Article 1. Pubdate: Thu, 20 Sep
2001
Source: Times, The
(UK)
Copyright: 2001 Times Newspapers
Ltd
Contact:
letters@the-times.co.uk
Website:
http://www.the-times.co.uk/
Details:
http://www.mapinc.org/media/454
Author: Simon Jenkins
THE WAR OUR LEADERS ARE HAPPY
TO FORGETRemember, there is a war on. I refer not to one
war but to two. The British
and American Governments are fighting two wars,
openly declared by both
over the past decade. One is in response to the
American air disasters of
last week. The other, against drugs, was declared
by America in 1990 and by
Britain in 1994. Both wars are in response to
assaults on the integrity of
Western society. Both have been called "total"
and "long-term", demanding
the global projection of military, diplomatic and
economic power. Both are
fought against shadowy foes mostly operating in
regions where anarchy and
poverty march hand in hand. In each case the
rhetoric of violence has been
easier to deploy than that of
reason.
The War on Drugs has been lost but defeat is not admitted. Its
battle plans
still lie on dusty shelves, its ships are mothballed, its
generals
cashiered. Yet the two wars are closely linked. They finance each
other.
Just as the IRA was recently arrested talking to FARC guerrillas
in
coca-growing Colombia, so 95 per cent of Europe's heroin came last
year
from Afghanistan. The Taleban regime would not exist were it not for
opium.
Part of its rage against America is at Washington's failure to send
aid
after the Taleban agreed to eradicate this year's crop.
The War on
Drugs is not fought in the open, any more than is that on
terror. Aircraft
carriers and Tomahawk missiles are no help against mobile
cells, agents,
sleepers and mules. The lumbering weapons of military might
are what a Middle
East diplomat of my acquaintance calls "enemy-makers".
They send potential
allies running for cover and make police action near
impossible. That is why
warmongering rhetoric is so absurd. The cry to "Do
something violent even if
it's stupid" merely enslaves strategy to emotion.
Richard Nixon declared
the first War on Drugs in 1969. Operation Intercept
was launched and troops
deployed to search 100,000 cars at the Mexican
border. Elvis Presley offered
his support and held a celebrated "hugging
meeting" with Mr Nixon. The war
lasted three weeks. It was revived by
Ronald Reagan with "zero tolerance" and
a futile "45-day war" in 1986. The
first George Bush declared the current War
on Drugs in 1990, demanding the
execution of all drug dealers. He sent a
carrier task force to the
Caribbean to "interdict supply". The hills of
Colombia were sprayed with
defoliant and napalm in the belief that this would
somehow stop New York
stockbrokers snorting cocaine. Bill Clinton did not
dare withdraw this
armada (or cancel its $2 billion a year cost) for fear of
having to admit
defeat.
In 1994 John Major joined in. He declared a
three-year nationwide War on
Drugs, "a battle we cannot afford to lose". He
appointed a Cabinet minister
to lead the campaign. The prison population
soared, cocaine consumption
doubled and heroin consumption trebled.
Undaunted, Tony Blair signed up to
the same crusade. A drugs czar, Keith
Hellawell, was appointed with much
fanfare. Cabinet units and task forces
leapt into being. Ministers trooped
through the sitting rooms of the British
Embassy in Bogota, baffled and
bemused.
Drug dealers are not
terrorists. They are supplying a worldwide demand for
drugs which governments
persistently refuse to regulate, tax or restrain.
Terrorists offer something
for which there is no demand. They offer mayhem
and death. But the deployment
of terror against civilians is no less
hallowed by history. Its goals may be
political not commercial. But it too
feeds on social alienation and human
misery. The terrorist has his reasons.
As with the drug dealer, those who
would combat him must understand those
reasons or get beaten.
