Published http://www.mapinc.org/resource/tips.htm Pubdate: Fri, 23 May 2003 Source: Guardian, The (UK) Copyright: 2003 Guardian Newspapers Limited Contact: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175 Author: Nick Davies, The Guardian Note: To access other items in this series, click this link: http://www.mapinc.org/source/Guardian STRIKING FALL IN ADDICTS' CRIME Switzerland is now leading the way out of prohibition. In 1994, it started prescribing free heroin to long-term addicts who had failed to respond to law enforcement or any other treatment. In 1998, a Lausanne criminologist, Martin Kilias, found that the users' involvement in burglary, mugging and robbery had fallen by 98%; in shoplifting, theft and handling by 88%; in selling soft drugs by 70%; in selling hard drugs by 91%. As a group, their contacts with police had plunged to less than a quarter of the previous level. The Dutch and the Germans have had similar results with the same strategy. All of them report that, apart from these striking benefits in crime prevention, the users are also demonstrably healthier (because clean heroin properly used is a benign drug) and that they are more stable with clear improvements in housing, employment and relationships. The Dutch report that only 7.7% of their soft drug users are also using hard drugs. In Northern Ireland, the only part of the UK for which comparable figures are available, 46.7% of soft drug users are also hard users. For those trying to tackle crack, the Swiss heroin programme shows dramatic falls in the use of all illicit drugs. The Swiss are now even reporting that, having stabilised their lives, 22% of one group of users have opted to abstain from all illicit drugs. By contrast, the US, which has led the prohibition strategy, is stumbling deeper into failure. President Bush, in his report on drug strategy last year, was forced to acknowledge that "in recent years we have lost ground" in reducing illegal use. In February, the US office of management and budget reported that the drug enforcement administration "is unable to demonstrate progress in reducing the availability of illegal drugs in the United States". - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake