Addiction Treatment Blog

There are many international laws aim to prevent drug abuse.

Legal Status of Drugs

In the UK, drugs of abuse are controlled by two main pieces of legislation.

Misuse of Drug Act (1971)

This Act classifies drugs into three classes according to the maximum penalty which an offender can expect to receive if he or she contravenes the law. The Act renders possession, export, import, manufacture or supply of any of these drugs illegal except in certain specified circumstances.

• Class A drugs: Pure cannabinoids (but not cannabis itself), cocaine, LSD, opioids, phencyclidine, psilocybin. Injectable forms of drugs in class B.
• Class B drugs: Amphetamine, barbiturates, cannabis, cocaine, dihydrocodeine, ecstasy, methamphetamine, methylphenidate.
• Class C drugs: Benzodiazepines, cathine, cathinoe, dextropropoxyphene, diethylpropion, anabolic steroids, human chronic gonadothropin and growth hormones.

Misuse of Drugs Regulations (1985)

These are principally concerned with regulating the legitimate supply and use of abusable substances.

• Schedule 1 (CD Lic): Only those persons licensed by the Home Office may possess or supply these drugs. None of them can be prescribed. The drugs in this schedule are those deemed to have little therapeutic value and so licenses are usually only issued for research purposes. The drugs involved include cannabis, cannabinol, cathinoe, ecstasy and related drugs, designer opioids derived from fentanyl (but not fentanyl itself), LSD, raw opium and coca leaf.
• Schedule 2 (CD): The Regulations give a long list of exemptions but, in most circumstances, possession of these drugs by a member of the public is only lawful when acting under the directions of a doctor. For those that supply them, the drugs are subject to stringent requirements for storage and documentation. Examples of drugs affected include amphetamine, cocaine, opioids (with certain exceptions including oral codeine and dihydrocodeine) and phencyclidine.
• Schedule 3 (CD No Reg): These are subject to the same regulations as schedule 2 except that the documentation of supply is less rigorous. Barbiturates, buprenorphine and cathine are included here.
• Schedule 4 (CD Benz): Part I contains anabolic steroids, growth hormones, human chronic gonadotrophin and clenbuterol. Part II comprises benzodiazepines.
• Schedule 5 (CD Inv): These are preparations containing very small amounts of substances which would otherwise belong to schedule 2 or 3. Examples include cocaine linctus, and kaolin morphine mixture. Suppliers and producers must keep transaction records of their dealings.

Drugs not covered

Certain abused substances are not covered by either of these two pieces of legislation. Examples include nitrites, volatile substances, over-the-counter medicines, ’smart’ drugs and gamma-hydroxybutyrate.

Legalisation

The arguments surrounding the legalisation of any one, or all, of the currently illicit substances are very interesting; not least the debate on what form legislation might take. Wholesale legalisation of production, supply and possession of all drugs is the most liberal option but there are various halfway measures. These include: allowing the sale of substances via registered promises only; decriminalising personal possession if the individual has no intent to supply; legalising possession and supply of substances manufactured under government licence only and not those from illicit sources; permitting wider supply via drug dependency clinics to registered abusers; and limiting legislation to certain drugs only.

Without targeting specific drug, what are the reasons for and against legalising a currently illegal substance? Some of the arguments commonly used on both sides are summarised below.

Arguments in favour of legalisation

• Freedom of choice: Any individual should have the right to take any pharmacologically active agent that he or she chooses. Alcohol, tobacco and caffeine are legal substances that are known to have potentially harmful effects – why should other psychoactive substances not be freely available in a similar way? Many abusable substances are thought to be considerably less harmful than tobacco or alcohol. Some of them are legal in other countries (e.g. cannabis in The Netherlands, khat in Yemen), and others have been legal in the UK in the past (e.g. opium in England until 1868).
• Quality control: Legalisation opens the door to quality control of abusable substances. This would prevent the involvement of potentially harmful contaminants, avoid accidental overdoses due to lack of knowledge of concentration and enable an individual to know exactly what he or she was taking. Injectable drugs could be supplied, correctly formulated, in sterilised ampoules, reducing the risk of injection site infection and other adverse consequences of injection. Needles and syringes  would be supplied to cut down the spread of AIDS and other infections from the sharing of injection equipment.
• Reduced crime: Thefts and assaults to obtain money to buy drugs would be drastically reduced if drugs were legalised and available free on the National Health Service or cheaply from agreed outlets.
• Reduced profits from criminal organisations: A number of large criminal organisations generate vast sums of money by manufacturing and supplying illegal substances. All street drugs are very cheap to mass produce and are not intrinsically costly; their illegal status currently keeps the street prices high. Legalisation would remove a vital source of income from criminal organisations and, with reduced revenue, this might in turn reduce their activity and influence in other areas.
• Decreased workload for law enforcers: Drug abuse currently forms a large part of the workload of the police, customs, lawyers and courts. Legalising a drug reduces public expenditure in these areas and frees public servants for other duties.
• Laws have not worked: Drug abuse is widespread, so the current legal controls have not worked. People who really want to abuse drugs will do so whether they are illegal or not. It is time to be more liberal in our approach and stop wasting effort on enforcing a system that has not worked.

Arguments against legalisation

• The unknown: Legalisation is largely a voyage into the unknown. Arguments in favour of legalisation are rather theoretical and based on conjecture. We cannot foresee what might happen to individuals and to our society if a drug is legalised. It is not appropriate to guess what may happen in the UK based on what has happened in our own past or in other countries because each culture and era is different. It would be difficult to reverse a decision to legalise a drug if we found the effects of legalisation were not liking. Tobacco and alcohol do have harmful effects but they are legal substances for historical reasons; rendering both of these illegal would be extraordinarily difficult because large sections of the population that would not have taken them were they illegal would now resist criminalisation.
• Adverse effects: The abusable substances that are currently illicit have never been subjected to formal clinical trials so there is insufficient information on human safety. There is little information on long-term safety for most drugs of abuse, especially with regard to central nervous system toxicity and psychiatric effects. Many drugs produce dependence, which can have great personal costs. However it is not just the direct toxicity to the individual which can be a problem, it is the indirect effects arising from intoxication such as accidents, violence and crime. The legalisation of drugs of abuse would lead to increased usage and consequently increased health problems. Alcohol and tobacco are bad enough in terms of potential to cause ill health, unhappiness and death. Health campaigns do warn of the dangers of tobacco and alcohol but how can the government then legalise other abusable substances and so add to the problem!
• Control: The current legal framework for controlling drug abuse is not perfect, but it does at least allow some control to be exerted over individuals. If new drugs of abuse were freely available, this could result in vastly increased usage and anarchy, and it might be uncontrollable.
• Society’s protective role: Society has a duty to protect the vulnerable who might be swept up in the use of new abusable substances. People who are young, suffering from psychiatric illness, mentally retarded, ill-educated or poor could all suffer disproportionately as a result of legalisation.
• Cost: The expense of regulation, quality control and potentially increased health costs could be very great.
• Philosophy of life: Individuals should not need to resort to pharmacological methods in order to enjoy life. We should try to find happiness in real life experiences.

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