Our drug rehabilitation programme works with some of the most excluded people in the community. In addition to a chemical dependency that captivates their lives and holds them to ransom, our clients also have a long history of criminal activity that often started in early adolescence. Such people enter into adulthood totally and completely incapable of dealing with the requirements maturity demands for a normal existence; hence they become unable to cope. Escaping into a drug-orientated lifestyle provides an aesthetic, which anesthetizes the pain of their existence. Sadly, this eventually controls the core fabric of their being and conceives the total destruction of their lives. We make contact with clients whilst in prison and our programme is introduced as an alternative route on release back into society. The complexities are huge. These young adults carry a psychological deficit initiated by a stifled and debilitated human development that has not progressed from adolescence, creating an additional vulnerability in addition to their drug addiction. Drug rehabilitation programmes are not geared for people with low levels of motivation. These are the people who don’t meet the criteria for entrance admission. Drug treatment programmes cannot deal with people who are still using drugs or those who deviate whilst on the programme. These are the people who have had a stormy relationship with school and were often excluded with their problems never really being addressed in the classroom. Such people enter into adulthood totally and completely unable to cope with the requirements maturity demands for a normal existence.

We have groups of people drifting from city to city incapable of making the commitment to address their drug problem. The therapeutic world can be tough, and rigid with an inflexible attitude. One of the fundamental reasons why we are losing the fight against drugs is that there are not enough resources made available to explore alternative approaches in dealing with people who cannot fit bureaucratic treatment systems. I communicate with excluded people throughout the UK in my work with edges magazine, a national publication, giving excluded people a platform to speak out and share their views. Constantly, I am faced with desperate young people who have drifted from their early years in the primary school and still look like lost children in their early twenties. It is encouraging to now find that education strategists are starting with the premise that, given the necessary support and opportunities while at school, young people may have a chance of attaining what is needed for normal development. Rather than exclude the disruptive child from school we now are encouraged to work positively with challenging behaviour. In many schools extra resources have become available to work with children as individuals so that they can develop the motivation, skills and behaviours necessary to gain benefit from normal classroom learning. However, several generations have missed out and we can see the results in our drop-in-centres up and down the country.

I wholeheartedly agree that the criminal law should be primarily reserved for dealers. This is sensible and realistic and more resources made available for the treatment of addicts, especially those who don’t fit the criteria for residential drug rehabilitation, is essential. I also agree that it is sensible and realistic for a total evaluation of our present drug laws. That does not mean that we downgrade and reclassify automatically, but we construct an analytical framework and measure it with a contemporary perspective of modern day Britain. The police superintendents association has said it welcomes the shift in emphasis from enforcement to harm reduction and has backed the call for the new "supply for gain" offence. Already we have health care professionals, patients and their carers engaged in the consultation process in relation to the use of cannabis derivates for the treatment of the symptoms of multiple sclerosis, insomnia and hepatitis C. In addition we have senior police officers concerned that too much emphasis is being placed on young people in possession of such drugs like ecstasy. This absorbs the human resource of the police and reduces their ability to strangulate the supply route. I would agree that ecstasy is clearly a dangerous drug. But I would also agree with the independent Police Foundation inquiry which pointed out that often the causes of death had as much to do with environmental aspects of the dance club scene, such as overcrowding and overheating, as the drug itself. The MP’s who suggest that in order to cut the number of deaths, advice should be made available in clubs on actions to take in order to reduce the risks, such as drinking the right amount of water, makes common sense. Equally, we have numerous heroin addicts living the most horrific lifestyles from injecting in their groin to prostituting their bodies. Many lack the energy to engage within the hierarchical structure of funding for their treatment and become the victims of the drug gangs who are ruthless and show no mercy. Such people live in constant fear and can be found in the most apalling places. Should we be thinking of prescribing heroin to hardcore addicts? I become concerned when people blatantly refuse to even explore the possibility.