Source: Evening News, Norwich

Pub Date: Friday, 19 July 2002

Pub LTE: True Madness of drugs Problem

Author: Derek Williams

TRUE MADNESS OF DRUGS PROBLEM

RECENT proposals for drugs law reform have been made because the whole situation is running out of control and changes are being forced on a reluctant government.

The Evening News has drawn attention to part of the problem with the heroin use around the market in Norwich. There's much more going on, of course, out of sight.

The last Conservative government reacted in 1995 by introducing "Tackling drugs together", essentially designed to halt calls for legalisation and to strengthen the war on drugs.

Seven years on, and has the situation improved? Drugs have never been cheaper, more available, or used by so many.

How much longer do we have to live with this madness?

Discarded needles in toilets and street dealers selling smack around the Guildhall are the result of the war on drugs and the refusal to provide a legal, regulated supply for the demand which exists.

The only way to solve this problem is to stop the war and bring in effective and workable controls over the sale and distribution of these substances which the law at present makes impossible.

The changes proposed by David Blunkett will make the situation worse by keeping the supply of soft drugs in the hands of organised crime, the same distribution network that provides the heroin.

Why should someone supply £10 worth of cannabis, and maybe see the customer again in a week's time, when he can sell £10 worth of smack and see him again in a few hours?

That is the truth behind "tough on drugs" rhetoric.

This problem will not be solved until we attack the cause of it, and the cause is the war on drugs, not the drugs themselves.

Derek Williams

Pembroke Road

Norwich