Labour’s anti-drugs campaign has not really achieved its aim. Why? Because cocaine used has doubled since it was launched.

[Home Office] data show[s] that even after a modest fall in cocaine use from 2006/07 to 2007/08, the drug is roughly twice as heavily used now as it was a decade ago.

Labour launched a ten-year national drug strategy in 1998, promising to “focus on those that cause the greatest damage, including cocaine”.

In the 1998 crime survey, 1.3 per cent of people said they had taken cocaine at least once in the previous year. This year, the figure was 2.3 per cent.

In 1998, some 0.5 per cent of people had used cocaine in the previous month. Now, it is 1 per cent.

However, the total amount of the drug seized actually fell by 15 per cent a year, and it has halved in five years. (The Telegraph)

That is a a vey large increase. When the fact that the amount of coaine seized by the police has fallen at the same time, what does that tell us? That this anti-drugs campaign has failed miserably.

Personally, I couldn’t care less what people do their own bodies so long as they don’t harm anyone else, but when an anti-drugs campaign encourages drug taking then there’s a problem somewhere. Most likely with the moralising of the campaigners, as usual.