I know
of nobody involved in the War on Drugs who believes it has been won,
despite
a quarter-century in the waging. Since the warmongering of the
early 1990s,
the world drugs trade has soared, now surpassing in estimated
value that of
motorcars and oil. Since the trade is by definition confined
to criminals, it
has become the prime sponsor of conflict and terror.
Whether in Chechnya or
Burma, Colombia or Iraq, Afghanistan or Northern
Ireland, look for the cash
and you will find drugs. Never in modern history
can one industry have
underpinned so much sheer evil. Governments declare
war on it, but seem
careless of defeat.
In his recent book Ending the War on Drugs, Ronald
Reagan's one-time
adviser Dirk Eldredge concluded that it was policy-makers,
not drug users,
who are "locked up in Alcatraz for 50 years". The repeal of
inter-war
alcohol prohibition had been a testament to American democracy's
ability to
admit and rectify mistakes. Democracy appears to have regressed.
Rather
than have the courage to admit that the criminalisation of a staple
world
product is now counter-productive to social stability and world peace,
the
American Government sticks to a failed policy and asserts that victory
is
just round the corner.
Britain is no different. Its War on Drugs
was still couched in the same
military terminology that is being deployed
against world terrorism.
Symptoms are attacked rather than causes. Supply is
targeted rather than
demand. The reason is depressingly simple: enforcement
is sexier than
social work. Any politician prefers to be photographed with
his boot on a
trafficker's neck than helping to detoxify an
addict.
The war has failed. The drugs czar has been sacked. The enemy may
be
packing the prisons, but drugs are plentiful and cheap. Heroin
addiction,
the greatest harm of all, is rising and penetrating ever younger
age
groups. I find it hard to imagine a more catastrophic outcome of war,
a
more devastating symbol of defeat, than that.
An astonishing example
of the collapse of British drugs policy landed on my
desk this week. It is a
proposal from Alan Milburn's Health Department that
will bring about the
closure of roughly half the drug rehabilitation
centres in Britain. These
units, most of them run by charities at a
fraction of the cost of prison,
have proved by far the most effective way
of combating drug addiction. Mr
Milburn is said to want to ingratiate
himself with the Genghis Khan of drugs
policy, Mr Blair's Alastair
Campbell. The new rules are pure nanny statedom.
They lay down how everyone
should run a residential home for young people.
They order no more
room-sharing, insist that rooms be private and lockable,
allow unrestricted
private visits and install a mass of "health and safety"
devices. The cost
of implementing the regime will drive many homes into
bankruptcy and force
all to reduce capacity by some 50 per cent.
More
to the point, the rules undermine the essence of drugs treatment.
The
European Association for the Treatment of Addiction, representing half
of
all rehabilitation units, simply cannot believe what is about to happen.
It
pointed out this week that the rules will "increase self-harm and
suicide
among people in treatment", especially in denying 24-hour monitoring
of
addicts. The rules are bureaucratic meddling at its most
destructive.
The essence of public administration should be to make
links. I imagine
some tunnel-visioned health official will have pushed the
rules past Mr
Milburn with a reassuring murmur that they "look tough". That
they cut off
the legs of the only institutions struggling to rectify the
Government's
failure on drugs is of no account. The logical outcome of the
new policy
will be to drive thousands of heroin addicts back on to the
streets or into
prison (where addiction is endemic).
It will increase
heroin consumption and push up the world price of opium.
This will fund
global crime and help the Taleban to protect terrorists. Is
that government
policy? Such linkage must blow the intellectual fuses in Mr
Blair's
"joined-up" Cabinet Office. The policy on care homes means another
avoidable
defeat in the War on Drugs. But that war is embarrassing and
forgotten. It
ripples no political muscles. It floats no frigates and fires
no missiles. It
is the wrong war. Today's politician thinks terrorist.
The Government's
conduct of the War on Drugs has had all the subtlety of a
Taleban conclave.
Hundreds of young people are still dying in that war, but
the Government is
bored. Instead it is bringing us the War on Terror. I
wonder for how
long.