DRUGS: WHY WE SHOULD MEDICALISE, NOT CRIMINALISE

If you are a desperate drug addict and you are neither a trust fund
babe nor a doctor with a prescription pad, you really have only three
ways to pay for your habit: you steal, you deal or you sell your
body. For those poor young women who have too many scruples to steal
or deal, prostitution is often the only answer. Some 95 per cent of
prostitutes, according to a Home Office study, are what they call
"problematic drug users".

And now five prostitutes in Suffolk have been murdered and the rest
fear for their lives. One of the victims, Gemma Adams, an
intelligent, piano-playing, pony-riding, middle-class girl, had
turned to prostitution, like many other such women, after becoming
addicted to heroin and crack. This week her parents issued photos of
her in happier days, to help people understand that she was a person,
not just a prostitute.

Yet even the law degrades prostitutes, valuing their lives at less
than that of a middle-class, piano-playing girl. When Dianne Parry's
daughter, Hanane (another heroin addict turned prostitute), was
murdered and dismembered in 2003, the Criminal Injuries Compensation
Authority offered Mrs Parry only half the money that a parent of a
non-prostitute would receive. It wasn't the UKP 5,000 that Mrs Parry
cared about, but the devaluing of her daughter's life.

And it is not just the law on compensation that should be changed. It
is the law on drugs themselves. Drug addiction is a medical
condition; it should not be treated as a criminal offence. The crime
that results from drug addiction is a direct result of the drugs'
illegality. The organised criminal gangs, with their violence,
corruption and money laundering; the street gangs, with their gun
crime, stabbings and intimidation; the muggers, burglars, car thieves
and shoplifters, who steal to fund their habit; the dealers who try
to create new addicts; and finally, the prostitutes who put their
health and lives at risk; all this crime and suffering could be wiped
out if the drugs were available, free, on prescription. Some 50 to 80
per cent of prisoners are in jail for crimes related to raising money
to buy drugs. Nearly half of women prisoners are there specifically
for drug offences and nearly three-quarters have had a drug problem.
The cost to the criminal justice system is huge. The cost to the
individuals, their families and wider society is greater still.

In European cities, where heroin is available on prescription,
property crimes by drug-users have dropped by as much as a half. And
think of the effect that widespread prescribing would have on turf
wars, gang violence, gun crime, street dealing and prostitution. An
excellent report from the Transform drug policy foundation* also
points out: "The largest single profit opportunity for organised
crime would evaporate, and with it the largest single source of
police corruption."

Transform estimates that the prison population would fall by between
a third and a half, ending overcrowding and the need to build more
jails. Billions of pounds spent enforcing prohibition and coping with
its consequences would be saved. Hundreds of thousands could be
treated as patients rather than criminals. The number of drug-related
deaths would fall dramatically. And desperate young women could be
rescued from pimps, potential rapists and murderers.

At the same time, unstable countries such as Afghanistan and
Colombia, which have become almost ungovernable thanks to the
distorting and corrupting effects of the drugs trade, could sell
their products legally to Western governments for medical use.

Of course we should try to get drug addicts off their drugs. It is
good that waiting times are now shorter for rehabilitation. But
treatment doesn't work unless users really, really want to give up.
And even then, they often relapse because the cravings are so strong.
So it is not surprising that enforced treatment and rehabilitation is
so unsuccessful. A National Audit Office report on the Government's
Drug Treatment and Testing Order, a court-administered mandatory
programme for addicts, found that 80 per cent of offenders were
reconvicted within two years.

It is much more sensible to prescribe a maintenance dose for addicts,
which they must take under supervision so they cannot sell it on,
until they are ready to try to give up. That way, they can attempt to
lead a normal life, to refrain from crime, to stay off the streets,
even to hold down a job, until they can wean themselves off the drugs.

This isn't just the whim of a crazy columnist. The former head of
Interpol, Raymond Kendall, has called for drugs to be "medicalised"
instead of criminalised. He spent his life trying to control the
supply of drugs, only to see how pointless the effort was. Drugs are
now available on virtually every street corner, ready to destroy lives.

So let's save lives instead. Let's take the profits out of the
pockets of criminal gangs and dealers. Let's make our streets safer.
And let's give these poor young girls the opportunity of a better
life, with dignity, security and scant chance of ending up murdered
and dumped in a ditch.

*After the War on Drugs: Options for Control www.tdpf.org.uk

Let's give credit where credit's due

It's funny what people choose to believe. I have written before about
the gap between voters' personal (good) experience of the NHS and
their (poor) perception of the national picture. Now it is the
Conservatives who are suffering from people's wilful disbelief of the facts.

Asked in our poll yesterday whether David Cameron had made real
progress in changing "the scandalous under-representation of women in
the Conservative Party" (his words), only 26 per cent said he had
made progress, while 56 per cent said he hadn't.

Actually, there has been a serious improvement. Some 38 per cent of
the 96 candidates selected since he became leader are female, a big
change since before the last election. And what's more, they are at
last being given winnable seats. Only last weekend, six
constituencies selected candidates, and five of them chose women.

This is a fact, not an opinion. It is not open to bias, challenge or
partisan interpretation.

If I were Cameron, I would be shouting it as loud as I could, and
repeating it often enough for voters to take it in. For it is too
depressing to be doing the right thing, achieving the right results
and still winning no credit for them.

Modesty prevents

My daughter's school has just run a competition for the best slogan
for Science Week. The winning entry is so clever that I thought I
should share it with you: "Physics rules, chemistry rocks, biology
grows on you."

To spare her blushes, I am not going to print the name of the author,
but if she doesn't end up as an advertising copywriter, I'll be amazed.