We note:
• The UK has one of the worst drug-related death rates in Europe. In Scotland drug related death rates have quintrupled in only 20 years. Clearly the current approach isn’t working and so we need a new approach based on evidence and common sense.
• New models, including decriminalisation and drug consumption rooms, have been introduced in a number of countries and have saved significant numbers of lives.
• A recent government-commissioned report by Dame Carol Black called for a more health-based approach and highlighted the relationship with poverty, deprivation and austerity.
• There’s a hypocrisy in politicians openly admitting to having used drugs in their youths with no penalty yet giving criminal records to ordinary people, who don’t have the same social protections, and cutting funding for treatment services for the most vulnerable. It’s one rule for them and another for the rest of us.
• The effects of criminalisation fall disproportionately on low income people and people of colour with black people being 9 times more likely to be stopped and searched for drugs than white people despite being statistically less likely to use drugs. Drug policy must be a consideration of economic and racial justice.
• A government-regulated cannabis market with appropriate controls on access, safety and potency would reduce the wealth and power of criminal gangs, removing a major source of violence and exploitation – particularly for the approx. 27,000 children in England and Wales being exploited by organised gangs.
• The Institute For Economic Affairs have shown that a regulated legal cannabis market in the UK would be worth over £1bn in taxation alone - plus savings for public services - and would virtually eliminate the black market.
• The US has spent over $1tn dollars and 50 years on the war on drugs only to result in higher rates of drug use.
• Lifting prohibition on alcohol in the USA led to safer products being consumed due to regulation, organised crime being severely wounded through a loss of income and significant public funds raised through taxation and saved through public services.
• Polls have shown broad support for reform across voters of every major political party as well as Nobel Prize winning experts.

We call for:
• Treating drug use as a public health issue rather than a criminal matter. Reform of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act to decriminalise personal possession and implement a mixed system of control and regulation.
• Investment in and a legislative framework for evidence-led drug treatment services, such as: opiate substitution therapy, heroin assisted therapy, drug checking, supervised consumption facilities, naloxone, inpatient detoxification and residential rehabilitation.
• Reviewing drug scheduling and investing in expansion of research programmes for medical treatment, such as medical marijuana and use of psychedelics in treatment of mental health conditions.
• Increase investment in mental and physical health for drug users.
• Invest in youth and community services.
• Increase the number of professionally qualified drug treatment staff and set occupational standards, competency and training requirements for drug workers and peer recovery workers.
• Promote campaigns to destigmatise people who use or have used drugs.
• Reduce poverty and deprivation.