Ask anyone in Britain's Home Office--even David Cameron himself--whether the specter of clench-toothed, pilled-up, and strung-out raving masses is finally a thing of the past, and you'll get a fairly resounding "Yes." Drug use across England is on a marked downslope, they argue. British drug policy is working so well, in fact, that there's simply no need to change course, or to heed urgent warnings issued just last week from a cross-party committee to "consider all the alternatives" to Britain's drug laws."Our current laws draw on the best available evidence," the government said in a statement. "A royal commission on drugs is simply not necessary. Our cross-government approach is working."But is it really that simple? Is it working? Are Britons over getting high?Maybe. Drug use in Britain peaked in 2002, according to British Crime Survey figures, when just under 12 percent of adults admitted to using an illicit drug. That number dipped to just over 11 percent by 2011. As of this year, the figure is just shy of 9 percent. Somewhat promising, no?Again, maybe. Critics agree that Britain's falling drug stats are indeed legitimate, but only when it comes to weed, which according to the Guardian's Max Daly and Fiona Measham appears to be going out of fashion not due to domestic policy, but to a combined result of smoking bans and a broader, Europe-wide trend that's found the green team losing more and more clout over the past 10 years, or so. In 2002, nearly 11 percent of Britons polled claimed to have smoked herb in the past year. As of this year, that number is closer to 7 percent.Still, critics warn that this downward trend comes as other, more powerful substances--club stand-bys like cocaine and ecstasy, of course, but also increasingly fashionable stuff like mephedrone, ketamine, and GHB/GBL--ratchet up among users. England, they contend, is not not still getting weird."Britain is not a nation that has simply fallen out of love with illegal drugs," write Daly and Measham. "Drug use remains both higher than in 1990 and than in the rest of Europe and by no means are we witnessing a decline in use across the board."Today, Class A drug use surpasses where it stood 15 years ago, Daly and Measham note. Ecstasy and coke are "still vastly popular drugs," with up to half of club goers estimated to chop down lines, or swallow any combination of pills, before tearing through the night. What's more, rampant mephedrone use is democratizing the cheap stimulant, as it were, now a popular "everyman drug" appealing to both UK teens and junkies, alike, who often have little to no idea just what sort of white powder they're about to nod off on.To that point: The good news is that heroin use seems to be dropping in Britain, Daly and Measham conclude. And yet in certain pockets of Cumbria and Greater Manchester telltale acquisitive junkie crimes--petty burglaries, and bike and auto thefts--are skyrocketing.It's blowback that former Labour minister Keith Vaz said traces directly back to a culture of addiction that cuts short thousands of lives and and hemhorrages billions of taxpayer pounds annually, the Guardian reported last week."This is a critical, now-or-never moment for serious reform," Vaz said. "If we do not act now, future generations will be crippled by the social and financial burden of addiction."Whether Cameron and the rest of the Home Office act is one thing. Whether they consider the results of the 2013 Global Drug Survey, of which everyday users have only a few hours left to complete, is another.Top via Reach Brian at brian@motherboard.tv. @thebanderson
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