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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: 'We need to deal with crime - and give addicts a way to break the cycle' Sergeant Richard Green, North Wales Police The Guardian Friday 11 Oct 2002 A school photograph stays in my mind. It was a picture of four of us in a tennis team when we were about 16, competing in the North Wales championships. Out of the four, two have turned out to be police officers, and two are convicted drug dealers. At the time I saw absolutely no indication the other two would go that way - we were all from the same social and family and financial background, and the same educational background; shows how drugs can hit anybody. I actually interviewed one of them when I went back to the town as a police officer eight or 10 years later; small place, but the number of heroin addicts was horrendous. He was one of the biggest problems there and hopelessly addicted. At interview he was crying and explaining the only way he can pay for drugs - though he'd love to come off - is to steal things. People have a right to a private life; it's when something they're doing affects other people that it becomes a police matter. To me the evidence is quite clear of the link between crime and drugs, based on my policing background, which is 12 years mainly in crime work as opposed to areas like traffic, and the past 12 months stationed at the custody unit at Carnaervon. This unit is the reception centre for all prisoners when they're first brought in, and I see same faces over and over again. They are the ones who have a heroin addiction. In my experience, the vast majority of addicts freely admit they have a drugs problem. They desperately want to break the cycle, but what they can't see is a way out. I think we should have a two-pronged attack. On one side, we should deal with the victims of drugs, the addicts themselves, by having the government pay for treatment options - including prescribing heroin in much the same way methadone is prescribed as a substitute now. Methadone isn't working; addicts don't like it and a lot of them freely admit they take heroin as well. At the moment addicts are too preoccupied with the hours it takes getting drugs - stealing the property, selling it, finding the dealer, and so on - to turn up for treatment. This is what drug workers say. By supplying them with heroin you remove that time-consuming process so they may try treatment. In various professional publications I've seen estimates that to buy a £10 bag of heroin a person has to steal property that retailed at £30 to £50. That's a lot of property stolen to buy those drugs. It would cost the government just over 60p to produce the same quality and grade of heroin as is available on the streets. Another advantage is that the government would also be in charge of the cutting agent; they'd make sure of consistency so you wouldn't have the deaths that have appeared in northern England and Scotland recently due to vast jumps in grade and quality. Unless you have time to explain yourself, this idea can be perceived as a soft attitude on drugs, but it is not. It's actually a hard option on dealing with volume crime -- and the side effect is that you're dealing with drug abuse too. Our chief constable [Richard Brunstrom] has been quite vocal recently saying that the traditional tactics on drugs need to change because they're not working, but my opinions are based on my own experience. On the treatment side, I also think we should make some changes in sentencing. Just as an example, take somebody sentenced to two years in jail; in reality they're probably only going to serve a year, the sort of thing the public hate. But say that person were to start treatment in prison - I think most policeman will agree that's the only place addicts get treatment that works, because you've got their undivided attention - and instead of being released at 12 months, they were let out at 10 with some sort of support package involving probation and treatment workers. What you could do is send them to some other part of country, a different community, with perhaps some sort of tagging device or a strong support network so they could continue the treatment for four months or so. The public would be appeased that the government was keeping control of that prisoner, and the prisoner would feel he's got a good deal by being released slightly earlier. It would be a bridge where somebody could become stronger in their mind and have a better opportunity of weaning themself off, instead of what happens now where prisoners go straight back to their old mates and on to the gear. Of course to do that, there would have to be a better support system in place than exists now. But the second prong of the attack if you're going to get addicts into treatment and discourage new users, should be that we enforce to the maximum the current laws on drug-supplying offences. I would most definitely keep street dealing of heroin illegal. We should also make sting operations possible by relaxing the constraints, to get rid of street dealers faster. At the moment we can't do these operations because in this country there are quite strict guidelines covering entrapment and agents provocateurs. I hope as a longer term byproduct of both these prongs of attack, the lowest tier of drug suppliers would disappear over time, as happened after the end of Prohibition in America. The bond between dealer and user won't happen right away - one day the addict's buying on the streets, next day they're at the doctor for a prescription, no. There will be a transition period. But hopefully the bond will be broken over time. I know all this sounds radical but I think the problem is so huge at the moment that by just tinkering round the edges you're not going to do anything constructive. Increasing punishment of the addicts won't do it, because they're just going to steal more to pay the fines. I don't think cannabis is causing the police problems on the same scale as heroin. But the government need to make it clear what they're doing -- it's a bit of a mish mash. From the people I see brought into custody, cannabis has much less of an effect. But it stays in body much longer than alcohol, so we do need to toughen the laws and on drug-driving, whether it's heroin, cannabis, cocaine, amphetamine. We need to increase our medical knowledge and we need to be looking at screening devices because someone on drugs behind the wheel can affect innocent people. The knock-on effect of drugs on other people who aren't involved, that's what I'm against. - Richard Green has worked all over the North Wales force area, first as a uniformed constable and later as part of a specialised team dealing with drugs in Anglesey. He has also worked in CID.
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