Drug Enforcement Leads To Increases In Violence, Report Published By UK Government Concludes
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“More studies demonstrated an association between drug-related law enforcement activities and increased violence than decreased violence.”
By Mattha Busby, Filter
Drug-related law enforcement is more likely to increase violence than reduce it, indicates a report commissioned by the government of the United Kingdom. Whether the government will revise its drug policies accordingly remains to be seen.
“The available evidence suggests that drug-related law enforcement activities are of limited effectiveness in reducing violence,” states the report, which was prepared by the research organization RAND Europe and published by the UK Home Office on March 27. “Indeed, more studies demonstrated an association between drug-related law enforcement activities and increased violence than decreased violence.”
The findings, which echo earlier evidence on the subject, are less startling than the fact that the UK government published them. The report references a prior review on the impact of drug-related law enforcement activity on serious violence and homicide, which, it notes, “found that increasing drug law enforcement was unlikely to reduce drug market violence alone and risked exacerbating it.”
The report urges British police forces planning drug-related law enforcement actions to “consider the risk of increased violence,” particularly related to the removal of leaders of trafficking groups and drug seizures.
“The counterproductive nature of drug law enforcement has been very obvious for a long time,” Steve Rolles, senior policy analyst at the Transform Drug Policy Foundation, told Filter. “The war on drugs has fueled an arms race between law enforcement agencies and organized crime groups—ensuring only the most cunning and violent crime groups prosper.”
Nonetheless, he continued, “It is welcome to see the systemic failure of the enforcement model confirmed by academic work commissioned and published by the Home Office itself. It certainly makes it a lot harder for them to ignore.”
The Home Office, which is responsible for areas including public safety, policing and border security in the UK, did not respond to Filter’s request for comment on whether it would act on the report’s recommendations.
Former police officers are among those who have long warned that the disruption of drug markets increases violence, as trafficking groups fight over resultant power vacuums when established hierarchies are disturbed by seizures and arrests.
“For years I’ve been arguing that no police activity in drug markets reduces the size of the market,” Neil Woods told Filter. A former undercover police officer, he changed his mind about the drug enforcement actions he once participated in. He now chairs the Law Enforcement Action Partnership UK, which campaigns to end the drug war.
“This kind of study should not just be of niche interest, it should inform policy,” he said. “We are talking about the very fabric of security and safety in our society.”
Police disruption of drug markets also increases the risk of overdose among people who use drugs, Woods added, citing a 2023 study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, which illustrated this. In what has been described as “the drug bust paradox,” the arrest of a person’s source of drugs can lead them to experience withdrawal and hastily seek a new source—who might provide drugs that are adulterated or of higher potency.
For another report, published in February by the think tank RUSI Europe, researchers studied examples of law enforcement actions including the shutdown of an encrypted messaging network, interventions against drug trafficking groups, the dissolution of a guerrilla group which sold cocaine, pandemic policing shocks and the collapse of a major trafficking organization.
“We find clear evidence in case studies…that enforcement often serves to worsen underlying violence and societal disruption dynamics, imposing significant human costs in terms of lives lost and socio-economic upheaval,” the report said, highlighting how the arrest of powerful leaders often removes dispute-resolution mechanisms and sparks anarchic violence and power struggles.
The point of such enforcement actions is ostensibly to reduce the supply of drugs. But in the long term, this is never the outcome.
“In no single case we evaluate have major external shocks or disruptions through enforcement, or lack thereof, been shown to have any demonstrable lasting impact on drug markets either locally or globally,” the RUSI Europe report found.
Sky ECC was an encrypted chat network favored by groups selling drugs, among others. In Europe, there was a concentration of users in Belgium, the Netherlands and especially around the major Belgian port of Antwerp. Following the law enforcement-led shutdown of the network in 2021, Western European trafficking groups in some cases escalated their violence, according to the report, including threats and several high-profile murders.
Four months after the shutdown, journalist Peter de Vries was killed in the Netherlands in one of the best known cases. A year on, the Belgian justice minister was forced to retreat with his family to a safe house on two occasions, due to threats.
“Nor does the operation seem to have reduced violent crime between drug gangs in the medium to long term,” the report added. “Brussels witnessed a record number of shootings in 2024, most of which were believed to be drug-related.”
In other cases, European drug policing involves direct violence against unarmed people. On April 7, an inquest into the death of 31-year-old Sean Fitzgerald, a former soldier, began in the UK.
Fitzgerald, who was not carrying a gun, was shot and killed by police in 2019 as he fled a suspected cannabis farm. “The police climbed up ladders and went through windows, almost like it was World War 3,” a friend of his told reporters at the time. “Obviously any person in their right mind would’ve been scared and ran away.”
The international drug control regime could be considered a violation of the fundamental human right to life and security, according to a 2023 paper published in the International Journal of Drug Policy. “The relationship between drug criminalization and violent criminality has long been recognized,” wrote the author, academic Petter Grahl Johnstad.“Prohibition makes the illicit drug trade very profitable and therefore attractive to criminal organizations, who will compete with each other for access to the illicit drug market.”
This article was originally published by Filter, an online magazine covering drug use, drug policy and human rights through a harm reduction lens. Follow Filter on Bluesky, X or Facebook, and sign up for its newsletter.
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