LEGALISATION MIGHT BE THE ONLY WAY TO HALT THE DRUGS EPIDEMIC

Angus on coke! Sadie's baby drops an E! John Leslie does it. Tara P-T and
Darren Day did it. Robbie used to love it but now he fights it. Noel and
Liam reckon E's more common than tea. Even Prince Harry seems to have
skinned up the odd spliff.

We don't seem to be able to get away from drugs and yet the prevailing
wisdom appears to be that, with just a little more zero tolerance, the war
on drugs can be won. Well, I have been researching material for my new
novel, which is set among drug-takers at every level of society, and I have
come to the conclusion that this war cannot be won - it is lost and we are
currently living under the yoke of a victorious army of occupation.

An army of drug barons, gangsters, pushers, traffickers, murderers, petty
thieves, muggers, corrupted officials and all the low-life of a vast
criminal economy. Radical new policies are required.

Many people in authority have come to the same conclusion, but don't expect
them to say so. Remember Commander Brian Paddick of the Brixton police? PC
Pothead as the press called him, or the Camp Commander. Mr Paddick had the
temerity to point out that so many people take recreational drugs that
stopping them is impossible and he would be better off directing his
officers to more practical and urgent areas of policing such as protecting
life and property.

Oh, what a deal of trouble did PC Pothead bring down upon his naive and
unsuspecting head, and the same fate awaits any politician or police
officer who attempts to address the drug problem in anything other than the
most blinkered and reactionary manner.

This is not only wrong, it is shameful. There is no moral high ground to be
had in blindly ignoring the utter failure of 30 years of drug legislation,
while loudly calling for more of the same. No one who is content to bang on
about tougher sentences and zero tolerance while leaving our
crime-bedevilled communities to their grim fate has any cause to think
themselves righteous.

It is a matter of simple fact that a large proportion of people in this
country, particularly young people, take drugs. Very few of them are drug
addicts but they are all criminals under the law - the problem is that this
vast nation of social criminals is linked arterially to a corrosive,
cancerous core of real criminals.

We are all connected to these people because there is no legal way for
numerous - otherwise law-abiding - people to get high, which they are
clearly intent upon doing. The law is effectively the number one sponsor of
organised crime.

I don't take illegal drugs myself and I don't want my children to, but I
don't want to live in a violent, ghettoised society either. Should drugs
therefore be legalised? Should the vast resources which are currently
employed in failing to prevent drug-taking be deployed to help those who do
take them?

The worry, of course, is that if drugs were legal there would be many more
drug addicts. I do not know if this would be the case but actually I doubt
it. I don't think that I would become a drug addict, or indeed that the
many sensible young people of my acquaintance would either. They might try
it but, as I have said, they do so anyway.

Abraham Lincoln once said that you cannot permanently do more for people
than they are capable of doing for themselves. I think he was right.
Government cannot change human nature. The young will always experiment
with things they shouldn't and they need education and protection, not
police persecution.

In the United States they once tried to ban alcohol. That one insane
experiment tells us a great deal about drug control. People did not drink
less - they just drank illegally. They paid no tax, some of them went blind
and the whole sorry mess financed the birth of the organised crime that has
plagued American society ever since.

And, speaking of alcohol, it's legal, but how dangerous a drug is that?
There were headlines recently about the fact that deaths from taking
ecstasy are doubling annually and that, in 2001, 40 people died from it.

This is a sad fact but not so sad as the fact that 6,000 people a year die
directly from alcohol misuse. At peak times eight out of 10 hospital
casualty admissions are alcohol-related. One in seven people killed on the
road are killed due to alcohol. I love a drink but I do not kid myself that
alcohol is a safe drug.

But two wrongs do not of course make a right. If deaths from E are doubling
annually, that is clearly cause for concern. However, it seems to me quite
possible that these figures are rising because ecstasy is illegal. There is
no quality control and the ruthless back-room chemists who make the stuff
do not necessarily have the best interests of the consumer at heart.

I would not particularly want my children to take E but, if they did, I
would infinitely prefer that they knew what they were taking, and that it
was produced under government licence, properly controlled and denied to
minors. We are told that a million young people a week take ecstasy - that
means that under a policy of zero tolerance we are leaving an entire
generation at the mercy of criminal chemists.

Perhaps some half-way house is the answer. There is currently much talk of
decriminalisation of marijuana. However, we are told that this has not
worked in Brixton; that it simply attracted more dealers. This was a
foregone conclusion.

You can't apply drug policy street by street. If the law is a little bit
"softer" in one area than another, then of course it will attract those who
profit from selling the more dangerous drugs. Criminals will always exploit
woolly lawmaking and police confusion - policy must be applied nationally
or not at all.

One thing is certain - doing nothing is absolutely not an option. A crisis
is developing, a crisis created by the law and from which the law offers no
protection. Both the Government and the media are failing the community. It
is time for a proper adult debate and I personally believe that that debate
must now encompass the possibility of some form of legalisation.

High Society by Ben Elton is published by Bantam Press (UKP 16.99)