Britain’s famed Royal Society has issued a report calling for a major rethinking of illicit drugs policy in the United Kingdom. The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce -- more commonly known as the Royal Society of Arts or simply as the Royal Society or the RSA – is a royal chartered independent body, which operates under the sponsorship of Queen Elizabeth. Founded in 1754 by William Shipley, a painter and social activist, the RSA’s manifesto charges it "to embolden enterprise, enlarge science, refine arts, improve our manufactures and extend our commerce". The RSA’s membership has included such famous names as Karl Marx, William Hogarth, Richard Attenborough. Stephen Hawking, Judi Dench, and Nelson Mandela. For the past fifty years the RSA’s President has been HRH Prince Philip.

Two years ago the RSA established a Commission on Illegal Drugs, Communities and Public Policy to examine all aspects of the relationship between public policy and the use and abuse of the currently illegal drugs. The commission sought answers to two questions:

1) If current policy and practice on illegal drugs is not working, why not?

2) What might be done to improve both?

The commission is chaired by Dr. Anthony King, Professor of British Government at the University of Essex, and includes members drawn from all walks of life – from law enforcement, drug abuse treatment, and other health and social services, as well as from Parliament, local government, business, the professions, and academia. The Commission’s report, titled Drugs -- Facing Facts, proposes a radical rethinking of the basis for drugs policy. The Commission urges that drug policy should be based on a factual understanding of the real harms caused by both legal and illegal drugs, an understanding that is not reflected in current UK or international policy. It further urges replacement of the UK’s current Misuse of Drugs Act with a broader Misuse of Substances Act that would include alcohol and tobacco.

In common with last year's report by the Parliamentary Science Select Committee, it recommends that the UK’s existing three-tiered classification system be replaced by a reality-based "index of harms". The existing system, according to Medical Research Council CEO Colin Blakemore, “has evolved in an unsystematic way from somewhat arbitrary foundations with seemingly little scientific basis". The RSA adopted the Council’s ranking of heroin as the most dangerous drug, followed by cocaine, barbiturates, street methadone, alcohol, ketamine, benzodiazapines, amphetamines, tobacco, buprenorphine, cannabis, volatile solvents (such as glue sniffing), 4-MTA, LSD, methylphenidate, anabolic steroids, GHB, ecstasy, alkyl nitrates, and khat, respectively. This ranking took into consideration an assessment of each drug's physical harmfulness, relative addictiveness, and negative impact on society.

In the words of the report, "the use of illegal drugs is by no means always harmful any more than alcohol use is always harmful. The evidence suggests that a majority of people who use drugs are able to use them without harming themselves or others." Current policy, modeled on the US’ “war on drugs” has been "driven by a moral panic" rather than any rational assessment of the problems of drug abuse or of workable solutions to those problems. A more effective illicit drugs policy, according to the RAS commission, would focus on harm reduction rather than persisting in the "criminal justice bias" of current policy. Addiction, the commission argued, should be seen as a health and social problem rather than simply a cause of crime.

"It is not possible to halt the importation and sale of drugs in this country” according to the report. "Large amounts of money are wasted in attempting to achieve the impossible. Drugs policy should, like that on alcohol and tobacco, seek to regulate use and prevent harm rather than prohibit use” and "should be measured not in terms of the amount of dealers imprisoned, but in the amount of harm reduced."

Prof. King says of the issue: "One of the themes of this report has been the need to shift drugs policy away from its current focus on crime reduction and the criminal justice system and onto a concern with drugs as posing a much more varied and complex set of social problems. Drugs in our society are not just about crime; they are about individual health, public health, family life and the health and well-being of entire communities. It cannot be good for the UK that it is currently the drug-using centre of Europe.”

The report argues that under the current policy the government is doing too little to help the UK's 350,000 problematic drug users. Drug users should be treated in the same way as any other chronic disease sufferers. Addicts should have better access to a range of options for their treatment including heroin maintenance, better methadone maintenance, residential rehabilitation, psychotherapy, and family treatment. The Commission also endorsed needle exchange and safe injection sites to reduce the harm resulting from injecting drug use. Drug addicts who are managing their condition should not be discriminated against by public services such as housing and employment. Through the framework of Local Area Agreements, local drugs policy should be joined up and include a renewed emphasis on creating resilient communities. Therefore, leadership in drug policy should be moved from the Home Office to the Department for Communities and Local Government

In the words of its chairman, the Commission urged the government "to set in train work on a new Misuse of Substances Act and to undertake with urgency the task of re-orienting drugs policy and redirecting it towards a broader conception of harm prevention and reduction. Current policy is broke and needs to be fixed."

The full report and Executive Summary are available online at: www.rsadrugscommission.org