[New report] Making UK Drug Policy a Success: Reforming the Policymaking Process

Bad practice in drug policymaking is the hidden driver of the UK’s current crisis, finds the CDPRG’s new report — with polling data showing the majority of MPs from all parties believe it needs an evidence-based update

Three-quarters or more MPs (even within the Conservative party) believe it is time to update UK drug laws based on evidence, new polling data commissioned by the Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group (CDPRG) shows. 

The political climate is overwhelmingly ready for drug policy reform as demonstrated by this survey of 105 MPs which was commissioned by the independent think tank the CDPRG in June-July 2021. 

The data reveals that increasingly evidence-based drug policies would be welcomed by the majority of MPs. This includes the majority of Conservative MPs polled, the Parliamentary demographic traditionally associated with the greatest  resistance to innovation in this area: 

- 72% agree the process of making policy about controlled drugs should make more use of evidence and research; 

- 75% share the sentiment that policy about controlled drugs is such a  controversial issue, it can be difficult to have an objective debate about the best solutions; and 

- 85% (and 90% of all MPs) agree that improved cross-departmental coordination would better help to tackle the health crime and social problems associated with controlled drugs. 

The full polling data incontrovertibly dispels the myth that there is predominant resistance among MPs to change in this area, which has historically been a barrier to drug policy reform. (See “4. Polling data infographic” in the Press Pack for full polling data highlights.) 

On Friday 26 November, these results, which are unpublished elsewhere, were sent by Crispin Blunt MP as part of an exclusive briefing to the Prime Minister and six Secretaries of State. This came ahead of the publication of the first part of the new Government drugs strategy, on 06 December 2021. 

In a letter to the Prime Minister, Crispin Blunt, who is the unremunerated chairman of the Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group, said: 

“Drug policy across the world is shifting, and following the commission of Dame Carol Black’s independent review along with the upcoming drugs strategy, the time is right for us to grasp this complex area once and for all and reap the enormous opportunities that getting this right will bring to the UK.”

Unless the way drug policy is made changes, it will not be possible to devise drug policies with better outcomes. Drug policy outcomes have worsened consistently following previous drug strategies, the report points out. 

Blunt told Ministers:

“Class A drug use has increased significantly over the past two decades; drug-related homicides accounted for a 20% increase in total homicides between 2013/14 and 2017/18; and the UK was the overdose capital of Europe for a second year in a row in 2020.” 

Calling for the structural reform of the UK’s drug policymaking system, he said:

“It would be foolish to rely on existing Governmental drug policymaking machinery, given this track record, to produce strategies of the calibre required to buck these wretched trends.” 

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, on cross-cutting policies and building capacity for research and evaluation. 

The report aims to support the realisation of the recommendations for improving drug treatment services and local coordination made by Dame Carol Black in part 2 of her independent review. 

Addressing the national drugs crisis will be instrumental to achieving other key government aims, like the levelling up agenda, asserts Black, who is a key consultant on the forthcoming drugs strategy. 

Supporting statements 

“Historically, governments have been nervous of drug policy change. But things are changing and it is now a misperception that both the general public and Members of Parliament are unready for change. Anxiety about the risk of change helped reinforce an innovation-shy drugs policy that has served a maintenance of the status quo that is increasingly deadly. CDPRG, which exists in order to make evidence available to parliamentarians and bridge the gap between research and science and all policy makers necessary evidence has now researched parliamentary opinion and the results reveal that the majority of MPs, in line with the British public, recognise that current drug policy isn’t working and are ready for drug policy reform.” (Crispin Blunt MP, Chairman of the Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group) 

“In the nine years since the UK Drug Policy Commission (UKDPC) established the characteristics of good governance for drug policy, little has changed. However, with a new national drug strategy in the works, with recognition from the very top that things must change, and with new momentum behind solving the coordination problems plaguing previous attempts, we are optimistic. This Government knows it can do better, and we have updated the lessons of the past so that we can all learn from them.” (Dr. Toby Webster, Director of Research) 

