THE TRUE PRICE OF PROHIBITION

Drug-Related Crime Costs More Than the Home Office's Annual Budget, but
Treatment for Users Is Underfunded and Locked into Punishment

Labour and the Tories are fighting over the law and order baton in the race
for government. But both parties are committed to a regime that arguably
causes more crime than any other single policy. In the 2004 comprehensive
spending review last month, Gordon Brown earmarked just under UKP15bn to
run the Home Office in 2007-08, up more than UKP4bn on 2002-03 but a
billion less than the UKP16bn that the government estimates to be the
annual cost of drug-related crime. Could it be that some of this
expenditure is actually creating this crime? Is there a policy elephant
that has hidden itself where no one can see it?

Transform estimates that drug prohibition has cost between UKP100bn and
UKP200bn over the past 20 years. The government estimates that it currently
costs UKP20bn a year.

In 1961 the UK signed up to the UN convention on drugs, joining over 150
member states in pledging to criminalise the production, supply and use of
a selection of psychoactive substances. This was the definitive moment when
global drug prohibition came into being. Ten years later the then home
secretary, Jim Callaghan, introduced the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. Then
there were fewer than 5,000 problematic drug users in the UK. There are now
an estimated 280,000, mostly using heroin and/or cocaine.

Unfortunately the chancellor does not control the price of opium- or
coca-based products. That is left to the unregulated illegal market. As a
result of the risk attached to the trade, profit margins exceed that of any
other commodity on the planet - 2000% to 3000% between production and use
is not unheard of, a gift horse for organised criminals. The knock-on
effect of the price hike at street level is to make a daily habit far too
much for most people to afford. An average heroin habit starts at UKP50 a
day; a crack binge can run into hundreds. Problematic users on ordinary
incomes often resort to crime to support their habit.

There are 8 million heavy drinkers in the UK of whom 2 million are very
heavy drinkers. The crime costs associated with the misuse of alcohol are
UKP7.3bn a year - most of it violent crime. There is little property crime
associated with alcohol use and none committed by the UK's 12 million
tobacco users. Our million prescription tranquilliser addicts are not
begging on street corners or breaking into houses. A far smaller population
of heroin and crack users commit far more crimes, purely because their
daily habit is prohibitively expensive.

As part of its welcome review of British sex laws the government estimated
that 95% of street prostitution is related to crack and heroin use. Most of
the women plying their trade by the road do so to get a rock of crack, and
will repeat the cycle for 36 hours or so until they crash out, using heroin
until the cycle begins again.

Lest you think that legal regulation would be a panacea, imagine 12 million
heroin addicts instead of tobacco users, a world where crack was
aggressively marketed to young people using techniques perfected by the
likes of British American Tobacco and alcopops retailers. Haven't we got
enough legal drugs on the market to tempt our children?

So, let's all pretend that young people are prey to evil pushers, rather
than self-determining individuals who, like adults, make some lousy
decisions. And if they screw up, let's make sure that, on top of everything
else, they have the long arm of the law to deal with.

Problematic use is clearly linked to social deprivation and only tackling
its root causes will significantly reduce the numbers of new problem users.
It is no coincidence that Britain has some of the highest levels of
problematic use in Europe and one of the widest gaps between rich and poor.

Prohibition is a major cause of theft, is responsible for violent turf
wars, contributes to urban degeneration and makes criminals of millions of
otherwise law-abiding people.

The UK locks up more people than any other western European nation.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that somewhere between 30% and 80% of the
prison population are property offenders funding a heroin or crack habit.
Prohibition also contributes significantly to the destabilisation of most
of Latin America, Afghanistan and the Caribbean.

So let's treat our way out of this mess: UKP573m is earmarked for treatment
of our quarter of a million illegal drug users (compared with UKP100m for
alcohol treatment). This treatment spending is delivered primarily through
the criminal justice system: the Criminal Justice Intervention Programme is
the newest flagship scheme to reduce offending among problematic users.

The effect of prohibition is to force up the price of illegal drugs,
causing problematic users to steal and be identified through the courts.
They are then - and only then - provided with treatment programmes of
highly variable quality. This means that most of our money is spent
enforcing the law, the public bears the brunt of the crime costs and the
policy appears to be "tough on crime". The government is effectively
running a harm maximisation policy, implementing a crime reduction policy
masquerading as treatment.

The reaction to all this from journalists, parliamentarians, NGOs and
academics is surprisingly muted. In 2002 the Observer polled a
cross-section of adults on a range of drug policy issues: 45% believed that
levels of street crime and burglary would be reduced if hard drugs were
decriminalised.

If nearly half the adult population understands that prohibition creates
property crime, why don't policy makers, the press, criminologists and NGOs
involved in crime reduction and penal reform?

Prohibition will continue so long as its potential critics remain silent.
And home secretaries of all political hues will continue to trumpet
reductions in crime, while pursuing the policy that doubles it. Next time
the crime figures are announced in the news, look carefully - there may be
an elephant in the room.