'TAKE THE MONEY OUT OF DRUGS AND BREAK THE CYCLE'

Some issues are so serious it takes a comedian to tell the truth about
them. Ben Elton didn't tell the MSPs on Holyrood's drug and alcohol
committee anything they didn't already know last week. They are
acutely aware that hard drug abuse is one of Scotland's key social
problems. So why did they feign shock and surprise when he proposed a
radical solution: the end of prohibition. It's not as if they haven't
talked about it themselves.

Well, it's our old friend political acceptability. The voters would be
appalled to know the truth: that far from combating hard drug-taking,
the present laws are promoting it. Politicians pretend to fight the
war on drugs, even when organisations like the Strathclyde Police
Federation tell them it's a lost cause.

There are more than 50,000 known problem drug-users in Scotland, and
they're getting younger: nearly 30% of pre-teens have been exposed to
drugs, according to Glasgow University. The casualties include the
11-year-old girl who turned up at primary school high on heroin. The
Scottish Executive is threatening to take up to 50,000 children of
drug- abusing parents into care in what might be called the Pol Pot
solution.

Up to three-quarters of property crimes are thought to be drug-related
and 70% of prisoners enter jail with a drug problem. The jails simply
become smack universities dominated by drugs barons. Of course,
prisoners are offered help to get clean and some do. But the final
idiocy of our system is that -- as BBC Scotland revealed in 2002 --
some prisoners who have broken their habit are being given hard drugs
by the prison authorities to "retoxify" them before release, so they
aren't killed by their first fix of high-strength street heroin.

When we are putting prisoners back on drugs for their own safety, only
to take their children away when they get home, it is surely time to
start asking if there is in fact a better way. There is, but it needs
economics, not zero tolerance.

By allowing the criminal underworld to retain a monopoly on the supply
of drugs we have allowed it to build a unique trade. Narcotics is the
only busi ness in the world selling a commodity that creates its own
demand. Consumers become salesmen as addicts turn into pushers to
finance their own habit. The result: a UKP 300 billion-a-year global
industry that is spreading like a disease.

The underworld mystique of drugs, captured so well in the film
Trainspotting, is highly seductive to troubled young people in the
West who find that, perversely, addiction gives their empty lives a
kind of meaning. It is something to do. A chance to opt out of the
world of work, pensions, mortgages -- all the numbing complexities of
modern life.

To break into this, two things are necessary: the market for drugs has
to be tackled at source, and those afflicted by this disease must be
prevented from spreading it. Tackling at source doesn't mean bombing
poppy fields in Afghanistan. Four years after the allied invasion of
that country, it is producing more opium than ever. Market forces are
far more devastating than explosives.

Take the money out of drugs and you take the criminals out, too. This
requires an alternative supply regulated by the state. As soon as
addicts leave prison they should be put under medical supervision and
provided with heroin under prescription, as was the case in the 1960s
. We already dope them with methadone, so why not give them the
related chemical, diamorphine, which is widely believed to have fewer
side-effects?

The NHS could provide a reliable, safe supply, in registered premises,
provided the addict agreed to voluntary rehabilitation. Regulating
heroin like this would prevent addicts falling back into the cycle of
dependency that turns them into criminals . It would wreck the
business model of the drug industry, ending its monopoly and
dispersing its sales teams.

As for the mystique, only by medicalising this problem can drug
addiction be exposed for what it truly is: a debilitating
psychological dependency rather than a bohemian lifestyle choice. It
is a medical condition which can be managed -- but is unpleasant,
often painful and ultimately life-shortening. Addicts are like any ill
person, they need help.

Most people I speak to who have any knowledge of the problem believe
something like this must happen eventually. But, unlike Ben Elton, I
would not immediately legalise all drugs. Non-medical use of heroin
should still be a serious offence, and pushing a very serious one.
This way the law would help the detox programme by increasing the
incentive for addicts to use state heroin rather than street heroin.
This way abusers can be monitored and targeted to help get them off
drugs. But in the end, it is up to the individual : if someone is
determined to kill themselves, by drugs or other means, society can't
stop them. But society can protect its children .

Now, the obvious objection is that voters wouldn't buy it. I mean,
turning the government into a drug supplier? Monstrous idea. Well, it
might have been 20 years ago, but attitudes change. Drugs are part of
popular culture, as Ben Elton said, and everyone under 40 has either
taken illegal substances or knows people who have. The clubbing scene
runs on ecstasy and amphetamines . Cocaine is everywhere; in politics,
business, the arts. Cannabis is virtually legal already.

The present generation knows the score: that drugs aren't going to go
away and that pious hypocrisy is the last refuge of the politician. I
bet half the MSPs in Holyrood have taken drugs. Which means this is
the first generation of politicians that could demonstrate that the
drugs really don't work.