DRUGS ARE HERE TO STAY - SO MAKE THEM LEGAL

Cocaine use is up, says the latest Home Office survey. No fewer than a
quarter of British children have tried drugs by the age of 14, and
more than half have done so by 15, claims a government-backed study of
schools in northern England.

But if you find any of these statistics remotely surprising, it's time
you woke up and smelt the coffee. Drugs are no longer a minority fad;
they're part of the social fabric. And the only way of dealing with
the problem is to accept a solution that we have rejected for far too
long: we need to make all drugs totally legal.

To legalise drugs would be to strike a blow for personal freedom
against the ever-growing powers of the nanny state; it would reduce
public spending on the apparatus of drugs enforcement (police,
customs, prisons, the judiciary), while simultaneously boosting public
revenues (via drugs taxation); it would deprive major criminals of
their main source of income, while lessening the need of minor ones to
mug, rob or burgle to fund their habits; it would reduce the health
risks involved in taking drugs (fewer contaminants in the supply; no
HIV-infected needles); and it would mark a responsible acknowledgement
of a truth so frequently dodged by politicians: that drugs are here to
stay and that the war against them is unwinnable.

You may argue that drugs are an abhorrence in a civilised society;
that they are physically dangerous, socially destructive and morally
indefensible. But you don't need remotely to approve of drugs to
support their legalisation. You merely have to recognise that the
issue is not whether we should choose between a world of drugs or no
drugs - that isn't an option - but whether we should make the best of
an inescapable problem or exacerbate it. It is ironic, given our
understanding of "Victorian values", that, in the golden age of
Empire, Britain was awash with drugs of every description - all legal.
The Queen herself was a user of opium and cannabis; and opium,
morphine, cocaine and cannabis were easily available from
pharmacists.

But there were no hysterical demands to stamp out the "evil drugs
menace". Drugs prohibition didn't arrive until the First World War
and, even as late as 1971, morphine, heroin and cocaine were
prescribable by doctors to "registered addicts".

Today, the laws against drugs have never been more severe; yet drug
"abuse" has never been more prevalent. In the past 20 years, heroin
use has increased by between 10 and 100 times (in 1980, there were
slightly more than 2,000 registered addicts; now there are an
estimated 200,000 users). One fifth of the population has smoked cannabis.

The popularity of "Rave culture" means that 500,000 ecstasy tablets
are consumed every weekend, and that more than one million Britons
have tried it. Cocaine use is rife in clubs and City wine bars alike;
crack is the terror of our housing estates. LSD is the third most
popular drug after marijuana and speed. You may not take drugs
yourself, but you will certainly know someone who does - maybe your
friends, your children, your grandchildren. By 15, 52 per cent of our
children have experimented with drugs. Do you really believe that, as
is currently the case, they should all be branded as criminals?

Perhaps you do. But that still doesn't make you immune from the effect
of our misguided prohibition laws. The illegality of drugs is what
makes them so expensive and drives some users to crime to fund their
habit. In 1995, it was estimated that A31.3 billion worth of property
was stolen by heroin addicts alone. If heroin was available cheaply
and legally, that wouldn't have been necessary.

Never been mugged or burgled? Then think of the money you pay in taxes
to keep criminals (about 30 per cent of whom are there for
drugs-related offences) in prison: it costs more than pounds 1 billion
in police, probation and legal costs alone.

Think, moreover, how much more the government would have to spend on
hospitals, education and, yes, rehabilitating drug users, if it could
tax drugs just like it does cigarettes and alcohol. Quite an obscene
amount, actually. The annual British drugs trade is reckoned to be
worth up to pounds 20 billion: about 2.5 per cent of GDP. (Interpol
estimates that the world illegal drugs business is worth an annual
pounds 350 billion; illegal drugs comprise eight per cent of all
international trade, the same as the oil and arms industries.)

Of course, any attempt to legalise drugs would not be without risks.
But none is likely to be as great as prohibitionist cant would have
you believe. So Britain would become the drugs capital of Europe?
Perhaps, but in Holland, where cannabis is decriminalised, the
incidence of use among young people is no higher than in Britain.

So drugs use would increase drastically? Not according to surveys: the
number of people who say they don't currently use drugs because they
are illegal is about the same as the numbers of users who say that
drugs wouldn't be worth taking if were legalised. So drugs can be
deadly? Well, so can almost anything when indulged immoderately, from
cigarettes and alcohol to cars and morris dancing.

In any case, it seems to me that the benefits of legalising drugs
would prove so manifest and widespread as greatly to offset any social
costs that might accrue. Alcohol prohibition was a disaster. Drugs
prohibition is, too.

The biggest drugs criminals in this country are not the millions who
use narcotics; they're the politicians who are in a position to turn
one of our greatest social evils into one of our biggest social
benefits, and yet would rather deny the obvious, bury their heads in
the sand and "Just say No" to legalisation.