Drugs White Paper Gives Wrong Signal

SIR - As somebody who applied but did not get the post of "drugs tsar",
despite my experience and qualifications, I would like to point out that
the White Paper's proposals (report, April 28) will have little or no
effect on the drugs problem. Its 10-tear "realistic strategy" is tantamount
to accepting that, like the pie-in-the-shy health targets, the Government
does not expect to solve the problem at all.

Compulsory education for children but non-compulsory treatment centres,
funded by seizures from drugs criminals, will not be effective and will do
nothing to change the drugs culture amongst young people.

Similar education has failed abysmally in stopping teenagers from smoking
or from under-age sexual activity. It is sentimentally appealing,
expensive, time-consuming, and highly likely to convey the wrong message.

I have never heard a drugs worker telling children that drug users are sad,
bad and dangerous for society. I have heard many counsellors with the
message that if you intend to use drugs, use safe drugs and clean needles,
which, incidentally, you can obtain from the local drugs centre.

What use are new drug treatment centres when we treat thousands of users by
issuing them with methadone, amphetamines, needles and syringes? The
culture of harm reduction and support for addicts does support the drugs
use and does harm society. Treatment centres with the wrong approach can
spend months using ineffective counselling rather than the four or five
days needed to detoxify an addict in compulsory detention and with the use
of drugs such as Britaflex.

The drugs industry will now include counsellors and educators, al committed
but none truly effective, and the human misery will continue until we
approach the problem differently. Until there is a wide-spread
condemnation of users, Draconian punishments for traders and a culture
which does not condone the promotion of drugs by pop media, and until all
those who seek more liberal drug laws cease their striving, we will remain
powerless to stop this plague.

Having a "drugs tsar" and producing White Papers is merely part of a cruel
deception that curative action is being taken when all concerned know that
none is to be achieved.

Dr Adrian Rogers
Exeter