When the leader of the Greens, Zack Polanski, talks about the need for a compassionate, public health approach to drugs, I hear the echo of a lifeline that comes too late for so many.

The real cost of the criminalisation of drugs

I am in my mid-thirties, from a Northern town ripped apart by drugs – and in my lifetime I have lost four friends to them. Trust me, I know the actual cost of the current law, not through the statistics the government throws out; I know it through the bigger, personal reality of it all. I know it through the stomach cramps and the sweats, through feeling the cold of the concrete as I slept under another doorway, a bag of white powder tucked to my chest.

My ketamine addiction was never fun. It was a desperate attempt to self-medicate a trauma I couldn’t even think about, let alone confess to anyone else. For two years, I lived in a walking dream-state, alternating between friends’ sofas and the cold, unyielding streets of Leeds.

One of the lucky ones

I worked full-time, paid my taxes, but because the state saw my addiction as a crime, I couldn’t escape the spiral. The fear of being arrested, the all-consuming shame, was a force that kept me silent. The social system that should have seen me and reached out to offer me hope —the one I paid into —pushed me further into the shadows. Stigma haunted me.

I was in my very early twenties, young and meant to be full of life. But the actual machinations of our drug system take the most vulnerable, and through criminalisation, ensure their silence until they’re beyond saving.

I’m one of the lucky ones. My health deteriorated, the NHS were forced to pay attention, but if it wasn’t for some very good friends, I know I wouldn’t be writing this right now. I count my lucky stars every day I am where I am, but there are four names eternally etched into my mind, the names of four people who never should have died, who the system should have and could have saved.

Addiction is a fucking disease. Can we please treat it that way?

The reason the UK is failing so many people so badly is its stubborn refusal to accept a scientific truth. That addiction is a chronic, relapsing disease, not the failure of a person. So many major global organisations officially classify addiction as a disease; it’s not semantics, it’s a fucking fact. Prolonged substance abuse alters the structure and the function of the brain, specifically the circuits which give us rewards, motivation, memory, and self-control.

Jesus, do I remember the high so well. And even to this day, I miss it so fucking badly. That first hit of ketamine, as soon as I woke up and rolled over, there was nothing like it. Narcotics hijack your body’s reward system, it floods the brain’s reward centre with dopamine, telling it that ‘this is vital for your survival… You need this.’ But over time, these receptors become broken, meaning you’re no longer using the drug for pleasure, but to feel normal.

What self-control?

And self-control? What self-control? Chronic use ruins your prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for judgment and impulse control. This is why the hallmark of addiction is the loss of power, and it really is all-consuming. From the moment your eyes open until the moment you have that drug in your system, it’s all your brain will think about. For me, it was that, and the compulsion to self-medicate the pain of a trauma I didn’t even know I carried.

Addiction is a relapsing condition. It is a chronic disease influenced by genetics, environment, and mental health. You don’t imprison people who are ill, yet the UK legal system continues to treat possession of drugs as a crime. And the treatment? A criminal record and a spiral into shame and further use.

But Zack Polanski’s push for legalisation and a public health model is so very, very overdue. It’s the adoption of an evidence-based medicine over moral judgment, and we fucking need it.

Our national shame is in the number of deaths from drugs

Polanski is absolutely right. The ‘war on drugs has absolutely failed.’

All we have to do is look at the heartbreaking stats to see it. But we don’t. In typical British fashion, we ignore those begging for help. In the most recent reporting period, there were around 5,448 deaths related to drug poisoning in England and Wales. That’s the highest number since records began in 1993. And it has doubled since 2012.

The saddest indictment of our system can be seen when you compare the UK to Portugal. In 2001, Portugal made the rational switch to decriminalising drugs and shocked the world with what happened next.

Whilst our death rates have surged to record highs, Portugal’s overdose deaths have remained dramatically low. Some estimates even suggest their drug mortality rate is up to 28 times lower than our own. The stark reality is that the fear-driven policies the UK clings to are actively killing our own, whilst the compassion-driven model we fear so badly is actively saving them.

The economic black hole. Why are we paying out billions to harm people?

It’s been fucking wild since Polanski announced his stance on our drug system. To those who argue his proposal is too soft or costly, we need to present the cold, hard economic truth.

The UK’s approach has failed. It is not fiscally responsible and is a massive annual drain on the public purse, costing an estimated £20 billion*.* This is the price tag for keeping up the shame, silence, and stigma.

But where does this unimaginable sum go?

Policing and prosecution costs are wild. We arrest those suffering, drag them through the courts for minuscule amounts to the tune of approximately £1.4 billion per year.

The ‘revolving door’ of prison, where we lock up the sick, with one in three prison places going to someone with addiction, is another massive drain. Billions upon billions are spent on maintenance, yet inadequate treatment means reoffending rates remain high as hell.

Social exclusion from criminalisation of drugs

And the crisis of social exclusion. The law ensures that people leave the system with a criminal record, which immediately blocks the path to recovery. Nearly 21% of people starting drug treatment don’t have a roof over their head. This is a devastating figure which shows the current system leaves people homeless, rather than curing it.

Polanski’s new proposal makes fucking sense. The evidence is clear. For every £1 spent on drug treatment, we can save society up to £4 by reducing demand on other services such as health, prisons, and emergency services.

This isn’t charity, it’s a common-sense fiscal policy. The Portuguese model has proven that shifting funds from prisons to health care saves money and lives. By legalising and regulating, as Polanski suggests, not only would the UK save billions, but it would also gain tax revenue from a legally controlled market. This can be used to directly fund and fight the integrated trauma and mental health support that people like me desperately need.

Heal the UK with hope

My own recovery, my second chance so many didn’t get, came not from the state but from friends who possessed the compassion that the state massively lacks. Time and time again, I tripped and fell, I fucked up and used over and over. But they got it. They understood that underneath the perpetual cycle of use and abuse was a scared and hurting girl, worried and running from something.

My friends understood that my addiction was a symptom of pain, not who I was.

And this is the essence of the policy that Zack Polanski champions: formalising compassion.

This switch to a public health model is a statement to every single suffering addict, to every homeless person self-medicating their trauma in a cold doorway, and to every family who has watched their loved ones fall and fade.

It is a statement which says, ‘We see you. We see your illness. We will not abandon you.’

This policy shift is not proposing a drug-free-for-all; we are proposing control – control over a system which is currently chaotic, violent, and fuels a fatal black market. It is proposing treatment over trauma, to finally end the senseless waste of life and money that has defined the last fifty years in the UK.

We need to stop being the shameful example of the ‘war on drugs’ failure. Come on, guys, drugs have won, but it doesn’t have to be this way. We must heed this national call for reform, listen to the voices of those who managed to get out of the cycle of addiction, and embrace a model that won’t just save our country billions, but more importantly, the lives of so many of our people.

Featured image via the Canary

By Antifabot

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