 |
| The “drug den” (police talk) at Tai Shui Ha Rd Yuen Long The jacket says “Customs, Drug Investigation Bureau” |
If the acting superintendent thinks that "blocking the drugs" will have anything other than a minor and short-term effect, he is deeply deluded.
The world has been fighting a so-called "war on drugs" since the "Harrison Narcotic Act" of 1914. The Act had immediate and negative effects, including:
…the failures of promising careers, the disrupting of happy families, the commission of crimes which will never be traced to their real cause, and the influx into hospitals to the mentally disordered of many who would otherwise live socially competent lives.
Sound familiar? That's the New York Medical Journal writing in May 1915. Yet rather than accept the expert opinion of deeply-engaged doctors ("following the science" in today's parlance), authorities chose to double down. Predictably, things got worse.
Today, a full 106 years later, the message from doctors is the same. Prohibition harms. A recent BMJ meta study of 141 studies notes
An estimated 271million people used an internationally scheduled ('illicit') drug in 2017, corresponding to 5.5% of the global population aged 15 to 64.1 Despite decades of investment, policies aimed at reducing supply and demand have demonstrated limited effectiveness.
"Limited effectiveness" is putting it pretty mildly. There's worse:
…prohibitive and punitive drug policies have had counterproductive effects by contributing to HIV and hepatitis C transmission, fatal overdose, mass incarceration and other human rights violations and drug market violence.
By contrast decriminalisation "was most often not associated with change of use" in the studies, while reducing harms from both illicit drugs and licit drugs like alcohol and tobacco
The alternative, as is now well known, is not free-for-all, but a sophisticated medical-regulatory regime. Not gloating over the arrest of hapless weed growers in Yuen Long.
Decriminalisation is recommended by the United Nations, and 23 countries have followed the recommendation Yet still we go on, at least here in Hong Kong. It's truly sad and depressing that we've learned nothing from more than a hundred years of failure. Our acting superintendent is proud of his catch — he's implementing the law! But the law is an ass, as history clearly shows, and the UN confirms.
Blindly following asinine laws is really not something of which to be proud.
PF etc…
