PALAD - General Principles & Aims

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PALAD advocates drug regulations that are more effective for minimising harm. Harm may be caused not only by the inappropriate use of drugs by individuals and organisations but also by the inappropriate use of regulatory legislation by authorities.

General Principles:

Regulation of activities:

We recognise that all activities may have harmful consequences and that authorities have a responsibility to regulate the activities of individuals and organisations to minimise harmful consequences while maximising beneficial consequences. There are two types of harmful consequence: self-harm and harm to others. People have a greater right to risk self-harm than they have to risk harming others and authorities have a greater responsibility to prevent harm to others than to prevent self-harm.

Activities may have four types of consequence: beneficial, neutral, harmful to those persuing the activity or harmful to others not persuing that activity. Each type of consequence requires a different regulatory intervention by authorities. Education is used to encourage beneficial consequences and to discourage consequences harmful to those persuing the activity. Legislation is only be used to prevent consequences that risk harming others. Medical treatment is appropriate for anyone harmed. [prohibitionists should agree so far]

Regulation of drug use:

The majority of people use recreational drugs to reduce stress and aid socialising. Many people use alcohol and caffeine, the most popular drugs, for these reasons. Drug use may have beneficial consequences. However those who suffer most from stress - often poverty-related stress - are more likely to use drugs excessively, risking harm to themselves or to others. The World Health Organisation estimates that 6% of deaths worldwide are caused by tobacco use, 1.5% by alcohol use and 0.2% by illicit drug use.

The regulation of drug use by authorities should aim to maximise beneficial consequences and minimise harmful consequences using education to minimise self-harm and legislation only to prevent harm to others. It is currently unacceptable to use legislation to prevent legal drug use that risks self-harm, food use that risks obesity or recreational activities that risk accident. For these activities legislation is only aimed at preventing consumers from harming others and producers/manufacturers/suppliers from harming consumers. Education is the regulatory mechanism used to minimise self-harm for all activities other than the use of illegal drugs.

Regulations that fail to clearly define the boundary between self-harm and harm to others may themselves cause harm to others. The inappropriate use of legislation to prevent self-harm from illegal drug use results in punishment for those who have not harmed anyone else and this inevitably increases the stresses that initially lead to their excessive self-harming drug use. The RAND Corporation's Drug Policy Research Center says "approaching this public health problem with criminal justice solutions poses significant threats to the already vulnerable social fabric of many of our minority communities".

Convergence of drug policies:

Recent trends in legal drug regulation show an increased awareness of the need to use legislation to prevent drug use that harms others (e.g. drink-driving, passive smoking). Trends in illegal drug regulation show an increased awareness of the need to provide education and treatment to those whose drug use causes self-harm. These trends indicate a general convergence of legal and illegal drug regulations, converging on the boundary between self-harm and harm to others. A future integrated drugs policy would cover the use of all recreational drugs and would use education to encourage beneficial use and to discourage use harmful to the user and use legislation only to prevent harm to others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PALAD AIMS

PALAD has four general objectives:

• To improve understanding of the causes and effects of drugs use, the drugs trade and the regulations that affect these activities
• To improve understanding of the costs and benefits of drugs use, the drugs trade and the regulations that affect these activities
• To develop an integrated evidence-based drug regulatory model that minimises all drug-related harm
• To contribute to the goal of improving regulation by encouraging greater consistency and integration between drug control policies and other social policies, including health, education, law enforcement and economics

Specific objectives of PALAD include campaigning for:

• drug policies that are evidence-based, cost-effective and sustainable
• drug policy making that is transparent, accountable and includes democratic participation
• drug policies that tax the trade in drugs to cover the costs of drug-related services (education, treatment and legislation) and to prevent organised crime from profitting from the drugs trade
• social policies that reduce the stresses affecting those who use drugs excessively
• drug policies that are consistent with education and health policies: the consistent use of the word ‘drug’ to mean all drugs; for each drug clear identification of drug use that is reasonably safe, harmful to user and harmful to others; the encouragement of individual responsibility for health and informed choice; the treatment of those suffering from drug-related harm
• law enforcement to focus only on preventing drug use that risks harm to others
• drug consumer rights: protection from harm from producers (lack of quality & quantity control and harm warnings), from suppliers (selling drugs to children or alongside products for children) or from regulators (punishment for exercising informed choice while risking no harm to others)
• drug trade rights: the removal of barriers to competition between the legal and illegal drugs trade; nations whose natural resources include drug plants enabled to sustainably exploit those resources as currently permitted for nations exploiting tobacco
• drug policies that do not discriminate against, socially exclude and punish drug-using minorities who risk harm to no one but themselves
• authorities to accept the World Health Organisation’s statement that "people with substance dependence are among the most marginalized in societies and are in need of treatment and care. To incarcerate offenders for drug use and dependence is not an effective prevention or treatment strategy"
• authorities to implement article 14 of the UN’s Declaration on the Guiding Principles of Demand Reduction which says "Governments should consider providing, as an alternative to conviction or punishment, that abusers of drugs should undergo treatment, education, aftercare, rehabilitation and social reintegration".

Systems Theory:

We believe a 'systems theory' approach is most appropriate for understanding the complexity of drug issues. Systems theory is the scientific study of holism - how the whole system works.
Many current approaches simplify the situation by isolating one part of the system but too often they attribute too much importance to the particular factors they study while ignoring factors they do not study.
A systems approach is the only way to examine how each part of the system affects the whole. It is able to explain epidemic effects, positive and negative feedback effects that can rapidly alter a system (known as non-linear effects since they do not increase in a straight line but instead exponentially).

More about the use of systems theory in drug policy modelling, including an article by the RAND Corporation's Drug Policy Research Center for the UN's Bulletin on Narcotics is here