A dangerous addiction – drug prohibition

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Drug prohibition is an idealistic, puritan response to an alarming real-world problem, of which limited freedom is the only viable solution. It is a problem that is consistently ignored by the majority of the political class; surprising in these times of deficit reduction and prevailing liberal attitudes. Under the simple justification of protecting its citizens, the state has created a monster that, like many other well-meaning public legislation, creates the exact opposite of protection. Ultimately, prohibition is an unnecessary policy of incredible economic cost based on flawed principles.

The social and economic cost of drug prohibition cannot be overstated. A study by the drug-reform think tank Transform only last year stated that the net cost of drug prohibition is, at their lowest estimate, in the region of £17bn per annum. When compared to the net cost of regulated drug markets at the highest estimate of £11bn, to lowest of £3.5bn, we can see there is a cheaper option. However such conclusions should be obvious. The international behemoth of drug production and consumption is under the immense pressure of the law and thus not able to engage in free markets. This inevitably drives all those involved to keep their trade strictly underground. Freed from public scrutiny, the drug industry is free to wage war against its customers; in the form of ever inflating prices, and in a highly inelastic market pushing many addicts to crime, and its competition; with monopolistic, violent gangs. All such social costs unnecessarily aggregate in the form of high taxes and high crime.

Yet the argument on principle is the strongest, and goes to the core of the freedom debate. John Stuart Mill famously fought for individual liberty and the sovereign individual. But politicians ignored such cries, frightened by the harsh realities of drug abuse, drawing a line through personal freedom by banning any drugs which they deemed necessary. But the principle demands politicians meddle further – it compels they ban all dangerous activities, from horse riding to driving – a flawed logic in many respects.

Therefore freedom and regulation is the only solution that would deal with the problems drugs bring to society. Market forces will control drug prices, thus crime. Addiction should be dealt as a health issue, as is currently for the legal drugs in society; alcohol and cigarettes. It will eventually be seen that freedom of choice is ultimately better for society than prohibition and control.

Daniel Meeson is the 3rd prize winner in the 2010 Young Writer on Liberty.

A step closer to legalization?

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Bar Council Chairman, Nicholas Green QC publically considered the rationality of decriminalising personal drug use according to the Telegraph. He began a new and much needed serious discussion on drug policy. Current drug laws encroach on individual rights and suck resources out of the economy.

Green points out the high cost of enforcement and punishment. He states, “If the prison population could be reduced from circa 85,000 to 80,000 it could save over £200million per annum.” The article quotes a dissenter with an excellent point: "It is a ludicrous argument to say let’s legalise drugs to take pressure off the police and the courts. That is an argument to legalise everything.” There is another side to the coin. Drugs like marijuana is proven to show little harm. Most favour its illegality because it’s seen to lead to worse drugs that do cause a great deal of harm. Are we saving society from enough harm to where it’s worth the time and money spent?

If some drugs are legalized, the state could regulate accordingly. There would obviously be an age requirement and special taxes. This would increase tax revenue and decrease costs to the justice system. Although I don’t support this, the state could even hold monopoly rights to sell the drugs. Despite a strong black market, the state would still profit off the setup.

This issue is not just about cost-benefit analysis though. It’s also a matter of individual rights. A grown man or woman should be able to use personal discretion to make lifestyle choices. Drug use that does not harm any third parties directly needs no state intervention. Take alcohol, driving under the influence and bar brawls can be dangerous but we trust adults to make good decisions.

Green is not alone. The Economist writes how in America some states have begun serious reforms in their approach to recreational drug use. California, the pioneer state of the matter, has already legalized medical marijuana. Several states soon followed. Now, recreational use is being considered. Yes, the price of marijuana will fall. And yes, perhaps more people will try it. But jails will be filled instead with harmful criminals, budgets will be healthier, and individual rights restored.

