CITY EXPERTS PAN DRUG STANCE

The idea of legalising all drugs - from marijuana to the opiates - is
finding no favour among Palmerston North people who deal daily with the
problems associated with them.

Comments by former Scotland Yard drug squad boss Eddie Ellison met with
almost universal condemnation yesterday.

Mr Ellison, who addressed a Feilding Rotary Club meeting on Tuesday,
advocates the legalisation of all drugs, from hashish to heroin.

He believes legalisation would reduce enormously the social costs of thefts
and burglaries caused by drug users trying to support their addictions.

Palmerston North CIB boss Detective Senior Sergeant Craig Sheridan said he
"dreads the day" methamphetamine is made legal and doubts the legalisation
of drugs would reduce the police workload.

Mr Sheridan said a blanket legalisation of narcotics - from marijuana to
cocaine and opiates such as heroin - is not that simple.

"If it was that simple, it would have been done already."

He said he would be particularly worried if methamphetamines - the drug
group that includes P - were to be freely available.

"There's a drug that causes people to act hugely irrationally. That's a
different issue to burglary and theft."

Martin McMaster, from MidCentral District Health Board's public health
unit, said legalising all drugs would be a unique position for any country.

"There's only one way to find if legalising drugs improves anything and
that is to just do it. The question is who wants to do that?" he said.

"It's not a new idea, but I think it is taking harm minimisation to an
extreme level and, while it might have some effect on criminal activity, we
couldn't wholeheartedly support it.

"Throwing up our hands and saying 'just do it' would probably cause a few
problems in itself. Okay, heroin addicts might not be burgling as many
houses, but they would still be addicts."

The idea of legal drugs is vehemently opposed by Palmerston North Drug-Arm
boss Lew Findlay.

Though such legalisation might lighten the workload of the court, police
and prison systems, it would come at a huge social cost.

"It would destroy our country and a whole generation of young people."

There is "no merit in any of it", Mr Findlay said.

"We have two legal drugs in New Zealand (cigarettes and alcohol). Look at
the damage and the cost we have from those alone. And this dipstick wants
to legalise more?"

Mr Findlay believes the country should be doing more to help drug users,
but should also be working harder to attack those who deal drugs,
- -particularly to children.

"When you see the parents sitting there, crying because their child was top
of the class when they went to high school, but at the age of 16 or 17 has
dropped out because they can't even read a book . . . What sort of a signal
would (legalisation) send our young people?"