Counter Blast

As a member of the Police Foundation committee that launched its report on drugs last week, I can say that we feel very pleased with our treatment by the media, and the press in particular. We didn't expect to the response we got from The Daily Mail, The Telegraph and the Express: they're not fully in favour of what we were saying, but they're heavily in favour of having an open debate on the subject.

Other bodies responded differently. Scotland Against Drugs said that it "sent out a very confusing and wrong message to Scotland and its youth". That's not the case - and anyone who thinks that "just say no" is effective, in my view, is mistaken. Young people are too intelligent for that kind of one-liner. I think the argument that Ecstasy is as dangerous, or no less dangerous, than heroin, is crazy. Heroin is clearly a much more dangerous and addictive drug.

Professor David Nutt, head of Mental Health at Bristol University and one of the country's leading experts in pharmacology, was on our committee. His advice, supported by many others, absolutely backed up our recommendations that ecstasy should be downgraded to a class B drug, and that cannabis should certainly be class C.

The government's Keith Halliwell came out only half an hour after the report was released, saying "there will be no change in the categorisation in Cannabis and Ecstasy. We see no justification for it and it will not improve the situation - if anything it would make it worse." I know Keith well: on reflection I'm sure he'll see recommendations that he could support.

For example, the re-definition of punishments in respect of those found in possession of small amounts of lower-class drugs. They should not go to prison. The reality is that we don't send them there anyway. Only around 6% of convictions for cannabis in the UK go to prison: something like 50% are cautioned. So we are only recommending, to a large extent, what is already in practice.

Sixty people have died of taking ecstasy - any one of those deaths is a tragedy. But 35,000 died last year from cancer - and goodness knows how many died as a result of alcohol-related diseases. Quite honestly, alcohol is a bigger curse than cannabis. We have a split personality in relation to harmful substances.

So many young people are involved in taking drugs - it's reckoned to be 50% who either take them, or try them out. Are we really saying we want to criminalise all these folk for these rest of their lives? Are we really saying that we want to throw them into jail? If we are, it means we're going to put them at further risk. And if they hadn't much of a drug problem when they went in, they'd certainly have one when they came out. Talking about a "war on drugs" means a war against young people.

We need to sort out the demand for drugs - once the demand stops, the dealers will stop. I would far rather see more invested in education and rehabilitation: if law enforcement had been the answer, we would have won the war on drugs a long time ago. And we clearly haven't.

The provision for rehabilitation and treatment centres is absolutely disgraceful: the only way you can get a bed as a drug addict is if you're suffereing from HIV. Treatment and rehab is expensive - but at least there is a fair success rate. If we're really serious we need to invest in these things.

In 1971, when the drug laws were first introduced, I was 27, I'm 57 now. And 30 years have gone by and the problem has got worse. We face the same problem with regard to provision of cannabis for medicinal purposes. I really do not understand what we're waiting on here. Doctors can prescribe heroin - a hundred licensed doctors in Britain - which is a much more dangerous drug. And yet they cannot prescribe cannabis for multiple sclerosis.

I went into the committee with a fairly traditional view, what you might call a Police view of what the issues were. I sat and listened and questioned - and because of that, I travelled probably further than I would have expected.

In the process of the committee, I met a group of kids from 13 to 17. On the evening that I saw them, some of them had taken drugs. One said "Mr Hamilton! Want cannabis? Five minutes. Want heroin, Mr Hamilton? Little longer - seven or eight minutes." That staggered me - that it was so freely and readily available. But these tough, working- class kids were very articulate and informed about the issues.

If young people are the problem in this situation, they're also certainly part of the solution. They can tell us more about drugs than anybody else. Why aren't we getting them involved in the sensible discussions we need to have?

John Hamilton is Chief Constable of Fife Constabulary. He was talking to Pat Kane

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