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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Governments are desperately
nervous about relaxing the laws on drugs, no matter how often they're told
that they're not working. This week a Report from the Police Foundation
will recommend that the legislation should be reviewed and the penalties
for possessing some drugs should be reduced or even taken away altogether
- but, as Robin Aitken reports, it's unlikely that the politicians will
take a blind bit of notice.
ROBIN AITKEN: Norwich has all the ingredients
that comprise the traditional English cathedral city but just beneath
the surface, alongside the quaint streets and the air of peaceable, provincial
normality there's another, much less comforting reality - drugs. The familiar
facades conceal what has become a national concern.
Picture postcard Norwich
is world's away from the drugs problem of popular imaginings, but the truth
is that thousands here regularly break the law by consuming illegal drugs.
Drug taking has become a commonplace and that's a worry for legislators
who see a widening gap between political rhetoric and what people actually
do.
At the Bure Centre, part
of Norfolk mental Healthcare Trust, they offer psychological and psychiatric
counselling to drug users. It works with the local Drug Action team -
one of the multi-agency groupings central to government strategy on drugs.
The main aim is to reduce illegal drug use but so far there's no evidence
of that happening locally.
DAPHNE RUMBALL: I think more people have moved
into using heroin, using from a younger age, that's been reflected in
some recent research into that population. Cocaine is gradually becoming
more visible throughout the UK and those are the sort of drugs which a
proportion of users find difficult to extricate themselves from without
professional help.
STUART MINTO: I don't know if we are failing,
I think what we're doing is we're certainly identifying more young people
and I think that in a sense we can turn it on its head and say if more
young people are coming into contact with drug agencies and more young
people are getting treatment then we're actually achieving something, because
if young people are not coming into contact and we don't know about them
then we can't make an impact on what they're doing.
AITKEN: But what the professionals
I've spoken to say is that more young people are using drugs.
MINTO: And I think - I mean, being
realistic, we understand that that's the situation.
AITKEN: There are signs nationally
that the proportion of young people using drugs has begun to level off,
but the numbers are still worrying. Norwich is in no sense exceptional.
Nation-wide one in twelve, twelve year olds has tried an illegal drug.
Among fourteen-year-olds the figure is one in three. And nearly half of
all sixteen year olds have experimented with drugs. But it's not just
young people. A third of all adults have used illegal drugs at least once.
And the cost to the country is huge. It's estimated crime, sickness and
absenteeism caused by drugs costs the country four billion pounds a year.
Labour has put an extra
�237 million over three years into tackling the drugs problem. This brings
the total spent each year on anti-drugs activity to �1.5 billion pounds.
One tiny fraction of that sum is accounted for by PC Richard Price, the
drugs education officer for the Norfolk Constabulary.
PC RICHARD PRICE: Well cannabis is extremely prevalent
in Norfolk. It's totally accepted amongst young people. I think there's
a general acceptance amongst young people that the police have adopted
a different approach and stance to dealing with cannabis users and as a
consequence, for many young people, it's become as commonplace as smoking
cigarettes.
ACTUALITY.
AITKEN: Constable Price exemplifies
the new approach the police have adopted to drugs education. He thinks
the "Just Say No " approach just don't work. He has concluded that in
drugs education honesty is the best policy.
PC PRICE: It's a little bit like
being mildly drunk. If you have large amounts of cannabis it makes you
a bit incoherent...
AITKEN: He has few illusions that
anything he says will deter youngsters from experimenting. His aim is
more modest.
PC PRICE: I would probably liken
the approach to that of sex in schools. Sex education isn't about stopping
young people having sex, 'cos they're gonna have sex whatever. It's about
making sure they understand about what unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted
diseases, safe use of condoms, and actually I see drugs as fitting in an
educational sense very much into that way of thinking. Hopefully they'll
choose not to take them, that's my objective. But informed decision making
is probably the best I can hope for.
AITKEN: But in Britain's hedonistic
youth culture getting people to sign up to self denial is a tall order.
This is the Time night club in Norwich.It operates a strict "zero tolerance"
drugs policy; anyone caught flouting it is handed over to the police. They
take all the precautions they reasonably can and yet no one is pretending
that in places like this there is never any drug-taking. For many the
drug of choice would be ecstasy - "E". It's estimated half a million
tabs are consumed every week in Britain. Ecstasy can kill- but it's commonplace.
For the police drugs like
cannabis and ecstasy pose a challenge to the authority of the law. With
so many apparently unconcerned about defying that authority many senior
police officers speak of the need for more debate - without conceding
the case for liberalisation.
ASSISTANT CHIEF CONSTABLE COLIN LANGHAM-FITT: I'm absolutely convinced
that most police forces would like to see the debate widened to make sure
that people better understood exactly what the issues are. As you say,
we police by consent. At the moment people think why are we wasting our
time with soft drugs. I think if they saw some of the problems of these
alleged soft drugs they wouldn't be quite so surprised that we devote some
of our efforts to trying to stifle the supply of soft drugs, so-called
soft drugs.
AITKEN: But as the police in Norfolk
admit, they don't spend a lot of time trying to find individual users.
Even when they do, for first-time offenders the result is often a caution,
an approach mirrored elsewhere around the country. And this de facto toleration
of drug use has emboldened proponents of more liberal drug laws.
On this Norwich park bench
there's a modest tribute to a politician who has no inhibitions about drugs
policy. At the last General Election, Howard Marks - the celebrity drug
smuggler - stood against Charles Clarke, the Home Office minister on a
platform of legalising cannabis. Of course it's quite easy for a maverick
like him to take a stance, it's much more difficult for mainstream politicians
to fashion their response to soft drugs. Even when they themselves have
taken drugs - as Charles Clarke himself admitted at pre-election hustings
on a platform with Howard Marks.
