Khat on a hot tin roof?

On the 3rd July 2013, the UK Home Secretary Theresa May announced the government’s intention to ban the use of and trade in khat by classifying it as a Class C drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. This decision was taken despite the recommendation of the government’s advisory committee, the ACMD, that the substance should not be criminalised. The ACMD's recommendation was drawn from careful study of the available evidence of khat's medical and social effects.

Khat is a mild stimulant produced from the leaves of the plant Catha Edulis. It has been used for thousands of years in East Africa and the Middle East, where it is embedded in social and cultural life, and is consumed in the UK by Somalis, Ethiopians, Kenyans and Yemenis. There are diverse patterns of consumption among these groups, and equally diverse views as to its effects on and place in community life. Typically, users meet to chew, relax and socialise in spaces called mafrish. Amongst these immigrant communities, khat is both celebrated and reviled, but recently the loudest voices have belonged to those campaigning for a prohibition on the substance, which they hold responsible for many of the problems affecting life in the UK's Middle Eastern and East African diaspora.

Concerns regarding the alleged effects of the drug on the social life of these communities prompted the Home Office to request the ACMD to review the advice given in its 2005 Report, which had found no grounds for banning the drug. Following its 2013 review, which specifically examined the linkages between khat and social problems, the ACMD again reported that: 'On the basis of the available evidence, the overwhelming majority of Council members consider that khat should not be controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.' They regarded such controls as 'inappropriate' and 'disproportionate', and made a series of proposals for dealing with such problems as might arise in association with the use of khat.

So, why did the government decide to go ahead and ban the substance anyway, in the teeth of clear recommendations from its own advisors? Theresa May wrote to the ACMD and appeared to accept the scientific validity of their Report. However, she informed them that: 'The government is entitled and expected to take a broader view, taking into account other factors relevant to the issue at hand'. In other words, while the views of the boffins were fine in their place (the lab, the library or the ivory tower), out here in the real world, the government has to act. While thanking for ACMD for their 'extensive report', she more or less explicitly declared it an irrelevance.

Two basic sets of reasons were given for deciding against the Council's advice: firstly, that many of the UK's international peers had included khat in their own domestic drugs legislation, and the government feared that the UK risked becoming a regional hub for its trafficking. Secondly, that khat appeared to be linked to social problems afflicting the immigrant communities that use it. As mentioned above, the ACMD had specifically examined the linkage of khat and social problems, and had pointed to its complexity and the absence of any causal relationship.

In fact, it is clear that the government had, as has so often been the case in the past, already drawn its conclusions based on moral assumptions and beliefs, and had no intention of letting some pesky evidence get in the way of what it wanted to do.

Drugs have always functioned as symbols, standing in for the social problems which they are alleged to cause – in this case, social, cultural and economic vulnerabilities faced by the communities in which the practice of khat-chewing is lodged. The policy of criminalisation targets a symbol, leaving untouched the underlying social relationships responsible for poverty, marginalisation, etc. In addition, as pointed out by Dr Axel Klein of the University of Kent, who has studied the use of khat for many years, this particular policy hands a victory to the fundamentalists of political Islam, who drove the campaign to ban it. Thelocal mafrish was often the only place where freedom of speech and association could be enjoyed outside the surveillance of fundamentalist zealots. As Klein observes: 'The trade has provided hundreds of UK Somalis with a livelihood, and their countrymen with a peaceful and agreeable past time.'

Drawing on a century of historical precedent, we can predict with some certainly that a change in the law will not eradicate demand; instead, the khat trade will be driven underground, to be controlled by organised criminals driven purely by profit, and bringing the khat chewers of the diaspora into contact with the full and fast-growing range of illicit drugs already on the market.

Governments have, it would seem, learned nothing.

Keep up-to-date with drug policy developments by subscribing to the IDPC Monthly Alert.