A POLICY ADDICTED TO MORAL POSTURING

The farmers anticipate another bumper crop. Nato has given up the
pretence it can destroy Afghanistan's opium fields. In Helmand, scene
of the fiercest fighting with the Taliban, the area under poppy
cultivation has doubled within two years. The record harvest will
soon be feeding the habit of Britain's heroin addicts.

Nato commanders say that to try to eradicate the crop would simply be
to drive the population in southern Afghanistan into the arms of the
Taliban. That in turn would invite military defeat. Yet these same
generals also know that the enormous profits of the opium trade keep
the enemy fed and equipped.

I have heard a British general say the answer might be to outbid the
Taliban for the crop. The National Health Service could take what it
needed and the rest could be dumped in the deep waters of the North
Sea. The Taliban would lose a main source of income and Nato would
secure a breathing space for economic reconstruction. Eventually, the
Afghan farmers might be persuaded to grow something else.

In the absence of better options, this strategy is certainly worth a
try. Equally certainly, it will not happen. British soldiers may be
dying in Helmand; young addicts, likewise, in Britain's inner cities.
But in the framing of drugs policy, moral panic trumps pragmatism.
Imagine the spluttering indignation of the tabloid press and the
BBC's Today programme were taxpayers' money handed to Afghan poppy
farmers. Better, the politicians say to themselves, to fight futile
wars than offend such populist opinion.

So in Afghanistan, so at home. Failure to halt the supply of heroin
(and it almost all comes from Afghanistan) holds up a mirror to the
dismal record of efforts to reduce demand. If Nato's shooting war
against the Taliban might yet bewon - though military strategists
seem doubtful - the British government's war against drugs was long ago lost.

It is a little over 35 years since Britain adopted, in the 1971
Misuse of Drugs Act, a policy of criminalising addiction to what are
called Class A drugs. At the time, the number of addicts numbered a
few thousand. Now it stands at somewhere between 250,000 and 350,000.
In between times, the "war on drugs" has been declared, fought, lost
and declared again more times than anyone can count. The futility has
been obvious to all; the remedy stubbornly ignored.

Last week an independent commission assembled by the Royal Society of
Arts offered a damning verdict on this legal framework. The current
system of classifying drugs was crude and ineffective; prohibition
had bred flourishing criminal networks; abuse of alcohol and tobacco
killed many more people and caused far greater social dislocation.
The commission called for a new approach grounded in reducing the
harm inflicted by drugs. Criminal sanctions would be concentrated on
traffickers rather than victims.

Politicians no doubt will dismiss such conclusions as the work of the
liberal establishment. But the report's central conclusions are now
wearily familiar. Only three years ago the prime minister's own
strategy unit came to strikingly similar conclusions - only to see
Tony Blair bury its recommendations. The present policy may be an
abject failure, the moralists seem to be saying, but at least it is
the right thing to do.

It is not. By any measure, it creates far more human misery - and
damage to society - than it eases. Even as the number of addicts has
multiplied, criminalisation has filled the prisons to overflowing. At
the end of 2005, some 17 per cent of male and 35 per cent of female
prisoners were incarcerated for drug offences.

Those figures greatly understate the true effect of present laws.
More than half of all prisoners have been sentenced for crimes linked
to their drug abuse. By some official estimates, more than
three-quarters of all incidences of shoplifting and burglary can be
attributed to addicts seeking to feed their habit.

Home Office studies suggest that four out of 10 prisoners manage to
get access to drugs while serving their sentence. So much for
prohibition. If it does not work inside prisons, how on earth can
anyone expect it to be effective outside? Of course, no one does. It
is just that the politicians are fearful of owning up to the truth.

The answer is not a libertarian free-for-all with heroin, crack
cocaine and the rest sold in every corner shop. It is a policy that
distinguishes the victims of drugs - the addicts - from the hugely
rich and violent criminals who run the trade.

Making drugs such as heroin available in controlled environments to
those who cannot survive without them may offend the sensibilities of
the tabloids. It will also make Britain a safer place. Drugs will
always be a problem. After all, about 85,000 people die each year
from tobacco-related illnesses - that, incidentally, against perhaps
2,500 victims of illegal substances. But where is the moral purpose
in a strategy that elevates posturing above effective action?