MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: Is it radical to suggest that we should stop people from using drugs in the first place?

Today, drugs kill three times as many people each year as die in traffic accidents. Last year, 5,448 people in England and Wales died due to the use of illegal substances such as cocaine and heroin. A further 1,172 people died from the same causes in Scotland.

And these numbers are growing.

They also do not include criminal violence that may have been caused by drug abuse but was not reported as such, or the growing problem of drug driving. Drug addiction is not a “victimless crime.”

A new report from the Center for Social Justice (CSJ) says more than 300,000 people in England are addicted to heroin and crack cocaine.

Collectively, they account for nearly half of all burglaries, robberies and other acquisitive crimes.

This is a significant change for the worse in our national life, yet it has received surprisingly little high-level attention.

Governments don’t seem to know what to do about it. Ministers from both major parties have been tough, insisting they have no plans to formally legalize or decriminalize drugs.

But what does this mean in practice?

Legalization advocates have long argued that the best answer to this problem would be to decriminalize and treat drug abuse as a medical rather than a criminal matter.

They tend to create the impression that illicit drug users face a brutal regime of arrest, prosecution and punishment.

But if this is true, it’s hard to find any statistics to back it up.

As it turned out, the authorities informally responded to such calls, and few people now go to prison simply for possession of illegal drugs.

Police energy tends to concentrate almost entirely on trying to stop supplies by going after the dealers.

Our current laws against drug possession seem tough, but they are paper tigers that are rarely, if ever, enforced.

A lot of energy and government money is already directed towards drug substitution programs such as methadone prescribing, as well as various forms of rehabilitation.

Cannabis possession is often dealt with through unregistered warnings, if it is addressed at all. Could this actually be a big part of the problem?

In its report, the CSJ said that two-thirds of police officers believe that cannabis has been largely or partially decriminalized. If the police think so, how confused is the public?

Middle-class cocaine users could also be forgiven for thinking that the law against the drug has been partially repealed as its abuse continues to go unchecked in many circles.

Meanwhile, reports are pouring in from overseas that the full legalization of cannabis, long touted by fashion figures as the answer, has failed.

In Canada, despite the legalization of cannabis, it is believed that up to 52 percent of the market is still in the hands of illegal gangs.

The commercial and fiscal prosperity that its supporters predicted did not materialize.

The same thing is happening in those US states that have also followed this path – and American voters are starting to rebel against it, recently voting against legalization in Florida.

Portugal’s much-publicized experiment in drug depenalization also failed.

CSJ’s Sophia Warringer says: “Pretending that liberalization is the answer is clearly wrong.

“No matter where you look, this has not eradicated the illegal drug market or been a silver bullet for reducing drug deaths or drug use.”

It requires treatment, and it undoubtedly takes place.

But isn’t it time for us to think about the old radical idea of ​​stopping people from using drugs in the first place?