Leading article: A startling injection of common sense

The report from the Royal Society of Arts Commission on Drugs tells us what most thoughtful people have known for some time: Britain's drug laws have been shaped by moral panic, rather than a rational analysis of the problem of substance abuse.

The two-year study argues that the focus of government policy should be on harm reduction. In common with last year's report by the Parliamentary Science Select Committee, it recommends that the existing "ABC" classification system be scrapped in favour of an "index of harms", which would extend the definition of drugs to include alcohol and tobacco. It also argues that there should be an emphasis on "medicalising" the problem of heroin abuse, urging the roll out of "shooting galleries" for heroin users and wider prescription of the drug by doctors.

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The report's authors feel addiction should be seen as a health and social problem rather than simply a criminal justice issue. If drug taking does not harm anyone, criminal sanctions should not be applied. Jail should be reserved for only the most serious drug-related crimes.

They also correctly identify the major reason why this is not already happening: politicians. The response of the former Home Secretary, David Blunkett, to the proposals yesterday sums up the problem. He rejected the arguments of the RSA in favour of reform and argued that the present approach by the Government is working perfectly well. Meanwhile, the former Tory leader, Iain Duncan Smith, who is shaping the Conservative Party's own policy on drugs, was also critical of the RSA recommendations. Mr Duncan Smith does at least have a strategy for improving on the present situation. He stresses the need for residential rehabilitation for addicts. But by arguing that getting people off drugs altogether should be the only objective of government policy, he too demonstrates why politicians are failing on this crucial issue. Too many in Westminster feel it is their responsibility to stigmatise addicts, rather than help them.

Of course, the reason ministers are clinging on to the crude policy of prohibition is that there is still a wide-spread mindset in this country, stoked up by the populist press, that all drugs are "evil" and that, by extension, so are those that take them. The summersaults performed by ministers over the downgrading of cannabis demonstrate just how in thrall to this popular prejudice they remain. The RSA report argues that: "The evidence suggests that a majority of people who use drugs are able to use them without harming themselves or others. The harmless use of illegal drugs is thus possible, indeed common." One can already predict the shrieks of alarm that will emanate from the prohibitionist lobby at this eminently reasonable statement.

The political classes have been afraid to challenge those who demand a "hard line" on drugs. They must begin to do so urgently. The present blanket prohibition is not working. A vast proportion of crime committed in Britain is related to the drugs economy. The Home Office has estimated that the social cost of drug abuse is between £10bn and £17bn a year. Our jails are bursting because they have been forced to take in so many drug addicts. As Professor Anthony King, the head of the RSA Commission, pointed out yesterday: "The quickest way into treatment is to commit a crime". What this shows is a society with its head in the sand when it comes to the question of drugs. It is high time we pulled it out.

The clock cannot be turned back when it comes to drugs. The reduction of harm must become the explicit goal of government drug policy, or we will all continue to pay a heavy price.