Liberal Democrats to announce decriminalisation of all drugs

Personal possession of all drugs should be decriminalised, the Liberal Democrats will announce today.

The policy will feature in the party's 'pre-manifesto', which is being unveiling this morning as it lays out its priorities in the next parliament.

While the document will not use the word 'decriminalisation', Liberal Democrat sources have told Politics.co.uk it will formally adopt a policy document proposal which called on the UK to adopt the approach used in Portugal.

Portugal decriminalised personal possession of all drugs in 2000.

Today's pre-manifesto will not mention Portugal by name, but "the essence" of the policy document proposal will feature in the document.

"We will adopt the model used in Portugal where those who possess drugs for personal use will be diverted into other services," the paper reads.

Under the system, police would decide whether someone caught with possession of a drug is a dealer or user. For those only using the drug, the onus would be on medical responses rather than criminal sanctions.

The move goes a step further than Nick Cleg's previous pledge to stop sending people to jail for drug use.

It is the latest in a line of increasingly liberal positions on drugs from the party, as it becomes more confident in demanding wholesale reform of Britain's drugs laws.

Jeremy Browne, the party's former Home Office minister, and Norman Baker, its current Home Office minister, were both sent on international drug law fact-finding missions by Clegg.

The deputy prime minister has called for a royal commission on drug laws to be set up and for European countries to come up with a common position on drug legislation ahead of a UN special session on drug law in 2016.

The Lisbon system retains the illegal status of recreational drugs if the amount is no more than ten days' worth, but makes the offence an administrative - rather than a criminal - one.

Predictions of a rise in drug use failed to materialise, with studies suggesting it actually declined among 15-24-year-olds, the population most at risk of initiating drug use.

In the years leading up to decriminalisation the number of drug-related deaths in Portugal had soared, with rates of HIV, Aids, Tuberculosis, and Hepatitis B and C among those injecting drugs rapidly increasing.

Following the move the number of newly-diagnosed HIV cases among drug injectors declined dramatically, from 1,016 in 2001 to 56 in 2012. Similar trends were evident for Aids cases and Hepatitis C and B.

The Portugal experiment provided potent data for those who argued that the punitive quality of a country's drug laws had no relationship to its rates of drug use.

A policy modelled on the Portuguese example was adopted by the Liberal Democrats in their policy paper following debates with party members. It will now become part of the party manifesto in next year' general election.

Whether it would survive coalition negotiations is another matter. Neither the Conservatives nor Labour have shown any interest in reforming Britain's drug laws, although there are reports of a more sympathetic response from David Cameron in recent months.

The policy paper also recommends making the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs independent and setting up a review of experiments in regulated cannabis markets in Washington, Colorado and Uruguay, although it is not clear if these policies have made it into the pre-manifesto.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/liberal-democrats-announce-decriminalisation-drugs-065457923.html#pnuZZ7I 08/09/2014