It’s interesting to see the coalition split over the treatment of drug users in the UK following the publication of a report that compares the UK’s approach on drugs misuse with 13 other countries (Minister steps down with parting shot at May, 4 November).
In fact, treating drugs use as a health matter, rather than a criminal matter, is very much the accepted protocol at present. Even without formal decriminalisation, most users found in possession are dealt with by a fine or an order for treatment if their case comes to court. Generally, only dealers or habitual users who consistently refuse treatment end up with a custodial sentence.
But there is real concern among organisations like Changing Lives that are at the sharp end of the delivery of drug and alcohol abstinence treatment as well as dealing with the fallout of drug use – homelessness, offending, family breakdown and mental illness. Government-funded treatment solutions are commissioned by local authorities and often delivered by charity and voluntary-sector partners. The funding for this work is not ringfenced and, increasingly, cash-strapped authorities with challenging budget-reduction targets are being forced to reduce their spend in this area.
One authority in the north-east has already cut its drug and alcohol treatment budget over the next three years by over 20%. Other authorities in the region are looking at overall budget cuts in the next three years. If we’re truly committed to changing behaviour over drug misuse, we need to continue to fund a solution that’s working.
Ollie Batchelor
Executive director of client services, Changing Lives
• The argument in your editorial (30 October), on how the recent Home Office research shows the folly of the current punitive response to drug possession, is persuasive. The point you make about stop and search, however, is over-argued by the use of 2010 figures for London instead of more recent ones. In that year, around half a million Pace and other “reasonable grounds” stops and searches were recorded in London and black people were 4.6 times as likely as white people to be subjected to the power (the other types of stop and search, under Terrorism and Public Order laws, account for very much smaller numbers and are not targeted at drugs).
Following a new approach by the Met from January 2012, informed by dialogue with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), Pace and similar searches had fallen to around a quarter of a million in the last nine months of 2012 and black/white disproportionality to 3.7 times (Stop and Think Again, EHRC, June 2013). More recent figures on the Met’s website show black/white disproportionality at around 2.5, though part of this further fall may stem from the use now of the more up-to-date 2011 census population figures. Notwithstanding this more measured use of the power, crime figures have of course continued to fall in London as elsewhere.
While a policing focus on drug possession has undoubtedly contributed to extreme and unfair race differences in stop and search, I think it is misleading to represent the situation in 2010 as the position now, and not to recognise when progress has been made.
Philip Pavey
Former criminal justice & safety manager, Equality and Human Rights Commission
