Word study. Comprehension. Follow-up

To a parent of teenagers or young adults, few terrors are greater than drugs. After all, some drugs can kill people, and the long- term effects of most on health are uncertain. No wonder politicians are so hesitant to urge the liberalisation of drugs laws, or stop short at recommending the decriminalisation of cannabis — an illogical policy that means allowing the pos­session of small amounts but not the sale.                             

Some, however, argue for scrapping the drugs laws on the grounds that they don’t work anyway. Certainly, they haven’t prevented the growth of a vast global industry. Its retail sales, according to estimates are probably worth about $150 billion. That is much lower than the UN's estimate and worth half the sales of the legitimate' global pharmaceutical industry.    

Moreover, prices of cocaine and heroin have fallen sharply in the past couple of decades, strongly suggesting that the supply of drugs has increased, not fallen. Billions of dollars poured into the war on drugs have not stopped the flow.

Illegal drugs may be falling in price, but they continue to cost vastly more than their raw materials.  A Colombian peasant gets about $610 for a kilo of coca leaves, and by the time the stuff reaches the street in the United States, a kilo of cocaine powder sells for $110, 000. This astonishing mark-up on a simple crop is largely the result of risks involved in transporting and distributing it.

Remove drugs laws, and the price would certainly fall further. As with tobacco, taxes might recapture some of the margin (better that the money should go to finance government than gangsters), though probably not the whole amount.

Undoubtedly, more people would take drugs if they were readily available and socially more acceptable. As a proportion of users of any drug tends to become dependent on it, the number of addicts would rise, too. In that sense, the fears of parents about scrapping laws are entirely justified.

But that is not the whole story. First, there is an issue of principle. Many people share the view of John Stuart Mill, whose famous essay “On Liberty” argued that a person should be allowed to harm himself, as long as he did no harm to others. “Over himself, over his own body and mind”, wrote Mill, “the individual is sovereign”.

Governments sometimes take that view, too. They allow their citizens to do all sorts of dangerous things. Insurance companies- and- mothers might be alarmed by such activities, but governments rightly tolerate them.

True, Mill believed that children needed special protection. And others argue that addicted drug users are not taking rational decisions, and therefore ought to be protected from themselves.

To that there are tow responses. First, only a minority of drug users (about 35 per cent in the case of heroin; fewer for other drugs) become dependent. And, second, nicotine appears to be far more addictive even than heroin, and yet society is rightly willing to tolerate its use.

The answer is not to ban drugs but to offer good health education and treatment for those who want to give up. Both would be easier to provide if drugs were legal. It is hard at the moment, for example, for schools to tell children: ” If you must take ecstasy, drink plenty water”.

Beyond the principal, there are practical considerations. Drug bans disproportionately hurt poor coun­tries, and poor people in rich coun­tries. Indeed, most drugs exports come from a handful of poor countries: about two-thirds of the world’s heroin appears to originate in Afghanistan and most of the rest from Burma; about four-fifths of coca from Colombia.

Drugs money corrupts the police and undermines the state in countries through which it passes, such as Mexico and in the Balkans.

Chemicals used to try to stamp out illegal crops poison land and make people ill.

Drug production also encourages local consumption - most of the world's drug users live in poor countries - and drugs use in the case of heroin, is a powerful force for the spread of HIV/Aids.

In rich countries, the most visible (and so vulnerable) end of the drug trade tends to be in the hands of the poor. The drugs bosses do business safely with a mobile phone, while their underlings at the bottom of the pyramid are out on the streets. So, it is the poor and the young members of racial minorities who tend most often to get into trouble with the police.

Nowhere does that have more devastating consequences than in the United States, where roughly one prisoner in four is locked up for a (usually non-violent) drugs offence. A disproportionate num­ber of those are black. A report by the Sentencing Project, a group lobbying for criminal-justice reform in America, finds that black people usually account for 13 per cent of monthly drug users; 35 per cent of those arrested for possessing drugs; 55 per cent of those convicted; and 74 per cent of those sentenced to prison. There, a whole generation of ethnic-minority

youngsters learn skills that guarantee a life of misery for them and those around them.

