Past Present & Future

Drugs Classification: Making a Hash of It?

Great title eh?

The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has published its report on the classification of drugs: they’ve got a good sense of humour I see. The title of the report is: “Drugs Classification: Making a Hash of It?”

This is the fifth report of the session 2005-2006 and the Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to ‘examine the expenditure, administration and policy of the Office of Science and Innovation and its associated public bodies.’

The report is the “second of three case studies under the Committee’s over-arching inquiry into the Government’s handling of scientific advice, risk and evidence in policy making. It addresses the relationship between scientific advice and evidence and the classification of illegal drugs“

So what do they have to say about the government’s drugs reclassification policy and actions?

“With respect to the ABC classification system, we have identified significant anomalies in the classification of individual drugs and a regrettable lack of consistency in the rationale used to make classification decisions. In addition, we have expressed concern at the Government’s proclivity for using the classification system as a means of ‘sending out signals’ to potential users and society at large—it is at odds with the stated objective of classifying drugs on the basis of harm and the Government has not made any attempt to develop an evidence base on which to draw in determining the ‘signal’ being sent out.”

Overall Recommendation:

“We have found no convincing evidence for the deterrent effect, which is widely seen as underpinning the Government’s classification policy, and have criticised the Government for failing to meet its commitments to evidence based policy making in this area. More generally, the weakness of the evidence base on addiction and drug abuse is a severe hindrance to effective policy making and we have therefore urged the Government to increase significantly its investment in research.”

Ah…very interesting! So perhaps there may be something to what I’ve been saying on posts on this site a while back about the cannabis debate- when the re-re-classification hoo-ha was raging. I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that the drug classification of cannabis has to do more with funny ideas and attempts at moralizing (not very good ones i might add ) on the part of Government, the sort of thing that only leads to less information on what’s actually going on, a good source of income for criminals, lot of work for the police, hassle for spliff lovers, and not much else.