Theresa May and civil liberties

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Home Secretary Theresa May announced in the House of Commons this week that the Coalition government would review invasive security legislation developed under the Labour government in response to terrorist attacks at home and abroad throughout the past decade. May stated that the government would work to “restore ancient civil liberties” that were increasingly at odds with Labour’s national security agenda.

A comprehensive overhaul of such legislation is badly needed, government power has increased spectacularly at the expense of civil liberties. Whereas prior to 2000 detention without charge was limited at twenty-four hours, the Terrorism Act 2000 permitted the police to detain any person without charge for up to seven days. This limit was increased to fourteen days in 2003, and to twenty-eight days, the longest of any Western democracy, with the passage of the Terrorism Act 2006. Parliament has also granted the police the right to stop and search any individual without cause, issue control orders, and exercise broad surveillance powers that extend to every type of communication. Britain has the highest density of CCTV surveillance cameras in Europe, and, with the power to forcibly extract and indefinitely hold DNA from anyone merely arrested on suspicion of having broken the law, the nation’s government maintains the largest DNA database in the world.

Though the review is ultimately meaningless without action, it appears that the Coalition government is serious about its commitment to restore civil liberties in the nation. Legislation scrapping the national identity card has been introduced, and May has pledged to better regulate information accumulated from CCTV cameras. The government will consider ending the use of control orders, twenty-eight day detention without charge, and stop-and-search. It appears that after years of suffering increased restrictions, liberty might finally enjoy some room to breathe.

Don’t hide the tobacco

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The Department of Health recently indicated that the government might overturn an anti-tobacco law passed by the Labour government during its last months in office. The law has not yet been implemented, but will prohibit cigarette vending machines in pubs and force retailers, including convenience stores, to remove displays of cigarettes. It was argued that the legislation would reduce children’s access to cigarettes and other tobacco products, as well as improve public health by reducing the rate of tobacco use in the general public.

The law, however, is unnecessary, and the recent news from the Department of Health is a heartening signal that the Coalition government may be willing to retreat from Labour’s regulation reflex. The United Kingdom does not need further legislation to prevent children from consuming tobacco products; existing law already prevents tobacco vendors from selling to those under the age of eighteen. Instead of merely enforcing the smoking age, the Labour law imposes needless costs on businesses, which would have to reconfigure their shops to accommodate the new regulations. Furthermore, the British government has already placed severe restrictions on the tobacco industry in an attempt to reduce smoking rates; the advertising of tobacco products was banned in 2003, and a ban on smoking in public was implemented in 2007.

More important than the regulatory costs and redundancy of the law is the paternalistic attitude that underlies this and the rest of the regulations that are the product of the crusade against tobacco use. Such paternalism is dangerous because it subverts self-determination and places in its stead values that are imposed by the government. British adults are not ignorant of the health effects of smoking and are fully aware of the consequences of their actions; those that choose to smoke merely choose to accept these consequences. For those who have supported restrictions on tobacco products, the health of the individual is of greater priority than his or her wishes and preferences. While improving health is certainly a noble goal, the substitution of communal goals and values for individual autonomy is a dangerous path for British society to walk along. It is time to stop and turn around.

Jon Gaunt’s loss is Britain’s too

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Freedom of speech in the United Kingdom suffered another blow yesterday when shock jock Jon Gaunt lost a legal fight with the regulator Ofcom, which had censured Mr Gaunt for having verbally attacked Michael Stark, a councillor from Redbridge who defended his borough’s decision to prevent smokers from being foster parents. Mr Gaunt’s rhetoric became increasingly heated during the interview, which took place in November of 2008, and he proceeded to call Mr Stark a “Nazi” and an “ignorant pig.” Mr Gaunt did, however, issue two on-air apologies during the same program.

The high court decision found that Ofcom was correct in taking action because Mr Gaunt “became increasingly abusive, hectoring and out of control,” and his use of “ignorant pig” had “no contextual justification at all and was said with such venom as to constitute gratuitous offensive opinion abuse.” Though Mr Gaunt was indeed vindicated for his use of the word “Nazi,” which the court ruled was protected political speech, the decision nevertheless begs the question of whether the regulation of speech by government agencies such as Ofcom is proper for a country that takes pride in its civil libertarian tradition.

