POLICE CHIEF SAYS 'DRUGS WARS IS LOST'

A senior police officer in Wales is to warn that the UK has lost the
so-called war against drugs.

Richard Brunstrom, Chief Constable of North Wales Police, is expected to
call for a Royal Commission to look at legalising some or even all illegal
drugs.

His is due to make his departure from conventional police policy when he
addresses his own police authority on Friday.

He is expected to say that that the campaign against drugs cannot be won by
means acceptable in a democracy.

He said the political consequences and the effect on society of a serious
crackdown on drugs would be too severe to be realistic.

Mr Brunstrom will tell members of the authority that despite the
expenditure of billions of pounds and thousands of officer hours, the
number of addicts and "recreational users" of illegal drugs in the UK has
multiplied at an alarming rate since the 1970s.

He believes the crackdown needed to halt drug use would be unacceptable in
a democracy.

He said the free movement of people and goods, which brought enormous
benefits in a democratic society, would have to go, to be replaced by a
fortress mentality and a police state.

"It might just work but the consequences are not palatable," he said.

Mr Brunstrom points out that alcohol prohibition in the USA in the 1920s
was an unmitigated disaster and, ironically, that more successful
enforcement of the drug laws would actually make things worse.

In a report to be considered by the police authority, he says that the
authority should call on the government to set up a Royal Commission to
look into the future of drugs policy in the UK.

He also says that they should welcome Home Secretary David Blunkett's
recent announcements and re-affirm its support for current government policy.

But he said that there was no particularly sound logic to the pattern of
proscription created by Britain's 1971 drugs legislation.

He said: "For historical reasons the only drugs whose actual use is banned
is opium, while the two drugs causing the most damage to society, alcohol
and nicotine, are not proscribed and are only lightly controlled.

"This illogicality, some might say hypocrisy, is at the heart of the
problem when explaining drugs policy to young people."

The UK currently spends UKP1.6bn each year on drug-related activity.

The bulk of which, over UKP1bn, was spent on reacting to the consequences
of drug misuse through the criminal justice process.

There were currently 200,000 problem drug users in England and Wales,
representing about three per cent of all drug users.