Wed 22 Nov 2006

Is it time to change our drug laws?

With Clive Anderson tonight are Howard Marks, Fraser Nelson and Rachel Holmes.

Today, a senior police officer has called for heroin to be available on the NHS as part of a treatment programme for addicts. Tomorrow, annual figures from the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Addiction will show the UK tops the European drugs league, with Britons apparently consuming £57 million of cocaine each week. The number of young people taking cocaine has doubled over the past seven years, and in some parts of the country you can buy an ecstasy tablet for 50p, but all these users are committing Class A drug offences, which is the same category as heroin users.

Do the current drugs classifications make sense? Is it time to recognise that our current drugs laws don't work. But if so, how should they be reformed, or is legalisation the answer? Why do Brits take so many drugs, and does it really matter anyway?