Britain's £6bn habit

Today's report on the future of Britain's drugs policies is Parliament's first attempt at an honest and grown-up examination of the state of the nation's habit.

It provides a bleak assessment of the law's failure to get to grips with the serious social problems caused by 250,000 users addicted to heroin and crack cocaine. But the all-party group of MPs are refreshingly honest in admitting what most young people know very well - that all drugs are not the same.

The report is robustly anti-drugs and the MPs have resisted calls for a liberal free-for-all, describing the "drastic step" of wholesale legalisation as a leap into the unknown.

But they have called for a change of approach on both cannabis and, most controversially, ecstasy. They make clear that they consider ecstasy to be dangerous, but say: "The harm caused by illegal drugs varies immensely from one drug to another and, since most users and potential users know this, there is no point in pretending otherwise."

The home affairs select committee's 10-month examination of drugs policies may have produced few surprises, but the MPs, headed by former Labour minister Chris Mullin, have done the nation a service as the first substantial group of elected politicians to join an adult debate.

At the heart of the report is the frank admission that 30 years of drugs policies based on enforcement have failed. "It remains an unhappy fact that the best efforts of police and Customs have had little, if any, impact on the availability of illegal drugs," it concludes.

The Government has taken welcome "tentative steps" to increase treatment for the estimated 200,000 heroin addicts responsible for a crime epidemic which costs Britain more than ? 2.5billion a year, yet treatment for addicts is still "woefully inadequate", the MPs say.

They add that the Government's 10-year strategy which contains targets to cut drugs consumption and step up seizures have "no earthly chance of success". One witness likened policy changes instituted by Labour's sidelined drugs czar Keith Hellawell to " moving deckchairs on the Titanic".

Mr Blunkett quickly said change in the law on ecstasy was not on the agenda and there are no plans for an experiment with safe injecting rooms for heroin addicts.

But today's report opens the debate - it is no longer taboo to say that ecstasy is a relatively safe drug, and sensible people will be able to argue openly for legalisation.

In the short term, the report will pave the way for the relaxation of the law on cannabis.

Home Secretary David Blunkett will ask Parliament within weeks to vote on his plan to downgrade cannabis - possession would still be illegal but offences would be dealt with by confiscation and a verbal warning, or a fine for repeat offenders. The MPs will not have gone far enough for campaigners who believe the drugs trade should be taken out of the hands of organised criminals and regulated by the state.

But in stepping into an area where they admit "British politicians have feared to tread", they have delivered a cool and rational assessment of Britain's £6.6 billion illegal drugs trade.

Legal drugs such as tobacco and alcohol are "responsible for far greater damage both to individual health and to the social fabric in general than illegal ones", with 120,000 deaths a year from smoking and up to 40,000 linked to alcohol, which also lies behind 40per cent of violent crime.

But the report makes clear that the argument for full-scale legalisation cannot be justified because of crack cocaine - the highly addictive drug liable to trigger unpredictable and violent behaviour in users.