Work doesn't make drugs | Professional Safety Magazine

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Six months into the Labor government, it is becoming clear that it is focusing on certain crimes (most notably, violence against women and girls, VAW; and antisocial behavior) and not the others (drug addiction). Unfortunately, the real world isn't like that, writes Mark Rowe.

Synthetic drugs wreak havoc wherever they are found, interior minister says Lady Diana Johnson ” said last week, announcing that many drugs of this type have been banned. She added: “I am concerned about the growing presence of these drugs on the streets of the UK and I don't think enough has been done in recent years to bring them under control. If illegal drugs are such a serious problem that has not been addressed (by previous Conservative governments she said nothing), it made her next remark all the more surprising, about the approach of his government on drugs, which we hope to expose later this year.

In other words, she could not say that after 18 months of Labor government, it would publish a drugs strategy. Contrast this with all of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer's ministerial statements on the outbreak of violence and meetings, making it clear to police and others called in that VAW are the priority. She also suggested that drug strategy published in December 2021 under the signature of the Prime Minister at the time, Boris Johnson, was missing. Yet it is difficult to see how a Labor strategy could usefully complement Johnson's more than 20,000 words. Additionally, its title was From Harm to Hope: A 10-Year Anti-Drug Plan to Reduce Crime and Save Lives. This implied not only that Boris Johnson and his party would be in power for ten years (how did that happen?), but, to state the obvious, that the plan would be relevant for all of the 2020s. Labor Party will be significantly different? This is an example of what Bagehot's column in The Economist has outlined in recent weeks; The UK government is faced with a process of investigating and writing documents rather than making decisions.

Good policy

That Labor places so much emphasis on VAW and relatively little emphasis on illegal drugs is good politics. VAWG appealed. Before the election, senior Labor figures, such as the current Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper and Shadow Justice Secretary Emily Thornberry (who was not appointed by Starmer) made this clear in Thornberry's speeches, for example, a year ago at a Fabian Society panel sponsored by Mitié that not only was the violence bad, but it was enough; VAWG was something personal for them. A woman sexually harassed on a bus, a person victim of domestic violence, rape, are our sisters, our cousins; we want a safer and better country for our girls. Law-abiding politicians and voters cannot make such a connection with drug addicts. Quite the contrary; drug addicts are generally antisocial by default. They are estranged from their families because they cannot be trusted; they steal to pay for drugs; they set a bad example for all the children in the area.

To go out

The most amateur student of human nature can observe drug addicts in a suburban shopping parade, on a high street, around a major train station (pictured, Birmingham New Street, as an example of zoning taking time to the police, despite the national policy of “good care, good person” to leave the sick to health professionals). Some are more visible and pitiful than others, shuffling their feet, perhaps carrying a blanket over their shoulders to protect them from the cold. But they stand out in a crowded place, to use anti-terrorism jargon: their hair and clothes are disheveled (their addiction destroys any sense of caring for themselves); their complexion is bad (no wonder, they choose to inject toxic substances); they do not transport the goods of law-abiding buyers (addicts have little or no goods, due to their chaotic lifestyle, to use additional jargon).

NBCS Event

They are antisocial in the sense that they live in an informal or intuitive society of drug addicts and greet each other with fists. Like any society, it serves two purposes: to lock up those who are part of it because they are addicted (and the strongest and least well-off addicts may be capable of preying on the weakest and temporarily better off) and isolate ordinary society. They become criminally antisocial when they regularly steal from shops, break locks on parked bicycles or commit any acquisition crime that will allow them to obtain drugs for the day. For the recovering addict who spoke at the National solution to commercial crime (NBCS) last month, featured in the February edition of Professional Security Magazine, was about purse theft (seemed like the best route to take). Violence can occur if a store's employees, often women, challenge thieves by stopping them from using drugs, although the woman said during the NBCS event that she was not the type to start when she was surprised by a security stores (without saying that some thieves actually start).

Businesses are falling victim to repeated shoplifting and anti-social behavior on their high streets, to quote Boris Johnson in the foreword to his 2021 drugs strategy. As if anticipating Diana Johnson's complaint, Boris Johnson also wrote : the old way of doing things doesn't work. He advocated for treating drug abuse not just as a law enforcement issue (although serial offenders should be properly punished), but as a problem for society as a whole to which l The whole government must tackle. Will the Labor Party propose something different, more nuanced? The addict told NBCS that drug addicts, if not treated for their addiction, continue to commit crimes (I've been to prison 28 times, had 57 probation orders that I haven't even never started, countless community orders you go to prison, it's just being paused.)

The catch is that addicts have to want to get rehabilitated (I just thought I've had enough) and getting clean is so hard that not everyone can do it (I'm not going to lie, it's absolutely horrible, I spent ten days in my own vomit, hallucinations, convulsions). Even assuming that enough rehabilitation places are available. Indeed, availability is the overall problem. The woman said she lives on Hagley Road, the worst street in Birmingham, so I'm surrounded by drugs, all day, every day, and I don't care. But that implied that it would be of interest to others.