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UK: 'Legalise' heroin says ex-police chief
BBC Online
Monday 05 Nov 2001 Former chief constable of Gwent Police Francis Wilkinson is calling for the 300,000 drug addicts in the UK to be given free heroin in order to cut crime. In an influential report which will be published on Tuesday, Mr Wilkinson said providing the Class A drug on demand - in effect decriminalising it - would reduce crime levels across the UK by as much as 20%. It is the latest in a long line of calls on liberalising the drug laws to be made by the former senior police officer who stood down from the Gwent force two and a half years ago. "In Britain we have the biggest heroin problem in the western world," Mr Wilkinson told BBC Wales. He said that while other European countries including Switzerland and the Netherlands have seen the levels of heroin addiction drop in the last decade, the number of addicts in Britain had increased steadily. "It is because we don't prescribe the drug, bringing people into the NHS providing them with the heroin that they are going to get somehow," he added. But the government has said it has continued faith in its multi-faceted arrangements of tackling heroin addiction. "We would be very worried about doing anything that encourages usage of the drug in this county," said Home Office Minister Bob Ainsworth. Mr Wilkinson's report 'Heroin: The Failure of Prohibition and What to Do Now' which has been commissioned by the Centre for Reform, an independent think tank. The report - also backed by Sir David Ramsbotham until recently the chief inspector of prisons - will urge the government to become, in effect, the biggest supplier of heroin in the UK. Heroin prescription The move would smash organised crime gangs, which control Britain's £4.7bn trade in heroin, mostly from Afghanistan; deprive terrorists of their main source of income; and take away the need for addicts, who spend an average £16,500 a year on drugs, to steal to feed their habits. The new study coincides with a review of heroin prescription ordered by Home Secretary David Blunkett.. He is understood to be looking to increase five-fold - to 1,500 - the number of people given free heroin. Mr Wilkinson's report goes much further, demanding heroin supply to all that need it. It demands secure clinics which would allow the strictly controlled supply of heroin and methadone, as well as residential "detoxification facilities". Last month Mr Wilkinson told the BBC Wales programme Week In Week Out that heroin should be legalised to cut street crime in Wales.
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