bs_bs_banner
Commentaries
was a 42% decline in arrests per day of marijuana use; but does that count against the ratchet hypothesis? Perhaps not, as it is unclear whether scientific evidence has played much of a role, relative to changing attitudes, demographics and state budgets; and, of course, we would have a larger body of medical evidence on marijuana if not for the tenuous state of what passes for evidence-based policymaking in this domain.
Declaration of interests None. Keywords Drug policy, drug scheduling, enforcement, politics, sentencing. ROBERT J. MacCOUN
Goldman School of Public Policy and Berkeley Law School, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-7320, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
References 1. Stevens A., Measham F. The ‘drug policy ratchet’: why do sanctions for new psychoactive drugs typically only go up? Addiction 2014; 109: 1226–32. 2. MacCoun R. J. The implicit rules of evidence-based drug policy, updated. Addiction 2010; 105: 1335–6. 3. MacCoun R. J., Reuter P. The implicit rules of evidence-based drug policy: a US perspective. Int J Drug Policy 2008; 19: 231–2. 4. Ross H. L. The neutralization of severe penalties: some traffic law studies. Law Soc Rev 1976; 10: 403–13. 5. U.S. Pharmacist. Drug rescheduling and controlled substances. Available at: http://www.uspharmacist.com/ continuing_education/ceviewtest/lessonid/109441/ (accessed 31 March 2014) (Archived at http://www.webcitation .org/6QIwWwx53 on 13 June 2014). 6. Drug Enforcement Administration. Rescheduling of the Food and Drug Administration Approved Product Containing Synthetic Dronabinol [(-)-D9-(trans)-Tetrahydrocannabinol] in Sesame Oil and Encapsulated in Soft Gelatin Capsules From Schedule II to Schedule III. Federal Register: 2 July 1999 (volume 64, number 127, pp. 35928–35930) from the Federal Register Online via GPO access (wais.access.gpo.gov) (DOCID:fr02jy99-3). 7. Caulkins J. P., Rydell C. P., Schwabe W., Chiesa J. Mandatory Minimum Drug Sentences: Throwing Away the Key Or the Taxpayers’ Money? Santa Monica, CA: RAND; 1997. 8. MacCoun R. J., Pacula R. L., Reuter P., Chriqui J., Harris K. Do citizens know whether they live in a decriminalization state? State marijuana laws and perceptions. Rev Law Econ 2009; 5: 347–71. 9. Humphries K. U.S. marijuana possession enforcement intensity is down over 40%. Available at: http://www.samefacts .com/2014/01/drug-policy/u-s-marijuana-possession -enforcement-intensity-is-down-over-40 (accessed 31 March 2014) (Archived at http://www.webcitation.org/6QIxMvzSv on 13 June 2014).
© 2014 Society for the Study of Addiction
1235
WIDENING THE DEBATE ON THE DRUG POLICY RATCHET: RESPONSE TO COMMENTARIES First, we would like to thank the two authors MacCoun [1] and Caulkins [2] for their detailed reading of our paper and for widening the debate with some interesting additions. We would like to preface our response by recognizing the specifically British context within which we write, and therefore some of the peculiarities of the ratchet to British new psychoactive substances (NPS) policy. As MacCoun notes, the United States is a very different drug policy environment with different patterns of availability and use, combined with cannabis decriminalization and, more recently, legalization in some states, alongside control of emerging substances through a Federal Analogue Act (the 1986 Controlled Substance Analogue Enforcement Act) rather than generic legislation [3]. There are, however, some important similarities, including a political desire for legislation to keep pace with the rapid increase in the number of psychoactive substances that are appearing on the market. We agree with Caulkins that many of these substances may have medical or other benefits (see also Rolles & Measham [4]), which is one of the reasons we think it important to study the operation of the policy ratchet. Secondly, we accept MacCoun’s comment that our paper discusses the ratchet in terms of legislation rather than enforcement, although we would suggest that a more complex link exists between the two than a simple inverse relationship. As an example, in 2004 in England and Wales there was an apparent loosening of both legal and enforcement control of cannabis, but this was followed by net-widening and a re-enforcement of both forms of control. When the government moved cannabis down from class B to C of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (while simultaneously increasing penalties for class C), police services also introduced the cannabis warning. This was a written warning that could be issued on the street, so officers could save time (and paperwork) by not arresting offenders. This did, initially, lead to a drop in arrests, cautions and convictions for cannabis, but it also led to an overall increase in the number of people coming into formal contact with the police. This was because police services used the cannabis warning as an easy way to increase the number of ‘offences brought to justice’ [5]. More recently, the number of arrests for cannabis has bounced back, with convictions reaching a record high in 2011 [6]. These increases in enforcement started well before cannabis was put back into class B in 2009. Due to political pressures discussed in our original paper, it may be easier to loosen enforcement than legislative classification. However, even such relaxations can soon be rewound. Meanwhile, the legal status of cannabis is back
