Pubdate: Wed, 2 Jan 2008
Source: Western Mail (UK)
Copyright: 2008 Media Wales Ltd
Contact:  http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2598
Author: Paul Rowland, Western Mail
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Richard+Brunstrom
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mdma.htm (Ecstasy)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

BRUNSTROM REAFFIRMS DRUG CLAIMS

IT IS "inevitable" that all drugs will be legalised, a Welsh police 
chief claimed yesterday.

North Wales Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom said a move towards 
drugs being decriminalised is "10 years away" and claimed doing so 
would destroy a major source of organised crime.

Mr Brunstrom has sparked controversy in the past for his views on 
drugs, drawing criticism from anti-drug groups when he stated his 
belief that heroin should be made legal.

He made his latest comments on a special edition of the Today 
programme on Radio 4, edited by officers from Dyfed-Powys Police. 
Inspector Richard Lewis, Samantha Gainard and Chief Superintendent 
Paul Amphlett were among a series of guest editors invited to take 
the helm of the flagship programme.

In an interview broadcast yesterday morning, Mr Brunstrom said he 
also believed Ecstasy was safer than aspirin.

The chief constable - who recently apologised over using an image of 
a decapitated biker as a teaching tool without the knowledge of the 
dead man's family - said he accepted that his views were not held by 
the majority, but that attitudes were changing.

"I'm certainly out of step with the majority of senior police 
officers, but not all of them," he said. "But in terms of society, 
public attitudes change quite rapidly and you need look no further 
than drinking and driving: in the space of my lifetime drinking and 
driving has gone from being socially acceptable, almost the norm, to 
being socially unacceptable.

"I think that the legalisation and subsequent regulation of 
proscribed drugs is now inevitable, and I think it's 10 years away, 
not 10 months away."

He added, "It has already happened in for instance Portugal, a full 
member of the European Union, decriminalised under the existing 
international treaties. The same sort of thing is being talked about 
across the world."

Mr Brunstrom claimed that levels of drug misuse across the country 
were still too high, despite apparent signs of a decline caused by 
improved treatment programmes

He said, "We're still causing something like UKP20bn worth of damage 
to our society every year. More than half of all recorded crime is 
caused by people feeding a drugs habit. The Government wants 
evidence-based policy; the evidence is very clear that prohibition 
doesn't work, it can't work, an enforcement-led strategy is making 
things worse, not better."

Mr Brunstrom's unconventional approach to his job has made him one of 
the most high-profile police figures in Britain.

He attracted publicity by agreeing to be filmed being hit by a Taser 
gun, and was in the headlines again last month for breaking into his 
own police station at night to highlight a lack of security.

And at the end of this month the North Wales Police Authority will 
consider a complaint made by Wrexham MP Ian Lucas against Mr 
Brunstrom and his deputy, Clive Wolfendale, after they were captured 
on a fly-on-the-wall TV documentary referring to the MP as a "Luddite".

But his attack on the UK's drugs policy has been his most enduring crusade.

Last autumn he issued a report in reply to a Home Office consultation 
urging that the law should be changed, which subsequently received 
the backing of his local police authority.

Yesterday Mr Brunstrom said he believed there was a great of a 
"scaremongering" and "rumour-mongering" about drugs.

"Ecstasy is a remarkably safe substance - it's far safer than 
aspirin," he said.

"If you look at the Government's own research into deaths you'll find 
that Ecstasy, by comparison to many other substances - legal and 
illegal - is comparably a safe substance."

He said he was now campaigning for drugs to be legalised, and for the 
class A, B and C system to be scrapped.

Mr Brunstrom's suggestions were criticised by some politicians, 
including Clwyd West MP David Jones, who accused him of "flogging a 
dead horse". 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake