Pot times
We're Losing War on Drugs
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n1073/a02.htmlNewshawk: Kirk
Pubdate: Mon, 04 Jul 2005 NO 10: WE'RE LOSING WAR ON DRUGS
Source: Mirror, The (UK)
Copyright: 2005 The Mirror
Contact:
mailbox@mirror.co.uk
Website: http://www.mirror.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1161
Author: Rosa Prince, Political Correspondent
Dealers in Control, Say Experts
THE Government was secretly warned two years ago that the police were losing the
war on drugs, it emerged yesterday.
According to leaked papers, Cabinet ministers were told dealers had won the
battle for control of the streets with the police proving unable to disrupt
supplies.
The report by the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit - overseen by policy tsar Lord
Birt - said measures to cut the amount of illegal drugs entering the UK since
the early 1990s had little impact on supply.
Seizure rates were running at less than 20 per cent, far lower than the 60 to 80
per cent the experts said was necessary to put major suppliers out of business.
The damning report revealed there had been no "sustainable disruption"
to the drug market.
The trade's big players saw government intervention as a "cost of
business" that posed no real threat to the industry's viability.
Cocaine and heroin have halved in price over the last decade in real terms,
although the report's authors said police action had slowed the rate of decrease
slightly.
The study revealed there exists an "inexhaustible" supply of drug
traffickers, who are "innovative and technologically sophisticated".
The international drug war led by the US simply forced production to be moved
from one country to another.
Researchers found that cracking down on drug users through the courts had little
effect and Lord Birt had recommended forcing them into treatment programmes.
The full report provided a powerful argument for legalising drugs in order to
bring them under government control, cutting crime and at the same time
undermining illegal suppliers.
The cost of crime by heroin and crack users was put at UKP16billion and 30,000
drug users were committing 21 million criminal offences a year.
Parts of the report were forced to be made public last week by Freedom of
Information requests while the rest was suppressed - however that hidden half
has now been leaked.
Former Customs officer David Raynes, who now works with the National Drugs
Prevention Alliance, said that rather than tackling the supply end, government
should focus on reducing demand for drugs.
He added: "Drugs enforcement doesn't solve the problem. The real
problem with drugs use is preventing young people using drugs.
"What has happened is we teach kids about drugs but we don't teach them to
resist peer pressure to use drugs."
A spokeswoman for No 10 said: "This paper was written two years ago and a
lot has happened since then.
"You need to see this paper for what it was - blue skies thinking.
The intention was to provoke debate."
