Police should join a fearless and rational drugs debate

http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2013/oct/06/the-big-issue-legalising-drugs

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Chief Constable Mike Barton is on thin ice when he calls for a change in our approach to drugs use ("'It is time to end the war on drugs', says top UK police chief", News), but courage and leadership have taken him there. The ice is so thin because politicians who know he is right dare not speak out and thereby thicken it. We are in a perilous situation and every route out is fraught with real dangers, but a route must be found.

All across the country, groups of young, sometimes very young, people who would otherwise only be petty criminals have been enabled by our creation of a lucrative illegal substances trade to become powerful and resourceful criminal gangs. The most vicious and ruthless become the most successful. There is absolutely no prospect whatsoever of preventing illegal substance abuse by the criminalisation of users and the extent to which that even reduces it is highly contentious.

A policy of concentrating on catching the major importers and distributors is hugely resource-intensive and may well lead to survival of the cleverest, including those capable of achieving corruption up to the highest levels. Interruption of supplies is only ever temporary and leads to higher prices and profits for the best positioned.

The time is right for professionals in every field affected by the drugs business, in health, law enforcement, social services and education, to call for a rational and fearless debate.

<strong>Bob Denmark</strong>

Former detective superintendent

Lancashire

The policeman from Durham speaks much sense, yet there's a side to this I may have missed. Criminals' mindsets aren't suddenly going to become altruistically benign just because we shaft their existing business model. I'm no criminologist, but surely if we cut their money supply they'll simply look to something else to maintain their margins. The unintended consequences could be even more unpleasant. Controlled drugs today, what's tomorrow?

The logic appears perverse since it seems to argue in favour of preserving the gangs' income so as to stop them from doing anything worse. This is hardly an effective argument for maintaining the status quo (and the chief constable has a deal of evidence underlining the unacceptability of that) but even an old leftie like me has to draw the line somewhere. The fact that the current situation is difficult for the police is irrelevant. That's what we pay them for.

<strong>Dr Christopher Haughton</strong>

Poulton-le-Fylde

Lancashire

Mike Barton confuses treatment and prevention, believing that provision of treatment for addicts will remove the need to impose legal restraints to prevent others from becoming addicted.

The chief constable claims that "we have not learned the lessons of history", that US alcohol prohibition merely encouraged criminal activity and that we are repeating the folly in our "war on drugs".

But by Barton's own admission, easily available alcohol has created an epidemic against which drug addiction "pales in comparison". That is not a glowing advertisement for ending prohibition.

Of course there must be a public health component in combating drug addiction. But addiction is not per se a criminal activity; dealing in and possession of drugs is.

Controlled provision of Class A drugs through the health service to those already addicted can deal with consequences, not causes. Decriminalising drugs and offering them untainted to addicts through the NHS will create a moral hazard encouraging more, not less, experimentation in dangerous substances.

We miss the point if we see drug policy as solely an issue of law enforcement versus public health. It will always be both.

The issue is not whether but how best we should use the law (and education and health) to contain this pernicious epidemic. That is where the debate on drugs should be focused.

<strong>Chris Forse</strong>

Stratford-upon-Avon

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