An interesting point on prohibition

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I received an interesting booklet in the post this week from the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, an outfit that presses for reform of drug law in the UK. I can't say I agree with them on every single point – their proposals could, arguably, leave the drug market over-regulated and thus fail to eradicate the deeply harmful illegal trade. But nonetheless, it's good to have someone campaigning for good sense on such an important issue.

The arguments against prohibition are well rehearsed, and will probably not be new to readers of this blog. To sum them up in a series of bullet points (more or less borrowed from the IEA's excellent Prohibitions):

• Prohibition places markets in criminal hands
• It increases the risk of already risky activities
• It criminalizes people who would not otherwise be criminals
• It divert police resources away from activities that actually harm third parties
• It increases public ignorance
• It doesn't actually work (i.e. if you can't keep drugs out of prisons, how can you keep them out of a free society)

Another interesting point against prohibition, which I had not previously thought about much, is mentioned in Transform's booklet:

[I]llegal markets under prohibition always tend to cause concentration of available drug preparations which are more profitable per unit weight. Just as under alcohol prohibition the trade in beer gave way to more concentrated, profitable and dangerous spirits, the same trend has been observed over the past centuries with opiates – from opium (smoked or in drinkable preparations) to injectable heroin, and more recently with the cannabis market being increasingly saturated with more potent varieties. With coca-based products the transformation has been dramatic... It was prohibition which first cocaine powder onto the streets in the first place, and finally produced high-risk smokable crack.

Wouldn't it be nice if politician's understood and appreciated the law of unintended consequences?

I demand to have some booze

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I am not one for being sentimental about the past, but staring into the bottom of my pint, memories flow of a time when things were better than this.

Of course the world has changed somewhat since we had the social divide of a woman’s place in the home and pubs exclusively the domain men. This is no bad thing, and the ready availability of other forms of entertainment from the Internet, DVD Players and affordable televisions the size of children. Vast swathes of the population now prefer watching the latest blockbuster movie with a bottle of wine to going to the pub. Fair enough.

The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) are trying to fight back. They are petitioning the government to limit the ability of supermarkets to make a loss on selling alchol. This is esentially a request for a subsidy and should not be supported. But what can be done to save the great British pub?

A good place to start is reversing the government’s blanket ban on smoking in pubs. At the very least pubs should be able to apply for a license to permit smoking. As well as being a highly illiberal act, the smoking ban has hit pubs hard; with the holy trinity of glorious vices – pint, cigarette and crisps – now one man down.

Tax is another problem. The Government takes over 80 pence in tax for every pint sold in a pub. This is a hefty chunk for the treasury that should be drastically reduced. Why not also lower the drinking age to sixteen at pubs. This would take youth binge drinking out of the private sphere, educating them in the finer points of drinking.

I spent much of my youth in pubs and beer festivals drinking real ale. I have no doubt that if the government simply backed off most pubs would survive. They offer something unique to offer that are being undermined by the public health agenda, obsessive regulation and indefensible taxes.

Next stop, Minority Report

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The latest surveillance security technology in development in the US threatens to become yet another expensive encroachment upon our civil liberties.

Future Attributable Screening Technology (FAST), which is being developed by the US army, uses surveillance cameras with advanced software to pre-empt crimes taking place. This is done by cameras recognising certain traits or signals which may indicate criminal activity. For example, it may be able to identify and follow people who leave objects in public places, or identify facial micro-expressions associated with people under stress or who are acting hostile.

The arguments for this technology are that it would be more efficient and reliable as a security guard watching a screen may not be able to effectively monitor every single person’s actions within a crowded public place.

But at the same time, the potential threat this poses to our right to privacy is worrying. I'm not sure I want to live in a world where we are individually targeted, tracked and recorded purely for acting ‘suspiciously’.

It would be even more problematic if – as seems inevitable – data from these CCTV images was collated and stored on a database. This could result in past offenders being traced and tracked continuously by cameras without having actually broken the law.

This technology may have a place within military organizations, but once 'domesticated' it is only likely to fuel further the surveillance society that we increasingly live in.

Guns, drugs and money

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Imagine my surprise on finding a cogent, well thought out and sensible article at the Guardian's Comment is Free site. But there it is, they've managed to do it.

It is perhaps tasteless to say so, but we are fortunate that we face a social plague very similar to that of gin – the illegal drug trade. And as in the mid-18th century, we see the failure of abolitionist policies to control the menace. The total value of this trade amounts to between £2bn and £6.5bn a year – all untaxed........The total benefit of such legalisation to the Exchequer is likely to be between £3.5bn and £6.3bn a year, including excise duty, VAT and income tax from the dealers and allowing for additional costs.

