Pubdate: Tue, 13 Mar 2007
Source: Financial Times (UK)
Section: Page 17
Copyright: The Financial Times Limited 2007
Contact:  http://www.ft.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/154
Author: Philip Stephens

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?
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