Drug Trends and Policy Responses: Explaining the drug policy ratchet

1. Drug Trends and Policy Responses:Explaining the drug policy ratchet Alex Stevens University of Kent

2. Content • The drug policy ratchet • Domestic • International • Drug control as a response to prevalence? • Explaining the drug policy ratchet: • The history of drug policy • Guilt by deviant association • Guilt by lunatic association • Guilt by molecular association • Ethnography of policy making • Survival of the ideas that fit • Usefulness and the civil service career • Totemic toughness • Silent silencing of alternatives

3. The domestic drug policy ratchet (MDA 1971) • In or up • Ecstasy into class A in 1977 • Barbiturates into class B in 1985 • Fresh magic mushrooms into class A in 2005 • Ketamine into class B in 2006 • Methamphetamine up to class A in 2007 • Cannabis up to class B in 2009 • BZP and GBL into class C in 2009 • ‘Spice’ into class C in 2009 • Mephedrone and Naphyrone into class B in 2010 • 2-DPMP and other pipradols into class B in 2012 • Out or down • Cannabis down to class C in 2004 • effect nullified at the time and subsequently reversed

4. The international drug policy ratchet • In • Opiates and coca derivatives in 1912 • Cannabis in 1925 • All three included in 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs • New drugs added in the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances • Amphetamines, benzodiazepines, barbiturates, psychedelics • Since 1971: • E.g. MDMA, methcathinone, ephedrine (under the 1988 convention) • Out • (Bolivia has attempted to ‘outschedule’ and then ‘downschedule’ coca, so far unsuccessfully) • (Dronabinol down from schedule I to schedule II in 1991, but not to schedule IV, despite WHO recommendation, due to US pressure)

5. Proportion of 16-24 year olds reporting past year drug use. Source: CSEW Evidence and policy

6. Indexed trend in proportions of 16 to 24 year olds reporting past year drug use * Ketamine: 2006/7=100

7. Proportion of 16 to 59 year olds using ‘new’ drugs: Source CSEW Evidence and policy

8. The lack of effect of cannabis policy change Source: EMCDDA Annual Report (2011)

9. Summary so far… • It’s much easier to get drugs into controlled schedules than out. • It’s much easier to ‘upschedule’ than to ‘downschedule’ drugs. • Prevalence seems to have limited effect on scheduling. • Scheduling (or levels of punishment related to scheduling) seems to have limited effect on prevalence. Evidence and policy

10. Historical explanations: guilt by deviant association • Drugs tend to get banned when their use is associated with marginalised, stigmatised people. • Chinese immigrants in western USA – 19th century opium ordinances. • Black men and Mexican immigrants in southern USA – control of cocaine and cannabis in early 20th century • Canadians, Chinese and other deviant corrupters of soldiers and Billie Carleton – British control of cocaine.

11. Guilt by lunatic association • Colonial Indian lunatic asylum data: • ‘if the man be a gangah-smoker, the drug is invariably put down [by the police] as the cause of insanity’ • Annual report of the insane asylums in Bengal, 1874 • Egyptian delegation to 1924 Opium Convention • ‘illicit use of hashish is the principal cause of most of the cases of insanity occurring in Egypt… from 30 to 60 percent of the total number occurring’ • WHO report in 1955 finds no countervailing medical benefit from cannabis use. Evidence and policy

12. Guilt by molecular association • Opium and coca derivatives banned in 1912. • Subsequent treaties banned substances with very low rates of use due to similarity. • More recently, Naphyrone banned due to similarity to Mephedrone. Evidence and policy

13. Ethnography of recent policy making • Six months of ethnographic participant observation in 2009. • Enabled study of the policy making processes of a central unit within UK civil service, with input to drug and crime policy. • Informed by theory on the evidence-policy link. • Triangulated against interviews with policy actors. • Published as ‘Telling Policy Stories’ in Journal of Social Policy, 2011. Evidence and policy

14. Selective evidence use • Survival of the ideas that fit: • Policy makers face a huge deluge of inconclusive evidence. • They need to tell persuasive policy stories that get the policy accepted by powerful groups. • They therefore choose to use evidence which fits with the interests and preferences of these powerful groups. Evidence and policy

15. Usefulness and the civil service career • “I found a problem with [policy area]. My boss said ‘Well you’re young. Why don’t you suggest we look again at [policy area] and see how far that takes you in your career?’ So there are certain areas where officials will self-censor and they won’t suggest to ministers to change policy on certain areas even though the evidence suggests it.” • Policy making civil servant

16. Totemic toughness • “We need to come up with policies that are totemically tough” • Special Adviser, echoed by several civil servants. • “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” • “We know who we’re talking about. It’s not the public schoolkids waiting at the bust stop… It’s those other kids”. • Civil servant in discussion of ‘incivility’.

17. ‘Silent silencing’ of alternatives • Modes of silencing (Mathiesen, 2004): • Absorption • System placement • Professionalisation • Masking • ‘The Gini coefficient is a policy lever that we cannot pull… we need to keep the lid on.” • Senior civil servant

18. Drug policy as ‘systematically distorted communication’ • The failure to achieve democratic deliberation due to strategic communication by holders of money and power (Habermas 2002). • Systematic distortion in drug policy: • Failure to use evidence according to the scientific method. • Selective use of only the evidence that supports existing distributions of power. • A ‘systematically asymmetrical’ distribution. • Silent silencing of evidence and advocates that support change to this distribution.

19. Conclusion • The upwards ratchet of drug control is not a response to concerns over drug prevalence. • There are historical trends which explain the progressive criminalisation of some drugs: • There are also social interactions within the policy world which tend to support increasing control. • Drug policy is not a value-free response to drug prevalence and harms. • It is a form of ‘systematically distorted communication’ which reflects and reproduces inequalities of power.

20. More information Email: a.w.stevens@kent.ac.uk Twitter @AlexStevensKent