The war on drugs

The war on drugs is clear and simple.

Our crime commissioner recently proposed that the local police should not spend their falling funds, savaged by austerity cuts, on targeting low-level use of cannabis.

I agreed with the war for 45 years but two books have altered my thinking. Drugs – Without the Hot Air: Minimising the Harms of Legal and Illegal Drugs by David Nut and Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari. The war ideology is shaken by evidence that a policing tactic replicates US prohibition that fuelled crime and gangsters. Drug use in Portland YOI shows this.

It seems obvious that if we want to protect young people from harmful drugs then a war is the answer. This failing yet dominant policy has been rocked by cCountries and US states that have broken ranks and legalised or decriminalised use have and amazingly cut harm. This is counter-intuitive.

During the war, statistician Abraham Wald was asked to help the British decide where to add armour to their bombers. He recommended adding it where there was no damage! The RAF was confused.

Wald had data only on the planes that returned so the bullet holes were all in places where a plane could be hit and survive.

The planes that were shot down were hit in different places so Wald recommended adding armour where the surviving planes were lucky enough not to have been hit. Counter-intuitive, but it worked.

The competition between the wind and the sun to make a traveller remove his coat was not won by fury and force but by warmth. Harm from drugs will be reduced not by war but by peaceful treatment.

Dr Jon Orrell

Coldharbour

Chickerell

Weymouth