Taking a New Line on Drugs

This report, ‘Taking a New Line on Drugs’, comes at a timely moment for drugs strategy both in the UK and across the world. The special session of the United Nations General Assembly on the world drug problem, which took place in New York in April 2016, represented a missed opportunity to move on from the ‘war on drugs’ and take a new approach, despite the pioneering policies focused on public health and harm reduction being pursued by a number of nations. In the UK, the Psychoactive Substances Act came into effect in May 2016, and we await a refreshed Government drugs strategy later in the year.

‘Taking a New Line on Drugs’ assesses the situation in the UK as regards rising health harm from illegal drugs, with reference to their context within the wider ‘drugscape’ of legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco, and sets out a new vision for a holistic public health-led approach to drugs policy at a UK-wide level.

Key recommendations

• Transferring lead responsibility for UK illegal drugs strategy to the Department of Health, and more closely aligning this with alcohol and tobacco strategies.
• Preventing drug harm through universal Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) education in UK schools, with evidence-based drugs education as a mandatory, key component.
• Creating evidence-based drug harm profiles to supplant the existing classification system in informing drug strategy, enforcement priorities, and public health messaging.
• Decriminalising personal use and possession of all illegal drugs, and diverting those whose use is problematic into appropriate support and treatment services instead, recognising that criminalising users most often only opens up the risk of further harm to health and wellbeing. Dealers, suppliers and importers of illegal substances would still be actively pursued and prosecuted, while evidence relating to any potential benefits or harm from legal, regulated supply should be kept under review.
• Tapping into the potential of the wider public health workforce to support individuals to reduce and recover from drug harm.