POLICE CHIEF ATTACKS BRITAIN'S 'HARSH' DRUG LAWS

A Chief Constable says he sees no problem with drugs as long as addicts are
"not mugging old ladies".

The top officer in North Wales, Richard Brunstrom, has previously called
for heroin to be prescribed free to Britain's 300,000 addicts.

In an interview on Channel 4 he also claims if drugs were not illegal,
their street value would not be so high, and pushers would not make vast
sums selling them.

He says lawmakers should be asking themselves why exactly drugs are illegal.

He says people needed to ask what the problem with drug taking was if
people were not robbing shops, stealing cars or mugging old ladies.

"We have the harshest drugs laws in Europe and by far the worst drug abuse
problem so we haven't got it right and in my view we are losing the war, we
have got the worst problems and we must look at other alternatives.

"There is no doubt there is an appalling toll of human misery caused by the
misuse of drugs in the current environment. My proposition is much of that
is caused by their illegality and not by the drugs and if they were treated
differently by our legal system it's possible much of the misery, much of
the adverse impact on health could be swept away.

"It is very clear that alcohol and nicotine are arguably much more
dangerous to individuals and more costly to our society than many of the
proscribed drugs.

So there is a great deal of illogicality attached to that. I would like to
see more logic, I'd like to know why these things are illegal - must they
be illegal?

"This is a moral problem as much as it is health or a legal one. But the
reasons why some of these drugs have become illegal are now lost in the
mists of time and we ought to think about this."