WHY BANNING DRUGS MAKES THE PROBLEM EVEN WORSE

Heroin use is soaring. Indeed, the Home Office in new research, predicts
an epidemic among young people as the drug spreads from the inner cities to
the comfy shires. Towns with serious hard-drugs problems are the target of
a network of pushers who are rebranding heroin to make it more readily
available and cheaper for children.

Government ministers are right to be alarmed. Heroin will continue to
spread to children as young as 10 as long as we imitate the anti-drug
policies of America - where use of the drug is growing at a frightening
rate. Both Britain and America believe the solution lies in prohibition of
drugs. Yet 30 years of prohibition has made the US the drug sink of the
world. And Britain has the worst problems in Europe. It's not working, so
we don't fix it. But why imitate failure when we can repeat success? The
Dutch and Swiss, with more liberal policies, have spectacularly reduced
heroin use and heroin-based crime. In the Netherlands, there are virtually
no heroin users under 20. Because young people there have spurned
hard-drugs use, average age of Dutch addicts has risen from 28 in 1981 to
44 today. Switzerland cut drugs-related crime by 80 per cent in a two year
trial in Zurich by encouraging addicts to turn to using supervised
injectable heroin. After the approval of a national referendum, their
programme of cutting heroin crime is being used nationally.

Common sense tells us that hardened addicts who get their fix under medical
supervision do not have to be full-time criminals or prostitutes to get
drug money. Their lives can return to normal.

However, in Britain we have a heroin crises. Nothing the authorities do
improves anything. Instead we have more addicts every year. And they're
getting younger. Plus the total of heroin deaths in Britain has leapt
nearly fourfold in three years.

Incredibly, methadone, our chosen "cure" to substitute addiction, is worse
than the cause. The medicine kills twice as many people as heroin does.
Keith Hellawell, the Government's anti-drugs policy co-ordinator believes
the solution is more anti-drugs education. That's been tried for 30 years
in America - and it failed. The US message to adolescents - that drugs are
wicked, dangerous and hated by parents - has encouraged kids to experiment
with them. After all, being young is all about risk-taking. The mythology
of drugs has terrified the older generation here. Their fear is that if
their youngsters take cannabis they will end up with a needle in their arm,
dead in a dark alley. The chances of that happening are as likely as a
social drinker becoming an alcoholic.

The stark fact is that most young people have tried an illegal drug. A
tiny number migrate to hard drugs and are more likely to do so under
prohibition. A generation of young people are being criminalised; they
have no choice but to use the illegal market for their inevitable
experiments in soft-drugs use.

The only way to reduce the harm drugs cause is to destroy the illegal,
irresponsible, armed black market by replacing it with a legal market,
which can be rigorously policed, regulated and controlled. That is
precisely the story of the success of Dutch decriminalisation. There, the
soft and hard drugs markets have been separated.

Cannabis is openly on sale to adults in controlled conditions. Those who
sell to youngsters or who also sell hard drugs lose their licences. But
under our prohibition system, a seller commits the same offence if he sells
to a disturbed 10-year-old or to a mature, well-balanced adult. Twenty
years of cannabis decriminalisation in the Netherlands has cut all
hard-drugs use. Young people are not moving on to hard drugs because they
can experiment with soft-drugs without mixing with hard-drugs pushers. In
Britain, however, cannabis prohibition wastes UKP2.5 billion a year. The
equivalent of six jails are filled with cannabis offenders and we are
planning to build 20 new jails at a cost of UKP88 million each. It's
madness. In the US, switching from an illegal alcohol market to a legal one
in the thirties cut alcohol deaths and robbed gangsters of their profits.
A spoof Press release from the "International Crime Syndicate" thanked
European governments for their prohibition policies "that allow our drug
business to grow every year without paying taxes".

True to form, our government releases its horror report on heroin on day
one of the parliamentary recess. Like the previous government, Labour
ministers hide from open parliamentary debate, which would expose the
futility of their policies.

With difficulty I discovered the facts of Operation Charlie, on which new
education policies are to be based. I expected it to be an exhaustive
study involving thousands of kids over many years. Nothing of the sort.
Only 44 children were involved. It did not last a year. They had one
hour-long lesson per week for 39 weeks. Four years later, they were
compared with other children who did not have the lesson. Their views were
slightly different. Big deal.

We will not know for a decade whether Charlie kids are more or less likely
to use drugs. Charlie stands for: Chemical Abuse Resolution Lies in
Education - its instigators decided the result of the trial before they
started it.

The "drugs tsar" Keith Hellawell and the Government tell us this anti-drugs
programme will last 10 years. Very convenient. By 2008 Hellawell will be
retired and Tony Blair will be Lord Sedgefield.

When will the Government realise that prohibition increases drugs use and
that intelligent policies reduce drugs harm?

(Paul Flynn is vice-chairman of the parliamentary all-party drugs misuse group)

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)