Mr Gaunt was intolerant and rude to Mr Stark, but certainly his rhetoric did no measurable harm to Mr Stark, nor did his words incite violent behaviour or pose a threat to security. Listeners similarly do not need any protection from “offensive” content; those who did not appreciate Mr Gaunt’s behaviour retained the ability to switch to another station or simply turn off their radio.

The subjectivity involved in the regulation of speech to eliminate “offensive” or “indecent” content in a situation as harmless as Mr Gaunt’s renders the practice a dangerous enterprise for those concerned with free speech and expression. Nor is Mr Gaunt’s case exceptional; the British government imposes a great deal of restrictions on what may be said or written in the country. Ofcom prohibits news broadcasters from speaking their minds on the air, while broad interpretations of laws against incitement to racial and religious hatred have been used to bar people such as Dutch politician Geert Wilders and American talk-radio host Michael Savage from even setting foot in the country. Free speech implies the ability to utter unpopular or offensive statements, which is an important safeguard of liberty lest our own words someday be classified as such. Mr Gaunt is merely another victim of the government’s tight control over the airwaves.

Gay marriage, rights and privatization

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Equalities minister Lynne Featherstone recently suggested that the Coalition government may decide to expand the rights afforded to gays and lesbians wishing to enter into civil partnerships. While certainly a step toward parity, a more equitable solution would reduce the role of the state in our personal lives.

Gays and lesbians have been able to enter into contracts called civil partnerships since the Civil Partnerships Act 2004 went into effect one year later in 2005. The arrangement grants same-sex couples parity with married opposite-sex couples in virtually all areas, including those involving financial matters, taxes, parental responsibility, next-of-kin rights, and immigration among others. There remain only minor procedural differences between the two contracts, which distinguish each in terms of the way in which they are formed. An amendment to the Equality Act 2010 repealed a prohibition on civil partnership ceremonies on religious grounds, and Ms. Featherstone has indicated that the current government may move to permit religious elements in civil partnerships. Neither the change to civil partnerships, nor its reclassification as marriage, would have any significant impact provided that religious organizations remain free to choose who they marry, as differences between the two are merely semantic and technical in nature.

However noble a goal true marriage equality may be, the current discussion is misguided, as those who present the discussion in terms of “pro-gay marriage” and “anti-gay marriage” ignore a third alternative: marriage privatization.

Under a system of marriage licensed by the state, the government offers only one type of contract into which people may enter. This contract is inflexible, and, as it is written, debated, and passed by Parliament, it is not the ideal contract for every couple. The privatization of marriage, an idea raised more than a decade ago by libertarian David Boaz, is not only a viable alternative; it permits a much broader range of options available to individuals, whether heterosexual or homosexual. Marriage licensing is merely a form of regulation, and is identical to any other form of state licensing. Privatization would end this regulation, and instead allow private individuals to contract with one another to design a legal structure most suitable for their needs. The government could enforce such contracts as it does any formal business arrangement. Many people would surely opt for a traditional marriage contract, and would be able to pursue a contract identical to that which exists today. Religious organizations would be able to hold ceremonies for whichever couples they would like, and heterosexual couples who do not agree with the connotation attached to marriage, such as Tom Freeman and Katherine Doyle, a heterosexual couple denied a civil partnership last year, would be permitted to contract with one another in a secular manner.

Allowing people to form contracts themselves would not rob any individual of rights or abilities. Instead, it would increase choice and reduce government intervention in our private lives.

