Ministers have 'failed totally in drugs war'

The Government's drugs policy has been a "resounding failure", a think-tank set up by Tony Blair claims.

The number of addicts and overdose deaths had soared in recent years, narcotics were more easily available than ever, and drugs education had had only a limited impact, the study said. Rowena Young, the report's author, said: "The war on drugs has been a resounding failure. Rarely in the history of wars have so many achieved so little at such a high cost."

Ms Young's report for the Foreign Policy Centre said ministers had not recognised that the cause of drug abuse was poverty. The criticism of the policies of the Government – and its predecessors – is embarrassing, coming from a group so close to the Prime Minister. The Foreign Policy Centre was set up in 1998 by Mr Blair, who is its patron, and Robin Cook, during his time as Foreign Secretary, to explore the results of globalisation.

Ms Young, a director of a drug treatment agency, said there were now 500 times as many drug addicts in Britain as there were in the 1960s. Britain was in the top five countries worldwide in terms of heroin consumption, she said.

The report, From War to Work: drug treatment, social inclusion and enterprise, published yesterday, said the Government should shift efforts from trying to cut drug use towards reducing the damage to the socially excluded.

The unemployed were seven times more likely to use hard drugs than people in work, and the poorest areas of Britain accounted for 30 times as many drug-related hospital emergencies as the richest ones, the report said. "The key issue is not the availability of drugs, but rather the problematic drug use caused by social exclusion," said Ms Young. Policy makers should learn from Asia where treatment and counselling had been combined with help finding jobs and learning skills, said the report.

To support her argument that Britain was losing the drugs war, Ms Young said that since the 1980s the number of addicts had doubled every four years; in 1998, there were nearly 3,500 drug-related deaths in Britain. The Office of National Statistics recorded a 110 per cent rise in heroin or morphine-related deaths between 1995 and 2000to 754 per year. The number of deaths linked to cocaine quadrupled to 87 a year. There are about 270,000 registered drug dependents – 540 times the number registered in the 1960s.

The report said the Government's own research showed education had failed to reduce drug use, while treatment had failed in two-thirds of cases.

Among the recommendations are a holistic approach that focuses on outcomes not inputs. This would mean scrapping targets for reduction of drug use and concentrating instead on reducing harm. It also called for more resources for police tackling drug misuse, and for private and voluntary sectors to train and provide work experience for users.

Robert Ainsworth,a Home Office minister, told the BBC's Today programme the problem would not be solved overnight. He said: "It needs to be tackled in a holistic way and that is exactly what the Government is trying to do." He disputed the finding that social deprivation was to blame. "Many problematic drug users do not come from deprived backgrounds, so there is a need for overall education," he said.