Policy > General > After the War on Drugs Report > Corrections

Corrections for the third reprint (Feb 2005) of 'After the War on Drugs, Options for Control':

If factual errors appear in documents produced by Transform we will publish corrections on the Transform website, along with the amended documents.

1. The quotation from Abraham Lincoln concerning alcohol prohibition (page 7 of first edition) has been removed after doubt has been cast on its provenance.

The complete quote:

"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."

Abraham Lincoln (1809-65) U.S. President. Speech, 18 Dec. 1840, to Illinois House of Representatives

Although the quote appears in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (Columbia University Press), and is quoted Rep. Robert L. Henry of Texas. on page 544 of the Congressional Record-House for December 22, 1914, (which we reasonably took as acceptable sources) other research, that we have recently been made aware of, suggests that the quote may have been invented or mis-attributed. Researchers have been unable to find the actual quote on record for the day it was supposed to have been made, and there is evidence now that it may have been made up for political reasons. For more information on this question see: www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lincoln

2. The report mistakenly claims that the number of imprisoned drug offenders has risen 'ten-fold for women and eight-fold for men between 1992 and 2002"

The actual figures for UK drug offenders in prison as provided by the Home Office are for women: 259 (1992), 1331 (2002) and for men 2899 (1992), 8744 (2002). This translates, approximately, to a five fold increase for women, and a three fold increase for men, not ten and eight as stated. The original error stemmed from a misreading of the graph (ie - that the increase for women was from 259 in 1992, to 1331 in 2002, when the 1331 figure was actually the men's figure for 1992). The authors would like to apologise for this careless mistake - which has now been rectified in the third edition (Feb 2005). The point that these figures were trying to illustrate, that there has been a dramatic increase in the prison population of drug offenders in recent years, still stands.

A small number of minor editorial changes and corrections were also made for the third reprint and some information updated.