Letters to the Editor

REALITY OF DRUGS

Sir: Steve Rolles of Transform (letter, 29 May) is right: reality has
obliged Keith Hellawell to alter his strategy to provide treatment for some
of the 100,000-200,000 who his report guesses are afflicted by drugs misuse
in this country.

This will not help the estimated millions who use drugs but do not become
addicts. These people still risk prison even though everyone knows that
most are not really criminals. Mr Hellawell has no plans to protect them
from the indiscriminate Misuse of Drugs Act.

Whilst a large, but inadequate, budget is spent on helping very few people,
the criminal justice system spends even more on punishing people uselessly.
The Dutch system of decriminalisation is fine, as far as it goes, but it
still grants the monopoly for drugs supply to criminals. Two percent of
Britain's GDP is earned by these criminals.

Mr Hellawell admits that he has no real baseline of data to work from. Yet
his targets are expressed as a percentage reduction of this non-existent
baseline. How odd. But he will never get a baseline until the fear of
prosecution is removed from those people who, alone, can provide the
information he needs.

Mr Hellawell is like a confused heavyweight rugby forward, who barges about
the field trying to tackle his opponents. He can tackle and he plays to the
crowd, but he doesn't know who has the ball.

He has a problem for which there is only one solution: he must bring drugs
supply and use under reasonable, legal control. When he does this, he will
know who needs help, money will stop being wasted by the criminal justice
system and revenues will start flowing in from a controlled, safe and legal
supply trade for those who need help.

Mick Humphreys,
Taunton,
Somerset