WAR ON DRUGS HAS FAILED, SAY FORMER HEADS OF MI5, CPS AND BBC

The "war on drugs" has failed and should be abandoned in favour of
evidence-based policies that treat addiction as a health problem,
according to prominent public figures including former heads of MI5
and the Crown Prosecution Service.

Leading peers - including prominent Tories - say that despite
governments worldwide drawing up tough laws against dealers and users
over the past 50 years, illegal drugs have become more accessible.

Vast amounts of money have been wasted on unsuccessful crackdowns,
while criminals have made fortunes importing drugs into this country.

The increasing use of the most harmful drugs such as heroin has also
led to "enormous health problems", according to the group.

The MPs and members of the House of Lords, who have formed a new
All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform, are calling for
new policies to be drawn up on the basis of scientific evidence.

It could lead to calls for the British government to decriminalise
drugs, or at least for the police and Crown Prosecution Service not
to jail people for possession of small amounts of banned substances.

Their intervention could receive a sympathetic audience in Whitehall,
where ministers and civil servants are trying to cut the numbers and
cost of the prison population. The Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke, has
already announced plans to help offenders kick drug habits rather
than keeping them behind bars.

The former Labour government changed its mind repeatedly on the risks
posed by cannabis use and was criticised for sacking its chief drug
adviser, Prof David Nutt, when he claimed that ecstasy and LSD were
less dangerous than alcohol.

The chairman of the new group, Baroness Meacher - who is also
chairman of an NHS trust - told The Daily Telegraph: "Criminalising
drug users has been an expensive catastrophe for individuals and communities.

"In the UK the time has come for a review of our 1971 Misuse of Drugs
Act. I call on our Government to heed the advice of the UN Office on
Drugs and Crime that drug addiction should be recognised as a health
problem and not punished.

"We have the example of other countries to follow. The best is
Portugal which has decriminalised drug use for 10 years. Portugal
still has one of the lowest drug addiction rates in Europe, the trend
of Young people's drug addiction is falling in Portugal against an
upward trend in the surrounding countries, and the Portuguese prison
population has fallen over time."

Lord Lawson, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1983 and
1989, said: "I have no doubt that the present policy is a disaster.

"This is an important issue, which I have thought about for many
years. But I still don't know what the right answer is - I have
joined the APPG in the hope that it may help us to find the right answer."

Other high-profile figures in the group include Baroness
Manningham-Buller, who served as Director General of MI5, the
security service, between 2002 and 2007; Lord Birt, the former
Director-General of the BBC who went on to become a "blue-sky
thinker" for Tony Blair; Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, until
recently the Director of Public Prosecutions; and Lord Walton of
Detchant, a former president of the British Medical Association and
the General Medical Council.

Current MPs on the group include Peter Bottomley, who served as a
junior minister under Margaret Thatcher; Mike Weatherley, the newly
elected Tory MP for Hove and Portslade; and Julian Huppert, the
Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge.

The group's formation coincides with the 50th anniversary of the
United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which paved the
way for a war on drugs by describing addiction as a "serious evil",
attempting to limit production for medicinal and scientific uses
only, and coordinating international action against traffickers.

The peers and MPs say that despite governments "pouring vast
resources" into the attempt to control drug markets, availability and
use has increased, with up to 250 million people worldwide using
narcotics such as cannabis, cocaine and heroin in 2008.

They believe the trade in illegal drugs makes more than UKP200
billion a year for criminals and terrorists, as well as destabilising
entire nations such as Afghanistan and Mexico.

As a result, the all-party group is working with the Beckley
Foundation, a charitable trust, to review current policies and
scientific evidence in order to draw up proposed new ways to deal
with the problem.