YOU MIGHT THINK I'M MAD. . . BUT SHOULD WE MAKE ALL DRUGS LEGAL?

ANYBODY Interested in cutting crime by eighty or ninety percent? In
making urban streets instantly safe?

In utterly destroying in one masterstroke the livelihood of every
gangster, mugger and ne'er do well in this country?

In reclaiming childhood as a time of safety and innocence? In emptying
our prisons? In cutting by a vast factor the impossible pressure on
our police and social services? And at the same time, in giving an
incalculably better life overnight to millions of people living in
desperate conditions? Wouldn't make a bad social programme for the
average political manifesto, would it? But until this week, I doubted
if any of our parties would dare to even think about the ballsy,
radical move needed to make it possible. Now, at last, a glimmer of
sense has entered the drugs cataclysm that is quite literally ruining
much of life in this country.

The news of high quality heroin becoming available to addicts on the
NHS under David Blunkett's new drugs strategy probably left you cold.
It was one of those news-for-other-people stories that zip by you like
a non-stopping train. But I would like to think it struck terror and
panic into drug barons and everyone else from smugglers to petty
dealers who make money out of supplying drugs. For imagine what would
happen to their rich living if Blunkett's new thinking were taken to
its logical extreme, and all drugs -- possibly even crack -- were
legal and available for free or at low cost. If every line, every
spliff, every wrap, was state supplied from a state monopoly. Quality
assured. Medically supervised. Available to anyone over 18 who
requested them in an interview with a doctor. And provided on premises
licensed and secured by the state and opened in every town and city.

Sounds insane? It does to everyone at first until they think about it.
Then they say it's interesting but a bit on the daring side. Then, as
I've been finding they tend to conclude that, wacky as it seems, it
could actually work. Look at it this way. Almost all crime committed
today is drug related. Almost everyone in prisoner is in for drugs.
Almost every mugger is off his head and doing it for drug money.

The reason for this mad and dangerous mess is not that drug producers,
and suppliers are on some secret mission to undermine society. It's
because there is a market and they want to make a lot of money with
minimal effort. It is part of the human condition to enjoy mind
altering substances. Always has been -- hence the prosperity of the
great Tory tobacco, brewing and distilling dynasties.

It is equally part of our make-up to try to make money by the easiest
possible means and ignore any paltry risk the law may put in our way.

Hence the prosperity of a tax avoidance industry for the wealthy. The
extent to which drugs have corroded decent life, attacked the
foundations of society in this country can not be exaggerated.

I have been speaking to a social worker whose patch includes housing
estates near Glasgow where a hundred per cent of the adults are on
heroin. Where two and three-year olds play outside at night, and, when
asked when their mummy is, say she's at home, but she's high.

It's the same in most inner cities, and in ex-coal mining areas.
Wherever drugs and the drug business grip an area, the hinterland is
devastated in their wake, too.

The users are generally unemployed but are compelled to spend their
time and ingenuity securing the next fix. Which means burgling your
house, stealing your wallet, nicking your kid's phone.

But even if local drug centres - super-markets, if you like - put drug
dealers irrevocably out of business, wouldn't they also create more
hard drug addicts? Possibly, for a while. But my plan envisages that,
while cannabis would be -sold at a reasonable price to take home, the
hard stuff could only be used in highly controlled surroundings -
which frankly, wouldn't be very pleasant, but would be safe.

The new drug centres would erode the glamour, as some see it, of hard
drugs. They would look like a cheerless, dreary hospital.

But the cheapness of the "official" drugs would be so cheap that there
would be no chance of a black market-developing for home use. A "few
dealers might stick around to service the likes of pop stars and 'City
bankers, but neither side of that deal poses any great risk to the
rest of us. The dealers whose customer are the young and the poor are
the danger, and they simply won't stay in business if their only
remaining market is children with pocket money to spend.

HERE's another important point. Our current assumption is that being
on drugs makes you useless for any kind of proper work.

But that's not true. What really makes you unemployable in that you
are "working' (or more likely nicking) round the clock to get the
money to feed your addiction.

There is actually no reason why plenty couldn't do a useful job. Many
of the Victorian writers and poets were heroin addicts who could
afford their fix. And you would be amazed by the number of doctors and
lawyers kept going by a steady stream of cocaine and, in some cases,
heroin. The screams of righteous anguish from some on the silly right
about David Blunkett's sensible new initiative this week were
predictable. But I hear-from another social worker based in London and
whose job is teaching colleagues how to deal with drugs that my "drug
supermarket" idea and others similar to it are already being discussed
by some of this country's leading researchers and academics in the
drug field.

"It sounds strange," he told me. "but you know what I long for, having
worked in this for a few years and seen the devastation the current
cat-and-mouse game over drugs is causing?

"I am actually desperate to be out of a job."