PUBLIC POLICING: THE WAY FORWARD FOR ALL ADDICTIONS

Holyrood Commentary: Iain Macwhirter

And then nothing happened. It's three weeks since the smoking ban hit
Scotland's pubs, clubs and cafes. We were warned of mass
disobedience. Critics claimed it was an offence against civil
liberties and said that Scots would defend their freedoms against the
nanny state. The result, they said, would be chaos.

Well, surprise surprise, the majority of Scots have abided by the
ban. There has been not a hint of violence and bars are reporting
soaring sales . Suddenly, pubs are pleasant places to meet, and eat -
and your clothes don't have to be drycleaned the next morning.

But I have to admit, as a supporter of the ban, that even I am amazed
it has gone so smoothly. When you think how deeply ingrained is
Scotland's drink culture, and how belligerently those loud-mouthed
defenders of personal liberty threatened defiance, it is scarcely
believable that there was no trouble. Not a single arrest.

It's a tribute to the Scottish Executive for having had the bottle to
promote this legislation - although they'll get little credit for
that. By definition, everything Jack McConnell does is either sleazy
or dumb, so expect no plaudits for the First Minister. People are
already saying: "What was all the fuss about?" But fuss there
certainly was. It took guts for McConnell to put his name to
legislation which could easily have gone wrong.

For some, however, the smoking ban will simply be confirmation that
the people have become powerless before an all-controlling nanny
state. But for me it is confirmation that Scotland remains a law-
abiding country in the best sense of the word. We accept and support
restrictions on our freedom provided they are the result of evidence,
debate and proper democratic process.

In this way, the smoking ban is also a reminder of the fragility of
the law. You realise that laws don't work on their own - they only
work when the people accept them and effectively enforce them
themselves. The reason the smoking ban works is because hundreds of
thousands of people in pubs and clubs quietly made sure that those
minded to break the law did not do so.

But what of the other poisonous and addictive substances that are so
much a part of modern social intercourse? The laws on drugs are not
being enforced by the same public who make the smoking ban a success.
Quite the reverse. For people under the age of 40, there is almost
universal transgression of the laws on drugs. Everyone either breaks
the law themselves by taking illegal drugs, such as cannabis or
ecstacy, or knows someone who is breaking the law and does nothing
about it. We are talking, quite literally, of millions of acts of
illegality. How do we square that?

OFFICERS in the Strathclyde Police Federation caused a massive row
last week by suggesting there should be a debate on the legalisation
of drugs - and not just soft drugs, but class-A substances such as
heroin too. They were accused of defeatism, of irresponsibility, of
being soft on drug barons, but we are asking the police to enforce
laws which we, the public, reject. It is our hypocrisy, and the
Strathclyde officers are right to call time.

The war cannot be won. The only way to deal with this problem is to
cut it off at source. Either people agree to stop abusing drugs, or
else, after a proper national debate, we will have to look at the
alternatives.

I have argued for legalisation of cannabis in the past. I have always
hated the drug, because it turns me into a zombie, but I could never
see any reason for it being illegal. As for hard drugs, it would be
irresponsible for any newspaper column to argue that crack cocaine
and heroin - two of the most addictive substances ever synthesised -
should be freely available. However, something must be done. Scotland
now has 51,000 addicts - there were only a handful in the 1960s,
before the prescription of heroin to addicts was outlawed. Methadone
is no solution.

The reality is that the present regime is only benefiting the
criminals. The pushers exploit public tolerance of drug taking to
promote a vicious and predatory expansion of their trade. Just as
prohibition in America benefited organised crime in the 1920s, so
prohibition is creating a global criminal infrastructure which is
becoming a political force. The drugs industry is worth ?300 billion
a year worldwide - equivalent to the GDP of sub-Saharan Africa. The
British and American armies defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan in a
matter of days, but they haven't been able to defeat the poppy growers.

Perhaps the smoking ban shows a way forward. It accepted the right of
individuals to take a dangerous drug - nicotine is just as addictive
as heroin - but only within a responsible social context and with
strict rules which protect the health of others. Perhaps we should
start exploring ways to modernise drugs laws, allowing people to use
drugs in the privacy of their own homes provided there is state
regulation to protect vulnerable young people and those who become
addicted.

The state licensing of the sale of drugs such as cannabis, ecstacy
and cocaine is a scary thought, but at the moment we have the worst
of both worlds: we have uncontrolled mass consumption of narcotics
and we have laws that are openly flouted by a criminal industry which
is free to develop its trade in the most pernicious way. The Scottish
parliament made history with the smoking ban; perhaps it should turn
its attention now to Scotland's second biggest drugs problem.