CHARLES CLARKE (23 APRIL 1997) I did smoke cannabis two or three
times in my late 'teens. I've never smoked tobacco at any time and that
was one of the reasons no doubt that i didn't smoke more cannabis when
I was younger.
AITKEN: And Mr Clarke is not alone.
MO MOWLAM MP (SUNDAY WITH ADAM BOLTON - SKY NEWS 16/1/00): I tried marijuana,
didn't like it particularly, and unlike President Clinton I did inhale
but it wasn't part of my life then and that's what happened.
AITKEN: Labour MPs like Ian Gibson
the member for Norwich North, next door to Charles Clarke's constituency,
find themselves frustrated by the current approach. The government wouldn't
welcome a national debate on drugs. While Mr Gibson thinks that defies
commonsense.
IAIN GIBSON MP: I think there ought
to be a Royal Commission and I think it should happen as soon as possible.
I think we'll have to think about who's on that Royal Commission, what
the questions are that they're going to ask. You'd have to have young
people on it themselves, you'd have to have their parents, you'd have to
have all aspects of society feeding into it. It may take a long time to
come through but it would be worth it in the end. And I would just about
think that cannabis would be seen as not being the major problem that we
think of it now.
AITKEN: But it's an emotive political
issue. The protection of young people is usually cited by opponents of
liberalisation. Last month the Tories called for tougher sentences and
"drug exclusion zones" around schools.
DAVID LIDDINGTON MP: I want to see a tougher regime
adopted against drugs by the police and by the courts. I think that people
who at the moment are ignored ought to be cautioned; people who are cautioned
probably ought to have a court appearance. And I believe that for the traffickers,
particularly people who sell to children, there should be mandatory minimum
prison sentences to indicate society's rejection of what they're doing.
AITKEN: That sort of uncompromising
stance draws on the awful consequences for individuals who do get involved
in serious drug misuse. John, Gary and Jock are three of the clients at
the Ferry Cross drop-in centre in Norwich, all casualties of Britain's
drug culture. They've all been hooked on heroin and are now trying to
break free.
GARY: I haven't done smack for
about five or six weeks now. I'm in the process of just not coming off
it, you know what I mean, and that is hard, but I don't want to do it anymore.
I hate the stuff. That's the worst drug there is as far as I'm concerned.
That just kills your life, that kills everything, basically.
JOHN: I'd say from the
age of 14 I was doing heroin. I was chasing it. I got expelled from school
over possession of heroin and I've just been out on the street you, know
what I'm saying.
JOCK: I've seen 13 and 14 year
olds actually hitting up heroin, up at the railway tracks, that's 13, 14
year old kids.
GARY: You know, sitting there cooking
up with - can - coke can top and that, you know what I mean? With the needle
share - sharing needles and that. There's the Aids, the Hepatitis, it's
just all one shabby circle.
AITKEN: The staff at the centre
do what they can to help; merely getting addicts to moderate unreasonable
behaviour is the first step. Dealing with the consequences of drugs
has caused many of these workers to question the law on soft drugs like
cannabis.
RICHARD HOLGATE: I certainly think one possible
avenue would be licensing which would be looking at the manufacture, the
distribution, the purity the packaging, how it's used, where it's used
and actually putting sanctions and controls in society to manage that.
Now the problem with that argument is one group of people will say we shouldn't
be using it at all and another group of people says it should be freely
available because we're free citizens able to make up our own minds. We've
got to find the middle ground and certainly the criminal element of it
currently is ineffective.
AITKEN: It could be an
ecstasy tablet brought to a freelance drugs testing service in Norwich.
The purpose - to see if it's real or a dangerous fake; The drug's illegal
but those involved says theirs is the responsible attitude. It's this
sense that the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act has been overtaken by events that
has led the Liberal Democrats to call for a standing commission on drugs
to recommend new approaches.
SIMON HUGHES MP: The logic of what's happening
on the ground is that we're not getting it right, we're not seeing huge
numbers fewer people taking drugs, we don't see young people less likely
to participate or experiment, we don't see smaller amounts of drugs. We
don't see fewer people making money out of drugs. So the problem, the
fact that people are becoming dependent and addicted and some very damaged
by drugs doesn't appear to have changed at all. In fact it's got worse.
AITKEN: But people like
Norfolk multiple sclerosis sufferer Thomas Yates have stimulated some fresh
thinking. The government has ordered trials on the possible therapeutic
use of cannabis - it's said to be highly effective in controlling the
pain of MS. Such ideas are already affecting official attitudes.
GIBSON: There was a case,
a big case here in Norfolk last week where someone was growing plants,
forty plants and got off, the judiciary got them off because they were
using the plants, so they said, to treat their MS. And I think that's all
part of the liberalisation that the judiciary and the police are saying,
look, let's back off these smaller problems.
LIDDINGTON: I think if the medical
profession comes to a considered view, on the basis of careful clinical
trials that a cannabis-based drug would give an effective treatment to
Multiple Sclerosis then clearly there would be a very strong argument for
allowing that to be used on prescription and subject to all the safeguards
for the testing and registration that we have for other medicines.
AITKEN: Britain's drugs
laws are thirty years old. Today, for many, smoking cannabis is routine.
Public attitudes have changed; time for a rethink?
HOLGATE: I think there's
an issue that it is easier for politicians to take a party political
view. What I perceive is that more and more politicians want to have this
debate but they're being held back and I think we need to remove the shackles
and allow people freely to debate this issue and encourage the debate to
come into the public arena.
AITKEN: The Police Foundation
report this week looks likely to join other past reports recommending
liberalisation in the government file marked "ignore". Be that political
cowardice, or be it responsible government - but there'll be a strong
sense of disappointment among those who deal with the reality of drugs
if another chance is missed.
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