WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT THE DRUG PROBLEM?

My peripatetic employment took me to Croydon last week, where, on Wednesday, 9th of July, I chanced upon a copy of the Evening Standard. Two things in the paper caught my attention. The first was Amy Winehouse yet again behaving badly. The second, to my mind closely linked, was a report that one particular London Borough, can’t recall which one and it’s off the Standard website by now, had found traces of cocaine in almost every nightspot in its area.

So, what are we going to do about the drug problem? Do we legalise the trade and then tax it like tobacco and alcohol? Or do we keep it illegal, but alter our tactics on how to combat the problem?

I will state now, that by penalising the Afghan farmer for trying to earn a living, or victimising the Columbian peasant for producing a crop for which there is a demand is not going to solve the problem and is VERY unfair to some of the poorest people in the world.

So what can we do?

So far as I am concerned, legalisation is a non-starter. This is for several reasons, not least that it will put us out of step with our neighbours and will encourage a more serious form of the “drug tourism” the Dutch have to tolerate after the relaxation of their laws on Cannabis. Such a step will also make the UK a source of hard drugs into other countries.

But the more important question to be answered with respect to legalisation is, “How will the legalised trade be controlled?” Will it be an absolute free for all with currently Class A drugs being available for sale to all and sundry? Or will the sale of newly legalised drugs be controlled with only licensed premises being allowed to sell them and age restrictions placed on who is allowed to buy them?

On both counts and taking the tobacco and alcohol trades as examples, I am not exactly filled with confidence that such a system would work.

If legalisation of the drug trade is a non-starter, then we must recognise that, as long as drugs are “fashionable,” there will be a demand and that as long as there is a demand there will be a supply chain to feed that demand.

So first, we must find some way of reducing the demand.

The demand can, more or less, be split into two sides, all be it with some overlap. First to deal with is the addict, the person who is physically or psychologically dependant on cocaine, heroin or any one of a range of other drugs.

The social problems caused by drug addiction are manifold, ranging from unemployment because the addict in unable to do their job properly, to theft, often with violence, or prostitution, both as a means of getting the money to pay for the drugs.

The shared use of needles leads to myriad health problems, not least HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis, which together with malnutrition caused by the “Self Neglect” addiction engenders, causes the unnecessary deaths of hundreds every year.

One way of getting addicts out of the demand picture would be the provision of a national network of clinics where they can receive and administer whatever their poison is, on site, in hygienic conditions and under medical supervision. This will, at a stroke, resolve a lot of the problems above, taking the addict out of the clutches of the pusher and out of the illegal supply system.

Tie this in with, where possible, employment protection so that a registered addict who is following a recognised rehabilitation scheme could not be sacked for the drug use and we have the makings of a support system that, though it would not be cheap, could actually have the chance of working and would probably cost less than the current farcical and feeble efforts we have today.

The second category of user is the so called “Social User” who sees the use of drugs as being “fashionable” and this is where the Amy Winehouse connection comes in. As a multiple offender against the laws on drugs, this woman, and many other so called “Celebs” like her, ought to have been jailed ages ago. That she hasn’t is a serious indictment on the way that our society views the use of drugs as a minor peccadillo rather then the serious, life destroying and anti-social activity it really is.

We must find ways of taking the glamour out of drug activity, making such use unfashionable.

As a first step, the “Meejah,” in particular, The News Of The World, must stop irresponsibly publishing photographs of Peaches Geldorf et al “snorting up.” This only serves to show the more impressionable “wannabes” how the rich and famous pass their leisure time, which only adds to the glamour.

If the press have evidence of such activity, let them pass it onto the police for investigation and publish only after a successful prosecution.

Second, crack down hard on the possession of illegal drugs. It is surely no accident that the countries that do have so called “draconian” anti-drug legislation are the ones with the least problem with drug abuse!

Widen the definition of “Possession” to include drug traces or residues found in the body during screening procedures and the reporting of such positive test results to the authorities mandatory.

Penalties for minor drug offenses need not be draconian, but they need to be consistently applied. Publicity and menial work in public, properly supervised, with clothing clearly identifying them as drug offenders, could be very effective.

It seems ironic to me that such a regime would not even get as far as the starting blocks as the shame and ridicule of offenders is deemed by a small number of people with influence to be against their “human rights!” What a shame these people do not have the same consideration for the rights of the parents and other relatives of the addicts.