I would love to think that the UK Green Party read my blog, but I know the chances are slim, anyway the leader today echoed the points I recently made wrt drugs and drugs policy, so Yeah me. BBC News – Drugs policy approach needs to change, Polanski sayshttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce8g7ymq959o Lets Rethink Policy-Making: Drugs Lets RethinkContinueContinue reading “Drugs Policy Thinking – I am not alone”
Tag Archives: Drugs
Lets Rethink Policy-Making: Illegal Drugs – Cost of Losing the War.
Has the War on Drugs delivered what it promised? Looking at fifty years of UK policy, this post explores drug use, harm, and public cost — not to win an argument, but to ask whether “being tough” turned out to be an especially expensive way of managing a persistent human behaviour.
Lets Rethink Policy-Making: Illegal Drugs – A cheaper alternative.
Let’s Rethink Policy-Making: Filthy Lucre
What happens if we stop pretending the illegal drugs market will disappear? Using conservative figures for England & Wales, this post explores how costs, criminal profits, regulation, and incentives interact — and why redesigning where money flows may matter more than repeating moral arguments.
Lets Rethink Policy-Making: Illegal Drugs – Who’s Been Getting Rich.
Let’s Rethink Policy-Making: The Filthy Lucre.
What happens when the public cost of managing illegal drugs is larger than the market itself? Looking at England & Wales data, we explore why drug use persists, how costs accumulate across health, crime and social services, and why pretending demand can be driven to zero may be one of the most expensive policy assumptions we make.
Lets Rethink Policy-Making: what Happened Elsewhere?
Ok — so before we go any further, it’s probably worth asking a fair question.
Is this just how things work everywhere?
Or is there something particularly British — or English — about the way we’ve handled it?
Up to now, we’ve mostly been looking at the UK. That’s deliberate. It’s the system we live in, pay for, and argue about. But it also risks leaving us with a blind spot.
So now feels like the right moment to widen the lens.
Let’s have a look at what’s happened elsewhere — maybe we find good examples, maybe someone has cracked it — or maybe different choices just led to different kinds of mess.
Because if everyone ended up in the same place, we might just be looking at an unavoidable problem.
But if some countries ended up doing noticeably better — or noticeably worse — then what we’re really looking at is design.
Lets Rethink Policy-Making: Sex Work
Sex work policy is often driven by moral discomfort rather than evidence. This post explores what actually happens when sex work is criminalised, how vulnerability increases when activity is pushed out of sight, and why punishment often concentrates harm instead of reducing it.
Lets Rethink Policy-Making: Drugs
Drug policy is often framed as a battle to eliminate demand — but decades of evidence suggest something else happens instead. This post explores how prohibition reshapes markets, increases risk, concentrates harm, and quietly shifts costs elsewhere when punishment becomes the primary response.
