Pubdate: Mon, 15 Jul 2001
Source: Observer, The (UK)
Copyright: 2002 The Observer
Contact:  http://www.observer.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/315
Author: David Rose

Drugs In Britain

OUR SOCIETY IS HOOKED ... HERE'S HOW WE CAN FIX IT

As the Tories debate legalisation of soft drugs and Labour grapples with 
the perceived link between drugs and crime, a visit to a rehab unit in 
Oxford reveals one vital truth - every addict is different.

In the summer of 1971, when United States involvement in the Vietnam war 
was near its peak, Richard Nixon's government commissioned a research 
project. The Pentagon knew that, confronted by the trauma of losing a war 
and limitless cheap narcotics, tens of thousands of American troops had 
become addicted to heroin.

Nixon and his advisers feared this flood of returning junkies would cause 
havoc back home, overwhelming drug treatment services and triggering a 
crime wave.

So they commissioned a study of almost 14,000 troops approaching the end of 
their tours of duty, and asked a team led by Professor Lee N. Robins of the 
Washington medical school to monitor them.

The results were extraordinary. First, the Pentagon had massively 
underestimated the scale of hard drug use. Almost half had taken opium or 
heroin in Vietnam, while at least 20 per cent were physiologically addicted 
to heroin, dependent on multiple shots of the drug each day and prone to 
withdrawal symptoms if their supply was interrupted.

The second major finding has lasting relevance for the debate about 
addictive drugs today. Twelve months after their return to America, only 5 
per cent of those who left Vietnam as addicts were still using heroin. 
Almost all the GI junkies simply came home and stopped taking it: less than 
2 per cent of the soldier addicts had had any kind of drug treatment. Even 
those who admitted they had been exposed to the drug subsequently and taken 
an occasional 'hit' had not been re-addicted.

As Robins commented, these findings sharply challenged conventional wisdom 
about heroin and its 'uniquely addictive' qualities - so much so that the 
New York Times assumed the study must have been some kind of whitewash and 
spent months trying to discredit it.

The story was never published. If we want to try to understand heroin 
addiction, and to find means of reducing the chaos and harm it wreaks, 
Robins's study is the place to start. We need to look not only at the drug 
but at the people who take it and cannot stop; at those who might, in other 
circumstances, have been among the 5 per cent of former addicts who were 
still dependent a year after leaving Vietnam.

The implications for current UK government policy are uncomfortable. 
Reduced to its essentials, this views the rapidly increasing problem of 
addiction to heroin and crack cocaine almost entirely through the prism of 
the criminal justice system. A high proportion of people arrested for 
property and other types of crime are drug users, the argument goes: so the 
crimes are caused by drugs. In the words of the former 'drug tsar' Keith 
Hellawell, we need 'to break once and for all the cycle of drugs and crime 
which wrecks lives and threatens communities'.

To an increasing extent, drug treatment programmes are being made available 
to addicts as part of a sentence by a judge or magistrate, for example 
through the new Drug Treatment and Testing Orders. The belief, in the words 
of a senior Oxford detective, is that 'if you take the drugs out of the 
offender, he or she will stop offending'.

Putting money into drug treatment cannot be a bad thing. But what if the 
relationship between drugs and crime is far more complex than Hellawell's 
formula suggests? What if there is no simple, causal link? That would leave 
existing policy dangerously skewed. Measured by the criteria that created 
it - the political need to cut the crime rate - it would fail.

Of course, there is such a thing as drug-related crime. I have spent the 
past six weeks talking to current and former Class A drug users, mainly in 
and around Oxford, and all of them had been in trouble.

One afternoon at the Ley Community, a long-term residential rehab unit 
outside the city, I joined a group of new residents who began swapping 
stories about their brushes with the law: 'Have you ever had the police 
chase you from a helicopter, fixing you from the sky with that red laser 
spot,' asked Linda from London. 'That's scary, man. Really scary.'

They agreed that when they were starting to 'cluck' or 'rattle' - to 
experience withdrawal from heroin - their determination to acquire their 
next 'raise' (the price of a deal) knew no limits. But the crimes they were 
prepared to commit were relatively restricted: cheque and credit card 
fraud, stealing from vehicles and, above all, shoplifting. Five years ago, 
they said, most problem drug users were often burglars. No longer. 'There's 
so many hard things about burglary,' Linda said. 'To begin with, you're 
much more likely to get caught. And nowadays you can get a lot of bird.'

As a result of changes brought into effect in Labour's first term, even a 
first offence of burglary will usually now attract a prison sentence. 
Shoplifting is different. Users may easily find themselves before the 
courts time and again, repeatedly given bail, a fine or probation. If they 
finally do get a custodial term, it will be much shorter: a few months, 
instead of years. And the one thing heroin addicts aren't is stupid - 
research by Dr Marian Small, a psychologist, has found that Ley Community 
residents tend be of above average intelligence.

However, this is shoplifting on an industrial scale. At the bottom end are 
'trolley runs'. Here, the user's client gives him or her a shopping list: 
he goes into Tesco or Sainsbury's and fills up a trolley in the normal way 
- then wheels it calmly out the entrance, avoiding the checkout. Or he may 
go for specific items and sell them door-to-door.

Other users work in pairs or teams, and the methods get more sophisticated, 
the sums raised higher. They have learnt how to remove security tags and 
how to prevent alarms going off. Sometimes, said Oxford's criminal 
intelligence chief, one or more users may act as decoys to capture the 
attention of security staff. Or one may go in and move valuable items away 
from security cameras' sight-lines; a partner will follow and remove them 
from the shop. 'Why bother stealing a suit?' asked Darren, 25. 'Far better, 
if you can, to steal the whole rack.'

Five years ago Oxford had 20-30 burglaries a day. Now the average total is 
four. National figures bear out the local experience. In the past 10 years 
Class A drug use has exploded, yet property crime figures recorded by 
police have steadily declined. Total burglaries in England and Wales fell 
from an all-time peak of almost 1.4 million recorded crimes in 1992, to 
950,000 in 1999.

Bailey. I weighed seven-and-a-half stones. As soon as I got there I started 
to change. It helped me get my life back.'