LONDON, Nov.23: As Afghanistan’s record opium poppy crop floods the European cities with the drug, the risk of higher numbers of heroin overdoses has increased in the region, the UN warned on Thursday.
Europe has traditionally been the biggest market for Afghan opiates and opium cultivation in Afghanistan increased by 59% this year.
Meanwhile, a top British police officer has called for heroin to be prescribed to addicts to cut the link between drugs and crime. Howard Roberts, deputy chief constable of Nottinghamshire police, said that making the class A drug available under supervision would save money in the long run.
He cited figures showing addicts each commit on average 432 offences a year, "from burglary to robbery, to sometimes murder, to get the money to buy drugs". On average, each addict steals at least £45,000 worth of property a year.
Prescribing heroin by contrast would cost £12,000 a year per person.
"Therefore the logic is clear, I suggest, that we take highly addicted offenders out of committing crime to feed their addiction, into closely supervised treatment programmes that, as part of the programme, can prescribe diamorphine."
Mr. Roberts' intervention came ahead of the arrival in Britain this weekend of a former US undercover detective who is spearheading a movement to end drug prohibition. More than 60 British officers, including two former chief constables, have joined Jack Cole's Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (Leap). He spent 26 years with the police in New Jersey.
"Prohibition doesn't work, it's never worked," said Mr. Cole. "Leap wants to end drug prohibition just as we ended alcohol prohibition in 1933. When we ended that nasty law, we put Al Capone out of business overnight - and we can do the same to the drug lords and terrorists who make over $500bn a year selling illegal drugs around the world."
Experts have also been suggesting that the governments in the West could buy the entire crop of poppy from Afghan farmers instead of trying to persuade them to go for alternatives. This, they said would control the menace more effectively and more economically than trying to apprehend the drug barons on the streets of Europe , London or New York.
In another related development a report by European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction has found that British drug users take more cocaine than those in every other European Union country.
The report found that use of the narcotic had almost tripled amongst adults in the past decade.
Cocaine use has also risen more than four times among 15 to 24-year-olds over the last 12 years. In England and Wales, almost 5% of young people have tried the drug in the past year.
The study looks at drug problems in the 25 EU member states, as well as Norway, Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics quoted in the report show that there were more than 54,000 deaths in the UK relating to drug misuse between 1985 and 2004.
In Europe as a whole, cocaine is now the second most popular illegal drug, after cannabis. Ecstasy use has fallen and although many more people use cannabis, its use has stabilised compared with cocaine.
The report estimates that around 10 million Europeans have used cocaine and around 3.5 million are likely to have used it in the last year.
Around 1.5 million Europeans, or 0.5% of adults, said they had taken cocaine in the last month.
