Drugs.

I read an article in the E&E yesterday about a police raid that closed down a crack house in Exeter. Only a few years ago, the idea that you might find a crack house in the St Leonards area of Exeter, or indeed in any other area of the city, would have been bizarre in the extreme but no longer. Crack cocaine, once the drug of choice for deprived urban areas can now be found almost anywhere in Britain, along with almost any other form of substance, illegal and otherwise that is likely to produce a state of altered conciousness in those who take it.

I dont remember hearing of of illegal substances in the village before the very late 1960's. True, those sophisticates at school who could pass for eighteen and could get into some of the Exeter clubs reported the existence of something called 'Purple Hearts' but I dont actually remember anyone admitting to having taken them. By the late 60's however, when the Three Tuns had become a trendy hangout for the Exeter Uni crowd and a number of students were renting property in the village, it was not that uncommon to come across people who had little brown blocks of a certain substance that they mixed into their rolling tobacco. Although not widespread, such items could soon be found amongst some locals as well as amongst the student crowd. After I moved to Scotland and came into contact with a much more prevelant drugs culture, I weas surprised to return to Silverton on occasions and to hear of people using magic mushrooms, of which I had then hardly heard and of needles being found on the recreation ground. A very big change in a very short time historically. Later of course, we get to "E's" and 'Skunk' which I have no experience of personally, but I suspect that some of those who use such substances would be amongst those regarded as thouroughly respectable.

When we have crack houses in Exeter and in some areas that I have lived in local dealers who were as well known for what they did for a living as the local milkman, you really begin to wonder if, for all the billions of pounds and dollars pumped into the so called 'war on drugs' by governments around the world, they are fighting a war that is already lost. For all the occasional talk of cocaine production being down in one part of the world and heroin production being curtailed in another, the drugs industry rolls on with the more innovative producers moving into buying property for cannibis production. Surely, the time will have to comne when governments are going to have to seriously consider forms of legalisation and the sort of state distribution of heroin to existing addicts such as is now the case in Switzerland. Perhaps then, the money spent fighting the failing war on drugs could be diverted to reducing or preventing people turning to such substances in the first place. If, as seems to be the case that drugs and alcohol are used often to blot out internal miseries, perhaps more should be spent on reducing the cause of such miseries.