What are drug laws for?

It seems ridiculous to suggest such an obvious question, but in the midst of yet another highly-charged scramble for new drug bans, we should be asking it again and again. What are drug laws for? Drug laws are to protect people, to reduce drug harms. If a ban will not reduce the suffering or harm caused by drugs, then it should not be introduced.

The terrible story of the homeless Ronald Poppo, whose face was mauled by Rudy Eugene before Florida police shot him dead, has horrified and fascinated media audiences worldwide, and generated an explosion of misinformed and hysterical speculation. It is believed that Rudy Eugene may have taken "bath salts", which have been inaccurately described as "LSD-like" by many sources.

Actual toxicological evidence will not be available for weeks, but comparing unfamiliar drugs to a feared "Class A" (under the UK system of legal classification) substance like ecstasy or LSD is a classic way that the flames of panic have been fanned in the past. And, sure enough, there are now many calling for "bath salts" to be banned throughout the US.

When tragedies occur, it is an understandable and universal reflex to want to act, and to call for government to act. Sadly, at present, when the 24-hour news cycle can pump up a new drug panic in a matter of hours, bans are increasingly being enacted out of hastily-concocted political expediency. In post Enlightenment democracies, though, where reason is seen as our best guide to the rules we should have, laws should be judged on their effects, not their intentions.

The experience of the rushed mephedrone ban in the UK shows the need not to jump to conclusions over tragic events. The mephedrone political crisis accelerated towards its climax after the deaths of two Scunthorpe teenagers who police said had taken mephedrone. Toxicological reports, which showed that the drug was not involved, only emerged after the ban.

If drug laws are to reduce harm, rather than just be tokenistic responses to tragedy, we must demand that there be evidence to support the theory that a future with the ban would be safer than a future without it. The fact that, in January of last year, Florida already banned several of the drugs sold as "bath salts" suggests that, if the attack on Poppo was caused by bath salts, bans by themselves are not solutions.

Governments get attacked for the harms of "legal highs", and but once they make them illegal, politicians are no longer held responsible. Then, the "victims" of legal highs become outlaws for whom government cannot be held responsible. Few stories of psychotic reactions to illegal drugs, like cocaine and amphetamines, cross the Atlantic: they are no longer newsworthy, but they happen. Bans are often a neat trick for placating voters, but have nothing to do with making society safer and happier.

In the case of mephedrone, it remains an open question whether the ban reduced total drug harms. The drug remains one of the UK's most popular illegal drugs. Of course, there were likely to be some people who did only use it because it was legal, and who have now stopped, but we cannot conclude from this fact that people are safer overall.

Fascinating statistics show that deaths from cocaine, which had been rising year on year, fell by about 20% after mephedrone became popular; this hints that the legality of one moderately harmful substance could have diverted people from an even more harmful one. These complexities of wider drug use behaviour are missing from the arguments of those who call for precautionary bans on minimal evidence.

I do not believe in the full legalisation of drugs. It is important that governments have the power to step in to prevent people freely selling a new chemical if good evidence emerges that it causes serious problems. But if such bans are to be effective at reducing harms, the conveyor belt pushing users from newly banned highs onto traditional illegal drugs, or newer, potentially more dangerous legal highs, must be brought to a halt. The only way to do this is to exercise restraint, and demand a minimum threshold of evidence of harm before banning. We need to recognise that to keep less harmful substances legal is as important as making more harmful ones illegal.