Addiction, 109, 1233–1236
1236
Commentaries
where it was in 1971, despite decades in which social attitudes have changed dramatically and normalization of cannabis use has occurred in some social settings, such as festivals and various nightlife scenes [7]. Thirdly, regarding the asymmetry in our table of legislative control, we feel that we may have misled Caulkins by our understatement of the scale of generic control. The table compares columns on the left, for substances for which control has been tightened, with columns on the right, for substances for which control has been loosened. Caulkins uses the number of rows in each column to calculate ratios of substances subjected to tighter or looser control, but what our table does not make clear is that the left-hand column often includes entire generic ‘families’ of substances, while the right-hand column lists only individual substances (with the exception of the temporary 2004–09 downgrading of derivatives of cannabinol). The scale and form of generic legislation makes it very difficult to represent accurately all the substances that are covered. The minister responsible for UK drug policy has stated that more than 200 named substances have been subject to such new forms of legislative control in the United Kingdom since 2010 [8]. The majority of them came under control before they were even identified by the European early warning system of the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction. This legislative innovation, moreover, creates legal control of countless substances that are yet to be identified or synthesized. As noted, this potentially criminalizes future users of drugs where use is so far non-existent and harms are unknown, while hindering research into potential therapeutic benefits [9]. Finally, we would like to clarify one other way in which we may have inadvertently misled readers. Caulkins suggests that we are ‘scolding bureaucrats’ for not taking decisions which are more evidence-based. As sociologically inclined criminologists, we would not lay the blame for any apparent irrationality at the door of the individual officials involved [10]. Rather, we wanted to point out some of the biases that consistently affect the use of evidence in policy decisions. We highlighted the influence of three forms of guilt by association and of the misapplication of the precautionary principle. As Caulkins notes, these biases have been built into the international system of control by the United Nations drug treaties. These treaties themselves are the products of power politics and systemic inequalities [11], not of mythically disinterested scientists or of errant, irrational bureaucrats. We would argue that there is more ‘room for manoeuvre’
© 2014 Society for the Study of Addiction
[12] within the treaties than Caulkins allows, but we agree with him that more rational drug policies would be easier to develop under a different framework of international control. Declaration of interests None. Keywords Cannabis, drug, enforcement, legislation, novel psychoactive substances, policy. FIONA MEASHAM1 & ALEX STEVENS2
School of Applied Social Sciences, Durham University, Durham, UK1 and School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent, Medway ME4 4AG, UK.2 E-mail: [email protected] References 1. MacCoun R.J. New evidence on the tenuous state of evidence-based drug policy. Addiction 2014; 109: 1234–5. 2. Caulkins J.P. Vice ratchets. Addiction 2014; 109: 1233–4. 3. van Amsterdam J., Nutt D., van den Brink W. Generic legislation of new psychoactive drugs. J Psychopharmacol 2013; 27: 317–24. 4. Rolles S., Measham F. Questioning the method and utility of ranking drug harms in drug policy. Int J Drug Policy 2011; 22: 243–6. 5. Stevens A. Drugs, Crime and Public Health: The Political Economy of Drug Policy. London: Routledge; 2011. 6. Eastwood N., Shiner M., Bear D. The Numbers in Black and White: Ethnic Disparities in the Policing and Prosecution of Drug Offences in England and Wales. 2013, London: Release. 7. Measham F., Shiner M. The legacy of ‘normalisation’: the role of classical and contemporary criminological theory in understanding young people’s drug use. Int J Drug Policy 2009; 20: 502–8. 8. Baker N. Transcript of oral evidence, in The Select Committee on European Union: Home Affairs, Health and Education (SubCommittee F). Inquiry on Enhanced Scrutiny: New Psychoactive Substances. Evidence Session No. 1. Wednesday 16 October 2013. 2013, House of Lords: London. 9. Nutt D. J., King L. A., Nichols D. E. Effects of Schedule I drug laws on neuroscience research and treatment innovation. Nat Rev Neurosci 2013; 14: 577–85. 10. Stevens A. Sociological approaches to the study of drug use and drug policy. Int J Drug Policy 2011; 22: 399–403. 11. Bewley-Taylor D. R. The United States and International Drug Control, 1909–1997. London: Pinter; 1999. 12. Dorn N., Jamieson A. Room for Manoeuvre. Overview of comparative legal research into national drug laws of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden and their relation to three international drugs conventions. 2000, Drugscope: London.
