review

At the beginning of his report for Public Eye on British drug policy, Ian Hargreaves (formerly of this parish) took a trip. He wasn't ingesting the product, you understand, as suit-and-tied reporters sometimes did in the Seventies, simply accompanying a weekend coach outing to Amsterdam, a service aimed squarely at smokers intent on "dodging the prohibition".

That choice of words, and the image of perfectly ordinary young people taking their leisure, set the tone for the film that followed - one that was profoundly sceptical about the success of existing policy and concerned about the growing generational gulf between law-makers and law-breakers. Bringing the issues back home Hargreaves took another bus to Bradford, for his purposes a typical British city. I'm not sure that the city fathers will be thrilled by his cheering description of it as "not that bad", or with the images of boarded up council homes, gutted by addicts who rip out copper-piping to feed their habit. But it provided him with ample evidence that neither education nor prohibition appear to be working very well. Even the index most favoured by Conservative MPs - market value - points to failure; for all the hoopla of customs' swoops and booming declarations of war, drugs are cheaper and easier to get than they ever were - indeed the Jack Cohens of the drugs world are even offering "buy three, get one free" deals.

Bradford also provided him with a Chief Constable prepared to voice his uncertainties about the current approach: Keith Hellawell was one of the first senior policemen to lift his head out of the deep and capacious trench which shelters the chiefs of staff in the drugs war, and he repeated his cautious appeal for fresh discussion in Hargreaves' film. He shouldn't hold his breath waiting- the hysterical mobbing of Chris Davies, the Liberal Democrat MP and Clare Short, after they had the temerity to suggest that the remedy might be worse than the disease, is hardly likely to encourage politicians to take risks in this area. Tempted by unscrupulous opinion- peddlers to get high on new ideas, they just say no.

So for some time yet we will be reliant for on journalists to test the water for politicians, or to actually try and raise its temperature sufficiently so the poor dears don't have to fret about their cold feet. Hargreaves did his bit by pointing out that treatment has consistently proved more effective than prevention, that preaching abstinence doesn't appear to be working, that prohibition makes criminals out of too many ordinary citizens. (Though sympathetic to Hargreaves' case I'm not sure this last point is the most effective argument in his arsenal. It rather leapfrogs the question of whether the behaviour in question is wrong, and it's those who believe it is that need persuading, after all. If someone were to say to you that crime figures could be halved by the legalisation of burglary, you could be forgiven for thinking that they had missed the point.)

It is clear, though, that increasing numbers of people simply don't accept the implicit equation between personal use of drugs and crime. On Monday Panorama took a long time to say a simple thing - that millions of Britons now treat the drug laws as irrelevent to their private life. On Thursday Public Eye reminded you that the reason for that may be because so many regard the law as morally inconsistent. "We do not condone the use of drugs" says Tony Newton firmly, and millions look on and see a hypocrite or worse - a man whose party happily adapts itself to the interests of the brewers and distillers of a notoriously destructive drug (alcohol) and whose former leader helps to peddle a highly addictive drug (nicotine) to Third World countries. The debate is far from over yet - Wednesday's Newsnight, in direct contradiction of Public Eye's take on the matter, reported on American evidence that Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign had worked well - but at least some kind of debate has begun.