Analysis: WHY THE TSAR WAS DEPOSED IN FAVOUR OF A NEW POLICY TO CRACK
RISING DRUG USE

Performance Targets to Reduce Cocaine and Heroin Use Are Ripped Up As
Government Aims to Increase Seizures and End Afghan Production

It was a glittering occasion more usually associated with a film
premiere than the launch of a new piece of government policy. In
April 1998, after less than a year in power, Labour ministers hired
the theatre of the Trocadero Centre, near Leicester Square, to tell
the world of their plans for "tackling drugs to build a better Britain".

Keith Hellawell, the newly appointed drugs tsar, took to the rostrum to
outline a 10-year strategy to "stifle the availability" of drugs and enable
young people and former drug users to live "healthy and crime-free lives".

The showbiz atmosphere and the spectacular nature of the claims provoked a
sceptical response from many of the experts present. Less than five years
on, the cynics have been proved right. The tsar has been deposed and is
engaged in a bitter feud with ministers responsible for drugs policy.

Mr Hellawell's strategy aimed to drive down drug- related crime, reduce the
overall availability of drugs, educate young people on the dangers of
substance misuse and increase the number of users receiving treatment. But
instead of communities safe from drugs, crack houses and street gun battles
have become part of Britain's urban landscape and heroin addiction has
spread from cities to the countryside. Availability of all illegal drugs is
widespread and cocaine use, in particular, has risen to recordlevels.

Drug prices are now lower than ever before, and a strategy that was largely
based on the education of youngsters has coincided with an estimated one
million people taking ecstasy every weekend and deep confusion over the
legal status of cannabis, the drug most widely used by teenagers.

Faced with the might of the global traffickers and the expendability of
street dealers, the Government announced a new tack yesterday of
concentrating on "middle-market" dealers.

It also ripped up three of the four "key performance targets" of the
Tackling Drugs to Build a Better Britain plan and replaced them with new
ones described as "achievable".

Instead of 10-year objectives that aimed to cut by half the numbers of
young people using heroin and cocaine and to reduce by 50 per cent the
levels of repeat offending by drug users, the strategy now looks for any
downward trend in these areas by 2008.

And instead of having to cut by 50 per cent the availability of heroin and
cocaine, the Government has now pledged itself simply to increase the level
of drug seizures and step up attempts to help Afghanistan reduce the
cultivation of poppies, with the aim of eliminating the crop within 10 years.

"Let's be totally up front," said Bob Ainsworth, the Home Office's drugs
minister. "We had no strategy at all in 1998. There was no evidence base."

Mr Ainsworth claimed the "direction" of the Home Office's Updated Drug
Strategy 2002 was "exactly the same" as the one launched by Mr Hellawell
four years earlier.

But that was not how the former drugs tsar saw it.

Still apparently enraged by the decision of the Home Secretary, David
Blunkett, to downgrade the classification of cannabis, he said policy in
relation to that drug was "a dog's dinner". He accused ministers of
confusing both police officers and young people on cannabis use.

Of the four original Hellawell targets, only one has survived.

Hazel Blears, a Health minister, said that the number of hard-drug users
being brought in for treatment was increasing by 8 per cent a year. She
said plans were on course to double by 2008 the 118,500 drug users who were
being treated in 1998.

Treatment services are to be expanded, with a major increase in the
availability of heroin on prescription for users who have problems with
methadone-substitute programmes. Hundreds of new drug support workers,
detoxification workers and residential care staff will be recruited,
including some who have themselves overcome problems of substance abuse.
The issuing by courts of drug treatment and testing orders will double by
March 2005.

But many drug users will be concerned that the only way they have of
gaining access services is to commit crimes.

The Government published findings by researchers at the University of York
who concluded that the economic and social costs of class A drug use in
England and Wales had risen to UKP22.7bn a year, and that the average
annual cost of a problem drug user was UKP45,858.

The 250,000 users with the most severe problems are responsible for 99 per
cent of the costs of drug misuse, the Home Office said.

The sheer scale of modern-day drug use shows how the Government - and its
immediate predecessors - have failed to get to grips with the issue. Danny
Kushlick, of the radical Transform Drug Policy Institute, pointed out
yesterday that the 1,000 registered drug users of 1971 had grown to 250,000.

In its revised strategy, the Home Office said four million people used
illicit drugs a year and one million used class A substances. The York
study suggests this might be a considerable underestimate, and that there
may be up to 3,486,000 class A users, of which up to 506,000 might be
"problem users".

The relaunch of the drug strategy attempted to find evidence of what
officials term the "green shoots" of progress. It cited self-reporting
surveys which showed that since 1998 the proportion of 16 to 24-year-olds
using class A drugs was stable at 8 per cent. The proportion of 16 to
19-year-olds using drugs in the past year fell from 34 per cent in 1994 to
28 per cent in 2001-02.

But the positive nature of the last statistic was tempered by the warning
that "within the same group there has been a worrying increase in the use
of cocaine". At the forefront of government concerns is the growing use of
the cocaine derivative crack. Official figures published yesterday showed
that 85,000 people in England and Wales might have used the drug in the
past year.

Treatment facilities have in the past concentrated largely on opiate users
and there is a dearth of support for those addicted to crack. Mr Blunkett
admitted yesterday that provision of drug treatment as a whole was "patchy
and variable".

The Government launched a National Crack Action Plan yesterday, with
fast-track crack treatment programmes in badly affected neighbourhoods and
"crack-specific education" for all children.

Next spring, the Government will, once again, launch a communications
campaign "driving home the risks of class A drugs". It will include the
repackaging of the failing National Drugs Helpline, which Mr Ainsworth
conceded was "not widely known among young people".

The Government insists the past four years had not been wasted. Mr
Ainsworth said: "We have learnt an awful lot over four years about what
works and what does not work."