Andria E-Mordaunt Woman of substance
After years of educating teachers, doctors, shrinks, midwives
and police about the health and human rights of drug-dependent people, I sometimes
find myself thinking, “Why bother?” Frankly, it’s hard to
show anything for all our best efforts.
HIV and hepatitis figures continue to increase, as does drug use and those
who are incarcerated for it. Deaths due to Aids and/or other blood-borne diseases
and crime associated with illegalised dependent drug use continue to rise
all over the world. Certainly there are few countries where it has reduced
and even then only minimally.
When we get the chance to vote for government A or government B, experience
shows us that where drugs policy is concerned it really doesn’t matter
who is in power.
There was a time not so long ago when drug policy reformers felt hopeful about
some comments made by the Tory leader David Cameron.
Life-long Labour voters even began to consider voting Tory just so we could
get this guy into power. We wondered if he really might make life easier for
illegalised drug users and their surrounding communities.
But inevitably we had to face the fact that, once in power, he would do what
all leading ministers do to get votes: act tough on crime and the causes of
crime, which we all know means tough on illegalised drug users also.
Hence we find it is our work, as activists, that is often what really makes
a difference - even if it seems terribly slow sometimes.
A fellow activist, who recently took the decision to give up his NHS-prescribed
heroin prescription (yep, we thought he was mad too, but even heroin can get
boring) urged me to write in PN about the John Mordaunt Trust.
The trust was a project I established in 1996 in the name of my life-partner
John to honour his name and work. John was a co-founder of the UKC who died
of Aids-related illness. The aim of the trust was to give drug users an opportunity
to self-organise, as he had done so well. 
But at some point in these last ten years, I awoke and thought: “What
the hell am I doing? I have spent huge amounts of time supporting peers, advocating
for adequate levels of methadone (and other meds) so they could have stable
productive lives, but the entire friggin’ system is ultimately rigged
against us.”
I recently told the International Harm Reduction Conference: “We can
throw methadone, clean works and blood-borne prevention and care treatment
at this issue till 2050, but, until we all (not just illegal drug users) become
political and raise our voices as fellow citizens, and say “hell no”
to these resource-wasting inhumane laws, all we are doing is covering up a
huge gaping wound.”
This wound, caused by prohibition, is not only here in UK society but across
the world. Let me remind readers of all the ways prohibition hurts all of
us, not just users.
It denies drug-dependant people basic health and human rights, forcing us
into the margins of society where being murdered is not uncommon. Just look
at the recent deaths of sex-workers in Ipswich.
Prohibition corrupts cops, customs officers and politicians. Honestly, how
many of us would refuse a huge bribe from narco-traffickers to look the other
way? Only around 15 per cent of the import, export or use of drugs is prevented
this way.
The aerial spraying of herbicides on drug crops in Columbia has proved a failure,
with the total area growing illicit drugs increasing annually. Not to mention
the devastating effects on human health, neighbouring legal crops and the
accelerated deforestation caused by vast tracts of agricultural land being
rendered barren. The US is now threatening to do the same in Afghanistan.
And of course it leads to street violence between drug dealers fighting turfs
wars into which members of the public are always drawn.
Criminalising and denying injectors access to clean works has increased the
spread of HIV and other blood-borne viruses all over the world; an entirely
preventable epidemic.
Recently, I visited a UK women’s prison where the governor told us there
was no way he could stop drugs getting in. As injectors did not have access
to clean works there, this also meant the inevitable spread of HIV.
Filling our jails with people for drug-related crimes, and getting them to
work for less than £10 a week is little short of slavery.
There really has got to be another way.
