Enjoyed a thought-provoking session with the Global Commission on Drug Policy in Geneva. While we were discussing how the world can treat drugs as a health problem not a criminal problem, the UK government was doing the opposite. The Home Secretary is banning the herbal stimulant khat – completing ignoring the evidence of its own Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD).
Khat
is a mild stimulant traditionally used by members of the Somali,
Ethiopian and Yemeni communities. The ACMD completed a comprehensive
review and found no evidence khat was linked with serious or organised
crime and concluded that there was no case for prohibiting it.
Despite this, Home Secretary Theresa May has decided to ban it,
making it a class C drug. This is the first time that a Home Secretary
has gone directly against the advice of the ACMD to ban a substance. At a
time when most of the world is moving towards more progressive drug
policies, the UK is taking a big step backwards.
What is the
point in having expert scientific advisers produce a comprehensive
review, if you are going to ignore the conclusions they find if you
don’t like them? The Global Commission has asked governments to follow
science and evidence based drug policy and this is exactly the opposite.
The ban will not reduce use; it will simply criminalise lots of
people who are minding their own business using khat in their own
homes. Tensions between communities and the police will increase,
attacking an ethnic minority and making their lives in the UK more
difficult and dangerous. Plus, instead of a market worth £14 million per
year being properly taxed, it will fall into the hands of criminal
smuggling groups.
Professor David Nutt’s hilarious article
about him mistakenly thinking the government is banning cats rather
than khat sums up the absurdity of the situation well. You won’t be
surprised to find the arguments for banning kittens are no more
ridiculous than those used to ban the stimulant.
By: Richard Branson
(Founder of Virgin Group)
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