Europe:
Former
Scottish
High
Court
Judge
Says
Legalize
It
9/16/05
Lord McCluskey, a former judge of the Scottish High Court, has become the latest high-profile figure in the United Kingdom to advocate the legalization of heroin and is one of the most senior legal figures in Scotland to have done so. McCluskey's comments come only a week after British Conservative Party leadership contender David Cameron said the United Nations should consider legalizing drugs and less than a month after another senior Scottish legal figure, former procurator fiscal David Hingston called on the government to make drugs "a legalized field." In an interview with the newspaper The Scotsman published Tuesday, Lord McCluskey qualified current drug policy as a "massive failure" and called for the legal availability of heroin, citing an increasing number of heroin overdose deaths in Scotland. "That is a massive failure of the current way of doing things. Yet we prescribe more of the same. If you want a simple measure of the failure of the present drugs policy, count the number of deaths, year by year. It has gone from zero in the 1970s to one a day," he said. "If people are addicted to heroin, give them heroin. I'm not suggesting you sell it at newsagents, but if you were to offer it to addicts in a medically controlled setting, there would be no criminal market," Lord McCluskey continued. "We've created a huge market for criminals to operate in. I think the drug element in all criminal behavior is massively greater than we are led to believe. In other countries, drug addiction is treated as a health problem. Here it is treated as a legal problem." Lord McCluskey's comments won favor from Scottish drug reformers. "What Lord McLuskey is saying is that, if people are addicted to heroin, let's provide it to them in a safe environment. We've called for the same thing in an attempt to get people in touch with services more quickly. You can do it, and they do it in other countries," said Graeme McArthur of the Scottish Drugs Forum. "It's actually quite sensible." Scotland is currently seeing rising death rates from heroin overdoses and other drug-related causes. According to the Scottish Executive, there were 356 drug deaths last year, up 12% over the previous year, and about 225 of them were heroin or morphine overdoses. But Scottish drug policy is reserved to the British government, and the Labor Party government in London shows no signs of moving in that direction. In response to a query from The Scotsman, a Home Office spokesman made that clear. "The government has no intention of legalizing the recreational use of any currently controlled drug. Those who advocate legalization take no account of the consequences of the significant increase in use that would follow legalization. Individuals are not the only ones affected by drug misuse; their families and communities are damaged as well."
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