. Reiner (ed) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (2012)
[21] Sentencing Council of England and Wales, Drug Offences: Definitive Guideline. (2012)
[22] Sentencing Council, 2012: 4-6
[23] Fleetwood, Jennifer, Polly Radcliffe, and Alex Stevens. "Shorter sentences for drug mules: The early impact of the sentencing guidelines in England and Wales." Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy 22, no. 5 (2015)
[24] Fleetwood, 2015: 431
[25] Sentencing Council of England and Wales, 2012: 9
[26] McGregor, 2017