“" Steve Rolles of Transform...is the only person over the last few years I have lost an argument with." ”

-- George Galloway

Contents

1.Transform News

• Recruitment - Chief Excutive
• Media News
• Events
• Titan Prison Consultation
• Blog

2. UK News

• ‘Is it time to legalise drugs?’ Debate on the Today Programme
• Julian Critchley – Evidence climate change is happening
• ACMD Ecstasy Review
• Potency of Cannabis decreasing
• Legal chemicals sold to fuel profits of illegal drugs

3. International News

• Americas -Over 100 US college presidents call for drinking age of 21 to be lowered
• Cocaine production still rising…
• Mexico may call for legalisation
• Asia - Change to South East Asia drug markets
• Africa - Cocaine smuggling causing political and economic turbulence across West Africa

4. Interview

• Francis Wilkinson – Former Chief Constable of Gwent Police

5. What can you do?

• Volunteer Community
• Calling All Students
• Donate

Transform News

Recruitment – Chief Executive

As the final part of our restructuring Transform are currently recruiting a new Chief Executive to be based in our Bristol office (part or full time, circa £35,000 per annum for full time). We are looking for an experienced manager, capable of motivating staff, managing projects and developing positive relations with funders and key supporters. Further details and an application form can be downloaded from our website (www.tdpf.org.uk). John Moore who has led the re-organisation and strategic refocusing is moving into academia at UWE Bristol but will be available to support and advise the new Chief Executive. He would be happy to discuss the job with anyone interested in applying.

The closing date for applications is the 29 th September and interviews will be held on 9 th October 2008.

Media News

" Steve Rolles of Transform...is the only person over the last few years I have lost an argument with."

George Galloway, PressTV, 31/08/08

Steve took part in a TV interview with George Galloway on 31 st August (starts at around 22mins). The interview can be viewed here.

We’ve also had extensive coverage around the Julian Critchley article (see below) and around Jack Cole’s trip to England (Director of LEAP – Law Enforcers Against Prohibition) during which Transform organised a number of high profile media opportunities including taking part in the Today programme along with interviews with the Economist and the Telegraph.

Events

Danny and Steve will attend the Beckley Cannabis Commission next month at the House of Lords.
All of our new staff members will be attending the Release Conference as an introduction to the organisation.
We will be recording our second day of interviews for the video project over the next couple of weeks.
The Drugs and Health Alliance will be meeting this month to determine a strategy and ways forward, now that Francesca Solmi has been appointed to co-ordinate the organisation.
Danny will be speaking at a meeting of EATA the European Association for the Treatment of Addictions on the 7th October.

Titan Prison Consultation

Transform has submitted a response to the government’s latest consultation on Titan Prisons (as recommended by Lord Carter in his review of prisons, the idea being, that a number of (initially three, each housing 2,500 prisoners) super prisons will be built to deal with Britain’s overflowing and outdated prisons).

Transforms submission argues that the single biggest cause of crime could be eliminated by moving from the current drugs prohibition regime to one of strict regulation and control, leading to a massive fall in the number of people being given custodial sentences. The results would be to eliminate the need for much of the current prison capacity, and certainly mean no new builds are required to meet ‘demand’.

Our submission can be viewed here.

In addition Transform, as part of the Criminal Justice Alliance, helped to draft and signed a joint letter published in the Guardian, alongside other members of the Criminal Justice Alliance.

Blog

The Transform blog continues to go from strength to strength, now attracting over 10,000 unique visits a month. For a relative newcomer to the blogoshere and a super-niche policy blog with no publicity budget this is quite an achievement. It now hovers around the 70 mark in the Wikio rankings of UK political blogs.

UK News

‘Is it time to legalise drugs?’ Debate on the Today Programme

On 4 th September the Today Programme aired the debate ‘Is it time to legalise drugs?’ The show has an excellent introduction provided by Mark Easton, before Jack Cole, a former undercover drugs officer (and director of LEAP – Law Enforcers Against Prohibition) debates with Dr Ian Oliver, consultant to the UN on drug issues, on whether drugs should be legalised. The eight-minute programme can be listened to here.

Paul Flynn MP, and long time Transform supporter commented on the today programme on his blog here.

