Decline in drug use means war on drugs is being won

Claim made by: Kathy Gyngell, Centre for Policy Studies
Location: Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2704957/Youth-turning-backs-alcohol-drugs-smoking-Level-drinking-teens-just-decade-ago.html
Spotted on: 2014-07-25

The decline in teen drug use shows that "The war on drugs is being won".

Update 2014-11-22

Kathy Gyngell replied saying that “The evidence is the report" (i.e. the report [http://www.hscic.gov.uk/catalogue/PUB14579] on the findings of the survey referred to in the Daily Mail), which “suggests that the policy of drugs controls as per the Misuse of Drugs Act” (i.e. the war on drugs) “is working as opposed to not working.”

It seems Kathy believes that the war on drugs is responsible for the drug use decrease. But is this correlation not causation? I got in touch with Steve Rolles from the Transform Drugs Policy Foundation, to find out whether other factors might be involved.

Steve agreed that “The drivers of levels of use are complex - they are a mix of a whole range of social, economic and cultural factors. But claiming that any fall is the result of punitive enforcement is a big stretch. There appears to be little or no correlation between a country's enforcement regime and levels of use.” He added that “The wider socio-economic and cultural environment is far more important” than the intensity of punitive enforcement, which is “at best a marginal factor”.

Furthermore, drug use has been declining in several other European countries, where the UK Misuse of Drugs Act does not apply and across which there is a “wide variety of policy and enforcement models” as described by Steve. Consequently it seems that attributing the decline in UK drug use to the war on drugs is a simplistic and unrealistic interpretation of the trend.

Rating

It's nonsense

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