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Kiwis on drugs: A blueprint for the future?

This week New Zealand publishes its Psychoactive Substances Bill, legislation which some believe will transform the international debate on drugs policy when it comes into force in August.
The new law is a response to the problem of "legal highs", but is being seized upon by reformers because it crosses a Rubicon - designing a legislative framework built upon regulation rather than prohibition.
As in Britain, the New Zealand government had attempted to control the influx of new psychoactive substances by imposing emergency restrictions under existing misuse of drugs legislation.

Unlike Britain, they have concluded that a "long-term and more effective solution" is to license the importation, manufacture and sale of all new psychoactive products.
In the same way as pharmaceutical companies must apply for a licence to sell a drug after extensive testing, so suppliers of legal highs will be able to market products in New Zealand if they can demonstrate they present a low risk of harm.

Rather than trying to ban every new drug that turns up, the legislation shifts responsibility to the manufacturer and the retailer.
Just as a bottle of aspirin can only be sold in certain outlets with all the warnings of the risks on the label, so recreational drugs will be available over the counter in New Zealand later this year.
There will be restrictions on sales to vulnerable consumers, particularly young people, and breaches of the rules could see manufacturers fined up to $500,000 (£275,000) or jailed for two years.
The legal highs dilemma reminds me of the panic that preceded the introduction of the Misuse of Drugs Act in the UK in 1971.
The home secretary at the time, Jim Callaghan, told Parliament how Britain faced a "pharmaceutical revolution" which presented such dangers that if the country was "supine in the face of them" it would quickly lead to "grave dangers to the whole structure of our society".

"Stimulants, depressants, tranquillisers, hallucinogens have all been developed during the last 10 years, and our society has not yet come to terms with the circumstances in which they should properly be used or in which they are regarded as being socially an evil," he explained.
Callaghan concluded that the answer was state prohibition - the criminal justice system would be the main tool to fight drug abuse. Those who argued that Britain should retain its traditional harm-reduction model were drowned out.
The New Zealand legislation comes at a key moment in the debate about global drugs policy, returning us to that moment in the late 60s when Britain and others took the fork in the road marked "prohibition".

This year has been designated by the United Nations as the start of an "intense preparatory process", before the General Assembly holds a special session in 2016 to "review the current policies and strategies to confront the global drug problem".
There is very little intensity or preparation in the UK, where the prime minister recently reiterated his opposition to even questioning the prohibition model.
When the Home Affairs select committee recommended a royal commission to consider alternatives in December, David Cameron instantly dismissed the idea arguing "we have a policy which is working in Britain".

(Articolo pubblicato dal CUFRAD sul sito www.alcolnews.it)