BRUNSTROM REAFFIRMS DRUG CLAIMS

IT IS "inevitable" that all drugs will be legalised, a Welsh police
chief claimed yesterday.

North Wales Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom said a move towards
drugs being decriminalised is "10 years away" and claimed doing so
would destroy a major source of organised crime.

Mr Brunstrom has sparked controversy in the past for his views on
drugs, drawing criticism from anti-drug groups when he stated his
belief that heroin should be made legal.

He made his latest comments on a special edition of the Today
programme on Radio 4, edited by officers from Dyfed-Powys Police.
Inspector Richard Lewis, Samantha Gainard and Chief Superintendent
Paul Amphlett were among a series of guest editors invited to take
the helm of the flagship programme.

In an interview broadcast yesterday morning, Mr Brunstrom said he
also believed Ecstasy was safer than aspirin.

The chief constable - who recently apologised over using an image of
a decapitated biker as a teaching tool without the knowledge of the
dead man's family - said he accepted that his views were not held by
the majority, but that attitudes were changing.

"I'm certainly out of step with the majority of senior police
officers, but not all of them," he said. "But in terms of society,
public attitudes change quite rapidly and you need look no further
than drinking and driving: in the space of my lifetime drinking and
driving has gone from being socially acceptable, almost the norm, to
being socially unacceptable.

"I think that the legalisation and subsequent regulation of
proscribed drugs is now inevitable, and I think it's 10 years away,
not 10 months away."

He added, "It has already happened in for instance Portugal, a full
member of the European Union, decriminalised under the existing
international treaties. The same sort of thing is being talked about
across the world."

Mr Brunstrom claimed that levels of drug misuse across the country
were still too high, despite apparent signs of a decline caused by
improved treatment programmes

He said, "We're still causing something like UKP20bn worth of damage
to our society every year. More than half of all recorded crime is
caused by people feeding a drugs habit. The Government wants
evidence-based policy; the evidence is very clear that prohibition
doesn't work, it can't work, an enforcement-led strategy is making
things worse, not better."

Mr Brunstrom's unconventional approach to his job has made him one of
the most high-profile police figures in Britain.

He attracted publicity by agreeing to be filmed being hit by a Taser
gun, and was in the headlines again last month for breaking into his
own police station at night to highlight a lack of security.

And at the end of this month the North Wales Police Authority will
consider a complaint made by Wrexham MP Ian Lucas against Mr
Brunstrom and his deputy, Clive Wolfendale, after they were captured
on a fly-on-the-wall TV documentary referring to the MP as a "Luddite".

But his attack on the UK's drugs policy has been his most enduring crusade.

Last autumn he issued a report in reply to a Home Office consultation
urging that the law should be changed, which subsequently received
the backing of his local police authority.

Yesterday Mr Brunstrom said he believed there was a great of a
"scaremongering" and "rumour-mongering" about drugs.

"Ecstasy is a remarkably safe substance - it's far safer than
aspirin," he said.

"If you look at the Government's own research into deaths you'll find
that Ecstasy, by comparison to many other substances - legal and
illegal - is comparably a safe substance."

He said he was now campaigning for drugs to be legalised, and for the
class A, B and C system to be scrapped.

Mr Brunstrom's suggestions were criticised by some politicians,
including Clwyd West MP David Jones, who accused him of "flogging a
dead horse".