After three decades of working in the drugs field (as a probation officer, researcher and academic) and seeing little change in a drug policy largely driven by prohibition, it is encouraging to finally see the emergence of a paradigm shift, towards drug decriminalisation and regulation. Globally, there are a growing number of countries, agencies and individuals exploring drug law reform, albeit, largely related to cannabis.

These are critical and important times, but after the debacle of prohibition, we should be careful not to get over-excited and simply lurch uncritically towards any reform that’s proposed. We need to be rigorous and well informed when considering and assessing appropriate drug policy change, otherwise we will fail to address the fundamental problem – the decades of damage caused by drug policy abuse. In this paper I shall clarify why drug law reform change is urgently needed, explore lessons from drug policy changes in other countries, highlight risks inherent within drug reform, and establish some guiding principles for change.