Pubdate: Sun, 11 Jun 2000 Source: Sunday Times (UK) Copyright: 2000 Times Newspapers Ltd. Contact: http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/ Author: David Quinn WAR AGAINST HEROIN IS A BATTLE IRELAND CAN WIN In 1839 the Chinese official, Lin Zexu, wrote the following words to Queen Victoria: "Suppose there were people from another country who carried opium for sale to England and seduced your people into buying and smoking it; certainly your honourable ruler would deeply hate it and be bitterly aroused." Lin's letter was a vain attempt to persuade Her Majesty's government to call a halt to the opium trade which was having a devastating effect upon growing numbers of the Chinese population. Following the conquest of large parts of India, the British invested massively in the manufacture and distribution of opium and imported it into China as a way of balancing its trade with that country. Beginning with 200 chests of opium in 1729, by 1838 the number had reached 40,000. The following year, Lin, having won the backing of his government, decided to act. He hit the smugglers hard. He had the Portuguese drive the British out of Macau which had been used as a point of entry into China. He put under lock and key the British opium supplies in China. A British expeditionary force was sent to China and Lin's country was duly pummelled into submission. The opium routes were reopened, Hong Kong was given to the British as a new conduit for the trade, and for good measure the Chinese had to pay the British the cost of sending the expeditionary force in the first place. This was one of the most humiliating defeats ever inflicted on China by a foreign power. It was followed by a second opium war which extracted from the Chinese more concessions. Opium was already being used in China before the British arrived, but thanks to them, by the end of the 19th century an estimated 10% of the population were using the drug with roughly a third of that number, or 15m people, addicted. Prior to Lin's efforts to close down the opium trade there were efforts made to legalise the drug. Those in favour of legalisation pointed out that attempts made earlier in the century to wipe out opium had failed. The problem was too widespread, they said. Officials were too easily bribed. The major dealers could not be traced. There were too many smugglers and too long a coastline. If this argument sounds familiar, it should. Ireland's growing heroin problem - the modern equivalent of opium - is giving rise to a pro-legalisation lobby in this country. Its arguments are identical to those used in China more than 160 years ago and they have been given added impetus by the recent spate of heroin-related deaths. The Chinese experience should help us to put our own problems into perspective. If Ireland had a heroin problem as grave as the opium epidemic faced by China a century ago, it would have not 13,000 addicts as is currently estimated, but 100,000, plus an additional 250,000 users. Dwell on those figures for a moment. Think of the amount of death, degradation and heartache contained in them. No doubt if the problem were as bad as this, the call to legalise heroin in Ireland would be nigh irresistible. We would conclude that heroin use was so deeply embedded in the culture, that the best we could hope for would be a reduction in the drug-related death rate, and maybe a long, slow process of educating people out of its use. Under no circumstances should we go down this path, nor do we need to, because the legalisers are wrong - heroin can be defeated. Other countries have successfully done so. So can we. Starting out with a far greater drug problem than anything faced by Ireland, China had all but eradicated opium use by the middle of the last century. It did so by going after the supply just as Lin did more than 100 years earlier. Other east Asian countries met with similar success, again by targeting suppliers. To this day drug traffickers in countries such as Singapore face the death penalty. Since our horror of such punishment exceeds our horror of the drug problem, we cannot employ those methods here - but we can copy Sweden. That country experimented with legalisation in the 1960s. Within a year of beginning the experiment, the number of addicts doubled. Under public pressure the government backtracked and put in place strict, well-enforced anti-drugs measures which we would do well to emulate in this country. Tackling drugs is as much a question of will as it is a matter of putting in place the right policies. The will must be there to tackle both the supply and the demand side of the problem. In Ireland we lack that and, what's worse, we are beginning to listen to "solutions" put forward by the left - namely needle exchange programmes, injecting rooms and heroin on prescription. People from the left are the last we should listen to because it is they who helped visit this problem on us in the first place. In the 1960s, members of the radical left, who had already been using drugs for decades, managed to persuade society that certain drugs presented all kinds of creative, mind-expanding possibilities. Second, by attacking the family, tradition, religion, and most sources of authority, they increased levels of social alienation by a quantum factor. It is especially those who have no family, no religion, and are disconnected from traditional ways of life who are most likely to turn to drugs for escape. If, on top of this, the left succeed in legalising drugs, they will have succeeded in normalising their use. Once that is accomplished, Lady Heroin will have us in her embrace forever. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake