OUR drug policies are inhuman, ineffective in achieving their stated goals, damaging in uncountable ways to the health of individuals and of society. They are enormously costly and corrupting. They don't work.

So why do we not only continue with these policies but even extend them? Why do we attack strategies of proven effectiveness and humanity, including methadone maintenance and needle and syringe distribution? Simple. We do not care.

Prohibition rests on a view of drug users as subhuman and outside society. The practice of prohibition reinforces these views. Internationally, drug users suffer human rights abuses from the most severe _ torture and death _ to daily irritations. They are discriminated against on every level and lack access to services we take for granted. The first and most fundamental step needed to tackle the problems around illicit drug use is to re-admit drug users to the human race. If we can refocus attention away from the demon heroin and on to the lives and desires of the people concerned _ and if we can look for what works rather than what is electorally popular _ then we will be devising very different approaches that will help.

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