PROHIBITION CREATES THE LINK BETWEEN DRUGS AND CRIME

Politicians Here Are Afraid To Admit That The War On Drugs Is A Failure

It's a funny thing, perspective. Another UKP 47m pours into the Millennium
Dome and the world shakes with fury. Cowardice, incompetence, imbecility.
Bring us the head of hapless Charlie Falconer. But pour another couple of
billion into a war gone bad, a war of obvious futility, and nobody says a
dicky bird. We can talk domes, but we can't talk drugs.

You may have seen a small story in the Guardian on Saturday. "One third of
those arrested in Scotland used heroin" - the link between drugs and crime
made manifest again. A new Glasgow University study shows that 31% of men
and women picked up by the police in Glasgow and Fife are on heroin, as
opposed to 29% in England (and 18% in New York). That tale made page 11:
few other papers used it at all.

William Hague's new Believing in Britain manifesto, with its wider "war on
crime", contains just one sentence on drugs. The equivalent Liberal
Democrat document mentions the subject only in passing. Year after year,
far into the next parliament, we shall spend ever more cash - maybe UKP
2.4bn by 2003 - on a struggle we don't debate (or even talk about in polite
political circles). The blackest hole of the lot.

Some gallant souls, of course, deserve their bows. Mo Mowlam, Simon Hughes
and Keith Hellawell (Blair's drugs "tsar") occasionally break cover. The
Police Foundation produced a notably thoughtful report last year and
rallied chief constables in support. But argument-wise, that's about it.
This issues file is closed - just as it is in the country where most of our
battleground metaphors come from: a United States of America about to turn
martial rhetoric into real conflict as it ships 63 helicopters and hundreds
of special advisers to Colombia in a $1.3bn expedition to close down the
peasant farms that grow the crops.

I have two witnesses for you. They are both - please note - Republicans,
one a congressman running to be senator for California, the other a hugely
popular state governor. I was there recently when they starred on Arianna
Huffington's shadow convention circuit, and I took detailed notes, because
I have never heard an elected British politician say anything so bold.

First, Representative Tom Campbell from California: "Look at our drugs war
over the last 20 years and measure drug availability by the street price of
heroin and cocaine. This price is one quarter of what it was 20 years ago.
Since 1980, the number of drug overdose deaths has increased by 540%. The
proportion of high school seniors reporting that drugs are readily
available has doubled.

Incarceration for drug offences has risen tenfold. The purity of heroin on
the streets has increased more than four times. We've spent a quarter of a
trillion dollars since 1980... and this war on drugs is a failure.

"We cannot spend our way out of the problem; we cannot incarcerate our way
out of the problem; and we cannot solve this problem by saying redouble our
efforts when the efforts we've made have been such a failure. We cannot
solve this problem, either, by vilifying any public leader who states that
failure."

Campbell finds only 115,000 methadone maintenance slots available in the US
for 800,000 heroin addicts (and 2,500 for 14,000 in crisis areas like San
Francisco).

He's desperate to shift the emphasis from crime prevention to treatment and
he lets a recent Rand Institute research study do his arguing for him.
Spending that $1.3bn on treatment would be 23 times more effective than
trying to eradicate Colombian production.

But that seems almost conventional when you hear Governor Gary Johnson of
New Mexico. He says that there were 450,000 American deaths last year from
tobacco, 150,000 from booze and 100,000 from legal prescription drugs. "You
know how many people died from marijuana? Well, I'm sure there were a few.
You know how many died from heroin and cocaine? Five thousand. Now, where
is the bogey man here?"

So, legalise marijuana: and stop at the minimum with strategies that reduce
the harm other drugs contrive. "The profile of the pusher in this country
is the single mom, three kids on welfare, who has sold crack cocaine to an
undercover agent for the third time and is going to be locked up for a very
long time. Tell me, does that help this country at all? When I talk to
judges, they say that none of the pushers they sentence are pushers who've
sold to a user. They are all pushers who sold to an undercover police agent."

And treatment? If you're a heroin addict, you need "to have a prescription
to get your heroin. You have to go to a clinic. You ingest the heroin in
the clinic. You know what? A number of bases have been covered here. First,
the heroin costs a tenth of what it does out on the street - so you do away
with the crime of having to go out and get it. You do away with the disease
- - hepatitis C, Aids, overdoses, dirty needles. You do away with the
incentive for those addicts to go out and recruit other heroin users. Tell
me, isn't that better in this world than tens of thousands of addicts
waking up in the morning with only one thing on their minds?"

Conclusion: "Drug prohibition is what's tearing this America apart, not
drug use - and that's not to diminish the problems of drug use. What's this
phenomenon of kids with 75 pounds of cocaine or 50 pounds of marijuana?
It's a prohibition phenomenon. We've made the penalties so stiff for adults
that they're going down shooting - and they're making kids the mules... We
need a bottom-line strategy... Let's reduce the crime done in the name of
illegal drugs... Let's reduce the violent drug offenders in gaol... This is
about saying no to drugs - as in know ."

To repeat, Campbell and Johnson are Republicans, followers of the burning
Bush. Yet they are also both close to a tragedy that haunts them; and they
are prepared to speak out. Is that a debate? Not really, while Clinton and
George W compete to send more choppers to Bogota. Central cowardice rules -
just as it rules here as change only comes under cover of silence. Some of
the extra UKP 3.5bn announced last summer will go on treatment and
education, but Jack Straw makes little of it. Changing the law wouldn't be
"tough" commando stuff.

What would I tell parliament while Wee Willie cries for three more strikes?

Nearly one third of Glasgow arrests tied to heroin, along with 29% of
English arrests, against 6.5% in LA? Alarm over crime? Determined action?
Who do they think they're kidding? Even talking about the Police Foundation
report would be start. Even acknowledging that we have a problem in the
body zone.