Addiction, 109, 1233–1236
Commentaries
was a 42% decline in arrests per day of marijuana use; but does that count against the ratchet hypothesis? Perhaps not, as it is unclear whether scientific evidence has played much of a role, relative to changing attitudes, demographics and state budgets; and, of course, we would have a larger body of medical evidence on marijuana if not for the tenuous state of what passes for evidence-based policymaking in this domain.
Declaration of interests None. Keywords Drug policy, drug scheduling, enforcement, politics, sentencing. ROBERT J. MacCOUN
Goldman School of Public Policy and Berkeley Law School, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-7320, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
References 1. Stevens A., Measham F. The ‘drug policy ratchet’: why do sanctions for new psychoactive drugs typically only go up? Addiction 2014; 109: 1226–32. 2. MacCoun R. J. The implicit rules of evidence-based drug policy, updated. Addiction 2010; 105: 1335–6. 3. MacCoun R. J., Reuter P. The implicit rules of evidence-based drug policy: a US perspective. Int J Drug Policy 2008; 19: 231–2. 4. Ross H. L. The neutralization of severe penalties: some traffic law studies. Law Soc Rev 1976; 10: 403–13. 5. U.S. Pharmacist. Drug rescheduling and controlled substances. Available at: http://www.uspharmacist.com/ continuing_education/ceviewtest/lessonid/109441/ (accessed 31 March 2014) (Archived at http://www.webcitation .org/6QIwWwx53 on 13 June 2014). 6. Drug Enforcement Administration. Rescheduling of the Food and Drug Administration Approved Product Containing Synthetic Dronabinol [(-)-D9-(trans)-Tetrahydrocannabinol] in Sesame Oil and Encapsulated in Soft Gelatin Capsules From Schedule II to Schedule III. Federal Register: 2 July 1999 (volume 64, number 127, pp. 35928–35930) from the Federal Register Online via GPO access (wais.access.gpo.gov) (DOCID:fr02jy99-3). 7. Caulkins J. P., Rydell C. P., Schwabe W., Chiesa J. Mandatory Minimum Drug Sentences: Throwing Away the Key Or the Taxpayers’ Money? Santa Monica, CA: RAND; 1997. 8. MacCoun R. J., Pacula R. L., Reuter P., Chriqui J., Harris K. Do citizens know whether they live in a decriminalization state? State marijuana laws and perceptions. Rev Law Econ 2009; 5: 347–71. 9. Humphries K. U.S. marijuana possession enforcement intensity is down over 40%. Available at: http://www.samefacts .com/2014/01/drug-policy/u-s-marijuana-possession -enforcement-intensity-is-down-over-40 (accessed 31 March 2014) (Archived at http://www.webcitation.org/6QIxMvzSv on 13 June 2014).
© 2014 Society for the Study of Addiction
1235
WIDENING THE DEBATE ON THE DRUG POLICY RATCHET: RESPONSE TO COMMENTARIES First, we would like to thank the two authors MacCoun [1] and Caulkins [2] for their detailed reading of our paper and for widening the debate with some interesting additions. We would like to preface our response by recognizing the specifically British context within which we write, and therefore some of the peculiarities of the ratchet to British new psychoactive substances (NPS) policy. As MacCoun notes, the United States is a very different drug policy environment with different patterns of availability and use, combined with cannabis decriminalization and, more recently, legalization in some states, alongside control of emerging substances through a Federal Analogue Act (the 1986 Controlled Substance Analogue Enforcement Act) rather than generic legislation [3]. There are, however, some important similarities, including a political desire for legislation to keep pace with the rapid increase in the number of psychoactive substances that are appearing on the market. We agree with Caulkins that many of these substances may have medical or other benefits (see also Rolles & Measham [4]), which is one of the reasons we think it important to study the operation of the policy ratchet. Secondly, we accept MacCoun’s comment that our paper discusses the ratchet in terms of legislation rather than enforcement, although we would suggest that a more complex link exists between the two than a simple inverse relationship. As an example, in 2004 in England and Wales there was an apparent loosening of both legal and enforcement control of cannabis, but this was followed by net-widening and a re-enforcement of both forms of control. When the government moved cannabis down from class B to C of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (while simultaneously increasing penalties for class C), police services also introduced the cannabis warning. This was a written warning that could be issued on the street, so officers could save time (and paperwork) by not arresting offenders. This did, initially, lead to a drop in arrests, cautions and convictions for cannabis, but it also led to an overall increase in the number of people coming into formal contact with the police. This was because police services used the cannabis warning as an easy way to increase the number of ‘offences brought to justice’ [5]. More recently, the number of arrests for cannabis has bounced back, with convictions reaching a record high in 2011 [6]. These increases in enforcement started well before cannabis was put back into class B in 2009. Due to political pressures discussed in our original paper, it may be easier to loosen enforcement than legislative classification. However, even such relaxations can soon be rewound. Meanwhile, the legal status of cannabis is back