Removing the ban on drugs would allow police to concentrate on arresting those who behaved badly because of their drug-taking: for example, thieves and those who drive while drugged. In fact, drugs seem to cause far less crime than alcohol does. Even in Soho, proba­bly Europe's largest drugs market, the police have far  more trouble from the aggression caused by drinking than from bad behaviour by junkies.

But there is an even more important benefit from legalization. Precisely because the drugs market is illegal, it cannot be regulated. It is not possible to pass laws that dis­criminate between availability to children and adults. Governments cannot set minimum qualitystandards for cocaine, say users can’t sue anyone if they buy substandard or contaminated drugs. No warning label can be fixed to a pack of ecstasy tablets, telling asthma sufferers not to use them, or giving their strength and a reasonable dosage.

This lack of regulation increases the dangers of drug-taking though they should not be exaggerated.  With the exception of heroin drugs contribute to far fewer deaths among their users than either nicotine or alcohol. Indeed, in the US, tobacco kills proportionately more of its users than heroin does.

  Most deaths occur when the user takes some additional risk. As the widely respected European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction says in a recent report:  " Acute deaths related solely to cocaine, amphetamines or ecstasy are unusual, despite the publicity they receive. " The risks of drug-taking are greatest, of course, to young and incompetent users who may not know how much to take, or in what circumstances, or whether what they are buying is contaminated by a cheaper toxic substance. And the risks are further com­pounded by the fact that illegality also puts a premium on selling strength: for example, it encourages dealers to sell and users to buy crack(concentrated) cocaine rather than the ordinary sort.

Exactly the same thing happened in the years of Prohibition on alcohol in the US in the 1920s. Consumption of beer declined; consumption of hard liquor increased.

But how, if voters accepted the case for legalisation, should we get there from here? When, in the 18th a powerful new intoxicant became available, the impact was disastrous: it took years of education before gin ceased to be Hogarthian threat to social order. Similarly, it will take time for conventions governing sensible drug-taking to develop. All these points to a strong case for moving gradually.

 So does the fact that a century of illegality has deprived govern­ments of much information that good policy requires. Academics have found it hard to do good research, either because govern­ments balk at the implications or simply because of the difficulty of gathering evidence.

The right approach is therefore the one adopted by the wise Swiss, who have formally set up clinics to provide heroin to addicts who can­not be treated any other way.

Then there is the question of how to distribute. The thought of " Heroin on the shelves at Sainsbury's adds to the terror of the prospect of legality. However, just as legal drugs are available through different channels - caf­feine from Pret a Manger, alcohol only with proof of age, valium only on prescription - so drugs that are now illegal might one day be dis­tributed in different ways, based on evolving knowledge of their potential for harm.

  Different countries should experiment with different solu­tions. At present, many are bound by a 1988 United Nations conven­tion that hampers even modest moves towards liberalisation by insisting that countries should not allow drugs to be bought and sold. It is causing particular problems for the Swiss, who are considering a law to allow the growing and sale of cannabis — though to Swiss citi­zens only, to discourage " drug tourism". The convention urgently needs amending.

Of course, legalising will not be easy. It involves allowing people to take risks, and society is increas­ingly risk-averse. But the task of government should surely be to prevent the most unruly drug users from harming others; to help to provide education and treatment for those who want to end drug dependency; and to regulate drug markets to ensure minimum quality and safe distribution.

 While the police spend their time chasing youngsters who sell cannabis - usually less harmful than whisky — such policies are difficult to implement. Regulation is impossible. Yet a legal market is the best guarantee that drug-taking will become no more dangerous than drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco. Just as countries rightly tolerate those two vices, so they should tolerate those who sell and take drugs. [28]

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