Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Police say: reduce crime, 'Give heroin to addicts'


Give heroin to addicts, says police chief
The Telegraph 21/02/2007

"One of the country’s most senior police officers has called for heroin to be prescribed to long-term addicts in order to prevent them from committing crime.

Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said that a way had to be found to deal with a hard core minority of heroin addicts.

“I was a drugs officer and we have to be realistic,” said Mr Jones, who has emerged as the most senior police officer yet to back heroin prescription."

In America: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

The stated goals of current U.S.drug policy -- reducing crime, drug addiction, and juvenile drug use -- have not been achieved, even after nearly four decades of a policy of "war on drugs". This policy, fueled by over a trillion of our tax dollars has had little or no effect on the levels of drug addiction among our fellow citizens, but has instead resulted in a tremendous increase in crime and in the numbers of Americans in our prisons and jails. With 4.6% of the world's population, America today has 22.5% of the worlds prisoners. But, after all that time, after all the destroyed lives and after all the wasted resources, prohibited drugs today are cheaper, stronger, and easier to get than they were thirty-five years ago at the beginning of the so-called "war on drugs".

With this in mind, we current and former members of law enforcement have created a drug-policy reform movement -- LEAP. We believe that to save lives and lower the rates of disease, crime and addiction. as well as to conserve tax dollars, we must end drug prohibition. LEAP believes that a system of regulation and control of production and distribution will be far more effective and ethical than one of prohibition.

We do this in hopes that we in Law Enforcement can regain the public's respect and trust, which have been greatly diminished by our involvement in imposing drug prohibition. Please consider joining us. You don't have to be a cop to join LEAP!



Find out more about us by reading some of the articles in our Publications section or by watching and listening to some of
our multimedia clips,. You can also read about the men and women who speak for LEAP, and see what we have on the calendar for the near future.



"Summary of the Synthesis Report." Programme for a Medical Prescription of Narcotics Institute for Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Zurich; 1997

Criminal activity

Income from illegal and semi-legal activities decreased dramatically: 10% as opposed to 59% originally.

Both the number of offenders and the number of criminal offences decreased by about 60% during the first six months of treatment (according to information obtained directly from the patients' and from police records).

Court convictions also decreased significantly (according to the central criminal register).

Swiss heroin model reporting benefits September 4, 2006

"In Switzerland, the medicalisation of heroin use has helped change the image of users: from rebels to losers," Nordt said. "In the eyes of the young, they're mostly just sick people, forced to get medical help."

The harm reduction policy followed by the Swiss authorities has also been successful in reducing heroin-related deaths, which have fallen by more than half over the course of a decade, and the transmission of Aids.

And there is more good news concerning the fight against crime and prostitution.

"Compared with countries like Britain, where crime is very often linked to substance abuse, this trend has almost disappeared in Switzerland over the last few years," said Nordt.

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