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Drugs: It’s all in the price
By Hempology | June 12, 2002
From THE ECONOMIST, June 8th, 2002
The street price of illegal drugs in Britain has never been lower.
The message should be clear – prohibition has failed.
If the government is looking for evidence about how it is faring in the battle to stop
illegal drugs, it need look no further than what is happening to prices. When Home Office
officials and police chies meet next month for crisis talks about the exploding use of crack
cocaine, they will have to confront the fact that the drugs they most fear have never
been cheaper or more plentiful.
The threat of crack, the most dangerous and unpredictable of illegal drugs, has
been fuelled by the easy availability of cocaine. During the past ten years, the
street prices of both hard and soft drugs have fallen sharply. Cocaine and heroin
have declined by nearly a third, while ecstasy ha dropped more than half. (see chart)
| % decrease in drug prices November 1990 to December 2001 | |
|---|---|
| Ecstasy | 62% |
| Cocaine | 31% |
| Heroin | 30% |
| LSD | 19% |
| Cannabis (resin) | 16% |
| Source: NCIS | |
In real terms, the figures, compiled by the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS),
represent an even sharper fall. While whisky and beer prices have doubled and cigarettes
almost tripled in price over the decade, illegal drugs are now often cheaper than a night
out in a pub. The cost of LSD, a hallucinogenic drug, is less than a packet of cigarettes.
These figures confirm that the increasing resources employed to disrupt the illegal drugs
trade are having little impact. Over the past five years, heroin seizures have more than doubled
and cocaine seizures have increased five-fold. But Customs and Excise officials accept that they are
intercepting only a fraction, probably less than 10%, of the drugs coming into the country.
Terry Byrne, director of law enforcement at Customes and Excise, acknowledges that the street prices
of drugs have never been lower. He also admits there is no evidence that the efforts of his and
other agencies are “reducing availability or increasing the price of illegal drugs”.
Neither Customs and Excise nor NCIS are willing to discuss the forces driving the market. But
Home Office officials say that events in Afghanistan have had a key role in boosting heroin supply.
The increasing use of cocaine appears linked to the West Indies. Large amounts are being brought in by
West Indian “drug mules”, often women who agree to swallow packets of cocaine and smuggle them in at
high risk for a couple of thousand dollars.
Given that the streets are awash and that buying of both hard and soft drugs has never been easier,
the government’s national anti-drugs strategy set out four years ago looks increasingly like a work
of fantasy. One of the government’s main targets to reduce the availability of Class A drugs by 25%
by 2005 and 50% by 2008, is so far adrift that an increase in availability is more likely to be
recorded than a fall.
The Association of Chief Police Officers says bleakly that if existing drugs policy is to be judged
“by measurable reductions of people who use drugs and the amount of crime committed to get money to
buy drugs”, then it is failing.
The Home Affairs select committee said in a report, published last month, that the government should
concentrate its efforts in treating the estimated 250,000 hard-core addicts rather than pursuing
criminal penalties. It called for “safe injecting houses” for addicts to be set up together with a
large-scale trial of heroin prescribing. It also want ecstasy to be downgraded to a Class B drug.
Predictably, this is all too radical for the government. But the home secretary, David Blunkett, has
moved a long way from the policy of his predecessor who, two years ago, dismissed a demand by a
distinguished committee of medical, legal, police and drug specialists for reform on Britain’s archaic
drug laws. A revised national drugs strategy is to be published next month which is likely to back many
of the committee’s recommendations. Mr Blunkett has already announced that he plans to downgrade cannabis
to a Class C drug, which means the penalties for possession becoming nominal. He is also sympathetic
to strictly monitored trials of heroin prescribing. The new strategy is likely to focus on treatment
rather than enforcement.
A new approach is badly needed but whether this shift towards treatment will work is uncertain. One
problem is cost. Prescribing heroin to hard-core addicts could cost more than £250m ($363m)
a year. But Transform, a pressure group in favour of legalisation, claims that the current regime costs
at least $pound;10 billion a year, if the burden of dealing with drug-related crime and prisons
are included in the calculation. Almost two-thirds of those who are arrested test positive for drugs.
Doung nothing may be politically safe but it is not a cheap option.
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