The new Misuse of Substances Act should have the following properties.

1. It should acknowledge that, whether we like it or not, drugs are a fact of life – and have been for millennia. They are not going to go away. The notion of a completely or almost completely drug-free United Kingdom is a chimera.

2. Given that drugs may, and often do, cause significant harm to individuals, their family, their friends and their communities, the main aim of the law should be to reduce the amount of harm that they cause.

3. The use of criminal sanctions should be confined to the punishment of those offences connected with drugs that cause the most harm.

4. Only the most serious drugs-related offences should attract custodial sentences – and those sentences should be long rather than short.

5. The law should encourage those dependent upon harmful drugs to seek or accept treatment but should not – as the law does now – actually make it easier for drug-using offenders who have committed other crimes to receive appropriate treatment than it is for users who have not committed other crimes.

6. The focus of the law should not be on individual drugs as such (as in the existing ABC classification) but on the harms that drugs cause.

7. The law should acknowledge that alcohol and tobacco, in addition to drugs, may, and often do, cause significant harm. Drugs should not be ‘ghettoized’ as being peculiarly abhorrent.

8. The law should be flexible. It should be capable of being readily adapted to take account of new drugs, of changes in the properties of existing drugs and of new scientific findings in relation to drugs.
 
9. The law should require ministers to take into account the best available scientific evidence relating to drugs and their use. If ministers reject the advice of their scientific advisers, the law should require them to state publicly and formally why they are doing so.

The statute should be drafted in broad and general terms, expressing the state’s intention of controlling substances whose use involves an unacceptable level of risk of harm, either direct harm to users or indirect harm to other people through crime, environmental damage, financial burdens on the taxpayer or distress to families, friends and communities. It should define in general terms the activities that will be considered offences, such as the cultivation or manufacture of dangerous substances and their trafficking. It should also make clear the circumstances in which the supply and use of controlled substances will not constitute offences.