NOW DRUG PLAGUE HITS THE POOR

There is more heroin on the streets of Britain than there has ever been.
The authorities seized 1,747kg of this hard drug (with a value of more than
#145m) last year - a tonne more than in 1996. The trade is, apparently,
largely organised by Turkish gangs that have "flooded" the market and
reduced the price dramatically. Wraps of heroin can be bought, retail, for
as little as #2. That is the obvious supply-push reason why use has
increased. But what about demand pull? Why do people use it in the first
place - and can the law do anything to help them stop?

The film Trainspotting showed us that heroin users can be, sometimes at
least, affable, charming even. But, unlike most of us, they are addicted to
a rush described by one character in the movie as "superior to a thousand
orgasms". When even sex can't compete we had all better watch out. "Heroin
chic" is one of the modern faces of fashion. Its meretricious charms are
all around us. Of course there have been epidemics of heroin use before. A
previous generation of film-makers exploited the cliches of underground
drug use in the late 1960s. "Chasing the dragon" caught up with us in the
1970s. But there was something self-limiting about those previous
outbreaks. Then, like myxomatosis, this was a disease in one British
species that could not be transmitted to others: it reached a natural limit
and declined until the next wave. In short, it was a hobby of the rich.
Today heroin is cheap and attacks the deprived, those liable to have least
incentive to "grow out" of the problem like college kids: it compounds
social problems and feeds crime on run-down estates. It threatens larger
sections of our people more virulently than ever before.

Keith Hellawell, the Government's "drugs Tsar", says that 700 heroin
addicts committed 70,000 crimes within three months to fund their habit.
Researchers have claimed that the average heroin addict has to steal goods
worth more than #43,000 each year to fund a modest daily habit. We are all
in favour of being tough on those convicted of such offences. But we need
also to understand where the cause lies.

Yesterday in this newspaper Oliver James argued persuasively about why
violent crime soared in the years after 1987. Violence is caused by being
male, young and from a low-income family. So is drug abuse. In 1979, 20 per
cent of boys were raised in low-income families. By 1981 this had risen to
33 per cent and has stayed there ever since. Some of Thatcher's children
have grown up to be violent and some have grown up to be addicts.

These arguments hold for all hard drugs, and we see no case for relaxing
the law, thereby admitting defeat; and a very good case for the Government
to tackle urban deprivation ever more passionately.

The same arguments do not apply to all soft drugs, particularly cannabis.
It would be foolish to pretend that cannabis presents the same kind of
threat to people that cocaine and heroin do. We find it very odd that
cannabis is classed in the same way as heroin. It is silly for MPs - of all
people - to abdicate their responsibilities and be frightened of joining in
the debate about drugs. But it does not follow that the time has come to
decriminalise cannabis.

Why not? Above all, because the evidence is not clear or decisive. If it is
the case that its heavy and sustained use is, on balance, not harmful, then
no reasonable person would do other than set the people free and
concentrate on licensing and regulatory questions. However, that weight of
evidence does not yet exist; we suspect that the evidence will accumulate
in the other direction. Comparisons with legal drugs, such as alcohol and
tobacco, don't seem persuasive to us: alcohol saturates our culture, in a
way that cannabis and heroin do not. If tobacco was first discovered this
week deep in some rainforest, and we quickly discovered how dangerous it
is, would we allow it to be legally available? Is the wider availability of
narcotics really a social good? And isn't the law, in frowning on cannabis
without being fiercely implemented, more like decent fudge than cynical
hypocrisy?

These remarks may startle some readers who have watched and supported and
marched with the campaign to decriminalise cannabis run by the Independent
on Sunday. We admire its vigour and respect its integrity. We share its
desire for a wider debate. For this newspaper, though, the onus rests with
those who favour change and that case remains to be proved.