LEGALIZING DRUGS THE ONLY ANSWER

During the difficult years that preceded the British handover of Hong
Kong to China, the Chinese government's intense antipathy to opium and
the still fresh memories of the evil that 18th century buccaneering
Britain had inflicted on China and Hong Kong added an extra emotional
charge to what, anyway, was a most complicated transition. Without
opium there would have been no Hong Kong. The British only acquired it
because of the Opium Wars, and the city's early economic success was
built on the opium trade.

It was the British who fed the Chinese propensity for opium.
Historians point out that the Chinese would have found it elsewhere,
even grown some of it themselves. But the truth is the Indian-grown
opium was the brand the Chinese smokers savoured and the British East
India Company marketed it with commercial elan.

Today the Chinese authorities regard opium as a singularly bad thing.
But in Hong Kong there is a public debate, shades of grey, layers of
complexity, both historically and currently. The study of opium
becomes as complicated as an addict's dreams and the solutions to
abuse as tortuous as cold turkey.

It was the Communist revolution that expunged opium in mainland China.
Mao Zedong with his political apparatus that reached into every hamlet
and home was able, as he repressed so many attributes of human nature
both good and bad, to lay the beast low.

It was a mixture of carrot and stick. Addicts were not condemned but
offered medical help and rehabilitation. But those who were
uncooperative were sent to labour camps or imprisoned. Dealers were
summarily executed, often without trial.

China was clean for 40 years, until the demise of Mao. Gradually opium
has returned. Now China is one of the world's most important opium
growers. Although China still regularly executes drug traffickers,
demand in its freewheeling economic society finds willing suppliers
prepared to take the risk.

Government attitudes in China have not changed. But the black market
is a match for government, as it is almost everywhere. The black
market grows by the decade and repression, unless it is totally
totalitarian, leaves enough loopholes for the determined to wriggle
through.

The zeal to repress in most countries of the world has become quite
counterproductive, building up the wealth and criminal reach of the
drug barons who have become so powerful that they often have a
political influence that distorts, even threatens, good governance. By
all accounts their influence is growing and the various types of
control - from Europe's tolerance of soft drugs but toughness on hard,
to China's rigorous policy on executing dealers - are clearly not
working. At least in Hong Kong there is a reasonably informed and
intelligent debate. In China, as in many parts of America and Europe,
debate is barely tolerated.

Hard drugs may be forbidden today in Britain and Hong Kong, but at
least, unlike most states in the U.S., there is no longer any debate
about their medicinal uses. This is why it is probably best to die
from some painful cancer in a British hospice, as my mother did.
Britain is one of the few countries to allow the use of heroin as a
pain suppressive, the strongest painkiller of them all.

The truth is that neither China with its millennia of centralized
government nor the U.S. with its technological prowess is a match for
the drug traders. The tough policies of China, Malaysia, Singapore and
Thailand who execute minor traffickers have rarely touched the big
barons.

We either do what Mao did - allow our governments to be simply
totalitarian on this issue and implement a scorched earth policy - or
we legalize opium and other drugs to break the back of the underworld
trade. We then deal with addiction by educational and medical means.
It is the present and almost universal in-between that is so
unsatisfactory and so dangerous.

On Tuesday, Vicente Fox, former president of drug-ridden Mexico,
surprised the country by saying it was necessary to legalize drugs in
Mexico. He argued this would pull the rug from under the murderous
drug barons who can only make their huge profits when drugs are
prohibited. This is how it should be - in China, the U.S., Latin
America, Nigeria and Europe. No other policy will defeat the drug mafias.

Jonathan Power is an international affairs writer.