Excellent article by Ross Clark in the Times cuts to the quick on the war against drugs (failed). Rightly pouring scorn on the drug legaliser mob who have leapt upon the conclusion by Lord Birt’s Strategy Unit that the attempt to suppress drug supply can never end drug abuse (see my Daily Mail article today), Clark rubbishes all the usual absurd legalisation arguments before getting to the real point:
‘But there is little point in engaging in a war against drugs if we are going to tackle only supply and do so little to fight demand. What effort is going into the punishment of users of illegal drugs? None at all. On the contrary, drug users are increasingly seen as victims, who have no power to resist what is pushed at them by evil dealers and should in no circumstances be saddled with a criminal record.
‘Ann Widdecombe, the former Shadow Home Secretary, was scorned for daring to suggest that anyone caught in possession of cannabis should be fined £100. I have never understood what was wrong with her suggestion. We prosecute those who buy stolen goods, not just those who steal them. We prosecute those who view child porn on the internet, not just the porn merchants. Why are we so feeble at prosecuting those who encourage drug dealers by buying their product? Admittedly, it would be counterproductive to sent drug users to prison when our jails are awash with drugs. But dope smokers forced to do community service with the mentally ill (many who gained their affliction by smoking dope), crack dealers forced to help victims of street crime? Why not?
‘The negative outcome of Prohibition of liquor in America in the 1920s should not blind us to the fact that a war against hard drugs has been fought once — and won. Parts of Britain in mid-Victorian times, most notably the Fens, were plagued by opium addicts. One chemist in Wisbech was found to have 40 gallons of laudanum in stock. Wisbech, not coincidentally, had a infant mortality rate worse than inner-city Liverpool. Yet between the 1870s and 1920s opium taking in Britain was almost entirely eradicated, through a combination of restriction of supply and suppression of demand.
‘If it can be done once, it can be done again. But it will take more than just a campaign against Yardies and South American farmers to succeed. Above all, we should stop treating drug takers as helpless victims, and instead make them responsible for their actions. The drugs problem lies as much with middle-class recreational users as it does with Third World farmers who grow illegal drugs and British gangs who trade in them.’
Indeed. Until and unless we target drug users as well as suppliers, the signals will be at best equivocal and drug use will continue to grow as a deadly scourge. It makes no sense to demonise drug supplies while regarding their consumers as helplessly passive. Demand drives supply. While we tolerate, ignore or even glamorise drug use we undermine any attempt to curb it. The war on drugs has been lost because it was never fought properly in the first place. Will the bien-pensants of Whitehall, hand in glove as they are with legalisers dressed up as ‘harm reductionists’, ever grasp this? Hell will freeze over first.
