Breaking vicious circle of drug abuse needs a better solution

Last updated 15:47, Thursday, 22 May 2008

Jenny Martin, who believes a change in the law over cannabis sent out the wrong signals

DEEPLY though I feel for Jenny Martin in her tragic loss (Times & Star, May 16), I am convinced she reaches the wrong conclusion in believing that criminalising drug use is a solution

Alcohol and nicotine are also powerful drugs with dangers of misuse, but criminalisation is seen as no solution there.

This mistaken policy has been a contributor to spreading the evils that drug-misuse can bring whilst sometimes criminalising those for whom moderate use can bring urgently needed medical relief.

Professional drug traders are guilty of profound wickedness deserving of harshest punishment but even they would be more effectively deterred by the approach of licensed supply that John Ashton advocates because they could no longer make such profits.

The lesson of prohibition in the USA is instructive. The attempt to prevent the appalling effects alcohol misuse can have by banning all from sensible enjoyment of it backfired badly. Supply of alcohol fell into the hand of gun-toting gangsters, health consequences of badly made illicit alcohol developed, and the crime rate soared.

Eventually the USA came to appreciate the blunder of prohibition; but only after it had caused so much more misery and evil than the problems that inspired it.

So why do governments pigheadedly make the same mistakes in trying to classify and criminalise some other drugs?

For a few, alas, there may be no solution to alcohol or other drug abuse. But the billions wasted on building more prisons, policing current laws, health services for victims of badly made drugs, would be so much better spent on prevention and cure - on the problems of deprivation, which drive many into the arms of criminals, who eagerly lead them from cheaper, soft drugs to even more profitable hard ones; and a better range of educative health provision about the dangers.

And ‘cure’ by far more help for those slithering into harmful drug dependency, frequently wishing to regain control of their lives.

Simplistically crim inalising drug-use has only vastly increased other crime, too. - theft or prostitution to pay the evil profiteer, give more employment to his petty criminal suppliers, prison for those caught to learn yet more criminal ways . . . and the solace more drug-abuse may seem to offer to such miserable lives.

It is time to break this vicious circle in John Ashton’s enlightened way instead of blundering on classifying and criminalising use, making the original problems infinitely worse and bringing tragedy to Jenny Martin and countless more bewildered and grieving families.

DONALD LEIGHTON
Sycamore Road
Maryport