“The issues we have identified with the UK drug policymaking machine are not new. We stand on the shoulders of giants in calling out the same methodological flaws that have made the UK’s drugs landscape a train wreck over successive decades. The better ways forward we recommend for UK drug policy as a result of our roundtables are also not technically new, they derive from successful policymaking in other areas. What is new is the strong political support for a fresh approach, with 90% of MPs endorsing the increased collaboration between different Government departments that we recommend.” (Amber Moore, Senior Researcher)

‘This is a thoughtful and powerful document. It makes great sense. I just hope it gets the attention of government that it deserves’ (Prof. Mike Barnes, Chair of the Medical Cannabis Clinicians Society)

Information for press 

To arrange interviews with Crispin Blunt, the report’s authors and/or to ask any questions about this work, get in touch with our Outreach Manager Ros Stone: ros.stone@cdprg.co.uk.

About Making UK drug policy a success: reforming the policymaking process 

Political release: 26 November 2021 

Public release: 17 December 2021 

Foreword: Crispin Blunt MP 

Authors: Amber Moore, Dr. Toby Webster, Dr. Dave King, Rosalind Stone 

Junior Researcher: Iram Salam 

Design: Timmy Davis 

Polling of MPs: Savanta 

Roundtables: “Delivering Cross-Cutting Policies,” with the Institute for Government in July 2021  and “Building Evidence: Data Systems, Research Strategy and Evaluation,” with DrugScience in September 2021

Access the press pack

Contents:

1) PRESS RELEASE | Bad practice in drug policymaking is the hidden driver of the UK’s current crisis, finds the CDPRG’s new report — with polling data showing the majority of MPs from all parties believe it needs
an evidence-based update

2) [The report in short] - 1 page PDF key findings summary

3) [Summary document] Making UK Drug Policy a Success: Executive Summary and Recommendations

4) [Polling data infographic] MP thoughts on drug policy, polling data highlights

5) [Letter to the Prime Minister] from Crispin Blunt MP, accompanying the briefing sent on 26 November 2021

6) [The report in full, including foreword by Crispin Blunt] Making UK Drug Policy a Success: Reforming the Policymaking Process (public release: 17 December 2021)

PRESS RELEASE: The Prime Minister signed off on rescheduling psilocybin. Why are the Home Office failing to act?

In a private meeting on 26 May 2021, the Prime Minister told Crispin Blunt that he had signed off on rescheduling psilocybin the previous day. This is understood to follow a formal Policy Unit submission. Psilocybin the active component of “magic mushrooms”) has potential as a treatment for a plethora of psychiatric and medical conditions including depression, addiction and PTSD. 

Yet, many proposed trials, which could address a huge unmet clinical need both in the UK, and globally, fall by the wayside due to the extended time frames, increased costs, and prohibitive stigma associated with researching controlled drugs in Schedule 1 of the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001 (MDR 2001).

Rescheduling psilocybin, is intended to have a very specific effect: benefiting scientific researchers. Moving the substance to Schedule 2 would make psilocybin easier, cheaper and quicker to use in clinical trials. But the law change would have no effect on psilocybin’s availability or use as a recreational context. Psilocybin would still be a Class A drug for anyone looking to consume it outside of an approved clinical setting. 

Recent YouGov poll data shows that across all demographics a majority (55%) of the UK public supports a change in the law to facilitate research into psilocybin for treatment development, with the don’t knows excluded, this is a 4-1 view.

The Home Office have failed to act on the Prime Minister’s instruction, by delaying on granting the simple, repeated request to commission the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) to review its designation as a Schedule 1 substance and act on its recommendations, even though psilocybin has been recognised by the HO as a promising medical and psychiatric intervention. The reason given for not actioning the review of psilocybin’s scheduling is that it has not yet achieved market authorisation. 

But market authorisation is not a prerequisite for rescheduling as the HO claim, and as such the decision not to call for an urgent ACMD review of psilocybin on this grounds is unfounded. Such a lack of action which does not recognise the substance’s non-medical scientific research utility and is equivalent to complicity in the abdication of the UK’s position as a world leader in life sciences research and an active hindrance in the development of new treatments for mental health conditions.

While the HO fails to act, the UK is experiencing a ‘brain drain’ on our psychedelic researchers. The urgent rescheduling of psilocybin which would remove barriers to its application in life sciences research, and enable the UK’s continued participation in medical psychedelic development, an industry which is predicted to reach a value of £10 billion by 2027. While the UK HO fails to act, North American neighbours Canada and the US continue to capitalise on UK science. The flight of Dr Robin Carhart-Harris to the US is indicative of the UK’s abdication of its position as world leader in the space.

