ALL PARTIES MUST SEE THAT THE DRUGS WAR HAS FAILED

Bob Ainsworth Is Not Alone in Craving a Rational Debate

It is clearly expecting too much of Westminster that, when a recently
retired cabinet minister calls for mature debate on drugs policy, a
mature debate might actually follow.

Bob Ainsworth was hardly a high-profile figure in the Labour
government, but he has served in the Home Office and the Ministry of
Defence, from which perspective he concluded that the "war on drugs",
as currently organised, is unwinnable. Safely out of office, he last
week expressed the politically delicate but entirely sensible
proposition that the current consensus around drugs prohibition is
flawed and that it is time other measures were considered. Those
might include decriminalisation of less harmful substances and
allowing doctors to provide addicts with legal, clean supplies of
drugs such as heroin that, when bought on the streets, are more toxic
and fuel crime.

It is only a pity no politician can find the courage to raise the
same questions while actually serving in government.

The Observer has called for just such a debate in the past. That is
not to deny the harm that drugs do. Quite the contrary. It is because
Britain's drug problems are so pernicious and costly that an
evidence-based quest for solutions is so badly needed. And the
evidence is that the current approach has failed.

The goal is to stop people taking drugs and to punish those who
profit from the trade. The outcome is a flourishing market in which
anyone can get hold of a banned substance at any time of day and to
the enormous financial advantage of vast criminal organisations. An
additional feature of the current regime is that ordinary users are
recruited into crime, steered away from mainstream society and into
prison where their chances of rehabilitation diminish.

Meanwhile, this whole edifice requires that the UK advocate at
international level a policy of forcing governments in opium and
coca-producing areas into futile military confrontation with drug
exporters. These dirty civil wars, raging across Latin America, west
Africa, south-east and central Asia have had no measurable impact on
consumption in the west but have cost millions of innocent lives. The
UK's own military endeavours against the Taliban in Afghanistan are
intertwined with that country's status as a narco-state. Throughout
the war, it has continued to provide, scarcely disrupted, the vast
majority of heroin used on British streets.

What lower depth of abject failure must a policy plumb before it
comes up for review?

The current government has no strategy to curb drug use other than
more of the same on a tighter budget.

Mr Ainsworth is clearly not alone in craving a rational debate; that
appetite is felt across the political spectrum. Amid much
recrimination, one of few supporting voices came from Peter Lilley, a
Conservative cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher and John Major.
But party leaders still fear engagement with reforming ideas for fear
that their opponents will resort to populist jibes about "softness".
This stalemate is crippling policy innovation.

Some overtures must be made between the main parties so that a truce
can be declared. Failure of the current approach might then be
publicly acknowledged and non-partisan work towards a different
solution begun.