MORAL MUDDLE IN THE DRUGS DEBATE

Editorial comment

IS one drug abuser's life worth more than another's? Our moral sense
says no. Whether you take your text from Jesus' example in befriending
prostitutes and curing lepers, or from Rabbie Burns's assertion that
"a man's for a that", the message is the same: we are all equal.

By this token, the death of the teenager, Leah Betts, after taking
ecstasy is no more tragic than the deaths of the 80 people from heroin
overdoses in Strathclyde last year.

But that is not the way it is shown in the media, says Netta Maciver,
the chief executive of Scotland's largest anti-drugs charity, Turning
Point Scotland. She is right, of course. Leah Betts dominated the news
for days, whereas dead heroin addicts are lucky to merit a few
paragraphs on an inside page, unless they happen to die in a cell.

Let's be honest about this. We saw in Leah an intelligent young girl
who died tragically with her life ahead of her. Endless editorials
were devoted to the dangers of dabbling in designer drugs.

Heroin addicts are portrayed, if at all, as problem citizens -
mentally ill, poor, deceitful, thieving, prostitutes, Hep C and HIV
positive, victims and victimisers. They do not have a life ahead of
them. Heroin is the junkie drug, used by losers.

Maciver has highlighted the moral muddle at the heart of the drugs
debate. Heroin is an addictive scourge. It causes untold misery to
young people who use it in an unsuccessful attempt to escape from
their unhappiness. Of course, ecstasy has dangers, but compared with
heroin it rates as little more than a middle class moral panic.

A sensible drugs policy would treat each drug according to the risk it
posed to health. Criminalising the true killers, unfortunately, is
impossible as we cannot end society's affair with alcohol and tobacco.

What we can do is to try to redress the balance in the way we deal
with illegal drugs. We can allocate resources for tackling addiction.
There are 3,000 registered addicts in Grampian, and not a single drugs
detox or rehab centre. We can lobby for Scotland to be given the
legislative power to set its own drugs policy, independent of
Westminster. And, above all, we must tackle social exclusion, which is
the reason why so many young people tragically throw their lives away.