Pubdate: Mon, 08 Nov 1999 Source: Times, The (UK) Section: 2nd Opinion Copyright: 1999 Times Newspapers Ltd Contact: http://www.the-times.co.uk/ Author: Francis Wilkinson Note: Francis Wilkinson was Chief Constable of Gwent Police 1997-99 TIME TO WIPE THE DRUGS BARONS' SMILE Francis Wilkinson Calls For Effective Regulation The illegal drugs business is now believed to be worth $500 billion [UKP 309 billion] a year. And, being formally untaxed, its global profits may well be larger than those of any other business. It is no surprise that countries are corrupted by "narco-dollars" and their regimes maintained in co-operation with those who run the drugs industry. Such people are out of reach of national law enforcement. Their existence has influenced the globalisation of US law enforcement with its troublesome effects in Central and South America. At national level, drug importers and wholesalers need to protect their businesses and they are not in a position to turn to the police for help. So they do their own protecting, or pay for someone else to do it with the consequent danger for business survival of relying on someone else for muscle in a field where the strongest muscle rules. Second to domestic violence, drug-related violence is the largest category of killing in the UK. It has engendered a gun-carrying sub-culture in Britain which, it is reasonable to think, would not otherwise be here on this scale. The drugs business employs a lot of people. Some facts indicate its size. The illegal drugs include cannabis (the most popular, used by almost half of 20-24 year-olds, according to the recently-published British Crime Survey report), chemical drugs, cocaine (the use of which has doubled over the past two years, having also doubled in the previous two) and heroin. There is a remorseless upward trend in all kinds of drug use (apart from LSD) so that we have, for the first time, reached the point where a quarter of 16-29 year-olds are users of one or more illegal drugs. That age group thus provides six million users in the UK. This scale of business can only be maintained by a network of suppliers reaching into every town, every secondary school, every club, every university in the country. Nothing from this vast business goes to the Exchequer. The drugs business destabilises the producing countries, provides extravagant lifestyles for those who are successful in it, introduces gun law to parts of our inner cities, supplies its products to anyone who can pay regardless of their age, and is associated with other forms of crime throughout. There is hardly a professional criminal who has not been involved in the drugs business in some way. It is so enormously profitable. The point of this outline is to indicate that the global approach of tackling the drugs problem through the criminal law has had no success. There is no serious suggestion that seizures are doing more than keeping pace with the level of supply, and drug purity levels suggest that they are not even doing that. The US experience of prohibiting alcohol earlier this century gave the Mafia the financial clout it needed to gain the power and reputation for which it is remembered. Until and unless a comprehensive and effective regulatory regime is put in place for the drugs that are illegal, the drugs barons will continue to be more successful than the drugs czars. All those drugs from cannabis to heroin should certainly not be made freely available. Heroin is a powerful and dangerous drug and the regime controlling its supply needs to be equally powerful. But many other illegal drugs are of much less power. A regime - like that used for alcohol, tobacco and legal pharmaceuticals - which involves legal controls on importation, manufacture, wholesale and retail supply, with rules about hours of supply and ages of those who can buy, with duty and tax extracted at each level and with health and safety controls to ensure standard strengths and remove impurities would at least stand a chance of being effective. It would bring a very substantial business within the law, something which, apart from anything else, must have social-psychological benefits for the country. Perhaps this seems naive. It was only last year that the United Nations reaffirmed its commitment to keeping illegal drugs that way. No doubt the drugs barons rubbed their hands, confident that their profits would be safe for the next ten years. The UK is a signatory to the UN agreement on prohibited drugs, and a unilateral withdrawal from that is not to be seriously considered. What is necessary, what is urgent, is that an informed and thoughtful debate is conducted on how best to deal with this global problem. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake