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Crossbench peer Lord Cobbold writes for ePolitix.com about his recent question on the government's approach to drugs following a United Nation's meeting in Vienna.
My question in the House of Lords on May 11 was designed to keep alive the policy option set out in the House of Lords letter of 5 March to the United Nation's secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, which was signed by 28 members of the House.
The aim of the letter was to suggest a modest next step for the United Nations, in the event that at the then forthcoming high level convention in Vienna, they were at last prepared to acknowledge that the prohibition policies of the last 40 years have failed.
The letter proposed that the United Nations should now establish an inter-governmental panel charged with the task of examining all possible alternative policies for control of the drugs trade. As part of its role, such an investigatory panel should examine and evaluate the experience of those countries that, in spite of UN regulations, have experimented with alternative policies, such as Portugal, Switzerland and Canada. Such an investigation would take the policy debate out into the open and provide real evidence.
The United Nations has taken a significant interest in the global drugs problem going back as long ago as 1946. While it is beneficial in theory that member states have an agreed common policy on the drugs problem, it is beneficial only if the policy is successful in solving the problem. If it does not solve the problem, it is likely to be counter-productive in that it inhibits experimentation of other possible ways of tackling the problem.
Well, the Vienna convention turned out to be a non-event. There were no changes recommended to any existing policies. The suggestion now is that we should try and persuade our government to get together with our European colleagues and try to persuade them to establish an inter-governmental panel, as previously put to the United Nations, but at the European level..
In his response to my question of May 11, the minister said that the government "are in favour of fact-based research programmes and of looking at any that might provide an answer to our problems". So there is some hope.
This, therefore, is our next priority.
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd