Main new polling from the APPG for drug coverage reform demonstrates the extent to which the general public are forward of politicians on embracing adjustments to our drug legal guidelines, and provides to a rising physique of proof dismissing the caricature of the ‘crimson wall’ as a socially conservative backwards-land.
The analysis, carried out by Redfield and Wilton on behalf of the cross-party group of MPs, exhibits clear public assist in favour of the introduction of overdose prevention centres, drug testing providers, naloxone provision and the legalisation of hashish. The polling additionally discovered {that a} majority of the general public assume that the federal government’s drug insurance policies have been unsuccessful in tackling the provision and use of medicine lately – unsurprising provided that medication are cheaper, purer and simpler to supply than ever earlier than.
It additionally requested voters in ‘crimson wall’ seats particularly for his or her ideas on potential reforms to our drug legal guidelines, a lot of that are prominently advocated for by specialists and campaigning teams, such because the Labour Marketing campaign for Drug Coverage Reform. In actual fact, crimson wall voters have been extra strongly in favour of measures equivalent to drug testing amenities at festivals, and wider provision of the life-saving anti-overdose drug Naloxone, than the final inhabitants.
The outcomes of this analysis go away Keir Starmer’s Labour out of excuses in terms of staying silent on the necessity for drug coverage reform. Starmer’s political challenge is unashamedly involved with profitable again crimson wall voters misplaced in 2019, exemplified by his appointment of ‘crimson wall’ polling guru Deborah Mattinson, who actually wrote the ebook on the ‘crimson wall’, as his director of technique.
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Labour’s refusal to champion the pressing reforms wanted to deal with the UK drug loss of life epidemic, which has seen deaths charges enhance 88% since 2010, have to be considered on this context. It’s not for a scarcity of confirmed coverage options, slightly it’s the brutal actuality of a political calculation primarily based on unchallenged Westminster knowledge that, till now, declared that drug coverage reform was electorally poisonous – particularly in these essential, legendary ‘crimson wall’ seats which would be the focus of the following normal election.
This perspective is maybe greatest evidenced within the forceful backlash towards Sadiq Khan’s proposals to determine a ‘London Medication Fee’ to look at the effectiveness of our legal guidelines on hashish. Shadow cupboard members sniped in WhatsApp teams about how drug coverage reform would lose Labour a normal election, as an alternative advocating for the naming and shaming of drug customers in an try to look ‘powerful’ on medication and the individuals who use them.
This polling – together with comparable analysis launched by YouGov this week – clearly dispels this fiction as soon as and for all and makes plain that removed from being a flip off, wise drug coverage reforms may very well be a vote winner, particularly within the ‘crimson wall’. That is consistent with earlier ‘crimson wall’ polling on different points equivalent to trans rights and public possession – all of which counsel that the ‘crimson wall’ isn’t any extra socially conservative than the remainder of the nation.
Fifty years of prohibition and criminalisation have utterly failed – delivering document ranges of drug use, and document numbers of drug deaths. Labour shouldn’t be afraid of placing ahead the constructive case for reform, explaining that measures equivalent to hashish legalisation, overdose prevention centres and drug testing at occasions all have worldwide precedent, and would save lives, big quantities of cash, and liberate police assets to deal with different, extra severe crime.
The final fortnight, with the discharge of those new polls alongside the shameful drug loss of life statistics for 2021 ought to function a get up name for a Labour social gathering that has to this point engaged in a race to the ridiculous with the Conservatives in terms of drug coverage reform. In terms of addressing and assuaging the hurt medication trigger to society and to people, the 2 principal events egg one another on in a dogmatic and sadistic virility contest aimed toward proving to voters within the ‘crimson wall’ that they’re the hardest social gathering of all of them.
As a former director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer is in a uniquely credible place to argue for these lengthy overdue reforms, measures which are confirmed to be efficient, and that we all know are each in style and utterly vital to handle the UK’s drug loss of life epidemic.
Individuals who use medication are, significantly in a problematic method, a number of the most weak folks in our society – typically dwelling on the intersection of a number of disadvantageous circumstances equivalent to poverty, psychological well being points, trauma and abuse.
Keir Starmer can not merely ignore the 1000’s dying every year from medication – greater than from all knife crime and street visitors accidents mixed – citing worry of electoral backlash. Reforming our counterproductive drug legal guidelines, and reframing discussions about individuals who use medication as a public well being problem, slightly than of 1 criminality, are causes that Labour needs to be boldly championing – providing a real various to 12 years of austerity, stigma and indifference.
The scenario is just too alarming for indifference to suffice as something apart from complicity. The injury being finished is just too deep. The burgeoning prices too nice. The casualties too quite a few. The reasons have run out.