Julian Critchley – Evidence climate change is happening

Following on from the former head of the UK’s Anti Drugs Unit Julian Critchley's call to legalise and regulate all drugs last month, extensive debate has been taking place across a range of media on the issues. Here at Transform we’ve found it all rather encouraging and its left us with a sense that drug policy climate change is finally starting to take place – even the Daily Mail managed a relatively neutral reporting of the story, with the headline 'Legalising Drugs would cause less harm AND cut crime, says former senior civil servant’ (we’ve commented the significance of this on our blog here).

Dr Ian Oliver, former Chief Constable of Grampian Police was the brave voice to speak out defending the prohibitionist status quo, writing an article in the in Independent entitled 'legalising drugs would only make matters worse' . An edited version of the Independent piece also appeared on the Guardian’s online Comment is Free forums. Despite Dr Oliver’s undoubtedly distinguished career, his arguments contain a string of unreferenced ‘facts’ and some just plain odd statements. Steve wrote an excellent, line-by-line, rebuttal of the article which can be read here. The online responses, particularly to the Comment is Free piece by Oliver, speak for themselves.

Since our last newsletter lots more media coverage has appeared around the story. Here is a selection:

Julian Critchley in the Independent (please look at the comments section – generally very encouraging)
Danny writing in Comment is Free - 'Drug Prohibition: a untenable hypocrisy' (which was in the top ten viewed CIF entries for a n umber of days)
Julian Critchley on the Today Programme
An article on the drugs debate on a local Plymouth news site.
Coverage from BBC online
Euro MP Chris Davies defended Julian Critchley in an article here.

ACMD Ecstasy Review

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) has invited members of the public to an evidence-gathering meeting on Friday 26 th September as part of its review of MDMA (ecstasy). The meeting is intended for a range of experts in the field to provide evidence relating to the harms of MDMA use. Steve wrote an excellent blog back in May on the reclassification and the predictable media frenzy that will ensue around the reclassification of this highly emotive drug. His blog can be read here.

Transform's submission to the ACMD can be read here.

Potency of Cannabis decreasing

The Guardian reported this month, that the potency of cannabis, seized by the police, has actually dropped, undermining one of the key arguments given by the government for reclassifying the drugs from Class C to B (the evidence claims that the samples collected are now weaker than when the drug was downgraded in 2004). Who knows what evidence we can really trust, but alongside the reports of falling cannabis use since 2001, and the ACMD’s review of cannabis harms it further exposes how the recent decision was driven by political posturing rather than actual evidence. More on the story can be read here. And the cannabis classification saga, along with much of the questionable science that underpinned it has been covered in detail on the Transform blog

Legal chemicals sold to fuel profits of illegal drugs

The Observer ran an interesting piece on September 7 th, which examined the increase in the number of organised gangs selling legal chemicals to drug dealers, as cutting agents for heroin and cocaine. These legal chemicals include the anaesthetics benzocaine, lignocaine and phenacetin other substances including caffeine and tetramisole, (apparently given to pets to expel tape-worms). This shocking story reveals another of the un-intended consequences of prohibition and highlights the Government’s risible claims that prohibition is about ‘control’ of the drug market!

International News

Americas

Over 100 US college presidents call for drinking age of 21 to be lowered

Over 100 US colleges have recently launched the Amethyst initiative, which is a petition signed by college presidents to make a change to reduce the current drinking age from 21 years, claiming that it has created a culture of dangerous binge drinking on their campuses.

The arguments presented in favour of lowering the drinking age follow many of the same arguments for legally regulating drugs. For example their petition states that "Alcohol education that mandates abstinence as the only legal option has not resulted in significant constructive behavioral change among our students." The parallel, abstinence only education clearly hasn’t worked with illicit drugs. A further example is that the petition states, “By choosing to use fake IDs, students make ethical compromises that erode respect for the law." Once again the parallel, the need for students to go outside the law to gain access to drugs, fosters their disrespect for the law in general and for the authorities behind the law. More discussion on the Transform blog.

