Legalising heroin and cocaine 'could save £10bn'

The government could save £10bn a year by legalising heroin and cocaine, according to research by a drugs reform group today.

Transform published a report which claims that by legalising the Class A drugs, the number of drug-related deaths could be halved.

And the government's current approach to drugs policy has failed to halt the rise in the supply of drugs, the charity stated.

The group is calling for drugs prohibition to be replaced with a regime of legal regulation.

Some £100bn has been wasted in England and Wales over the last 10 years on a "punitive" and ineffective drugs policy, Transform said.

Steve Rolles, the organisation's head of research, told the BBC that the current approach is "very clearly" not cost-effective.

He stated: "This is a policy that costs billions a year and has consistently delivered the opposite of its stated goals."

Rolles argued that the government's approach to drugs also leads to higher crime rates.

The government's own analysis suggests that dependency on heroin and cocaine leads to £9bn of crime each year, he suggested.

"We have to consider that since 1971 the use of heroin has increase by over 2,000 per cent and cocaine use has doubled in the last 10 years," said Rolles.

"If there is evidence that this is a successful way of reducing drug use, we haven't seen it.

"If we move the policy away from criminal justice to public health, we are much better able to intervene on the market and control availability and control use."

He added: "Any responsible government would take a look at the costs and the outputs and at least review that, subject it to effective scrutiny and start a rational, mature discussion on alternatives."

But a Home Office spokesman insisted: "Drugs are controlled because they are harmful.

"The law provides an important deterrent to drug use and legalisation would risk a huge increase in consumption with an associated cost to public health.

"The legalisation of drugs would not eliminate the crime committed by organised career criminals; such criminals would simply seek new sources of illicit revenue through crime."

And pointing to alcohol and tobacco smuggling, he added that a regulated market would not "eliminate illicit supplies".