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Drug seizuresDrug seizure statistics are often misunderstood and misused. Defenders of the drug war status quo frequently use increases in seizures as evidence of a successful enforcement policy or, conversely, that a decrease in seizures is evidence that drugs markets are reducing. Neither represents a correct interpretation of the statistics, and in reality drug seizure data are of little use for policy makers – aside from achieving arbitrary and equally un-useful seizure targets. Drug seizures primarily reflect activity of the enforcement authorities and do not provide any useful indication of the scale of actual drug markets, as they can rise or fall entirely independently from drug availability or usage levels. A single large drug-bust can dramatically shape annual year on year stats. It is entirely inappropriate for seizures statistics to be used (as they are in the UK national strategy) as a measure of drug availability, as there is quite simply no correlation whatsoever. Trumpeting seizures as a success on availability targets has been one of the more shameless and wilfully dishonest activities of Government in recent years.[1] They know full well that drug availability is increasing and drug prices are falling and have acknowledged as much on the Home Office website and in other reports.[2] Global seizuresThe primary use of global seizure statistics is also primarily for political and propaganda purposes rather than as for evaluating policy effectiveness – for which they are next to useless. Each year governments submit their drug seizure statistics to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime who publish them in their World Drug Reports. The UNODC have acknowledged in previous reports that statistics are likely to be subject to a degree of double counting, eg customs and police forces may report the same seizure or multiple countries may claim credit for a seizure when more than one country was involved. Different counting methods in different countries do not help either. When, as is often the case, data is missing from some countries, the UNODC usually substitutes it with data from a previous year. As a result, even for a value which could, in theory at least, be accurately established, this data can be taken as only the vaguest of guides to the actual quantity seized.
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Seizures in England and WalesThe Home Office publishes statistics for the number of drug seizures in England and Wales. At the time of writing the most recent are from 2004, and cover seizures made during the year by police (including the British Transport Police), together with information from HM Revenue & Customs (formerly HM Customs & Excise) and the National Crime Squad. Whilst these stats are of little use in policy terms, there is no reason to think they are not accurate. There may be some inflation from double counting, or a tendency to round up stats to make them look more impressive, but this is difficult to establish.
* Seizure can involve more than one drug therefore figures for individual drugs cannot be added together to produce totals. Links
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