Quite, in these straitened times, while all are looking for new sources of tax revenue, why don't we legalise something which we know we cannot beat by prohibition? As we've shown by trying said prohibition for the past few decades?

The tax revenue would not be the only benefit, of course. There is the simple civil liberties aspect: my or your desire to ingest oddities carries no diminution of the rights of others, nor threat to their person or property, so it should not be something which is constricted by the law. Legalisation and the subsequent competition amongst legitimate suppliers would lower prices (even with the high tax rates we'd impose) and thus reduce the crime associated with addicts looking for the money with which to score.

Prisons could be filled with real criminals rather than those only damaging themselves, we'd save many billions in policing costs. The quality of the drugs on offer would rise, thus reducing the physical damage that they do and the associated costs to the NHS.

All in all, we reduce the costs to the Exchequer, increase the revenues and advance freedom and liberty in one fell swoop.

It's something of a pity that we've not done it already really, isn't it?

Perhaps this could be one of those Naomi Klein moments, from her book The Shock Doctrine? Where we neo-liberals use a shock, a crisis, to advance our agenda?

Two-thirds of a pint, anyone?

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An announcement that the National Weights and Measurements Laboratory (NWML) is considering introducing a ‘two-thirds of a pint’ measurement into pubs across Britain raises questions as to why publicans and drinkers cannot deal in any quantity they want.

Left to the free-market, consumers would be free to demand whatever quantities of drink they wanted and firms would satisfy those demands in order to make greater profits. Even if the government did not choose to regulate the size of drinks we consume a system of standardisation would no doubt emerge, but one which was more responsive the needs of drinkers rather than being dictated to them.

The arguments for state intervention in the quantity of our drinks seem somewhat restricted from the outset. Perhaps the government thinks that it can tackle the over consumption of alcohol as people will no longer be forced to have a whole pint. This would be a narrow and ineffective goal for the government to aim for.

Why does the state decide what size glasses our alcohol must come in but they do not apply the same logic across the board? For example, when ordering soft drinks, some pubs fill the glass with ice before serving, others do not. The government has not felt inclined to interfere here, so why elsewhere?

Essentially, we should be able to say how much we drink and in what size glass. At the very least, this would lead to a much better allocation of resources when purchasing drinks!

Fight for freedom

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The front-page of yesterday’s Sunday Times revealed that the government intends to require the production of a passport by anyone purchasing a mobile phone. The reason? They want to know who owns every phone used in the UK, so that they can electronically track all of us, all of the time.

Even when no call is being made, mobile phones send out a signal to the nearest telephone masts, making it possible to work out the phone’s location. The government intends to link this information with the DVLA’s car registration database and the police’s automatic license plate identification system, to make keeping tabs on us that little bit easier. The government also intends to create a new database which will store the details of every single electronic communication made in the UK.

It really makes me wonder what kind of a country we are living in. Will the current government ever realize the George Orwell did NOT intend 1984 to be used as an instruction manual? Somehow, I suspect not.

Instead, the government is bound to say that only the guilty have anything to fear and that unless we have something to hide, we should all march (or should that be goose-step) happily down the road to electronically-tagged serfdom , safe in the knowledge that Big Brother is on the side of the angels. That’s the excuse that all tyrants use, and I don’t expect our ones to be any different.

The problem is that it isn’t true. The very existence of that kind of information and that degree of centralized power is a threat – regardless of the intentions that lie behind it. These powers will be abused and the data’s security will be compromised. It is so predictable that you would be a fool not to see it coming.

Everyone who values freedom, regardless of their political affiliation, should fight these proposals and others like them every step of the way. It is not just a matter of practicality or expense: liberty matters in and of itself. We are not the possessions of government, and it’s high time we reminded them of that.

Hat-tip to Chris Weston, the comic-strip artist behind the fantastic image accompanying this blog.

Crime and Punishment

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Fascinating stuff this, like a press release from the Howard League on how we should treat criminals.

I'm sitting in Oslo having lunch with the director general of the Norwegian prison service – Kristin Bolgen Bronebakk – and we are discussing "Scandinavian exceptionalism". In other words, why is it that Finland, Sweden and Norway in particular, have much lower rates of imprisonment than other European countries?

Isn't that wonderful? They've managed to design a system where those who employ their rapacity upon their fellow citizens do not end up warehoused, locked in a cell for 23 hours a day, in a Victorian building. Perhaps there's something we might learn from this system, how do they do it?

Oslo had the highest rate per person in Scandinavia in terms of reported crimes, with 90 reported crimes per 1,000.

Copenhagen had 50 crimes reported per 1,000 and Stockholm had 79.

