The laws regulating the non-medical use of drugs

Abstract

Especially since the 1960s 'drugs' have been considered a major social problem and the criminal law the solution. This thesis contains an examination of the laws that regulate the non-medical use of drugs, the underlying contention is that the use of the criminal law is not the solution to the problem. Due to the fact that drugs are not an emotionally neutral topic of discourse many of my submissions are contraversial and have to be supported by 'more respected authors'. Especially as in this field people tend to hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest. Before I started working on this thesis my bias was definetly liberal in that I felt that to punish someone for using or abusing a specific type of drug was not going to help him or the society in which he lives. As I read and studied the problem I became more radical as I began to feel that the whole mentality behind the use of criminal law as a solution to the 'drug problem' was misfounded and unstudied. My arguments are not based on the contention that the prohibited drugs are not harmful or that there are other legal drugs that are more harmful. My conclusion is based on the recognition that our present methods of handling the drug abuser at best ineffective and at worst counterproductive and cruel. It is significant that every government committee set up to study the problem has severly criticised the use of the criminal law in this field and yet legislative enactments to give effect to the recomendations are practically non-existant. In abrogating certain laws we are not admitting a defeat of any kind, we are merely admitting that the original legislation, however well intended, was both unstudied and unsuccessful. However the abrogation of these laws would not on its own solve the problem. The laws were enacted because of an attitude towards drugs which is still very noticable tody. This thesis suggests that the criminal law has and can only make matters worse. A short study of alternative proposals is made in the conclusion, the rest concentrates on the present laws, their introduction and their effect.