SITTING ON THE FENCE OVER DRUGS WILL NOT DO

RECENTLY, I was invited to take part in a panel discussion at a two-day
conference on drugs, run by a well-known charity. This event took place at
Regent's College, London, and was called the Release Drugs University.

Not long after my arrival, I gained the strong impression hat maybe I was
the token opponent of drug legalisation.

The conference began with a series of introductory addresses, followed by
numerous work-shops which people could choose to attend according to their
own particular interests.

The vice-chairwoman of Release opened the conference and then left because
she was a lawyer who had to attend a trial. However, I did manage to speak
to her later to challenge some of the assertions which she had made in her
opening remarks.

The general tenor of her address was that there had been a sea change
throughout the UK in favour of the legalisation of drugs, even among the
population group between the ages of 65 and 70.

She reinforced her observations by pointing to the experiment taking place
in the Brixton police area. This has more to do with a pragmatic approach
to the use of police time than it has with the approval of drug use.

She then cited Anne Widdecombe's proposals at the last Conservative Party
conference, for a compulsory penalty for first use of cannabis, which had
been ridiculed as unworkable.

Finally, reference was made to the "wise words" of Peter Lilley, a minor
Conservative member, who now favours the sale of cannabis in off-licence shops.

When I did manage to speak to the vice-chairwoman, she assured me that most
senior citizens favoured the legalisation of cannabis, in common with the
majority of the population, and when I asked for evidence of this
assertion, she merely continued to assure me that she was correct.

Indeed, the. whole case for legalisation throughout the time that I was at
the conference appeared to he based on assertions reinforced by wishful
thinking, and rebuttals of my arguments by the statement: "You are wrong."

Even Viscountess Ruth Runciman, who was the chairwoman of the infamous
Inquiry Into the Misuse of Drugs Act, 1971, otherwise known as The Police
Foundation Report, resorted to similar tactics,

SUCH conferences may be the reason why there has been a media-driven
campaign recently which seems to be very much in favour of decriminalising
so called 'soft" or 'recreational" drugs, particularly cannabis and ecstasy.

In one notable case, there were four full pages of assertion in one of the
broadsheet newspapers advocating the legalisation of heroin on the spurious
grounds that the author considered it a harmless drug.

Not one letter in rebuttal was printed in that newspaper, despite the
inaccuracies abundant throughout the article.

Journalist Nick Davies was due to appear on the panel with me at the
Release conference, but failed to attend, which is probably just as well
for him, as all the other panel members agreed that his article was misleading.

Now it has been reported that a group of Lambeth activists, calling
themselves Cannabis Action London, seek to have cannabis cafes in the borough.

These people want to introduce cafes along the lines of the Amsterdam
coffee shops as the natural corollary to the policing experiment, which
issues warnings for possession of small amounts of cannabis for personal use.

In the Greater Manchester area, an attempt by another activist to open a
cafe at which he intended to sell cannabis as a medical aid was short-lived.

A REPORT just published by the Home Office shows that the use of hard drugs
is not falling in accordance with national and international targets and
this has been seized upon as more evidence that we are losing the war on
drugs and that the Government anti-drug strategy is wrong.

It is said that resources and efforts are wasted by continued opposition to
the abuse of illicit drugs.

The alleged, simple remedy is to legalise their use under strict and
licensed conditions.

What surprises and disappoints me is that the silent majority is failing to
react to all of this nonsense in favour of legalisation.

Most people in the UK neither use illicit drugs nor want them to be
legalised, and yet they remain silent and fail to react to the increasingly
vociferous statements in favour of introducing highly dangerous and
addictive substances into our communities on a legal basis.

There is almost a silent conspiracy to ignore the proposals in the hope
that the damage will not occur or, if it does, it will not affect good and
decent people. This is what the psychiatrists refer to as "denial".

EVIDENCE from the US which has just been released indicates that the drug
problem is again on the increase there, particularly in schools.

Most American schools are not drug-free, any more than are ours in the UK,
and it has been estimated that student substance use costs at least $41
billion a year.

The illiteracy and drop-out rates are high, and for many pupils the schools
are neither safe nor supportive in helping them to achieve a good education.

Nevertheless, some legalisers continue to assert that this is evidence to
show that prohibition does not work. All this indicates to me is that maybe
the targets are unrealistic and are certainly difficult to achieve.

Sending a message of approval for drug use is not the way to remedy the
problem.

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University
(CASA) has issued a 117-page report entitled Malignant Neglect.

This highlights the fact that there has been a complete failure to achieve
the year-2000 National Education Goal enacted by Congress in 1994, which
pledged that, by the millennium year, America's schools would be "safe,
disciplined, and alcohol and drug-free" and that there would be widespread
"parental participation".

What has happened in many cases has been a blame culture in which the
problem has been aggravated by finger-pointing and denial, with parents,
teachers and administrators all blaming someone else.

The report concludes that the widespread availability of drugs in schools
is due to "the malignant neglect of parents, teachers and administrators,
communities and students themselves.

The two most important factors leading to substance abuse were said to be
the availability of substances, and the perception of risk in using them.

EDUCATION about drugs alone is of limited value unless the lessons are
reinforced by parental engagement with their children in addressing the
problem and implementing the knowledge gained.

Instruction without the support of parents, family, friends and the whole
community are little more than a cosmetic attempt by policy makers to
demonstrate that they are "doing something".

This last point reinforces my disappointment that there is little apparent
evidence that there is a widespread acceptance of this responsibility with
either parents or communities.

The deafening silence in response to demands for legalisation or
decriminalisation of dangerous drugs is nothing short of appalling. Failure
on the part of all of us to take part in resistance to such demands is also
highly irresponsible.

Gradually, the culture of tolerance and acceptance of drugs is gaining hold
simply because not enough of us bother to find out the facts.

We do not involve ourselves in assisting young people to gain the right
information and the strength of character to resist pressures to try drugs
as some kind of approved rite of passage to maturity.

Where are the voices of the elected politicians and community leaders in
resisting this media drive towards legalisation?

It is time for them to be much more active in opposing harm and in ensuring
that our approach to educating our children is backed up by those support
systems which have been found to be absent in many American schools.

Soon it will be too late to resist the permissive culture of the minority
which is driving us irrevocably towards a harm every bit as serious as
terrorist attacks on our communities.

It is time to wake up and get wise. Sitting on the fence just will not do.

Members of the Government who hide behind the need for debate in the face
of irrefutable evidence of a permanent and devastating potential for harm
within our communities are failing to give leadership.

Any debate must be about the way in which we deal with a pernicious
problem, not about the possibility of exacerbating it by giving implied
approval through the decriminilisation of demonstrably harmful substances.