The CDPRG's 2021 Drug Policy Highlights — The Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group
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The CDPRG's 2021 Drug Policy Highlights

With huge thanks to our collaborators, supporters and everybody who has followed our projects, we look back on our advances in drug policy reform in 2021.

2021 draws to a close marked by the publication of our latest report Making UK Drug Policy a Success: Reforming the Policymaking process

Launched by our unremunerated chairman Crispin Blunt on BBC Politics and publicly released on Friday 17 December 2021, the report and accompanying infographic revealing cross-party support (even among Conservative MPs) for giving drug policy an evidence-based update was sent to the Prime Minister and ministers from six Government departments relevant to drugs ahead of the publication of their 2021 drugs strategy.

More about the report: Supported by new polling data on MPs’ cross-party support for giving UK drug policy an evidence-based update, the report makes 23 recommendations for improving how UK drug policy is made. These relate to understanding the problem, setting goals, policy design, costing, local commissioning, outcome monitoring, evaluation, accountability and overall policy improvement. To identify better ways forward for drug policymaking in the UK, the CDPRG’s consultation process included individual expert interviews and two roundtables with the Institute for Government and DrugScience, on cross-cutting policies and building capacity for research and evaluation.

Our other flagship publication this year, Steps Toward Evidence-Based Regulation of Controlled Cannabinoids in Non-Medicinal CBD Products, was published on 26 February 2021.

This report’s focus is on the regulation of cannabinoids, and ahead of public release was sent to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) with the intention of assisting them in fulfilling a recent Home Office request for advice related to consumer CBD goods. The CDPRG recommends urgently clarifying and adapting existing policy to ensure that it reflects the available scientific evidence on cannabinoids and is fit for purpose.

Tenacious Labs was selected by the Officers of the APPG to act as its secretariat. Tenacious Labs is an independent company that owns retail brands in the CBD sector, and provides information and analysis on the sector. Tenacious Labs have no direct or indirect financial arrangements with any political figures in any territory or country.

The APPG for CBD products was established on 17th November 2021, co-chaired by Crispin Blunt and Baroness Zahida Manzoor.

The APPG for CBD Products is a cross‐party group focused on encouraging the development of UK regulation on CBD products that reflects evidence-based policy, clear regulation, and the most certain basis for investors and entrepreneurs to safely serve the public and wider national interests engaged in public wellness and economy.

Addressing the deadlock on medicinal cannabis access for the UK, Crispin Blunt spoke in support of a Private Members Bill on Medical Cannabis Access, launched by APPG for Drug Policy Reform co-chair Jeff Smith on 13 December 2021

The bill aims to address the lack of medical cannabis provision in the UK by increasing numbers of prescribing GP’s and addressing roadblocks to NHS provision of cannabis-based medicinal products.

The majority of the British public support the rescheduling of psilocybin

YouGov polling was commissioned by Drug Science, the leading independent scientific body on drugs in the UK, and conducted by PsiloNautica, a UK think tank set up to investigate the future of psychedelic medicine and integrated therapy. The majority of the public (59 per cent) would consider therapy assisted by psychedelics for themselves “if they had a condition for which there was strong evidence it could be effective.”

The CDPRG supported the survey, specifically the question on #PsilocybinAccessRights for veterans, who remain in dire need of better mental health treatments on discharge following their return to the UK, a cause on which we are proud to collaborate with Heroic Hearts UK of which Crispin is a trustee, which he discusses in this Veterans in Politics podcast (18 May 2021) and in Men’s Health (24 September 2021).

Ahead of these results, the rescheduling of psilocybin was approved by the Prime Minister in a meeting with Crispin Blunt on 26 May 2021

Psilocybin drug law UK change: UK faces 'research blackout' if action not taken – MP warns | Politics | News | Express.co.uk

This sanction, which is yet to be followed-up by action from the Home Office due to a legislative misinterpretation of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, was closely followed by the launch of our international #PsilocybinAccessRights campaign, in collaboration with Mind Medicine Australia and the Canadian Psychedelic Association.

Our’ Magic Eye’ #PsilocybinAccessRights (#PAR) postcards were conceptualised by Tara Austin, Consulting Director at Ogilvy, and designed by visual artist Phan Tu.

Speaking at Breaking Convention: The Intermission on 14 August 2021, our Psilocybin Project Rescheduling Manager Timmy Davis spoke alongside pioneering psychedelic researchers Robin Carhart-Harris and David Erritzoe about this growing campaign, which has developed an international network of collaborating organisations over the course of the year.

Timmy introduced the campaign and our related activity around rescheduling psilocybin at a number of other events in 2021, including the Drugs and Alcohol (DNA) conference at Royal Holloway in April, (also featuring talks by Rosalind Stone and Amber Moore), and The Psychedelic Society’s “Rescheduling Psilocybin: the Urgency and What You Can Do” with Rudi Fortson QC, ClusterBusters’ UK's Vice President Ainslie Course and psychedelic clinician Dr. Sarah Tai.

Breaking Convention returns for its next full conference on 1-3 July 2022; we hope to see you there!

Supporting the recommendations made in The Independent Review of Drugs part 2 by Prof. Dame Carol Black

The CDPRG has participated in multiple events dedicated to advancing evidence-based drug policy in direct support of Dame Carol Black’s recommendations in 2021.

Ahead of their publication in July, Crispin Blunt and fellow Conservative MP and NHS psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Poulter who sits on the CDPRG’s policy council co-chaired an event by the Westminster Policy Forum at which Dame Carol Black presaged her recommendations, drawing attention to the urgency with which drug treatment and support services must be upgraded to reverse the UK’s current rising levels of addiction and its drug death rate.

Dame Carol Black’s recommendations were published on 08 July 2021, and the CDPRG welcomed the Government’s creation of the new Joint Combatting Drugs Unit as an initial step towards greater cross-departmental coordination on drugs. (See press release, and read our breakdown of the recommendations, by Junior Researcher Iram Salam.)

The CDPRG gained a new Managing Director and Director of Research in 2021

Tarsilo Onuluk founded CDPRG alongside Chairman Crispin Blunt MP in 2018 and has been at the forefront of shaping and developing our organisation ever since. He was a key policy figure during Parliament’s decision to reschedule medicinal cannabis for prescription, is a leader of the Secretariat for the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Drug Policy Reform, and has helped set up the APPG on CBD Products.

Dr. Toby Webster is a medical doctor with interests in the reduction of drug harms, facilitating valuable research on controlled substances, and evidence-based national drug policy. As well as his work for the CDPRG, he works part-time as a doctor in emergency medicine in South London.

(Read more about our two new permanent team members and the CDPRG team at large.)

We hosted two side-events at the Conservative Party Conference (03-06 October 2021)

Our in-person drinks reception Teesside Squared explored options for delivering increasingly effective treatment options to address drug-related heath and social issues in Teesside, and was attended by Tees. representatives including Deputy Mayor Meika Smiles and Police and Crime Commissioner Steve Turner.

Chaired by Rob Ralphs at Manchester Metropolitan University, the panel included former undercover drugs detective Neil Woods of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership UK, our chairman Crispin Blunt MP, Coordinator of Scotland’s Naloxone Programme Kristen Horsburguh of the Scottish Drug Deaths Forum, Clinical lead at the Middlesborough HAT clinic Daniel Ahmed, Prof. Daniele Zullino, Head of the Addiction Division at the University Hospital of Geneva, and Jonathan Bowden, advanced practitioner at Tees. Public Health.

We are incredibly grateful for the academic support of our Policy Council, whose assessment is instrumental to the academic quality of our projects, and likewise to our supporters for the opportunity to carry it out.