Cocaine production still rising…

"If you look back at the days of Escobar, the names have changed but there's as much cocaine or more cocaine coming out of the Andes as a whole as in the peak anti-Medellin war on drugs"

John Walsh, The Washington Office on Latin America.

The Washington Post published an article this month outlining the total failure of America’s war on Drug with South America. The article reports that across the Andean region, the size of the coca crop has increased 18 percent in the past five years, despite the fact that during this period the United States has spent $4 billion on anti-drug programmes.

Mexico may call for legalisation

"We can't continue thinking that we are going to combat the problem of drug trafficking without more radical measures, and one of them has to be the legalization of drugs in the United States…After the United States will we continue with Mexico? Of course, or both at the same time... This war, the way it is outlined, is going to be lost, we're all going to lose, it makes no sense and there need to be some changes."

Javier González Garza - Democratic Revolution Party Co-ordinator

Asia

Change to South East Asia drug markets

The Transnational Institute have published a briefing this month, which examines the changes to South East Asian drug markets over the past decade. They conclude that although opium production in this region has decreased significantly, this reduction has not reduced the supply of opium and heroin available globally. They go on to note that many former producers have suffered significantly as a result of the declining production as they lack alternative livelihoods. Further they state that this decline has led to a shift from smoking opium to injecting it, which is further exacerbating the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the region. The report can be read in full here.

Africa

Cocaine smuggling causing political and economic turbulence across West Africa

South American drug cartels are increasingly using West Africa as a ‘stopping off point’ for their drugs en-route to Europe and the trend is now threatening to turn small nations, such as Guinea-Bissau into ‘narco’ states. These cartels have targeted many of West Africa’s most fragile states, some of which are rebuilding after civil war, and therefore the borders are poorly protected and state authority is weak. An interesting account of the story can be read on the trade Africa blog here. As so often happens with prohibition related catastrophes, many of the Drug Wars cheerleaders, including the UNODC, claim that this is a reason for fighting the drug war even more fiercely, failing entirely to see that they are part of the problem, not the solution

Interview

We are currently in the process of making a number of short talking head videos to help us to promote Transform’s cause. As part of this we have been conducting a number of interviews with key supporters and figures to discuss the failure of the current drug laws and why people feel that they should be restructured. Below we have featured an excerpt from the interview we conducted with Francis Wilkinson, Former Chief Constable of Gwent Police and Transform patron.

Francis Wilkinson – Former Chief Constable of Gwent Police :

Transform: How did you come to believe that there should be a major overhaul of the current drugs laws?

Francis: I don't think I was ever convinced by the laws that we currently have. I dealt with drugs in the police in every rank, from Constable to Chief Constable and it was apparent whatever level you were dealing with them at, that the system wasn't working. It was only really once I retired that I had time, and I thought that it was proper to develop policy that was different from the law that I was paid to enforce.

Francis: Oh dear there is an enormously long list. There is an enormous amount of violence throughout the world, areas of production become lawless because the power of the money that is generated by the drugs business means that the people who run it are, in their areas, more powerful than the authorised law enforcement in the country. So that’s one area of real conflict and violence at a high level and very often using quite advanced weapons and with a lot of deaths but on the streets there is the same problem. If you’ve got some drugs, you want to protect your supply, you don’t want to have your supply taken away from you, if somebody robs you then you can’t go to the police so you have to employ, somehow your own protection, whether it’s a knife in your pocket or whether it’s a couple of people that you employ at a higher level in order to provide you with that protection with guns. So at every stage there is violence and it has an effect on British Society as a whole that level of violence. A lot of social violence is caused by crime of that sort, but there is also at the very bottom end, that is to say where the user doesn’t have enough money to feed their addiction they commit crime in order to feed their addiction and as research has shown the sheer number of crimes committed by people who are addicted is far higher than for example a burglar who is not addicted to a drug. I could go on.

There are so many adverse effects of prohibition. What are the rights and wrongs? What do teenagers think are the rights and wrongs of drugs? Do they just lump legal drugs in one area, alcohol and tobacco, which are permitted and therefore supposedly less harmful, and do they lump cannabis, heroin and cocaine in another area, drugs which are dramatically different in their seriousness, their addictiveness and there effects? I don’t think anybody’s ever become addicted to cannabis but addiction to heroin is an enormous problem. Then do they go down a slippery slope of, I’ve gone across the line and tried something illegal and so those other things are not that much worse? We have an irrational dividing line and that line must be removed to prevent the confusion that many young people have, about the rights and wrongs of drugs and stimulants.

