Professor Alex Stevens:

It is called Drug Policy Constellations: The Role of Power and Morality in the Making of Drug Policy in the UK. It is about how a lot of the opposition to different ways of doing drug policy is based on traditionalist morality. It is unsurprising that given decades of people being told that these substances are dangerous and evil and that they ruin communities, people are fearful about different ways of doing things, particularly if they think that this different way of doing things will expand the market and bring more people into these patterns of use.

I do not believe it is helpful to dismiss those fears but we need to engage with them on the basis that people are concerned about their children. They do not want their children taking substances that might kill them. That is absolutely fair enough and so we need to think about designing methods of decriminalising and regulating drugs that do not increase the risks to children. So far the evidence suggests that decriminalisation does not increase the risks to children because it does not increase drug use. There are ways of doing legalisation and there are companies out there waiting to pounce on such opportunities that would predictably increase drug use among children. For example, if companies were allowed, as they have been in some states in the United States of America, to sell fizzy drinks and sweets infused with cannabis, the use of cannabis among young people would be expected to increase. Indeed we have seen in some states an increase in emergency hospital admissions for children because they are taking what they think are sweets. We need to be aware of the fact that people will be nervous about these. We need to address those honestly and openly. We also need to be aware that there will be people who are willing to distort the evidence in pursuit of maintaining the status quo. I will give the example of the use being made of evidence from Oregon, which decriminalised the possession of all drugs a couple of years. Since the decriminalisation in Oregon, there has been an increase in drug-related deaths and crime in that state. People are jumping on that to say, "Look what happens when you decriminalise drugs - it is a disaster." When they make that point, people are completely ignoring that there was also a pandemic that dramatically reduced drugs-induced deaths and crime and also that the fentanyl has entered the market in Oregon, which predictably increased drug-regulated deaths. When we control for the timing of the pandemic and the entry of fentanyl into the market in Oregon we do not see an increase in crime or deaths that can be attributed to the decriminalisation of drugs.

These are highly emotive and politicised debates. We need to try to engage with people openly and honestly, understand why people are concerned, and give them the information they need to be able to make their own decisions about what is best for our children and our society.