Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by CoolHand on Friday June 12 2015, @06:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the no-more-drug-war dept.

UK Home Secretary Theresa May is continuing a trend of ignoring science advisers when it comes to drug policy:

Home Secretary Theresa May and her statutory advisers on drug policy look to be heading for a showdown over government plans to deal with so-called "legal highs". Some members of The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) are understood to be furious that they were not consulted on proposed legislation for a blanket ban on psychoactive substances. The relationship between the ACMD and ministers in various governments has long been strained. There have been sackings and mass resignations in the last few years, amid claims that expert scientists were being bullied and ignored because their advice didn't coincide with government policy.

Questions are now being asked as to whether the ACMD is being edged out of the drugs debate - 44 years after a Conservative government set it up to ensure science rather than politics dictated policy. In the House of Lords yesterday, a number of peers demanded to know why ministers had not asked the ACMD's opinion before drawing up the controversial Psychoactive Substances Bill.

"It is actually a legal requirement set out in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 that the ACMD must be consulted before alterations to the Act or new legislation is brought in," Labour peer Lord Rea told the House. "Instead, a specially appointed expert panel was set up by the Home Office. I can only suggest that this was done because the opinion of the ACMD is often not exactly welcomed by the Home Office".

The principle which underpinned the drugs debate in the UK at that time [in 1971] was the longstanding and broadly accepted view that addicts were ill and required treatment rather than punishment. Known as the "British system", ministers felt a medical science-led approach was preferable to US-style prohibition. Roll the clock forward four decades and the government view seems to have turned around entirely in responding to the threat from so-called "legal highs". The bill to outlaw NPS prohibits everything "capable of producing a psychoactive effect" unless it is specifically exempted - and there are concerns that the proposals are being introduced without proper consultation with health experts.

A blanket ban on psychoactive legal highs with prison sentences of up to seven years was featured in the Conservative Party's election manifesto and the Queen's Speech.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2, Informative) by purple_cobra on Friday June 12 2015, @08:30PM

    by purple_cobra (1435) on Friday June 12 2015, @08:30PM (#195527)

    Yes, yes she is. We've had some utter dipsticks in the past (Jack Straw is the one who immediately comes to mind. Oh, and Blunkett), but I think she's mainlining whatever evil venom the past dickheads were not-inhaling. For the uninitiated - and UK politics is just as tedious for UK residents as it is for anyone else - the two big parties are the Conservatives (authoritarian, god-fearing) and Labour (slightly more left wing, prodnose nanny-state), so the choice people wanting to back a horse that will win is between a group who will bend you over a barrel because they are bigger than you and a group who will bend you over a barrel because it's for your own good. Me? I don't like being bent over a barrel and voted for a team I thought would do the least amount of damage (and no, my vote of choice did not result in a winner). There's precious little separating their policies, though I suspect the poor wouldn't suffer quite so much under Labour (see the Bedroom Tax and it's complete lack of onus on the local authority to provide housing deemed adequate) and both are wont to just randomly ram shit laws through the statue books and to hell with the unintended consequences.
    Rambling aside, if aliens descended tomorrow and wiped the lot of them out, I would not be sad.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Informative=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @12:02AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @12:02AM (#195566)

    the two big parties are the Conservatives (authoritarian, god-fearing) and Labour (slightly more left wing, prodnose nanny-state)

    the Tories haven't been about Toryism since Thatcher, so they're hardly "authoritarian"; if you're alluding to the "extremist speech" shit, Labour's no better (indefinite detention without trial, "hate speech"). "God-fearing" has me scratching my head -- do you mean "god" as in Adam Smith's "invisible hand"? David Cameron used to say he was agnostic, now he says he's CoE (probably the least god-fearing church). The front-bench Tories have pretty much the same social views as Labour, i.e. progressive.

    "Slightly more left wing": well yeah, but UK politics is already skewed pretty far to the left anyway. We're no Sweden, but we're definitely far more left wing than the US. The difference between the two parties is primarily economic.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @06:53AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @06:53AM (#195679)

      we're definitely far more left wing than the US.

      Do you realize how utterly ridiculous this statement is? I mean US is in the same right wing group as North Korea and Nazi Germany...

  • (Score: 1) by KGIII on Saturday June 13 2015, @04:15AM

    by KGIII (5261) on Saturday June 13 2015, @04:15AM (#195641) Journal

    Hey now, Jack Straw is most excellent.

    http://artsites.ucsc.edu/GDead/agdl/jstraw.html [ucsc.edu]

    --
    "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @05:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2015, @05:12PM (#195831)

    slightly more left wing, prodnose nanny-state

    Are you using the right-wing definition of "nanny-state" - pro-social welfare, pro-social safety nets, pro-universal healthcare, etc - or the actual definition - making the state into a actual nanny by using force of law to dictate what people can and can't do based on a specific religion's guidelines, especially in their bedrooms and in the privacy of their own home, what they can put into their bodies, what they can do with and to their own bodies, etc? The former isn't a nanny-state at all, but merely a non-socipathic society and an example of a meaningless scare-word defined as "anything I consider bad", just like "communism", "socialism", "politically correct", and "SJW"; while the latter is literally a nanny state.