There is so much wasted money in enforcement efforts. If all drugs, the illegal and the legal ones, were similarly regulated then instead of having to spend millions and millions of pounds every year enforcing, and failing effectively to do anything about the enforcement of the importation and use of illegal drugs we could instead tax them, we could make sure that cannabis is regulated in a way which took the crime out of the business and get some money for the tax man as tobacco is. And I cannot see any reason why that should not be done, except for the fact that we like every other country in the world are signatories to the UN conventions.

Transform: What type of system would you like to see in place of prohibition in the future?

Francis : Regulation is the solution, just as regulation works reasonably well for tobacco and alcohol there should be a system regulating the supply of cannabis, which seems to me, taking all the health hazards into account, should be roughly the same as the system we have for regulating the supply of tobacco. There should be a system for regulating heroin and I don’t know of a better system that the Swiss one, where people who are addicts are supplied with as much heroin as they need or like in a controlled environment. So there is no leakage out to people who are not currently addicted but so the motive to steal in order to get a supply is simply removed as they can get what they need without having to break the law. And the effect of this in Switzerland is that the heroin-addicted population is becoming smaller and older, whereas we know in this country it’s becoming younger and larger. I don’t have a solution for cocaine in the same way it doesn’t seem to be amenable to regulation to the extent that I’ve been able to work out a regime that will do the trick but that is simply because I haven’t yet had the time to thoroughly research it yet. Nonetheless there must be one, and regulating the supply of cocaine is something that is going to be far superior to what we have at present.

Transform: How do we get from here to there?

Francis: Well of course it’s Transform’s objective to assist that process. And Transform has been lobbying the public, MPs, opinion formers holding meetings at the National level, the European level and the global level at the UN. All these levels are important for different reasons. I think that it’s unrealistic to suppose that the UK, under any government that I can foresee is going to take the lead internationally on making illegal drugs subject to regulation, bringing them within in the law rather than keeping them outside it. Nonetheless I think that there is scope for the EU to take that sort of a lead. There are some countries in Europe which have much more firm views about regulation or at least decriminalisation being the way forward than we do. And I think the EU is a strong lobby in terms of number of countries and I think it could make a difference at the UN. Really the difference has to be made at the UN level because it’s the UN conventions that all countries have signed up to and we’ve got to change that so that countries can change their national laws as a result

Transform: What do you say to people who say it will never happen?

Francis: Well they need more vision.

What you can do?

Volunteer Community

Our volunteer community slowly seems to be coming to life, having been revived with the posting of a whole range of new projects that you can work on from the comfort of your own home. These projects range from carrying out research before the next general elections, to providing us with contact details for people we can interview. So if you still haven’t logged on, or you joined ages ago and haven’t taken a look for a while please do. We’d also really appreciate your ideas, what sort of projects would you like to help us with, do you find the website easy to use etc? Please either post any ideas to the site or you can email them to info@tdpf.org.uk

If you’d like to sign up and create an account please follow this link:

http://www.transform-volunteers.org.uk/user/register

Calling All Students

Donate

Transform relies solely on donations to maintain its work. We have recently expanded our work and are having a bigger and bigger impact. We are currently running a small deficit and need our income to rise to meet our activity. If you haven’t already you can sign up online to make a donation to the organisation – it really can make a difference. You can do this easily through our secure on-line giving pages run by the Charities Aid Foundation. If you’d prefer please send an email to info@tdpf.org.uk and we’ll send you a form with further details about how to make a donation.

We also need funding for two projects. Firstly we are writing a report reviewing and summarising existing work on the economic costs of prohibition. We need £1,000 to print and disseminate a hard copy version of this. Secondly we are looking for £3,000 to fund the cost of holding a one-day seminar on Transform’s proposed work around wellbeing. If you can help with either of these projects or wish to discuss making a contribution to Transform’s work please contact John, Danny or Jane on 0117 941 5810

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