A War We Have to Win

The debate about legalising drugs has been with us ever since the hip old days of the 1960s. Then the call for liberalisation was largely confined to small, fashionable groups from the world of pop music and the media. Attitudes have since shifted. Last week no less a figure than the secretary general of Interpol, an organization dedicated to defeating international crime, advocated the legalisation not just of cannabis but of all drugs, including heroin.

That the debate should have reached this state is a result of the staggering growth in drug abuse and related crime. The police claim they are losing the war against drugs.

The evidence that drug abuse is growing in Britain is equally disturbing. Millions of young people regularly use cannabis and Ecstasy. A growing number are using crack and heroin. That in turn is fuelling crime, some of it violent. As many as two-thirds of thefts are linked to drugs. In the northwest, no fewer than 95% of a sample of young people convicted of criminal offences admitted to using drugs. A heroin addict needs to steal £ 90,000 of goods a year to feed the habit, and there are a quarter of a million such people. The illicit drug trade in Europe is worth an estimated £ 260 billion a year, the equivalent of the government’s annual spending.

A whole society is under threat and the young are being dragged into a cycle of abuse and despair that will further expand the ranks of the underclass. Apart from the material costs and the shattered lives, this places an intolerable burden on our prisons and court system. All right-thinking people agree that if the plague is not defeated we shall all suffer.

This is where opinion divides. Politicians in Britain and the United States have ruled out legalisation. They find it easier to denounce drug use and hope, that the crisis can be contained.

The pro-legalisation lobby argues that it is humbug to continue to ban cannabis while we smoke cigarettes and drink gin and tonics. They say we should accept the reality that most drug users are not dealt with by the law and that cannabis is no more harmful than tobacco. Yet even if we were to legalise soft drugs, who can categorically say that users would not move on the harder drugs? Nor would legalising marijuana defeat crime; the serious money is in heroin and cocaine.

If we know that drugs are dangerous, why should they be legalised? Common sense tells us that if drugs are readily and legitimately available, more people will use them. Just because many are addicted to nicotine or alcohol does not make it right to legalise other addictive drugs. The consequences of smoking and the violence associated with alcohol abuse have caused immense suffering. So why make it easier for yet more people to suffer? Though legalization of all drugs would reduce the profits of the drug dealers, and hence crime, the wider consequences would be intolerable.

Drug legalisation is a quick fix that will fuel long-term problems. If millions become addicted in a period when drugs are illegal, socially unacceptable, and generally difficult to get, then millions more will surely become addicts when drugs are legally and socially acceptable and easily obtainable. We should always be suspicious of simple solutions to complex problems. There has to be another policy to defeat drugs. What is required is resolution and planning.

The attack should be on the users and distributors of hard drugs, not on the consumers of cannabis. We should also identify unregistered drug addicts as they come into contact with the police and offer them a rehabilitation programme. We need to develop ways of treating them, wearing them off opiates so they do not turn to crime.

Finally plans must be drawn up for a drugs education programme in schools. The traditional scare tactics have failed. Young people must be told the truth if they are to act on the message. The war against drugs will be a protracted and unsavoury struggle, but it is a war and one which we must win.

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