Don't ban the burqa

It would discriminate directly against Muslims, irrespective of whether they wore the burqa or not in the first place. This would set us back centuries in our constitutional development. It would be a heavy defeat for the side of liberty, a battle lost where so much has been won over the centuries right back to Catholic Emancipation, our right to habeus corpus, and more recently the decriminalisation of homosexuality. Rather than being a symbol of Islamism’s triumph, the burqa’s continued legal presence in Britain constitutes a triumph for British values of tolerance under the law. That is not to say that everyone will or indeed should privately tolerate the use of the burqa, but that the law and the state must.

It is no great secret that the aim of radical Islamists is to end the British or “Western” way of life: one based on liberty and tolerance. Forcing the imposition of restrictions on that liberty constitutes a victory for them, and a defeat for us. Allowing fear, along with security concerns to override our civil liberties in the form of detention without trial and the explosive growth of the surveillance state, all constituted victories for radical Islamism.

Even on a foreign policy level, the push to engage US-led allies on an ever-greater number of fronts and for extended periods of time is not to force their withdrawal from Muslim countries, but to simultaneously radicalise aggrieved Muslims and force the US to subject its own citizens’ liberties with the reintroduction of conscription. In this larger context then, the banning of the burqa would achieve two Islamist strategic goals: the subjugation of liberties by its enemies’ governments, and the further radicalisation of Muslims offended by the move.

Addressing further concerns, the burqa may indeed prevent further social integration into the majority’s social norms, but the same argument can be used against any practice that sets a minority apart. Even playing video games could be seen as a barrier to “social cohesion”! This does provide a sufficient argument to ban them, and nor does it provide an argument for the burqa to be banned. Individuality and differences are so often celebrated in Britain. Why should the use of the burqa be an exception?
Some may respond by saying, “those who come here should follow our values”. The statement is ignorant of British-born who choose to wear the burqa, but more significantly, of what British values are: that all British citizens should subscribe to a model of government that allows them all to exist together, equal, and free under the law. So long as you do not seek to impose the burqa on others against their will, there is no justification along these lines for it to be banned. In fact, the burqa’s continued use in Britain in this context is a symbol of the triumph of tolerance and co-existence.

The sole problem therefore is the burqa’s use as a symbol of misogyny – namely its imposition by male members of an often ultra-conservative family against the woman’s will. Unfortunately this does happen, but to use a ban on the burqa as a response would be akin to banning weddings in order to prevent forced marriages: utterly disproportionate, punishing the majority who do it by choice, and not addressing the root of the problem. The burqa is a symptom of sexism within some families or social groups. It is not the cause. There is no case for a ban.

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Belgium and France plan to ban the burqa in public. Belgium lawmakers have approved a draft ban to wearing the full Islamic veil in public places. France’s will most likely become law in September. These are highly worrying developments for supporters of liberty, not least because of the growing calls to emulate the ban here in Britain.

Some say that the burqa prevents ‘social cohesion’, others that its endurance is a symbol of radical Islamism’s triumph over Western values. Others cite its use as a means of repressing women, or the threat it poses to security. However, a ban on the burqa is not only an ill-judged and flawed response to these concerns, but goes against everything that Britain stands for.

Britain is a nation united by liberty under the law. It is an idea rather than an ethnic construct, an idea that allows people of any race, religion, sexuality, lifestyle or opinion to co-exist peacefully, governed by the same laws. It is a unity through liberty and tolerance that allows Scotland, Wales and England, each of them distinct ethnic and cultural constructs to be part of a whole. It is a unity that allows us to have a political culture predominantly based on conflicting ideologies rather than on ethnicities or religions. To ban an item of clothing then, especially one peculiar to a particular religion or culture, is fundamentally anti-British. A ban ostracises thousands, impinges on their liberty, and favours other ways of life at the expense of a minority, striking at the very heart of the British unifying principle. READ MORE

Smoking for England

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For some reason, the news that Winston Churchill's cigar had been photoshopped out of the iconic image above by a London museum reminded me of another picture I'd seen on the internet:

Sadly, it remins unclear whether our lords and masters share that sentiment.

