Czar quality

In his first annual report, Keith Hellawell, the Government's Anti-Drugs Co-ordinator, states that it will take at least ten years "to rid our society of the cycle of drugs and crime which blights so many lives." He has £217 million to help accomplish the task and, for the first time, access to the seized assets of drug dealers.

"The overall aim of the ten-year strategy," writes the Drug Czar in his Foreword to the report, "is to shift the emphasis away from dealing with the consequences of the problem, to actively preventing it happening in the first place." Mr Hellawell goes on to say that the intention to direct the bulk of the available resources into treatment and education will "make a substantial impact on the amount of drug-related crime committed and the severe misery that causes."

Mike Trace, Deputy Anti-Drugs Co-ordinator, was formerly director of RAPt (the Rehabilitation of Addicted Prisoners Trust) and the report draws attention to the importance of treatment programmes in prison which "can mean the difference between hope and a future, or the return to a life of crime. Drug Testing and Treatment Orders are now on the agenda and the hope is to "break once and for all the link between drugs and crime."

The report sets out the targets which are to be achieved by 2002. They include the intention that all Drug Action Teams (DATs) should have established integrated and comprehensive programmes in lifeskills approaches in all schools. One result envisaged is a reduction in exclusions from schools for drug-related incidents. Also as far as young people are concerned the aim is to delay the first use of Class A drugs by six months and to reduce by 20 per cent the number of 11-16 year olds using Class A drugs.

The report goes on to state the aim "to increase the participation of problem drug misusers, including prisoners, in drug treatment programmes which have a positive impact on health and crime by 100 per cent by 2008, and by 66 per cent by 2005".

A reduction in the use of drugs involves a reduction in their availability. The report states that its principle aim in this area "is to reduce access to all drugs amongst young people (under 25) significantly, and to reduce access to the drugs which cause the greatest harm, particularly heroin and cocaine, by 50 per cent by 2008 and by 25 per cent by 2005."

The report, for all its worthy aims, would have more impact did it not almost sink beneath the weight of its own jargon and ambiguity of expression. What are we to make, for example, of the intention "to develop plans for the introduction of supervised consumption of controlled drugs by pharmacists"? It was Mr Hellawell who recently said, "There's a myth that if we legalise a substance it would somehow take the illegality out of it".