Why I ... think heroin should be legalised

The prevalence of illicit drug use of all kinds has gone up and up among all sections of society, all age groups and across all drugs over the past 15 years.

Alongside this we have had an increasing emphasis on the war against drugs. Data from Scotland shows that the law is being implemented much more harshly. But despite this war on drugs, their use is rising inexorably. Any reasonable person looking at the facts would say: "This isn't working." Creative thinking is needed right now.

Drugs are part of our society - 60 per cent of young people use illicit drugs from time to time. I would like to see a debate on legalisation because I think the present law is not merely ineffective, it actually has a negative impact on drug use.

The law surrounds what is basically a health and social issue with a framework of criminality that breeds gangsterism and death on the streets. In Manchester, people are shooting each other over drug territory.

Yet most drug deaths, particularly those due to heroin, and also, I suspect, Ecstasy, arise because of a lack of control over the quality of those drugs. So what you get in an Ecstasy tablet can range from no MDMA at all to 140 milligrams; it can be ketamine, it can be baking powder.

Similarly, the quality of heroin on the streets is variable - as soon as you get better quality heroin out there people start overdosing. We need some quality control.

Because of the media we think that drug problems arise from drugs alone. In fact, the state that we call addiction has several components. It involves a seductive drug, a person who has particular goals in life and it is also influenced by how the person lives.

All the evidence shows that heavy drug use is most likely to result from experimentation in urban areas of high deprivation. And when you are faced with dysfunctional families, no job openings, miserable housing estates, to simply tackle this as a war against drugs does not do justice to people.

If you are a chronic drug user, your best bet is learned helplessness. We encourage people to see themselves as addicts and to behave like addicts. We want some creative thinking that does not revolve around the law and allows drug-users to take control of their lives.

John Davies

Professor of psychology at the University of Strathclyde, has carried out drugs research for several government departments. He has just finished interviewing drug users for a Scottish Office study