Media/News > Press Releases > 09.07.07

Tories split on illegal drugs News Release

Tomorrow the Conservatives publish their report Breakdown Britain. Part of which will include recommendations for drug policy reform and on Thursday will launch their policy paper on addiction. Two senior conservatives will not be revealing their own views on drug policy at this event:

David Cameron MP

As a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into drug misuse in 2002 – Cameron voted in favour of recommendation 24:

"24. We recommend that the Government initiates a discussion within the Commission on Narcotic Drugs of alternative ways—including the possibility of legalisation and regulation—to tackle the global drugs dilemma (paragraph 267)."

Source: http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200102/cmselect/cmhaff/318/31815.htm

Alun Duncan MP

Duncan wrote a chapter in ‘Saturn's Children – How the state devours liberty, prosperity and virtue' by Alan Duncan and Dominic Hobson titled The Legalisation Of Drugs. On his website publicising the book it says:

“In response to numerous requests this chapter is reproduced for the benefit of the enquiring student and does not signify any departure on Mr Duncan's part from current party policy.”

Here are two extracts:

“The analysis of the economics of the drugs trade is too compelling to ignore. Logic suggests that the only completely effective way to ameliorate the problem, and especially the crime which results from it, is to bring the industry into the open by legalising the distribution and consumption of all dangerous drugs, or at the very least decriminalising their consumption. This is not the drastic or revolutionary step which many people believe it to be.”

“There is no reason to suppose that the number of consumers would increase if dangerous drugs were legalised. A sensible legalisation would retain strict official control over the distribution and quality of drugs, and perhaps include the establishment of a register of users of hard drugs. Evidence from Holland and the United States, where experiments in the decriminalisation of soft drugs are taking place, suggests consumption tends not to rise but drug-related crime does tend to fall. Almost everybody is sufficiently aware of the dangerous side-effects of narcotic abuse to avoid taking dangerous drugs for precisely that reason. But a minority will always prefer to take the risk, just as smokers continue to consume tobacco despite overwhelming evidence of the damaging effect it has on their health. Although the democratic State has a constant urge, as de Tocqueville forecast, to act as an 'immense, protective power which is alone responsible for securing their enjoyment and watching over their fate', it is perfectly respectable to believe that people are the best judge of their own interests, even if they choose to consume harmful drugs.”

See the entire chapter at: http://www.alanduncan.org.uk/legalisationofdrugs.html

Danny Kushlick, Transform Director said:

“This is what we call Green Room Syndrome, where politicians hold one view before the cameras roll and another for popular consumption, and drug policy is the prime exemplar. Only a handful of politicians are willing to show leadership on this issue and to give us the opportunity to genuinely debate alternatives to the catastrophic status quo of prohibition. Like the other major parties, out of political cowardice, the Conservatives have failed to grasp the nettle of prohibition.”

ENDS

Notes to editors:

Danny Kushlick gave evidence to the Conservative Social Justice Working Group on Addictions.

Click here to see Transform's extensive and surprising list of supporters of reform: http://www.tdpf.org.uk/MediaNews_Reform_supporters.htm