A 2009 report by CPS Expert Kathy Gyngell, ‘The Phoney War on Drugs’ and its focus on state expenditure to treat drug abuse is referred to in a Bad Habits article in The Spectator.
“Britain’s cities are not wanting for drug prevention and rehabilitation programmes. On the contrary, drug addicts searching for help are in danger of being smothered with attention from therapists and counsellors. In many cases the ‘treatment’ mainly consists of the state taking over the job of supplying drugs to addicts — entirely free at the point of delivery.
An investigation by the Centre for Policy Studies in 2009 found that just a quarter of the £1.5 billion a year being spent fighting drugs was directed towards tackling the supply of illegal narcotics.
The approach isn’t working. Convictions for the unlawful importation and exportation of drugs almost halved over the last decade, to just 649. Theoretically, drug users can be jailed for seven years for possession of a class A drug such as heroin, cocaine or ecstasy and up to five years for possession of a class B drug such as cannabis. Increasingly, however, these sentences are being commuted, treated as archaic remnants of law. In practice, drug users — even celebrity ones who are often photographed breaking the law — know they can smoke cannabis with impunity and need only be a little more careful in their consumption of class As.”
Click here to view the full article at The Spectator
Date Added: Monday 5th March 2012