Banning the burqa: a bad move

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This week the French cabinet approved legislation to ban the wearing of full-face veils, including the burqa, in public and this will go into law in September. Amongst my circle there are plenty who are delighted with this news and only wish the UK government would have the guts to follow suit and ban what they see as oppressive, uncivilised and extremist clothing. However, in passing this law the French are setting a dangerous precedent, sacrificing individual freedom of choice and religious expression for the sake of apparent community cohesion.

The French Republic prides itself on its ethos of equality and liberty, so it seems ironic that, to protect their cultural ideals, they are removing a woman’s right to dress how she pleases. It may not be ‘French’ to make a public show of one’s faith, but these women should have a right to express their faith and dress according to their personal convictions. Personally, I think it is wrong to ask a devout woman to give up the burqa if she sees it as an act of obedience to God and there is just not enough evidence that this clothing is forced upon women by male relatives. On the other hand, in making Muslim women give up their burqas, the State could be forcing them to compromise their beliefs and identity for the sake of cultural homogeneity. Laïcité, the French concept of a secular society was supposed to ensure the absence of government intervention in religious affairs - not just keeping religion out of government. As such this authoritarian stance seems misplaced, and seems to exist more for the sake of calming public concerns over the rapidly growing Muslim population in France than to protect women’s rights.

Whatever the justification, the State in France shouldn’t arbitrarily force their values on their citizens – religious expression and dress simply isn’t a matter that any government should get involved in. It’s a personal matter and the government should step back and let things take their course without positive or negative discrimination. It’s not about the government making a shrine to the ideal of multiculturalism, but rather they should let individuals do what they want aware of the repercussions for them in their community. Businesses should be free from employment rules which may force them to positively discriminate for Muslim or burqa’d women, and women should be free to dress how they please, but be prepared for the fact their burqas may make them socially isolated in Western society.

This to me seems the only solution and may, in time, lead to a decline in the amount of women wearing burqas without the government needing to intervene. Ultimately, a society is healthier where people are free to choose what they wear and do and as such I believe it’s important that politicians do not let their personal prejudices lead to the loss of fundamental civil liberties. 

Time to opt out

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I’m not quite sure when we lost the right to privacy in the UK, but I have recently started to wonder what details on my private life I can protect from the State’s intrusion. The new NHS database is the latest violation of our rights to privacy, taking away our control over our medical records. Call me paranoid, but I find the idea of over a million NHS employees and central government bureaucrats accessing information about my medical history quite frightening.

Much fuss has been made in the media over the new NHS Database, which is costing an estimated £12.4billion to place everyone’s medical records on a central database (expected to be completed by 2015). Suffice to say, there doesn’t seem to be much sound reasoning behind such a colossal and costly project. The NHS claims that the database is necessary to replace the paper files currently held in GPs offices, allowing hospital and out of hours staff to access medical records in emergency situations. This may sound reasonable but the NHS has managed for years without this need for centralised information and there seems little evidence to support the argument that the public’s health is being compromised by having our medical records kept at the GP’s.

They also try to justify this nightmare database by claiming it would cut down on lost records and test results. Again this seems unjustified with a spokesman for the Department of Health admitted this was not a major problem under the current system. The whole thing seems a complete farce – for the sake of modernising the NHS and using the latest technology, our private medical records are being placed (at a huge cost) on a database particularly vulnerable to abuse and errors. There are already rumours that such information is being sold on the black market by private investigators, and I find it disconcerting that the State will have records documenting whenever one has visited psychiatrists, alcohol-dependency clinics or GUM clinics. Surely this information should be shared only between the patient and GP and not automatically uploaded onto a database accessed by over a million NHS employees.

So, thanks to The Big Opt Out and all the fuss in the media, I’m opting out of the NHS database. Our privacy in the UK has slowly been eroded by the vast amount of information that is being held on us and I can only hope that Cameron’s promise to return to traditional civil liberties will include a reining back on the database society we live in.