TELLING STATISTICS OMITTED FROM DRUG POLICY MANIFESTO

Sir, Would Martin Wolf explain how decriminalisation could achieve
anything other than an increased demand for drugs; and how that could
possibly help, here or abroad? ("We should end our disastrous war on
drugs", June 4.)

Would he also ask the Global Commission on Drug Policy, on whose
24-page manifesto he relied, why the following UN Office on Drugs and
Crime data were omitted from the statistics assembled to tell their story:

* 5.7 per cent (upper estimate) of the world's adult population used
(any) drugs (once) in the past year;

* 23 per cent drop in the global area under opium cultivation in the
past two years;

* 28 per cent drop in coca cultivation in the past decade;

* 75 per cent drop in US cocaine consumption since the 1990s (hence
Mexican cartels' battle over a shrinking market) and a drop in
methamphetamine use since 2006;

* 50 per cent rise in all drug consumption in Portugal since
decriminalisation in 2001, including cocaine, amphetamines and heroin
(European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction statistics).

It may surprise Mr Wolf to know that here in the UK, young people's
cannabis use has dropped by about 25 per cent in recent years; that
rates of custodial sentencing for supply and possession of drugs,
even of class A, are minuscule (796 cases in 2006) and only
one-eighth of cannabis cases come to court (warnings, the main
response, do not involve legal sanctions); finally that treatment, an
option in national and international law, is one that the UK has
invested heavily, but not wisely, in, for in so doing has sponsored
further drug and welfare dependency.

It is convenient to think that decriminalising or legalising drugs
would solve the problems caused by as yet small levels of use. Could
we afford these to be higher?

Kathryn Gyngell,

Research Fellow,

Centre for Policy Studies,

London SW1, UK