(Ed. note: It is hard to overstate the
importance of this insight by a paper as influential as The Times, owned by Rupert
Murdoch. There is not only a recognition that cannabis can play a positive role; there is
an understanding that an "anti-drug" measure can actually be counterproductive.
Usually, any such suggestions would be denounced as "pro-drug" deviationism.)
See Random
Drug Testing At Work Drives Employees To Swap Cannabis For Hard Drugs -- UK Report and
Why "Drug" Testing Is
Really Just Marijuana Testing – Which Is CounterproductiveThe Times
of London Editorial
letters@the-times.co.uk
http://www.the-times.co.uk/
March 12, 1998
There Should Be Zero Tolerance Of Heroin In Prisons
Some 70 per cent of suspects have drugs in their system when they are arrested. Since
only the most serious of offenders are sent to jail, it is perhaps no surprise that
prisons are rife with convicts who want to take drugs. What is more surprising is that
they can do so with such apparent ease: drugs in prison seem to be
almost as readily available as on the street. The Chief Inspector of Prisons, Sir David
Ramsbotham, has now accused prisons of being in the grip of drug barons, as many as ten
per jail.
Yesterday Sir David rowed back a little. While it might have been fair a few years ago
to say that prison staff turned a blind eye to drugs, it is not so now. Mandatory drug
testing and closed circuit televisions have been introduced, while searching has become
more frequent, sometimes with sniffer dogs. Now the Prison Service is proposing to ban
prisoners from physical contact with visitors if they have been caught with drugs. But
that will not stop visitors to other inmates from bringing in drugs. Still drugs are
obtainable. In the criminal justice system, the law must surely be upheld.
Drug dealers in jails know that they have a ready market. Anything that makes time pass
more quickly or boredom more bearable will be in demand. Some inmates arrive as addicts;
many more will leave in that state. Bullying and intimidation are commonplace, and debts
are easy to run up and hard to pay off.
Cannabis use has been tolerated in some jails because it calms
aggressive prisoners. Heroin, however, has few redeeming features. It is extremely
addictive and encourages recidivism. In order to finance a heroin habit, an ex-prisoner is
likely either to steal or to deal once out of jail.
Mandatory drug testing, introduced in 1995, may be having a perverse and unintended
effect. Because cannabis can be detected in the body up to a month after having been
smoked, prisoners are tempted to switch to heroin, which is just as cheap and stays in the
system for only 48 hours. Recreational drug users are turned into junkies. A survey by the
Institute for the Study of Drug Dependence found that, after one year of drug testing
among prisoners, the proportion found taking opiates (mainly heroin) had doubled, while
the figures for cannabis had dropped by some 20 per cent.
Neither drug should be condoned in jails, but it is surely wrong to design incentives
for inmates to move from soft to hard drugs, which do much more harm both to the
individuals and to society. For the balance to be tipped the other way, the penalties for
being caught with heroin should be toughened relative to those for cannabis.
Prisons should do their best to help those who are already addicts to kick their
habits. Too few jails have their own rehabilitation units, where inmates can be treated
and kept separate from continuing drug users. For the future, however, the new drug
treatment and testing orders in the Crime and Disorder Bill may succeed in keeping addicts
out of jail and in helping them off drugs altogether.
Meanwhile, governors must institute a "zero tolerance" regime for heroin. If
it means barriers between visitors and inmates for those who have been caught with the
drug, so be it. Prisoners should be using jail as a means for coming
off hard drugs, not starting a new habit. All the rules, regulations and penalties
should be designed with that aim in mind.
Supported