WE MUST LIVE IN REAL WORLD TO FIGHT DRUGS

As the Olympic motto "Faster, Higher, Stronger" emphasises, records
are made to be broken.

Back in 2005 Australian police cracked the one tonne barrier for
ecstasy seizures, prompting a federal minister to declare that a
message had been sent to drug traffickers.

Whatever it was, they didn't take much notice. This month the Aussies
raised the bar, announcing a 4.4 tonne haul. The politicians took a
different tack this time, claiming the world record seizure would save
Australia $1.6 billion in health and social costs. A more rigorous
audit might offset this saving against the cost of the investigation
which involved 400 police, 185,000 telephone intercepts and 10,000
hours of surveillance. Agencies in five other countries also took part.

Rather than beat his chest, the Federal Police Commissioner found it
sobering that the drug syndicate could shrug off a financial hit of
that magnitude and continue with business as usual.

Health professionals were also underwhelmed. An associate professor at
Melbourne University's School of Population Health said recent
experience suggested the seizure would have little impact on supply
because traffickers stockpile for rainy days such as this.

An emergency doctor specialising in illegal drugs pointed out that the
traffickers wouldn't have brought in that much product unless there
was a market for it: "What you're looking at is a truly phenomenal
demand for these sorts of drugs. As long as that demand exists, it
doesn't matter what interdiction does." Nail; head.

The front line in the war on drugs is the Mexican city of Ciudad
Juarez (pop. 1.5 million), just across the Rio Grande from El Paso,
Texas. Around 60,000 people cross into the US via Juarez every day,
making it a prime entry point for narcotics.

Juarez makes Baghdad seem like Havelock North: over the weekend before
last, 40 people were murdered there; last weekend the death toll was 42.
This year, 800 people have been killed in Juarez as rival drug cartels
wage a savage war for control of this immensely lucrative smuggling route.

If there's one place on earth where interdiction should work, it's
here. Everyone knows what's going on. Enforcement, in the form of
local and regional cops, undercover men, customs agents, border
patrol, the monolithic US Drug Enforcement Agency and a 3000-strong
troop deployment in Juarez, is well-resourced and omnipresent. But no
matter how many mules they nab and how much dope they intercept, the
stuff keeps coming. How do you stop a blizzard?

Last week, the former head of the Britain's Anti-Drug Co-ordination
Unit revealed he quit because he got sick of having to implement
policies that he and his colleagues knew were a waste of time but
which their political masters insisted publicly were the only way to
tackle the drug menace.

Julian Critchley believes the world would be a better place without
drugs. However, he also believes - and one would've thought this would
be the starting point for anyone who's serious about tackling a major
social problem - that "we must live in the world as it is, not as we
want it to be".

Critchley started out against decriminalisation but soon concluded
that "enforcement and supply-side interventions were largely
pointless. They have no significant, lasting impact on the
availability, affordability or use of drugs".

The facts bear him out. After decades of prohibition, illegal drugs
are in plentiful supply in Britain and cheaper, in real terms, than
ever. The number of drug users and the volume of drug-related crime
have risen sharply and the lavish, untaxed profits from illegal
trading have fuelled massive growth in organised crime. The same is
true of most western countries, including this one.

We have an approach - prohibition - that not only fails utterly in its
basic objective of keeping these substances out of the hands of young
people, but also does untold global damage by bolstering the most
amoral and predatory elements in society and corrupting state
institutions in countries such as Mexico and Colombia to the point
where they're rotten to the core.

In the face of this catastrophe politicians continue to trot out
Margaret Thatcher's mantra: "There is no alternative." They do so
because middle-class parents, the people who determine the outcome of
most elections, are understandably tormented by the thought of drugs
destroying the young lives in which they've invested so heavily.

The middle class is kidding itself. "There is no alternative" implies
an eventual successful outcome that prohibition can't possibly
deliver. In reality it means that there's no alternative to having the
worst of both worlds: drugs and crime.