This blog was written by Hope Humphreys

The Government has a message about drugs: Drugs are bad, don’t use them, and if you do, we will punish you severely. End of message. The Government prides itself on sending the “right” message, but is it?

The message I receive from the Government is that it’s an unthinking, cruel body of people that you disobey at your peril. They are in office now and nothing must put that at risk. They lock up the disobedient, and sacrifice others. They refuse to take control of the supply of drugs away from criminals, for fear of sending the message that drugs are somehow acceptable. So, if a teenager dares to be disobedient, and tries some dodgy unregulated drug, it’s their fault if they die. Their death will be an example to others, maybe put them off being so foolish.

But anyone who has had children, or knows anything about them, will also know that they aren’t always obedient. Often they do things we would prefer they didn’t. It appears that the Government sees the deaths of those young people as collateral damage, for the greater good. If they allowed people to test the safety of their drugs, that might seem to condone their use. In 2014 there were a record number of accidental drug poisonings in the UK: fifty people died every week.

Our Government seems to relish punishing people who use or share illegal drugs. They give criminal records to 70,000 people a year for doing it, and over half of those in prison are there for non-violent drug offences.

These policies have had other serious consequences. To avoid the law, many users decided to turn to legal substances that would give them a high. Thus began an undignified race as the Government tried to ban each new concoction as it came along. Many of these new drugs were even more dangerous than the familiar, well-tried, illegal ones. Instead of using cannabis, which grows like a weed, they tried synthetic cannabis, which killed them. Deaths from these kinds of so-called “legal highs” were publicised by the media, who successfully engineered a societal panic about the substances. What the media often neglected to mention, however, was that such deaths are entirely avoidable – they are a direct result of the Government’s drug policy.

Desperately, the Government devised the Psychoactive Substances Bill, which was intended to address the problems caused by banning drugs by banning even more drugs. This rushed-through bill will, with few exceptions, prohibit anything and everything that might give people a high. Criminals must be delighted to have an even larger menu of illegal substances to profit from. A similar bill was passed in Ireland five years ago. The “head” shops that sell these products have gone, but the trade went underground and use of these banned substances has not declined – in fact, it’s risen.

Ignoring this, our Government insists on making their own mistakes, come whatever. This indiscriminate bill was due to become law on April 6th. But reports suggest it has been delayed indefinitely. Rumour has it that our already overburdened police questioned how they were going to be able to enforce the law, and also that the Government needed time to figure out exactly what they had banned. Many of us hope that it will stay in in the long grass and disappear forever.

But what if the Government decided that drugs were much too dangerous to be left in the hands of criminals? What if they agreed that young people are far too precious to be allowed to play Russian roulette with untested substances? If they admitted that people who use drugs aren’t bad people, but just like you and me, or even some of them? What if they realised those who have problems with addiction need help and compassion. What if the Government recognised that prison is not the place for non-violent drug offenders, and they shouldn’t saddle so many of our youth with criminal records, hampering their futures forever? What if they decided that every drug, legal and illegal, should be scientifically assessed for its dangers so that there could be fact-based, honest, drug education. And what if, most importantly, drugs were taken out of the criminal justice system altogether and dealt with as the health and social issue that they are?

If we had Government that could admit that they had been wrong – a Government with the wisdom and humility to realise that their policies were more harmful than the drugs themselves – it would be a message they could be proud of. It would mean that they cared enough to change and were willing to use evidence, science and humanity to shape their drug policies.

Until the Government brings the supply of drugs under effective legal control, they will continue to have blood on their hands. Only they have the power to change the law; we must endeavour to persuade them to do so. Who wants yet another year of rising deaths, more overcrowded prisons, and thousands more branded for life with a criminal record. Change has to happen. To quote my friend Anne-Marie, whose 15-year-old daughter died after taking unregulated ecstasy, “I want David Cameron to stand by my daughter’s grave and tell me that the drug laws are working.”