Call your propaganda a 'report' or a 'survey' and someone will always fall for it
Another 'report'on drug decriminalisation has come out. You'll know about this by now. Sigh.
Several years ago I wrote a rather exhaustive book about the history of drug laws in this country since the 1960s, ‘The War We Never Fought’. This was the fruit of some years of careful research and was published by a reputable major publisher, Bloomsbury. It is still in print and available in other formats. https://www.amazon.co.uk/War-We-Never-Fought/dp/1441173315
This book also examined many of the arguments common on this subject. I made my own opinion clear, that the relaxation of laws against mind-altering drugs was a serious mistake.
While I am not a major celebrity, my name is not entirely unknown, my publisher is far from obscure, I had the services of one of the best publicists in the business, the subject is far from uninteresting or dull or non-topical indeed, barely a week passes without it being discussed , as I shall mention below. The book also had a beautifully-designed, clever and striking cover and was printed and produced to a very high standard. Had it ever been prominently displayed in bookshops, as more favoured books are according to the mysterious rules of the trade, it would have attracted attention.
To this day, there has been (outside my own newspaper) no fair or even approximately accurate summary of this book’s contents in any major British publication, though it contains some research pretty much unavailable elsewhere, and certainly not widely published elsewhere, which contradicts generally-held opinions on the state of affairs here. It has not been fairly or properly covered or reviewed by any major British publication. I was asked on to no BBC programme to discuss it.
It was the subject of a one-sided if entertaining interview of me by the delightful Decca Aitkenhead in the Guardian, in which she won all the arguments because she wrote up the interview http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2012/10/how-to-get-psychoanalysed-for-nothing-the-joy-of-interviews.html , and of one-sided and less entertaining ‘reviews’ of the book in the Guardian and the Observer, by less delightful persons, one of which is discussed here. http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2012/10/the-reviewer-reviewed-a-response-to-jonathan-ree.html
The other is dealt with here http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2012/10/the-usual-abuse-number-one-in-a-series.html
That was it. Nobody else reviewed it at all. Years of work and an important argument, pretty much gone to waste. People in the publishing industry joked that it was ‘The Book They Never Bought’, and indeed it is the only one of my books that never went into a paperback edition(though paperback versions can now be obtained on demand).
Yet this morning, for what seems to me to be about the tenth time this year, a so-called ‘report’ on drugs, here https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56eddde762cd9413e151ac92/t/582eecc6e3df2844237ca6dc/1479470281332/The+Tide+Effect+WEB+VERSION.pdf
Achieves prominent and respectful coverage here
and here
here
here
here
here
here
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/legalising-cannabis-would-give-treasury-9300049
here
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/legalising-cannabis-would-give-treasury-9300049
and of course on the BBC Radio 4 news.
The ‘report’ (which I have quickly skimmed, intending to read it thoroughly tonight) is in fact a reasonably competent and quite interesting propaganda pamphlet, containing the same arguments repeatedly advanced by legalisers with glancing mentions of (and confident dismissals of) medical worries about cannabis , the usual ‘what about tobacco and alcohol?’ stuff, Portugal, Uruguay, etc etc, and the usual crude and misleading use of the word. ‘prohibition’. It slightly acknowledges, but does not properly describe the arguments against its position, as a ‘report’, in my view, would do.
As usual in such documents, it fails to distinguish between the formal existence of a law and penalties, and their actual enforcement. Comically, it attributes the decline of enforcement to a failure of deterrence (p.28) as if recent highly-publicised abandonments of enforcement (as in Durham) were new developments rather than confirmation of a trend many decades old.
Oddly, it does later acknowledge ‘de facto decriminalisation’ , but fails to grasp its importance or to understand how long it has been going on.
In saying that more than 1,000 people in prison for cannabis offences (‘The incarceration of more than 1,000 people is a blight on not only the lives of those in jail but on the lives of their families too’. P.7), it contrives (page 30) to suggest (without actually saying) that they are there for possession :
‘Every year, 10-15% of all indictable offences brought before the courts are for drug possession. According to the latest figures available, there are 1,363 offenders in prison for cannabis-related offences in England and Wales’
It then produces this Parliamentary answer
Ministry of Justice
Prison Sentences: Cannabis
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people were serving prison sentences for offences related to cannabis in each of the last five years.
A
Answered by: Andrew Selous
Answered on: 26 May 2016
Prior to June 2015, information held centrally on prisoners serving sentences for drug related offences was not sufficiently detailed to identify offences relating to cannabis as opposed to other drugs. Providing data back to 2010 could therefore only be done at disproportionate cost.
According to centrally held data, as at 30 June 2015 (latest available), there were 1,363 offenders in prison custody for cannabis related offences in England and Wales. This number includes all offenders who have had their offence categorised as a ‘drug offence’ and in which cannabis is explicitly stated in their offence description. This number does not include instances where cannabis may have been a contributing factor to the main offence committed.
These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.’
*******
This of course does *not* mean that they are in prison for simple first-offence cannabis possession. I doubt anyone is. We can only guess what the offence was (though we can be pretty certain it was not a first offence) but it is far more likely to involve dealing of various categories, and manufacture. Given the vast extent of Britain’s cannabis farming industry, the figure is in fact startlingly small.
Interestingly the ‘report’ accepts that legalised cannabis would probably be smuggled( see p.33) but describes legalisation, even so, as a ‘great leap forward’.
While aware of the Treaties on the subject (p.38) the report does not seem to grasp that, as a UN Security Council member, the British government cannot simply ignore treaties it has signed and ratified (hence the de facto decriminalisation policy in the first place, I suspect). Nor, since it lacks the federal structure of the USA, can it pretend to be unable to control law changes in federated states, as the US Federal government has done.
It cites of course various other one-sided ‘reports’ similar to itself such as from the ‘Royal Society of Public Health’ or the ‘Police Foundation’ , as evidence on its own side. It makes no mention of billionaires such as George Soros, who have given so much help to the pro-decriminalisation lobby.
But at least it is honest and open (e.g. Chapter 6. The State of the Industry’ ) about the profitability of the Cannabis industry should it achieve legal status, and also about the tax which the West’s bankrupt Treasuries could swiftly squeeze from it. The section on Microsoft is extremely interesting.
I am happy to see it publicised, in itself. I would be glad if plenty of people read it with critical and open minds and then studied its implications, happier still if they were impelled to look at my book offering the opposite case. But I am dismayed by the selective way in which the media (and MPs and Parliamentary Committees) approach this subject, endlessly publicising these efforts but more or less marginalising the other view (which is only produced as an afterthought voice of opposition to the predominant position).
