EX-ENVOY TO COLOMBIA SAYS LEGALISE DRUGS

Britain's former ambassador to Colombia, who has witnessed at close
quarters the spiralling cost of the war against cocaine and been at the
heart of international initiatives to counter trafficking, yesterday called
for legalisation of drugs.

Sir Keith Morris, who served in Bogota from 1990-94, argues in a Guardian
article that the drugs war "is unwinnable, costly and counter-productive".
He urges an end to prohibition and the establishment of a controlled, legal
framework in which drug sales would be taxed for the common good.

The founder chairman of the British and Colombian chamber of commerce, he
maintains contacts with Latin America, where governments have for years
urged the west to help their drug-distorted economies by reducing the
demand for illicit drugs.

He has also been privy to senior UK government thinking. While in Bogota he
hosted visits from then home secretaries Kenneth Clarke and Michael Howard,
and the then prime minister John Major.

Sir Keith's comments coincide with signs of a possible softening in
official policy on drugs and a flurry of debate on the issue since the
election. Last Sunday, Mo Mowlam, the former cabinet office minister who
visited Colombia several times as the minister heading the war against
drugs, urged decriminalisation of cannabis.

"This government believes in 'what works': drugs prohibition does not
work," Sir Keith, 66 and now retired, said yesterday. "I'm encouraged that
the government has started to relax the regime for cannabis.

"Now the principle of prohibition has in practice been abandoned, I hope
the government will start a serious examination of the best way of
controlling drug use within a legal framework. It will not be easy. Hard
drugs users may have to register with GPs and get their drugs on prescription.

"Some soft drugs might be sold under a regime like that used for alcohol
and tobacco and, as Mo Mowlam has proposed for cannabis, they would be
tested for purity and taxed.

"The revenue would go to medical research and greatly improve education and
treatment. There will be costs, probably, initially at least, greater use
and addiction and problems quite unforeseen. But the benefits to life,
health and liberty of drug users and the life, health and property of the
whole population would be immense."

Sir Keith admits advocating legalisation has been personally difficult
"because it means saying to those with whom I worked and to the relatives
of those who died that this was an unnecessary war".

By coincidence, the police in Brixton, south London, chose this week to
announce they will simply warn those caught in possession of small
quantities of cannabis. In effect, they have turned their attention to more
serious crimes.

In her column in the Sunday Mirror, Ms Mowlam wrote: "From my time of being
concerned with the government's drug policy I have come to the conclusion
that we must decriminalise cannabis. The trade needs to be legalised so it
can be sensibly regulated.

"We could then have a tested product, which would be safer; outlets where
other more dangerous drugs were not also available and it could be taxed."
Any income, she suggested, would pay for improved treatment of addicts.

Since Ms Mowlam retired from parliament at the election, responsibility for
government drug strategies has passed from the cabinet office to the Home
Office.

Arguments for legalisation have more commonly come from the libertarian
wing of the Conservative party. Last year, for example, the former Tory
treasury minister, Philip Oppenheim, similarly warned "criminalising drugs
hands massive profits to organised crime". Drugs are dangerous, he
conceded, but "legalisation looks like the lesser evil".