editorial comment Hospitals and programmes? Are you mad? We are much better off with prisons! Stay the course sir!

READING probation officer Bob Turney says it is time to stop pouring billions of pounds into a never-ending war against drugs and open a hysteria-free debate about legalisation.

His job offers him an insight into the criminal underworld because he spends his days at Crown House probation office working with drug dealers and robbers.

But the 59-year-old father-offive also spent 18 years drifting in and out of prison himself as a career burglar, drug addict and alcoholic until 1979.

Living in Shinfield for 21 years he is now also a respected author, and has a university degree despite his dyslexia.

He says: "It's not working. Every time there's a major bust the price of drugs rises, which stokes crime, because addicts are dependent on offending to get drugs.

"History shows you prohibition has never worked. Legalising and regulating would halve both the prison population and property crime, and get rid of most prohibition-related turf wars and corruption."

The government, he says, is giving hazy signals with longer drinking hours and its more lenient approach to drug possession.

Under Home Office plans people caught with less than 500 cannabis joints will be cautioned - and Bob says that means dealers will simply carry enough for 499.

He said: "Some of the people I talk to see it as a family business, it's as if they're providing a service.
"The 12-year-old kids who act as lookouts make £450-a-week and these guys dealing make £7,000 a week. How do you tell them to get a job in the Oracle?"

The author, whose latest book Wanted was launched at Reading Prison in March before an audience of 80 including Reading West Martin Salter, says the money spent combating drugs globally is wasted.

"If they were legal or addicts can get them on prescription, you can do the same thing as cigarettes, make it anti-social and marginalise it. Just saying no, don't do drugs, isn't the answer, kids don't react to that.

"When I was young you used to get heroin on prescription. You could get speed in the chemist in the 60s, then they criminalised it. As years go by things change but not necessarily for the good.

"We're spending billions on trying to prevent it, but it just increases. We could put that money into hospitals and programmes to help people and regenerating rundown areas.

"There's always been addiction - alcohol, caffeine, cigarettes - it will never go away.
"We need a cross party group, like we had in Northern Ireland, with decriminalisation and legalisation on the table.


"Don't get me wrong, I don't agree with drugs in any form. We just need an intelligent debate, no blood letting or pulling out hair, just a sensible debate." ..SUPL:

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