Malcolm Dean writes: Labour's assault on the Liberal Democrats' policy on drug law reform will have won few friends in the drug treatment world. An accompanying populist article by Tony Blair in the Sun will have brought more despair in the way that it brutally shuts off an urgently needed rational change of direction.
According to the prime minister - supported by a Sun editorial on the same page - "the war against drugs in our country" has to continue. Under a large banner headline, the prime minister warns Sun readers "just say no to Lib Dems over their drug policy madness".
So precisely what have the Lib Dems been saying?
First to pursue the proposals of the report of the independent inquiry into our current drug laws in 2000 - a commission that included a chief constable, top pharmacologists, medics and treatment experts - to reclassify drugs according to their known degree of harmfulness. The current law is 30 years old. This would mean the recent reclassification of cannabis as a class C drug would be maintained (Labour is reviewing it after only introducing it 18 months ago) and that ecstasy should be downgraded from A to B.
Second, following the example of the Dutch and Portugese, ending the use of imprisonment as a punishment for possession of any class of drug if it was only for the individual's own use.
Third, allowing GPs - as they used to do - to prescribe short term or emergency maintenance doses of heroin to remove the dependence of any new or existing addicts on criminal suppliers.
As the Lib Dem briefing document (pdf) notes, the prohibitionist approach to drugs in the last 30 years has not worked. According to the 2003 British Crime Survey 12% of adults (four million people) took an illegal drug in the previous year and 3% (one million people) a class A drug. Mr Blair's war on drugs would be a war on the nation's children, the biggest users of cannabis.
The document succinctly sums up what is wrong with Labour's policy. It exacerbates the adverse consequences of drug use; brings many young people, who would otherwise be law-abiding, into contact with both the criminal underworld and the criminal justice system; undermines more promising strategies for minimising harmful drug use; and diverts large public resources (particularly the police budget) into avenues (such as the pursuit of cannabis which takes up 75% of police drug operation spending) that could be better employed.
The Lib Dem drug policy calls for a more intelligent range of responses with an emphasis on education, treatment, harm reduction with criminal sanctions only retained where relevant. The only thing wrong with the Lib Dem policy is their failure to promote it in this election.
Malcolm Dean is assistant editor of the Guardian