There is no escape from the fact that new mental health treatments are needed. The Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group produced the Medicinal Value of Psilocybin: reducing restrictions on research and treatment report with the Adam Smith Institute in June 2020, documenting the critical status of the UK’s mental health crisis: mental illnesses, including substance misuse, account for over 22% of disability in the UK, the largest of any medical illness category. Depression is the largest contributing factor to suicide, which remains the leading cause of death in men under 50 and women under 35.

Crispin Blunt, unremunerated chairman of then CDPRG, says, “This delay matters. In the 110 days that have passed since the PM’s sign off nearly 2,000 people have taken their own lives; the majority probably preventable when this research is translated into treatment.

In light of the worsening mental health crisis and the sheer number of people taking their own lives daily, the dogged determination to prevent change that characterises the Home Office response is simply not good enough. It is time that they stop coming up with nonsense excuses, devoid of an evidential base, which mean senior political decision makers of all governments are regarded with rich contempt by scientists and researchers who know what opportunities are being denied. “

For interviews with Crispin Blunt, contact our outreach coordinator Ros Stone: ros.stone@cdprg.co.uk

Launch of the Sign, Send, Subscribe campaign to reschedule psilocybin for the UK's mental health

PRESS RELEASE: The Conservative Drug Policy Reform Group launches the Sign, Send, Subscribe campaign, uniting voices across the UK in a call for the urgent rescheduling of psilocybin to allow the development of pressingly needed new mental health treatment approaches.

The Sign, Send, Subscribe campaign calls for a Home Office review of the Schedule 1 status of psilocybin, the active component of “magic mushrooms.”

This is your invitation to get involved.

The aim of the campaign is to enable breakthrough mental health treatments to be developed. Especially in the wake of the coronavirus lockdown, fresh mental health treatment approaches are needed to counteract the crippling social and economic costs of the UK’s already critical mental health crisis.

“The reports of those lucky enough to have received [psilocybin-assisted] treatment legally read as unequivocal endorsements, yet the possibility of scaling up the research necessary to roll out these treatments on the widespread scale so desperately needed remains at almost impossible reach,” says Conservative MP for Reigate and unenumerated Chairman of the CDPRG Crispin Blunt, speaking of the restrictions posed by psilicybin’s current Schedule 1 status in the forward of Medicinal Use of Psilocybin.

This new report was co-published by the CDPRG and the Adam Smith Institute on 27 July 2020 and sent in advance to the Home Office, calling for the rescheduling of psilocybin. Underscoring the recommendations made by the report’s authors, the Sign, Send, Subscribe campaign calls for the urgent movement to Schedule 2 of the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001 on a research-only basis, to enable clinicians to study its therapeutic potential more easily.

It is open to all individuals and organisations who wish to support drastically needed improvements to the mental health of the nation through the rescheduling of psilocybin.

Those who wish to participate in the call for this simple but pivotal change can:

1. Sign the Gov.uk petition, “Reschedule psilocybin to reduce unnecessary barriers to mental health research.” (Currently awaiting publication. All participating organisations will share the link with their audiences when it is available.)

2. Send a letter to your MP, using the simple template letter provided to explain the issue.

3. Subscribe to the mailing lists of participating organisations for updates on the progress of the campaign and additional initiatives to get involved in.

Letters sent already have had positive replies, with those contacted, including Peter Bone, MP for Wellingborough and Rushton, agreeing to raise the issue in Parliament. Campaigners are taking to Twitter to share MP’s responses.

Psilocybin has already demonstrated greater efficacy in early clinical trials than any currently available treatments in alleviating many of society’s most prevalent mental health conditions. Conditions in which it is understood to be helpful include, but are limited to, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), addiction, eating disorders, end-of-life anxiety in cancer patients and cluster headaches.

But it current Schedule 1 status creates unnecessary roadblocks in the form of increased costs, timeframes and stigma, which are currently preventing the UK’s researchers from developing widely available treatments befitting the scope and scale of the nation’s unmet treatment needs.

