We are all chasing dragons : Article on UK drugs problem

[klaatu]

Guardian Unlimited

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/...g_dragons.html

June 20, 2006

In his final Big Blogger post, Altrui calls for joined-up thinking to tackle Britain's heroin problem.

Throughout Big Blogger, two threads have weaved their way through my efforts. The first is about a sense of community: that to face the big problems confronting society we all need to pull together; that the problems affecting a section of society affect the whole; and that community and government are essential in helping to address those problems.

What is clear from many of the responses to my posts is the sense that people, of all political persuasions, are sick of watching our communities fall apart and there is a real sense that people want to get them back. How we do this is, evidently, open to debate, but one thing is clear: for almost everyone, the status quo is not working.

The second thread is perhaps less obvious, but is a chain that binds them all, linking the underclass, the war on terror, and crime together. Breaking this chain would release resources and expertise to more effectively tackle all three. It is heroin.

Problematic addicts account for 99% of the costs to society of drugs in the UK, both in terms of direct government expenditure and "social costs" estimated at around £20bn a year. In Glasgow alone, heroin deaths have increased by 70% over the first six months of this year.

The reasons for these deaths are simple, involving larger and purer dosage sold by cynical dealers manipulating their market and to a lesser extent some users' tolerance to the drug being affected by disease. The drug's illegality, and separation from medical supervision, killed them as sure as the overdose did.

To the government's credit, access to drug treatment has improved and Drug Treatment Orders have provided an alternative to prison. But countervailing this good work are persistent problems of poor access to residential treatment, insufficient after-care, and housing problems all militating against this modest progress.

Trials are ongoing in the UK on the medical prescription of heroin and cocaine. As studies in Switzerland and elsewhere have already shown, it is a cost effective way of stabilising very chaotic lives to the benefit of wider society. Acquisitive crime, drug dealing offences, and other associated criminal activity have been shown to be cut - in some cases drastically. Many patients hold down jobs, and the retention rates are excellent.

In the UK we could make such treatment cheaper with some joined-up thinking by the government. Afghanistan accounts for almost all the heroin consumed in Britain today. The UK has just taken over operational responsibility for the poppy growing region, and is assisting the Afghan authorities in destroying the poppy crop. As history has shown, attempts by outside powers to impose their values onto the Afghan people have usually ended in utter disaster.

By buying and legitimising the Afghan opium crop, the UK government could take the biggest weapon of mass destruction ever visited upon the west out of the hands of the warlords. By prescribing that heroin to addicts here, we would save billions at home. At a stroke, some of the most serious issues we face abroad and at home can be resolved.

This is not an argument for the legalisation of drugs, or even for decriminalisation. It is, however, only by controlling both the supply and demand that we can ever hope to control problematic drug use in this country. The only effective way to do this is to make drugs a medical problem again, thereby taking the market out of the hands of the villains.

In doing so, we must accept that the war on drugs is lost. What is conducted now is a war on drug users; society is waging war on itself. All of us are affected by addiction in some way, and if we are ever going to tackle it effectively, then society as a whole must pull together and play its part in fixing it.

Instead, our government continues playing "tough", and our society, like the addict it has come to despise, carries on chasing a dragon we will never catch, in complete denial of the obvious; that all along the dragon had, in fact, caught us.

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Klaatu