Making drugs legal will backfire, warns top cop
MAKING drugs legal would fail to stop gang wars or organised crime, one of Britain’s top police officers said yesterday.
Chief Constable Andy Cooke said criminal gangs would respond by producing new illegal, stronger drugs or by stepping up their human trafficking operations.
He called for a renewed crackdown on kingpins wreaking havoc and said more officers targeting them could “knock them off their perch”.
Ministers have faced calls to consider legalising drugs to prevent bloody turf wars between gangs.
A cross-party group of MPs has even predicted class B drug cannabis – Britain’s most commonly used illegal narcotic – will be legalised within five to ten years.
And the former Chief Constable of Durham Police, Mike Barton, has called for an end to the war on drugs.
But Mr Cooke, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for serious and organised crime, told the Daily Express: “I don’t want to see drugs legalised.
“It isn’t going to solve the problem of people taking other drugs and it is not going to stop the violence.
“And it is not going to stop the organised criminals – they are not going to just go home and not bother, or go and get a job.
“They are criminals for a reason. They will use any commodity they can to make money and are totally uncaring about the impact on others. It could be people-trafficking or cigarette-smuggling. Even if we legalise drugs, people will still produce other drugs that are either stronger or have a different effect.”
The National Crime Agency, branded ‘Britain’s FBI’, warned that 181,000 people are linked to organised crime, the “deadliest threat facing the nation”.
They said gangs are exploiting a growing demand for drugs to groom children into violence.
Cocaine use in Britain has more than doubled in the past five years and purity has reached a record high, while prices have fallen. The drugs market is believed to be fuelling much of the violence on our streets.
The UK is known as the cocaine capital of Europe, with one in 10 people having tried the class A drug – double the European average.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has pledged to hire 20,000 officers by 2023. Mr Cooke, who is Merseyside Police Chief Constable, said the extra officers will be crucial.
He said: “Using highly skilled, uniformed officers with good intelligence to target these people is exceptionally effective.
“Communities seeing these crime lords being taken out of their cars and being stopped-searched to show they are not above the law is very important. It is about knocking these people off their perches.”