What The Green Party’s Drug Policy Actually Means

Zach Polanski’s invigoration of the UK’s Green Party has been nothing short of a miraculous turnaround, taking what was a fringe political movement for those student-heavy constituencies in Bristol and Brighton to a national superpower, with only a small helping hand from the complete capitulation of the traditional two-party system. The success isn’t unfounded, either. Well-spoken, charismatic and with what appears to be a genuine grasp of democratic socialism, Polanski’s ability to communicate the Green’s policies and truly appeal to the sensibilities of Britain’s young and disillusioned is nothing to turn one’s nose up at. That is, apart from one, quite crucial, section of their manifesto. For some reason, Polanski seems almost incapable of properly explaining the Green Party’s proposal to decriminalise drugs.

This isn’t necessarily Polanski’s fault, to come to his defence. Given the opportunity, like Starmer or Farage, to sit and address the nation uninterrupted, he would undoubtedly be able to provide the public with a relatively suitable explanation. However, as with every cog in the ever-turning zeitgeist of British daytime television, Polanski remains bound to the constant interruptions of Ed Balls and Susanna Reid.

But, in seriousness, this is a policy that, while providing what could be enormous benefits to the British people, needs explaining. Akin to the grandiose claims of withdrawing from NATO that sucked the wind from the Your Party sails shortly after it left the parliamentary harbour, radical reforms to the sensible, centrist British status quo are never met with open arms. Perhaps, great bastion of the British people, Jeremy Vine, has a point. Why would we want crack dealers and heroin users walking the streets?

One of the best arguments, and inspiration for this article, comes from the always-emphatic Nick Davies (famous, of course, for being depicted by a grey-haired David Tennant on ITV … and one of the greatest exposures of the news media in global history). Early in his book Flat Earth News, Davies tells the story of the Thatcherite black drug market in London. In the late-1960s, a few hundred opium addicts sought fairly liberal prescriptions from their GPs to upkeep their habits. It was a common practice following the war, with large groups of soldiers experiencing withdrawals from the painkillers and anaesthetics they had become reliant on in the medic’s tent. However, once the media caught wind that three of these doctors were charging patients fees for their heroin, outrage ensued and the practice required a special license from the Home Office. Less supply led to higher demand, and the heroin distributed by these specially licensed offices became harder to get. Some users broke into chemist’s offices, using some and selling the rest to their friends. The black market is born. Suddenly complex and illegal trade routes stretch from London to Afghanistan, carrying poor quality heroin, and when Thatcher took office in 1979, her ever-thoughtful approach to the issue was a complete police crackdown, joining Reagan and the Americans in the war on drugs.

The long and short of the story is this: when the news picked up the story in the late-1960s, there were a few hundred opium addicts walking the streets of London, monitored and controlled by the GP offices. After the snowball of criminalisation and police influence of the next twenty years, that few hundred had become 300,000 illegal heroin addicts, many of whom suffered from disease, anorexia and overdoses, as well as being involved in crime and prostitution in order to fund their addictions.

Drug addicts are an easy scapegoat for political misfortunes. They contribute little to the economy, partake in habits many view as unseemly and dirty, require government funds and manpower. But does this eliminate them from qualifying for our help as a society? This is the question posed by the Green Party, and the core of their proposal. Similarly to questions of illegal migration, social welfare and benefits, the argument of the Greens is that instead of punishing those different from and less fortunate than ourselves, we can address the root causes of their behaviours and try to find a middle ground where drug-related crime and consumption is more efficiently addressed and managed.

So, this is all great on paper, but what does the Green Party’s drug policy actually mean? Well, what it doesn’t mean is street-corner dealers suddenly becoming legal businesses, or blacked-out Range Rovers without numberplates lining the street outside your child’s Surrey primary school. What it looks like is the elimination of the black market through legal avenues for managing drug addiction. NHS drug programs and council-led harm reduction initiatives will cost the taxpayer, of course, but in the long-term, it will cost them far less than the over £1 billion the government already allocates to the Department of Health and Social Care and £1.4 billion allocated to enforcing drug laws annually. A look at Portugal’s famous drug decriminalisation in 2001 supports this idea, with drug-use and drug-related deaths far below the EU average and the percentage of incarcerations being made up of drug charges dropping by 25% in the last 25 years.

In an ideal world, this kind of policy would be readily explained to the country of susceptible and impressionable voters Britain has become. It could be a radical change for good in the country, but instead is lambasted by the British media and its blind loyalty to fence-sitting reactionary centrism. The vast majority of the country has been in contact with someone affected by drugs, and they should be given the opportunity to hear a voice that wants to help them, not lock them up. Zack Polanski and the Greens have a responsibility to justify their policies and explain them to the public, but, equally, the know-it-alls on Good Morning Britain and Channel 5 might also help by putting their blatant bias aside and letting him get on with it.

Image: Flickr/Thomas Marthinsen

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