Soft Spot.

• Author: Sullum, Jacob
• Position: British drug policy - Brief Article

Even before it came out, a drug policy report from the Police Foundation, a think tank funded partly by the British government, was making politicians squirm. Released in late March, the report recommends downgrading the legal status of LSD and MDMA (a.k.a. Ecstasy) and eliminating jail time for marijuana offenses.

The authors, who include law enforcement officials as well as academics, call this policy "depenalization"--not "decriminalization," which apparently has too radical a sound to it. Clare Short, currently Britain's secretary for overseas development, was harshly criticized several years ago when she used the latter word, and now only Charles Kennedy, leader of the Liberal Democrats, is still tossing it around.

In February, British drug czar Keith Hellawell declared himself firmly against "legalization, decriminalization, or depenalization." But he added: "We need to discriminate between different drugs and the relative harm caused.

[ldots]The focus is going to be on the drugs that cause the major harm." According to The Observer, "this means that cannabis use and even the...