Advocates for cannabis legalization and decriminalization frequently frame their case as a social justice issue. Ending racially disparate mass incarceration, for example, has become a refrain among pro-cannabis progressives in the United States. But across the pond, some British doctors are adopting a different tact. Instead of drawing attention to the criminal injustice of the UK’s drug laws, they’re framing decriminalization as a public health concern, publishing their arguments in one of Britain’s leading medical journals.
British Doctors Say Drug Laws Are Harming Public Health
The British Medical Journal is one of the oldest, oft-cited, and reputable research publications in both the US and UK. And in a new issue dedicated to studies on drug laws and public health, British physicians present a compelling case for comprehensive decriminalization.
This isn’t just a call for decriminalizing cannabis. Physicians and researchers with BMJ are calling for all drugs to be legal, taxed, and regulated for medical and recreational use.
In her brief preface to the May 10th publication, BMJ editor-in-chief Fiona Godlee lays out the indisputable facts. Numbers, Godlee says, that “bear reflection.”
Estimates say each UK taxpayer dumps £400 ($545) annually into the war on drugs. And to combat a rising tide of violent crime, the UK’s newly minted Serious Violence Strategy proposes to spend £40 million ($54.5 million) on prohibitionist drug enforcement policies.
The Strategy recognizes the link between violence and drug prohibition. But BMJ researchers say the proposed measures will “do nothing to tackle drug-related crime”. In fact, one article links the UK’s gun and knife crime epidemic to fentanyl and crack cocaine flooding the illicit market.
Furthermore, the UK has become