THE WAR OUR LEADERS ARE HAPPY TO FORGET

Remember, there is a war on. I refer not to one war but to two. The British
and American Governments are fighting two wars, openly declared by both
over the past decade. One is in response to the American air disasters of
last week. The other, against drugs, was declared by America in 1990 and by
Britain in 1994. Both wars are in response to assaults on the integrity of
Western society. Both have been called "total" and "long-term", demanding
the global projection of military, diplomatic and economic power. Both are
fought against shadowy foes mostly operating in regions where anarchy and
poverty march hand in hand. In each case the rhetoric of violence has been
easier to deploy than that of reason.

The War on Drugs has been lost but defeat is not admitted. Its battle plans
still lie on dusty shelves, its ships are mothballed, its generals
cashiered. Yet the two wars are closely linked. They finance each other.
Just as the IRA was recently arrested talking to FARC guerrillas in
coca-growing Colombia, so 95 per cent of Europe's heroin came last year
from Afghanistan. The Taleban regime would not exist were it not for opium.
Part of its rage against America is at Washington's failure to send aid
after the Taleban agreed to eradicate this year's crop.

The War on Drugs is not fought in the open, any more than is that on
terror. Aircraft carriers and Tomahawk missiles are no help against mobile
cells, agents, sleepers and mules. The lumbering weapons of military might
are what a Middle East diplomat of my acquaintance calls "enemy-makers".
They send potential allies running for cover and make police action near
impossible. That is why warmongering rhetoric is so absurd. The cry to "Do
something violent even if it's stupid" merely enslaves strategy to emotion.

Richard Nixon declared the first War on Drugs in 1969. Operation Intercept
was launched and troops deployed to search 100,000 cars at the Mexican
border. Elvis Presley offered his support and held a celebrated "hugging
meeting" with Mr Nixon. The war lasted three weeks. It was revived by
Ronald Reagan with "zero tolerance" and a futile "45-day war" in 1986. The
first George Bush declared the current War on Drugs in 1990, demanding the
execution of all drug dealers. He sent a carrier task force to the
Caribbean to "interdict supply". The hills of Colombia were sprayed with
defoliant and napalm in the belief that this would somehow stop New York
stockbrokers snorting cocaine. Bill Clinton did not dare withdraw this
armada (or cancel its $2 billion a year cost) for fear of having to admit
defeat.

In 1994 John Major joined in. He declared a three-year nationwide War on
Drugs, "a battle we cannot afford to lose". He appointed a Cabinet minister
to lead the campaign. The prison population soared, cocaine consumption
doubled and heroin consumption trebled. Undaunted, Tony Blair signed up to
the same crusade. A drugs czar, Keith Hellawell, was appointed with much
fanfare. Cabinet units and task forces leapt into being. Ministers trooped
through the sitting rooms of the British Embassy in Bogota, baffled and
bemused.

Drug dealers are not terrorists. They are supplying a worldwide demand for
drugs which governments persistently refuse to regulate, tax or restrain.
Terrorists offer something for which there is no demand. They offer mayhem
and death. But the deployment of terror against civilians is no less
hallowed by history. Its goals may be political not commercial. But it too
feeds on social alienation and human misery. The terrorist has his reasons.
As with the drug dealer, those who would combat him must understand those
reasons or get beaten.

I know of nobody involved in the War on Drugs who believes it has been won,
despite a quarter-century in the waging. Since the warmongering of the
early 1990s, the world drugs trade has soared, now surpassing in estimated
value that of motorcars and oil. Since the trade is by definition confined
to criminals, it has become the prime sponsor of conflict and terror.
Whether in Chechnya or Burma, Colombia or Iraq, Afghanistan or Northern
Ireland, look for the cash and you will find drugs. Never in modern history
can one industry have underpinned so much sheer evil. Governments declare
war on it, but seem careless of defeat.

In his recent book Ending the War on Drugs, Ronald Reagan's one-time
adviser Dirk Eldredge concluded that it was policy-makers, not drug users,
who are "locked up in Alcatraz for 50 years". The repeal of inter-war
alcohol prohibition had been a testament to American democracy's ability to
admit and rectify mistakes. Democracy appears to have regressed. Rather
than have the courage to admit that the criminalisation of a staple world
product is now counter-productive to social stability and world peace, the
American Government sticks to a failed policy and asserts that victory is
just round the corner.

Britain is no different. Its War on Drugs was still couched in the same
military terminology that is being deployed against world terrorism.
Symptoms are attacked rather than causes. Supply is targeted rather than
demand. The reason is depressingly simple: enforcement is sexier than
social work. Any politician prefers to be photographed with his boot on a
trafficker's neck than helping to detoxify an addict.

The war has failed. The drugs czar has been sacked. The enemy may be
packing the prisons, but drugs are plentiful and cheap. Heroin addiction,
the greatest harm of all, is rising and penetrating ever younger age
groups. I find it hard to imagine a more catastrophic outcome of war, a
more devastating symbol of defeat, than that.

An astonishing example of the collapse of British drugs policy landed on my
desk this week. It is a proposal from Alan Milburn's Health Department that
will bring about the closure of roughly half the drug rehabilitation
centres in Britain. These units, most of them run by charities at a
fraction of the cost of prison, have proved by far the most effective way
of combating drug addiction. Mr Milburn is said to want to ingratiate
himself with the Genghis Khan of drugs policy, Mr Blair's Alastair
Campbell. The new rules are pure nanny statedom. They lay down how everyone
should run a residential home for young people. They order no more
room-sharing, insist that rooms be private and lockable, allow unrestricted
private visits and install a mass of "health and safety" devices. The cost
of implementing the regime will drive many homes into bankruptcy and force
all to reduce capacity by some 50 per cent.

More to the point, the rules undermine the essence of drugs treatment. The
European Association for the Treatment of Addiction, representing half of
all rehabilitation units, simply cannot believe what is about to happen. It
pointed out this week that the rules will "increase self-harm and suicide
among people in treatment", especially in denying 24-hour monitoring of
addicts. The rules are bureaucratic meddling at its most destructive.

The essence of public administration should be to make links. I imagine
some tunnel-visioned health official will have pushed the rules past Mr
Milburn with a reassuring murmur that they "look tough". That they cut off
the legs of the only institutions struggling to rectify the Government's
failure on drugs is of no account. The logical outcome of the new policy
will be to drive thousands of heroin addicts back on to the streets or into
prison (where addiction is endemic).

It will increase heroin consumption and push up the world price of opium.
This will fund global crime and help the Taleban to protect terrorists. Is
that government policy? Such linkage must blow the intellectual fuses in Mr
Blair's "joined-up" Cabinet Office. The policy on care homes means another
avoidable defeat in the War on Drugs. But that war is embarrassing and
forgotten. It ripples no political muscles. It floats no frigates and fires
no missiles. It is the wrong war. Today's politician thinks terrorist.

The Government's conduct of the War on Drugs has had all the subtlety of a
Taleban conclave. Hundreds of young people are still dying in that war, but
the Government is bored. Instead it is bringing us the War on Terror. I
wonder for how long.