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? - --- MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman