Writing in response to the ePolitix.com Forum Brief on Conservative drugs policy, shadow home secretary Oliver Letwin explains his position.

New figures reveal that gun crime is soaring under this government. The deep-rooted connection between gun crime and drug dependency is widely documented.

Accordingly, it is impossible to make a serious attack on street violence and gun crime without a proper strategy to tackle drug dependency.

The government's approach has been fundamentally flawed: they have relied on short-term initiatives and focused on the supply of drugs.

The only way to seriously tackle the problem is through a coherent programme to address demand.

It is for this reason that we have put forward a programme of targeted mandatory treatment for young heroin and cocaine addicts.

We are proposing that we should actively identify young people who are on heroin and crack, and that we should present them with a choice: treatment (including all the psychological and other help required to beat the menace) or the criminal justice system.

To make a reality of this policy, we will need to greatly expand the amount of treatment available in this country for heroin and crack addiction.

We will need to multiply treatment tenfold - to the same level per capita that we see in countries like Sweden.

We will need to develop new attitudes and new methods amongst parents, peers, teachers, the police, probation service and others.

We will need to design detailed mechanisms for increasing the amount of identification of these hard drug users, for delivering treatment and counselling, and for involving the non-statutory sector.