New drugs policy

[Fambo Number Mive]

The government will aim to provide rehab for 300,000 drug users who carry out half of all thefts, robberies and burglaries, Boris Johnson has said.

The prime minister said the 10-year strategy for England and Wales would also tackle 2,000 county lines gangs.

The £300m gangs crackdown will be joined by the "largest ever investment in treatment", the government said.

Other measures include using dealers' seized phones to message clients and discourage drug use.

Speaking on a visit to Merseyside Police headquarters, Mr Johnson said: "Overwhelmingly, the problem is caused by 300,000 people whose lives are simply chaotic, who are torn apart by their own addiction.

"You've got to help them, you've got to do treatment. But you've also got to come down hard on the county lines gangs."

He said the strategy, which is due to be published in full later on Monday, would also "come down tougher" on so-called lifestyle drug users.

Mr Johnson previously told the Sun on Sunday the government would look at taking away their passports or drivers' licences to discourage them from feeding demand for the trade.

Labour said reforms were "long overdue" and cuts to police budgets had allowed gangs to grow...

Also included in its strategy is the expansion of testing on arrest, with police forces being encouraged to direct drug users towards treatment or other interventions.

Judges will also be given the power to order testing on anyone serving a community sentence for drug-related offences and those who test positive could be jailed...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59540781

On the one hand it sounds like there will be more of a focus on treatment for those using illegal drugs, on the other hand people serving community sentences for drugs related offences can be jailed if they test positive.

Not sure what "lifestyle drug users" are.

...Dr Laura Garius, policy lead at Release, which campaigns for a public health approach to drug laws, said increased funding for treatment was a positive step, but the focus on punishment for supplying drugs or using them recreationally "ensures that the UK remains firmly in a failed war on drugs".

"These backward moves will undermine proposed treatment efforts, and will do little to address the record-high rates of drug-related death and the entrenched racial and social injustice caused by drug law enforcement," she said...

[Paul Calf]

the government would look at taking away their passports

What the fuck is this?

[Sebastian Cobb]

A convenient distraction given the times reported on Westminster drug use this weekend. Of course labour will attack this from the 'not going far enough' angle.

[olliebean]

Speaking on a visit to Merseyside Police headquarters, Mr Johnson said: "Overwhelmingly, the problem is caused by 300,000 people whose lives are simply chaotic, who are torn apart by their own addiction.

Poor choice of words. Those people may be part of the problem, but it isn't caused by them. He could have said, for example, "Overwhelmingly, the problem is caused by the lack of available help for these 300,000 people."

[Buelligan]

Some of the 300,000 -

[Sonny_Jim]

Other measures include using dealers' seized phones to message clients and discourage drug use.

This is bizarrely childish thing to do, really.  Like 'Oooh, we were going to come get you, but we are so hard we'll just let you off with a warning'.  Like anyone at a 3 day rave is going to get a text and go 'pack it up boys, I've just had a very enlightening text and it appears getting high and having the time of my life in the Welsh countryside is the wrong thing to do.  I'm selling the rig and becoming a PCSO'

[Lost Oliver]

This is bizarrely childish thing to do, really.  Like 'Oooh, we were going to come get you, but we are so hard we'll just let you off with a warning'.  Like anyone at a 3 day rave is going to get a text and go 'pack it up boys, I've just had a very enlightening text and it appears getting high and having the time of my life in the Welsh countryside is the wrong thing to do.  I'm selling the rig and becoming a PCSO'

tbf if I was at a rave and I got a text off the police saying that I'd probably lose my mind.

[Buelligan]

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiinggggg, rrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiing!

[Butchers Blind]

Other measures include using dealers' seized phones to message clients and discourage drug use.

Hey client, its the government here, don't do drugs, there's a good chap.

[Mrs Wogans lemon drizzle]

Taking away passports sounds a bit draconian.  How many grams of gak would it take to forfeit trevel?

[dissolute ocelot]

The "take away the passport" thing is going to be like people getting banned for drunk driving - if you have a good lawyer saying "Oh my client really needs his passport to visit his sick mother" then you'll get off for free. It's transparently not going to happen.

I've read that Boris doesn't do any drugs other than heavy drinking and hasn't since his student days, so I wonder if he's annoyed at Gove getting off his tits on cocaine. Get off the white powder and buy some decent brandy! (Positive side is that if Gove does become PM and all this is still on the statute books, he'll have to relax drug laws.)

