GOVERNMENT'S DANGEROUS ADDICTION TO ZERO TOLERANCE

Oh God, not another book about drugs. I feel your ennui, but really this is
an important one. It also comes with the implicit Davenport-Hines guarantee
of hard work, deep thought and good writing. Not to mention a political
sensibility, a distrust of the patrician and a passionate sense of justice.

Davenport-Hines tends to leave off titillating accounts of what the
substances do to one, although a description of the effects of ketamine,
much in the public mind as Jazzer in The Archers recovers from his coma
induced by the drug, starts well - " It seems to sever the association
between mind and body" - but becomes almost comically unsatisfactory: "and
can make sexual contact seem bizarre and exciting, especially between
strangers."

But that isn't really his brief. He wants to understand why governments are
unable to contain the growth of drug use, even though their policies
aggressively punish the suppliers and the users. The conclusion is that
such policies are themselves to blame for the increasing popularity of drugs.

When making such claims, a command of the facts is important, and there are
enough alarming facts in here to shake the faith of even the most obtuse
zero-tolerance fanatic. The sheer lack of success such policies have had -
and their staggering cost - should alone make people think again. Sadly,
clear thinking is beyond the capacity of our legislators, who take their
cue from the spectacularly unhelpful American model. To take one example:
the Higher Education Act of 1998 denies student-loan eligibility to anyone
convicted of a drug offence, however minor. Which closes off a particularly
effective method of self-improvement and rehabilitation.

"All the most important problems since the 1860s," says Davenport-Hines,
"could be resolved by a clear answer to one question: what is so
distinctive about the United States?" This may lead him to make
speculations about "unrealistic" expectations to a life of happiness, as
enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, but when you have the chief
of the LAPD telling a Senate committee that "the casual drug user should be
taken out and shot", or Nixon inaugurating the war on drugs while his mind
was warped by a cocktail of not even legally prescribed pharmaceuticals,
you realise he has a point.

This is a book which British politicians should be forced to read. They
will not like it: when they are not monstrously thick-headed, they are
hypocritical. Public policy on the matter has been influenced more by the
hysterical ravings of the Daily Express than by the findings of experts.
(RUSSIAN ROULETTE WITH A FULLY LOADED REVOLVER - THAT'S POT is one headline
that appeared in reaction to the 1969 Wootton Report, which posited that
long-term moderate consumption of cannabis has no harmful effects.)

Davenport-Hines makes an eloquent and unanswerable case for pragmatism. The
bottom line is that the approach he suggests will save lives - although not
as many as are lost to alcohol.