STREET PRICES PROVE DRUGS WAR IS BEING LOST

For young Britain it is the cheap alternative to a night out on bottles of
lager and Bacardi Breezers. The price of drugs in the UK has collapsed,
allowing dealers to make the average dose of ecstasy and LSD cheaper than
beer and cigarettes.

Official street prices of recreational drugs have been lowered by dealers
to such an extent that drinking is now a far more expensive option.

Parents struggling to comprehend the social revolution which is seeing
teenagers switch from drink to drugs in ever greater numbers will be
horrified to find out that supply is now so bountiful that designer pills
across the UK have been lowered to pocket money levels. The long-term
health implications are immeasurable.

The figures also stand as an indictment of Home Secretary David Blunkett's
well-intentioned war on drugs. Successive governments have spent heavily on
combating the drugs market, now worth an estimated 6.5 billion. The
National Criminal Intelligence Service has provided figures to the House of
Commons showing, for the first time, the street price of each of the six
main illegal drugs since 1990.

The most startling decline is that of ecstasy, the dance drug, which has
fallen from UKP20.50 a tablet ten years ago to only UKP7 today. Prices of
heroin and cocaine both fell by 30 per cent over the same period.

The Scotsman has measured these figures against the price of cigarettes,
lager and whisky - whose average price is measured every month by the
Office for National Statistics. Both have been made sharply more expensive
by successive budgets.

The study shows that, ten years ago, the price of one ecstasy pill would
have bought 14 pints of lager or 222 cigarettes - enough for a fortnight's
heavy smoking.

For young people disinclined to take a Class A drug, the economic case for
drinking was clear. One pill cost the same as an average two nights out in
the pub.

Today, the UKP7 street price for a tablet of ecstasy is the equivalent of
3.5 pints of lager or 34 king-size cigarettes.

The Scotsman's study shows that LSD, the highly dangerous hallucinogenic
drug, last year became cheaper than a packet of cigarettes. LSD has become
cheaper still, and the price difference between the two is now 77p.

The survey shows for the first time the real economic decisions facing
young people at weekends - and how illegal drugs are now the cheaper option.

Proof is mounting that the successive "war on drugs" campaigns waged by
Conservative and Labour governments has ended in abject failure, as dealers
have been able to not only avoid but undercut HM Customs.

David Laws, the Liberal Democrat MP who obtained the street prices through
a Parliamentary question, said the figures are the last word in an
indictment of Mr Blunkett's policy.

"It shows you how unsuccessful the war against drugs has been," he said.
"Either there has been a huge collapse in demand for drugs - which I think
very unlikely - or the supply has rocketed."

Annabelle Ewing, the Scottish National Party's Home Affairs spokeswoman,
said the price collapse is the final proof of Mr Blunkett's failure.

"This is a pure, free-market situation which works according to the laws of
supply and demand - falling prices can only mean that more supply is
getting through," she said.

"This can be traced to the cutback in coast guards, which was set in train
by the Tories and continued under New Labour. This makes illegal drugs more
affordable and increases the danger of more young people getting sucked in."

If parliamentarians are concerned by the problem, there seems to be little
that they can do to combat the crisis. This week MPs suggested liberalising
drug laws, a policy deemed to be an act of surrender by the high-profile
parents of children who have died after taking drugs.

The Home Affairs Select Committee urged the re-categorisation of ecstasy
from a Class A drug to a Class B drug.

It also recommended the prescription of heroin to addicts - a technique
which has been successfully used in Switzerland.

The report was entitled "The government's drugs policy: is it working?" -
and concluded that the jail threats and draconian fines have not had the
slightest impact on a thriving drugs trade.

There was plenty evidence to support this. The use of "soft" drugs such as
cannabis has boomed, with more than half of young people admitting to
having smoked it.

In 1998, some 3,500 people died from drug-related causes - an increase of
almost 20 per cent on 1994. Police on both sides of the border now estimate
that about one third of property crime is drug-related.

Since the laws on prescribing heroin to addicts were tightened in 1971, the
number of users has grown from 1,000 to anything between 200,000 and 500,000.

David Cameron, a Tory MP and member of the Home Affairs select committee,
said the formula of heroin prescriptions and jail threats has been
disproved and must change.

"Politicians should get up from behind their barricades and actually look
at what works, rather than what sounds good," he said. " If we get this
right, we could cut crime, save money, save lives and reduce the harm that
drugs do. I would say that's worth a row or two."

Other MPs sent out contradictory signals, warning that a clampdown on
smuggling is needed. The Scottish Affairs Select Committee published an
earlier report raising fears that Scotland is a "soft touch" for drug
smugglers as its coastline is so thinly guarded.

The Home Office yesterday declined to comment on the figures - deferring to
HM Customs, who deferred back to the Home Office. Its standard response has
been to highlight the increasing amount of drugs seized.

DrugScope, one of the most influential drugs charities, said yesterday that
it welcomes all drugs swoops - but said that the price chart does not
suggest a tightening drugs market.

The cries for change have been rebuffed by the Home Office. Prescribing
heroin necessarily involved shoot-up rooms - these are politically unpalatable.

The success of the current strategy, however, is shown in the table above.
More drugs mean cheap drugs; the danger premium seems to be removed from
the retail price.

Mr Blunkett no longer needs opposition parties and drugs charities to
criticise his war on drugs. Its abject failure has been proven by the
invisible hand of the market.