A BOLD ATTEMPT TO CLEAR THE CLOUDS OF CONFUSION

The Chief Constable of North Wales, Richard Brunstrom, will today ask
his police authority to put its weight behind his call for the
legalisation of drugs. Heroin, ecstasy, LSD, cannabis - the chief
constable is advocating that all should be legal. He says current
policies are failing, and he wants this to be the official submission
of his force to the current Home Office consultation on drugs strategy.

This is brave talk. It is likely to be met with the usual knee-jerk
dismissal that such recommendations habitually attract. But, as more
and more thoughtful people adopt this view, is it not time to consider
the chief constable's views on their merits? There has been a tendency
to believe that the only people qualified to challenge current
orthodoxy on drugs policy are those familiar with the gritty inner
city. If the police chief in a predominantly rural region - itself not
immune to drug problems - believes the law as it stands is having a
perverse effect, surely this is a sign that the blight of addiction
warrants a new approach.

Mr Brunstrom is the only chief constable to have been so outspoken in
support of the legalisation of all drugs. But he is not such a lone
voice in the upper echelons of the police service. Over the past 12
months, other senior officers have argued for the treatment of heroin
addiction as a medical, rather than criminal, issue. Over the same
time, the extent to which the illegality of drugs itself generates
crime has been become increasingly, and shockingly, apparent.

All the prostitutes murdered in Ipswich last winter were drug addicts,
selling their bodies to feed their habit. Of the young people killed
in shootings in south London, Liverpool and Manchester in recent
months, most lost their lives directly or indirectly because of drugs.
Some were themselves involved in drug-related gangs; others fell foul
of such a gang.

Illegal drugs are a direct, or contributory, factor in Britain's
swelling prison population. Mugging, shop-lifting, burglary and the
like are crimes committed by many not for money or property as such,
but for funds to secure their next fix. And the Government's promise
of treatment as an alternative, or supplement, to prison has done
little to reduce the numbers. Often this is because, even where
treatment is available, the offender has to wait for a place on a
programme, and then the treatment is too peremptory to do a great deal
of long-term good. That the street price of drugs is falling, and that
drug use is now endemic even in many prisons, illustrates how current
policies have failed.

Mr Brunstrom argues that the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act should be
replaced by a new Substance Misuse Act. This would legalise and
regulate all substances of abuse, including alcohol and tobacco, which
would be classified according to a "hierarchy of harm". His reasoning
is that regulation, rather than criminalisation, would result in a
sharp drop in drug-related crime, allowing public funds to be
transferred to treatment. In some cases, that treatment might include
the supply of, say, heroin, under medically controlled conditions.

The chief constable's thinking is along similar lines to a report
published by the Royal Society of Arts Commission on Drugs six months
ago, which called for an end to the "moral panic" surrounding drugs,
and the start of a rational analysis. Like the RSA, Mr Brunstrom cites
the reluctance of politicians to challenge the hard line on drugs for
fear of public opinion. He is right. The debate on drugs is wrapped up
in a fog of confusion, myth and hysteria. It is time that prevailing
assumptions were challenged and the bankruptcy of current policies
seen for what it is. The Chief Constable of North Wales has made a
welcome start.