Addiction, 109, 1233–1236
1236
Commentaries
where it was in 1971, despite decades in which social attitudes have changed dramatically and normalization of cannabis use has occurred in some social settings, such as festivals and various nightlife scenes [7]. Thirdly, regarding the asymmetry in our table of legislative control, we feel that we may have misled Caulkins by our understatement of the scale of generic control. The table compares columns on the left, for substances for which control has been tightened, with columns on the right, for substances for which control has been loosened. Caulkins uses the number of rows in each column to calculate ratios of substances subjected to tighter or looser control, but what our table does not make clear is that the left-hand column often includes entire generic ‘families’ of substances, while the right-hand column lists only individual substances (with the exception of the temporary 2004–09 downgrading of derivatives of cannabinol). The scale and form of generic legislation makes it very difficult to represent accurately all the substances that are covered. The minister responsible for UK drug policy has stated that more than 200 named substances have been subject to such new forms of legislative control in the United Kingdom since 2010 [8]. The majority of them came under control before they were even identified by the European early warning system of the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction. This legislative innovation, moreover, creates legal control of countless substances that are yet to be identified or synthesized. As noted, this potentially criminalizes future users of drugs where use is so far non-existent and harms are unknown, while hindering research into potential therapeutic benefits [9]. Finally, we would like to clarify one other way in which we may have inadvertently misled readers. Caulkins suggests that we are ‘scolding bureaucrats’ for not taking decisions which are more evidence-based. As sociologically inclined criminologists, we would not lay the blame for any apparent irrationality at the door of the individual officials involved [10]. Rather, we wanted to point out some of the biases that consistently affect the use of evidence in policy decisions. We highlighted the influence of three forms of guilt by association and of the misapplication of the precautionary principle. As Caulkins notes, these biases have been built into the international system of control by the United Nations drug treaties. These treaties themselves are the products of power politics and systemic inequalities [11], not of mythically disinterested scientists or of errant, irrational bureaucrats. We would argue that there is more ‘room for manoeuvre’
© 2014 Society for the Study of Addiction
[12] within the treaties than Caulkins allows, but we agree with him that more rational drug policies would be easier to develop under a different framework of international control. Declaration of interests None. Keywords Cannabis, drug, enforcement, legislation, novel psychoactive substances, policy. FIONA MEASHAM1 & ALEX STEVENS2
School of Applied Social Sciences, Durham University, Durham, UK1 and School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent, Medway ME4 4AG, UK.2 E-mail: [email protected] References 1. MacCoun R.J. New evidence on the tenuous state of evidence-based drug policy. Addiction 2014; 109: 1234–5. 2. Caulkins J.P. Vice ratchets. Addiction 2014; 109: 1233–4. 3. van Amsterdam J., Nutt D., van den Brink W. Generic legislation of new psychoactive drugs. J Psychopharmacol 2013; 27: 317–24. 4. Rolles S., Measham F. Questioning the method and utility of ranking drug harms in drug policy. Int J Drug Policy 2011; 22: 243–6. 5. Stevens A. Drugs, Crime and Public Health: The Political Economy of Drug Policy. London: Routledge; 2011. 6. Eastwood N., Shiner M., Bear D. The Numbers in Black and White: Ethnic Disparities in the Policing and Prosecution of Drug Offences in England and Wales. 2013, London: Release. 7. Measham F., Shiner M. The legacy of ‘normalisation’: the role of classical and contemporary criminological theory in understanding young people’s drug use. Int J Drug Policy 2009; 20: 502–8. 8. Baker N. Transcript of oral evidence, in The Select Committee on European Union: Home Affairs, Health and Education (SubCommittee F). Inquiry on Enhanced Scrutiny: New Psychoactive Substances. Evidence Session No. 1. Wednesday 16 October 2013. 2013, House of Lords: London. 9. Nutt D. J., King L. A., Nichols D. E. Effects of Schedule I drug laws on neuroscience research and treatment innovation. Nat Rev Neurosci 2013; 14: 577–85. 10. Stevens A. Sociological approaches to the study of drug use and drug policy. Int J Drug Policy 2011; 22: 399–403. 11. Bewley-Taylor D. R. The United States and International Drug Control, 1909–1997. London: Pinter; 1999. 12. Dorn N., Jamieson A. Room for Manoeuvre. Overview of comparative legal research into national drug laws of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Sweden and their relation to three international drugs conventions. 2000, Drugscope: London.
Addiction, 109, 1233–1236