In New York, there were 22 reported crimes per 1,000 inhabitants.

As economists have endlessly pointed out, it's not just punishment for crime that reduces crime. It's a combination of the severity of the sentence, the conditions of serving it plus the liklihood of detection and conviction. All those together add up to the expected punishment for a particular action.

And whatever else the Norwegian version of social democracy might have to tell us here it seems clear that not locking up criminals does not reduce crime.

So that's one more thing that we know not to do then.

Don’t tread on me

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Jacqui Smith has revealed that the government is considering creating a single, centralized database containing records of all telephone numbers called, time and location of calls, websites visited and e-mail addresses used by UK citizens. If this goes ahead, it will be yet another incursion by the state into the private sphere of the individual.

The reactions from Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have been swift and correct. Dominic Grieve, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: "The Government must justify the case for any such massive increase in state acquisition, sharing and retention of data, spell out the safeguards to prevent abuse and – given its appalling record – explain how it will protect the integrity of any database holding sensitive personal data." Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: "Ministers simply can't be trusted with confidential data of this sort, as it has shown again and again."

These disagreements are focussed on concerns for the practicality of the scheme. In fact, most of the arguments I have heard and read on this scheme ignore the disturbing ideology behind it. It would be nice to hear politicians refer to the principles of freedom and liberty, instead of simply banging on about the propensity the government seems to have for losing things (relevant as that is). Even if the scheme could catch more criminals and the government was able to protect the information, the essential point still stands that a centralized database of this sort gives powers to the state that they should simply never be allowed to have.

There is a great appetite for greater freedom in the UK, but no major party that is offering to give it to us to any meaningful degree. One reason for this is the ubiquitous demand for politicians to solve all problems and the delusion that leads them to claim that they can. When power is finally taken from Gordon Brown's Stalinist hands, there will be a real opportunity to roll back the frontiers of the state. However, the very real risk is that there will be no one in government with the will or gumption to do it.

Drinkers unite!

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Here's a guest blog from our friends at The Drinker's Alliance:

So the latest edict from politicians in London and Edinburgh is that they should decide how much alcohol should cost to try to control how much we all drink.  Despite all the legislation already out there to deal with shops that sell to the underage, or bars and clubs that contribute to anti-social behaviour, politicians seem to think that writing even more laws that punish everyone is the solution.
 
Like so many Government-led debates, the average punter who enjoys a pint or a bottle of wine with friends, continues to be ignored.
The Drinkers Alliance, is a new platform recently launched to give everyone a chance to make their views heard on the debate on alcohol. 
While opinion polls show that the public oppose higher taxes and support action to deal with problem drinking, politicians in London and Edinburgh are proposing measures that will punish everyone.  And all this when the Government’s own statistics show alcohol consumption is actually going down!  Some of the ideas currently being debated are:

• Increasing the age of sale of alcohol in shops from 18 to 21
• Introducing a minimum price for alcohol
• Restricting where alcohol can be positioned within shops
• Introducing separate check-out queues for alcohol
• Banning under 18s from serving alcohol at all in shops

These won’t make any difference to problem drinkers and will just be a massive hassle for everyone else.  And they won’t do anything to actually enforce the laws we have or try to teach young people about the dangers of alcohol.

The Drinker's Alliance encourages ordinary people to get involved in the public debate on alcohol by providing tools to make their voices heard to politicians and the media. It’s really easy to sign up and you’ll be kept up to date on the campaign with regular emails and blogs. The Drinker's Alliance is here to give you a voice in the debate so sign up now and take a few minutes to invite your friends.

Make sure your voice is heard and don’t let the politicians ignore the ordinary drinker.
 

Lords are leaping

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An oft-held criticism of the House of Lords has been that its in-built conservative majority makes a mockery of representative democracy and leads to more labour defeats in the second house than conservative ones. Labour’s reforms have gone some way in correcting this.

It now seems likely that 42-days detention will be bounced back from the Lords by a 3-figure margin. Perhaps it is time to blame this defeat on the upper house’s renunciation of a truly awful piece of legislation rather than the actions of an unrepresentative house keeping the Labour government down.

Labour is unlikely to resort to using the parliament act to force through this controversial legislation as it is unconventional to use the act to achieve anything which does not appear in a party’s manifesto. It would also be the fourth use of the parliament act since 1997 meaning that New Labour was responsible for half of all the uses of the act since 1911 when it was introduced.

Perhaps we can look forward to a reversal of the existing 28-day without charge law in the future to bring us more in-line with other democratic nations. But, for now, at least we can be more confident that soon it will not be legal for a person to be held for over a month without knowing why.