Sign, Send Subscribe is being vocally supported by individuals and organisations including Wales Police and Crime Commissioner Arfon Jones, the DrugScience Medical Psychedelics Working Group, led by Prof. Jo Neill and Prof. David Nutt, veterans’ mental health organisation Heroic Hearts UK, the Maudsley Psychedelic Society led by Dr. James Rucker, the Imperial Centre for Psychedelic Research, the UK’s Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP) led by former undercover drugs operative and Good Cop, Bad War (2016) author Neil Woods, and Clusterbusters which supports research into cluster headaches — a notoriously painful and hard to treat condition for which psychedelic-assisted treatments show unique promise.

The Sign, Send, Subscribe campaign is also being widely covered in regional and national press. "This [campaign] could save lives and needs enough MPs to support it to change the schedule," Woods, who is a former undercover drugs operative, told The Hereford Times. "I challenge our MPs to publicly support this. It should be easy for them to do so or explain why they don't support the mental health of veterans, police or those suffering with PTSD." In The Sunday Times, police commissioner Arfon Jones said, “I think it’s very important that we do what we can to improve the wellbeing of the population, especially the large numbers who suffer from depression,” he said. “And a lot of them are not treatable by conventional, traditional medications.”

“According to the commissioner, [rescheduling psilocybin] could improve the lives of people suffering mental illness and save the NHS billions of pounds,” reports Wales Online. “There was an urgent need to act quickly because the isolation caused by the coronavirus lockdown had had a devastating impact on people’s mental health, [Jones] said.” “New research from scientists clearly shows psilocybin has been wrongly classified as being harmful,” Jones told The Mirror, urging Government Officials to listen to the recommendations made by leading scientists in connection with the Medicinal Use of Psilocybin report and the Sign, Send Subscribe campaign.

“Psilocybin should be rescheduled. At this point it’s unethical to keep it prohibited given its transformative effects on depression and very low risk of harm if used in a therapeutic context with appropriate screening,” said Prof. Julian Savulescu, Director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and Co-Director of the Wellcome Centre for Ethics & Humanities, in a set of recommendations for the rescheduling of psilocybin from leading academics which has been sent to the Home Office.

As well as signing, sending and/or subscribing, all individuals or organisations wishing to raise awareness of the need to reduce current barriers to mental health treatment research can get further involved by contacting CDPRG Outreach Coordinator Ros Stone on ros.stone@cdprg.co.uk.

Links

The campaign page: https://www.cdprg.co.uk/psilocybin

Select press coverage:

• “Police commissioner keen to discover how magic mushrooms can really be...” The Daily Express, Jaymi McCann, 09 August 2020

• “Police commissioner: magic mushrooms spirit away the blues,” The Sunday Times, Hannah Al-Othman, 09 August 2020

• “Magic mushrooms should be legalised to save the NHS billions, says cop boss,” The Mirror, Alan Selby, 08 August 2020

• “Welsh police boss wants magic mushrooms reclassified and used to treat mental health problems,” ITV News, 06 August 2020

• “Magic mushrooms could avert mental health crisis,” Cambrian News, 06 August 2020

• “‘Magic mushrooms’ could avert looming mental health crisis, says North Wales police boss,” Wales Online, Steve Bagnall, 06 August 2020

• “How my secret fight against drug gangs made me ill,” The Hereford Times, Ben Goddard speaks to LEAP’s Neil Woods, 03 August 2020

Medicinal Use of Psilocybin, full report, by Dr. James Rucker (King’s College London), David King, Dr. Daniel D’Hotman, Dr. Jesse Schnall, Timmy Davis and Prof. Jo Neill (Manchester University).

Medicinal Use of Psilocybin, press pack, containing:

➢ Press Release (4 pages including author quotes)

➢ Author Bios (2 pages)

➢ Supporting statements (1 page) 1-2 page documents to summarise specific arguments: ➢ The economic case for rescheduling

➢ The scale of UK mental illness and how psilocybin could be gamechanger

➢ What's the scientific justification for current S1 status?

➢ A research-only model: how to reschedule without increasing harms/crime

Press release: “Home Office imply there’s no need to reschedule psilocybin - Crispin Blunt MP launches economic investigation in response,” CDPRG, 05 August 2020

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