COWARDICE IS STILL THE DRUG OF CHOICE

Politicians Take A Hard Line But Remain Soft In The Head Says, Mary Ann
Sieghart

We were milling around outside the studio, the three MPs and I, before a
recording of BBC's Question Time. The conversation turned to drugs, and
both the Labour and the Liberal Democrat politicians joined me in arguing
for legalisation, against the lone opposition of the then Tory minister.
Just ten minutes later, when the question came up on air, the three-to-one
ratio was instantly reversed. With all three politicians mumbling
platitudes about "setting the young a bad example", I found myself alone
defending our previous position. It was the televisual equivalent of an
offside trap.

It seems to me inconceivable that these politicians could not have come
across drugs in their student days, even if they didn't inhale themselves.
I don't expect people of my parents' generation to understand the problems
of drug prohibition (though many of them, to their credit, do). But I did
nurture hopes that, with a new generation of liberal-minded
forty-somethings in charge of the country, there would be a more
commonsense attitude from our new leaders.

Instead we have mandatory drug testing proposed in the Queen's Speech. And
we have Tony Blair telling Middle England how "petrified" he is of his
children taking drugs, as if he were not aware that most of his successful
colleagues and friends probably spent their Saturday nights as students
giggling stupidly and passing the joint round.

The truth is, as he should know, that it is not drugs that should petrify
him, but addiction and crime. Occasional and moderate use of drugs such as
cannabis or alcohol does not wreck lives. Addiction, whether to heroin,
alcohol, crack cocaine or nicotine, is what kills people or breaks up
families or ruins careers or turns people to crime.

When we were teenagers my father gave us very sensible advice. "Don't do
anything irreversible," he warned us, such as having an unwanted baby,
allowing a drunken friend who might crash the car to drive us home,
covering our arms with tattoos, or becoming addicted to anything.

It was a bit rich coming from him, a lifelong chain-smoker who did
eventually die early from lung cancer. But this excellent advice helped me
to resist the peer pressure to take up smoking when I was 13, and the
equally strong pressure to try heroin at 16, when so many of my "cool"
teenaged friends succumbed. Even now, they are paying the price. Several
contracted hepatitis C decades later; one or two are still hooked. Others
have problems with alcohol, for an addictive personality finds it hard to
take any mind-altering drug in moderation.

Addiction is the social menace that needs to be addressed. Cannabis is an
unnecessary distraction for the police and the criminal justice system. It
causes very little harm to anyone and is not physiologically addictive. But
when politicians lump it in with truly dangerous substances, such as heroin
and crack cocaine, under the broad label of "drugs" that "petrify" people,
they are almost encouraging this generation of teenagers to try harder
drugs. After all, once young people find that cannabis is pretty harmless,
why should they trust what adults say about heroin and crack?

Drug testing also encourages this escalation. Because traces of cannabis
remain in the bloodstream for about a month, while heroin and crack
disappear within 48 hours, anyone scared of being caught by a test would be
tempted to switch to the much more addictive and hazardous drugs. This is
what may have happened in prisons since drug testing was introduced there.
Home Office figures show that, in the past five years, the number of heroin
seizures in UK jails has trebled, from 350 to 1,079, while cannabis finds
have halved.

Addiction to an expensive illegal drug such as heroin is almost bound to
lead to crime. Apart from the odd aristocratic junkie, most heroin users
must either deal or steal to finance their habit. Each dealer will then
create a pyramid of other heroin users below him, who will also eventually
be tempted to deal or steal. The result? Organised crime makes a fortune,
while the rest of us have our houses burgled, handbags snatched and cars
driven away.

Incarcerating addicts in prisons swimming with heroin is hardly the answer.
Treating them helps. The best solution is to allow doctors to prescribe the
drug, which would pull the rug from under the organised criminals' feet.
Without the base of existing addicts to support them, it would not pay to
import heroin solely for the purpose of trying to find new recruits. And
the young would get the message that heroin addiction is a medical problem,
not an attractive pastime. In The Netherlands, where drug laws are much
more sensible, the average age of heroin users is 39 and rising: in Britain
it is 26, and falling.

Politicians treat these ideas as taboo. They do not form part of any
party's discourse (in public at least; I have many allies in private, some
even in the Tory party). But I wonder how illiberal the British public
really is these days. Yes, the Daily Mail would go berserk - as it did
yesterday anyway over taxing traffic congestion. But each time I express
liberal views on drugs I get stacks of supporting letters from the least
likely sources: police officers, doctors, probation officers, grandmothers.

It is an idea whose time will come - eventually. So far, only the Liberal
Democrats have dared even call for a royal commission on drugs. But if
Charles Kennedy risks going further, he may be pleasantly surprised by the
support he wins. There is a huge political constituency out there, just
waiting for a lead.