Caution should be exercised before deciding to legalise some drugs, the chief executive of Bradford’s biggest drug charity has warned after a group of MPs and peers yesterday urged the Government to consider legalising some substances because the war on drugs is not working. Bradford Chief Reporter Dolores Cowburn examines the issue.

There were clear examples abroad, such as the Czech Republic and Portugal, that show appropriate regulation of drugs can help cut crime, according to Baroness Meacher, chairman of the All Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform.

She has now called for Prime Minister David Cameron to set up a cross-party commission to be set up to examine the evidence.

She told the BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme: “We have evidence from a lot of different countries about what works rather better than what we do in the UK.

“The Czech Republic and Portugal have decriminalised possession and use of small quantities of drugs. They have lower levels of problem drug use, lower levels of use of these drugs among young people, lower cocaine use, lower heroin use.

“It’s fairly clear that you do quite well if you have decriminalisation, so that’s one of the policies we think needs to be looked at.

“We hope it will be a commission set up by David Cameron, our Prime Minister. This should be a cross-party commission in our view because we need to take the politics out of this and start looking at the evidence in a sensible way.”

But Jon Royle, who heads the Bridge Project, in Salem Street, Bradford, has warned that a cautious approach needs to be taken when it comes to drawing conclusions from other countries’ experiences.

“What works in the Czech Republic and Portugal might not necessarily transfer to the UK context and culture,” he said.

Mr Royle said he agreed that police resources should be concentrated on drugs such as heroin and crack that cause most harm to society.

He said that usage of those drugs did seem to be gradually decreasing, but there was a problem with underground pharmacists and scentists creating new formulas for illegal substances that could be bought online.

Christian Guy, policy director at the Centre for Social Justice, also warned that “waving the white flag” on drugs was the wrong approach.

He said: “I would agree that the war on drugs has been failing but what I’m concerned about is the idea we should stop fighting it and wave the white flag to these criminal gangs and say we are going to give up."

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