MANY ILLEGAL DRUGS HAVE BECOME UBIQUITOUS

The Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) was a good concept but
implementation has been deeply flawed. This is mainly because the Home
Office accepted undemanding performance targets. The agency is riven
by personnel, pay and budget issues and obsessed with a few,
well-known, mainly UK-based, key criminals - regardless of whether
they are currently supplying the UK market.

It is also obsessed with "up-stream disruption". That's good, but it
has a marginal effect on the UK market. It frequently refuses
follow-up operations to catch the organisers behind Customs "cold
find" frontier seizures. These often represent the very best current
intelligence and offer an opportunity to disrupt the market, make
arrests and lead on to targeted operations against organisers.

Customs has consequently struggled to cobble together investigation
effort from local police forces - inadequately resourced,
inexperienced, unprepared and ill-equipped - to deal with major
traffickers.

Customs border staff are frustrated and demoralised by the lack of
useful service from Soca. Good agency intelligence for the fleet of
purpose-built vessels (the Cutters) is missing. Customs acquired these
at a cost of UKP5m each to meet the challenge from large-scale drugs
smuggling by yachts and other vessels. Smuggling drugs into Britain in
2007 is easier than at any time in 30 years. The relevant Home Office
junior minister is allegedly asking tricky questions and right to be
"concerned".

The whole drugs strategy has been dysfunctional. There's been a
failure to appreciate that the most important thing is culture and the
way that the view of drugs has changed in recent years. People have
been sent mixed messages. The Blunkett downgrading of cannabis had an
extraordinary effect and led to even greater confusion.

We have a situation where legal drugs, particularly alcohol, are
causing us problems and we also have a problem with illegal drugs
that's worse than most countries in Europe. Many illegal drugs,
particularly cocaine, have become ubiquitous.