[Sonny_Jim]

Thing is, drunk driving = loss of license at least makes sense.  You were pissed and driving, you aren't allowed to drive because you were pissed.  You were selling drugs = loss of passport doesn't work the same way.  Unless you were an international mule or a flight risk I can't see the justification for it.

[jobotic]

The "take away the passport" thing is going to be like people getting banned for drunk driving - if you have a good lawyer saying "Oh my client really needs his passport to visit his sick mother" then you'll get off for free. It's transparently not going to happen.

I'm sure that, like most laws, this won't apply to "high value individuals".

[TrenterPercenter]

Taking away passports sounds a bit draconian.  How many grams of gak would it take to forfeit trevel?

This appears to be something Johnson has just blurted out

[Fambo Number Mive]

I note the video in the BBC piece shows Johnson wearing a hat with POLICE on it and a jacket with POLICE on it, even though he is not a police officer (unless he's got bored with being PM and decided to join the Arts and Antiques squad or something). Which is technically an offence.

[Pink Gregory]

Poor choice of words. Those people may be part of the problem, but it isn't caused by them. He could have said, for example, "Overwhelmingly, the problem is caused by the lack of available help for these 300,000 people."

Also presumably there are no systemic factors to their problems, they are 'simply' chaotic.

[JaDanketies]

Dumb that as the rest of the world is decisively moving away from punitive drug policy, we're still leaning into it. At least they are funding some treatment, although I would've thought this should've been comprehensively funded a long time ago and is the lowest-hanging-fruit and the most obvious stitch-in-time-saves-nine example possible.

[thenoise]

I note the video in the BBC piece shows Johnson wearing a hat with POLICE on it and a jacket with POLICE on it, even though he is not a police officer (unless he's got bored with being PM and decided to join the Arts and Antiques squad or something). Which is technically an offence.

Ooo he is a rogue that one #borislad

[shoulders]

"Their lives are a mess because of their own addiction"

Absolutely classic Tories. Libertarianism writ large there.

Absolutely nothing about the shithole they have provided others to try and exist in.

As I have said many times, it wouldn't rid of us these creeps but it may be an idea for our elected representatives to have to spend their time living on what they deem is acceptable for others to live on, for all their safety nets to be taken a way and maybe creep gradually towards a hint of understanding and empathy.

[Johnny Foreigner]

Where do people get these 'drugs' in the first place? I've never seen anyone supply them. Are there subterranean illegal chemists that charge membership fees? Do drug suppliers run speakeasies, like in America in the 1920s?

[olliebean]

I gather they order them online using some kind of onion.

[shoulders]

In a dark dark web there was a dark dark portal with a dark dark shop

[Endicott]

They tried speakeasies, but the problem was, when the police turned up in a raid, well when they flipped all the tables over to make it look like a cafe, the drugs just went everywhere. Looked like they'd had a bun fight in a bakery.

[Goldentony]

I'll be dipped in dog motherfucking shit if this isn't a test run for just stripping citizenship from people for saying 'fuckhad' on Twitter to some fuckhad from the Telegraph. Soft, shitty arms of green belt fascism. Cunts.

[Goldentony]

fuck me I hate all these stupid cunts so much

[Milo]

I note the video in the BBC piece shows Johnson wearing a hat with POLICE on it and a jacket with POLICE on it, even though he is not a police officer (unless he's got bored with being PM and decided to join the Arts and Antiques squad or something). Which is technically an offence.

Wouldn't count as an offence, though would be funny if they nicked him after the photo op.

[Goldentony]

d'you know how much more tolerable Liverpool is on drugs when you're poor? it's like you're in Mayfair, you can get a normal train or bus to a normal place and all the roads are sound and the One Stop community centres arent all being fucking shuttered and the council isnt full of corrtupt fuckheads who just build fucking big empty unaffordable luxury apartments instead of anything useful that any cunt can live in instead of freezing to death outside a McDonalds. It's great. If you want 300K people of the sensimilla give them 300K quid each you fucking ugly gobshit.

[bgmnts]

We could make life not as shit so that a lot of these people don't need to escape into drug use. Fuck that though.

[Milo]

Why can't they just get hammered like normal people?

[Goldentony]

BUT THEY BUILT AN AXE THROWING CENTRE!!! AND THEY MADE THE MAIN ROAD ALONG THE FRONT OF THE RIVER LOADS SMALLER! WHAT ELSE DYUOUIWANT