Transform Drug Policy Foundation

Transform Drug Policy Foundation works nationally and internationally for a just and effective system of legal regulation for all drugs. Transform argues that when we legalise and regulate drugs, we can make them safer and take the market away from organised crime. Besides this long-term goal, it supports pragmatic changes on a local level, which can save lives today.

In 2009, Transform – which receives funding from The Glass-House Trust – published the seminal After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation. This comprehensive framework for drug market regulation set out alternatives to drug prohibition. It reframed the drug policy debate within a wellbeing perspective that considered the impact of policy on human rights, human security and human development. Transform has since published free-to-download books on how to regulate stimulants, cannabis, and psychedelics.

The charity’s work drives reform to cannabis legalisation and regulation. It has collaborated with officials in Malta, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Czechia, Ghana, Brazil and Colombia on cannabis reforms, informed by its practical guide for regulation.

Anyone’s Child field of flowers in Bristol with a visiting overdose prevention ambulance

At home, Transform’s Anyone’s Child: Families for Safer Drug Control campaign amplifies the voices of people whose lives have been impacted by drug policy failures and are now calling for the legal control and regulation of the drug market.

Anyone’s Child continues to influence the national conversation around drugs through the ‘Take Drugs Seriously’ series of public events and an annual lobby of Parliament. This year Transform held events across the country, bringing together local communities, police, councils, and Anyone’s Child activists for pragmatic conversations about drug policy. These events are catalysts for communities to consider and implement alternative approaches to drug policy and push forward reforms despite the confines of UK law.

Transform also seeks to highlight the fact that the war on drugs entrenches systemic racism. Black people are more likely to be stopped and searched, arrested and imprisoned for drug offences – this is despite their levels of drug use being lower in than in white communities. Transform has formed an allyship with the social action network Blaksox, to ensure that the voices and experiences of Black people and communities most impacted by prohibition inform the debate on drug law reform in the UK.

A global evolution towards more humane drug policy is underway, and Transform continues to play an essential part in this.