BLAME THE RICH FOR FEEDING THE DRUG INDUSTRY

The Police Will Never Be Able To Win The War Against Drugs. It's The
Culture Of Tolerance That
Is The Real Problem

Bear with me, if you will, while I skim through a random selection of
people who in one way or another were found in possession of Class A
drugs in recent months.

Scott McEvoy, 24, from Liverpool - 40 months in jail. Alistair Oliver,
23, from Edinburgh - 29 months, ditto. Craig James, 23, from Swansea -
three years. Rio Ross, 14 months, from Bristol - killed by an overdose
of his mother's drugs. James McGlashan, 26, of no fixed address -
fined UKP 300. Former Royal Marine Vincent McGuire, 32, of
Gloucestershire - three years' jail. Matthew Edward Dean, 20, of
Cardiff - fined UKP 100 with UKP 60 court costs and a UKP 15 victim
surcharge.

And, as of this week, Hans Kristian Rausing, 45, and his wife Eva, 44,
from Holland Park - a conditional caution and all charges dropped
without a court appearance. With not even a UKP 15 victim surcharge,
UKP 60 when multiplied by four, on account of their four young children.

The distinction is, of course, that the people in the second paragraph
are just names plucked from the massed ranks of the oikish or the
ordinary. Whereas the Rausings are some of the richest people on the
planet, heirs to the multi-billion-pound Tetra Pak fortune.

Not for nothing did Sir Ian Blair, the head of the Met, order an
immediate review of his force's charging practices for Class A drugs
offences. And not for nothing did he pass bitter comment on the
decision by the Crown Prosecution Service not to take the Rausings to
court for possession of up to UKP 3,000 of cocaine, crack, heroin and
cannabis.

The Rausings, who met in rehab, were let off after they confessed
their drug problems to the prosecutors and promised to get further
treatment. Sir Ian, like the rest of us, believes their wealth had
protected them. "I do find that result extremely surprising and it
reminds me of the 19th-century legal comment often attributed to Sir
James Mathew, 'In England justice is open to all - just like the
Ritz'," he remarked.

Behind him, one could hear drug squad officers across Britain chewing
their fillings in agreement, well aware that their hard and risky job
just got ten times harder and riskier. Even worse, the Rausing
decision has rather made them look like fools - lumpen public servants
who toil to no effect against the thrilling indulgences of the
privileged. Let them keep busy catching the nasty underclasses, and
leave us alone, it says.

This has not, to put it delicately, been a good week to be a cop
involved in the fight against drugs. The UK Drug Policy Commission's
report, revealed in The Times on Tuesday, was quite blunt in its
assessment: no matter what the police and Customs officers do, the
game is a bogey. They're not winning the war. The UK is awash with
illegal drugs, a UKP 5.3 billion illegal industry, and the law
enforcers, despite spending a billion and a half in their efforts, are
only catching about 12 per cent of the market; to be effective, they
need to stop 80 per cent. The market is resilient; prices continue to
fall; and within hours of dealers being raided, replacements have
moved into the territory.

These are terrifically gloomy realities that cloak a myriad ruined
lives. The problem is so bad, and threatens to become so all-
encompassing, that the big moral questions surrounding it must soon be
addressed. I suspect every politician is hoping it doesn't happen on
their watch.

At what point do we start to look at legalisation as an exit strategy
in a war we cannot win? Is it possible to turn drugs into a health
rather than a crime issue? Or should we blame Britain's excess of
tolerance for turning it into one of the most drug-blighted countries
in Europe? As one leading expert, Neil McKeganey, of Glasgow
University, puts it, at what point do we stop regarding illegal drug
use as human right, and start seeing drugs as a destructive social
cancer?

These are uncomfortable questions for both the Left and the Right but
it is time we started asking them. We have to accept that this is no
longer an argument about drug availability; this is about the
existence of a drug culture that has spread to every corner of
society. The poor old police can plug away at reducing supply until
they are exhausted, but they cannot begin to address something that
undermines them at every turn.

Sir Ian was unfairly mocked for announcing that middle-class addicts
who snort cocaine at dinner parties were not above the law. He was on
a loser when he said it, but he was right. Every recreational drug
user - wealthy, liberal, educated, naughty, dabbling for the fun of it
- - is feeding an industry that threatens all that is good and positive
in society. It is a nihilistic act. But one is, of course, sneered at
in fashionable circles for saying such a thing - by people who have no
answers to the problem, nor have ever witnessed the horrors of what
street drugs do to vulnerable people.

This column is not the place to heap coals of guilt upon the Rausings.
It would be unfair, would it not, in this liberal paradise of ours, to
deny the rich the delights of the poor. Just as the disadvantaged buy
Class A drugs to numb the pain of being poor, it appears that the very
wealthy seek to numb the pain of being rich. There is nothing new in
such decadence - Frances Osborne in her wonderful book The Bolter,
about Idina Sackville, described how the ex-pat addicts in Happy
Valley would get their heroin flown on to their front lawns by
biplanes, and then openly inject themselves with silver syringes in
front of their frends.

The Rausings are symbolically important. By letting them off, we
validate the illegal drugs industry. We must hope that until they are
drug-free, they stop donating millions of pounds to anti-addiction
charities; and that Mrs Rausing resigns as patron of two such
charities. Redemption takes a lot more than money. The world may
indeed run on double standards, but sometimes there is a limit to what
the public can stomach.