SOAPBOX: Today, Peter Dunn of Blackburn speaks about the drugs culture and its legacy of fear

A CRISP autumn afternoon in a district of Manchester and I am leaping over the barriers dividing the busy urban bypass, taking my life in my hands as I sprint across the remaining carriageways to the safety of the opposite pavement.

Why? I could have used the subway.

The answer - this is modern-day Britain and I, a respectable member of our society, dare not venture into an empty subway in this part of the city for fear of being attacked and mugged by a person or persons needing to subsidise their illegal drugs habit.

A 17-year-old youth has recently been gunned down in Longsight, the eighth person to be killed in gangland Manchester in the past six months.

The reason, of course, is the illegal drugs industry. Armed youths now roam unchecked within certain areas of the city.

A recent government drug survey of 5,000 over 50s has revealed that drug-related crime gives more concern to those surveyed than cancer, heart disease, smoking-related problems or AIDS.

Age Concern has stated that old people are more worried about drugs because they are afraid of being attacked in the street or robbed at home. They are fearful not only for their own safety but also for that of their grandchildren and great grandchildren.

They have every right to be afraid. The recent British crime survey has revealed that one third of all urban crime in Britain is drugs related. We have the worst record in Europe for the illicit use of drugs.

Three times as many British 15-16 year olds have tried ecstasy than their French and German counterparts. British teenagers are more likely to have tried speed, LSD and solvents.

The same survey also showed that as many as 1.86million people in Britain use drugs at least once per year.

At the moment, the users of these drugs tend to be treated as victims rather than as persons engaged in a serious crime.

Possession of cannabis seems to be obsolete as a criminal offence, having been "normalised" by a variety of rock stars in the 60s and 70s.

Had the authorities taken the opportunity to prosecute some of these high-profile rock stars and given them significant jail sentences then perhaps many thousands of gullible young people would not have taken up their habit.

Possession of drugs could have remained a far more serious crime than it is regarded today.

For too many years now, drug abuse has been treated as a sickness, not as a crime. The drug users are the people who steal from the public, the shops, their friends and their relatives. These are the people who burgle the homes of the elderly, snatch bags in the street.

A recent local case saw a man sentenced to two years' probation for two charges of burglary, the second committed while he was on bail for the first. His probationary sentence was to give him the opportunity to beat his habit.

Surely the best way to beat his habit would be to remove the opportunity to use his substances.

The feelings of his victims seem to have been totally overlooked.

It is time to deter these people from their criminal ways and what better deterrent than prison?

It would remove their criminal behaviour from the innocent public and would make inroads into the reduction of that one third of urban crime that is currently being perpetrated by them.

The increase in available police time and resources would enable the authorities to make a greater impact on the remaining two thirds of urban crime.

This huge increase in the prison population would, of course, be very costly. However, this could be offset by the day release of "tagged" users and pushers undertaking the cleaning up and improving of urban and rural areas that our under-funded local and area authorities have been forced to abandon due to financial constraints.

This high-profile punishment would also be most likely to persuade the borderline "should I? - shouldn't I?" potential users that involvement in drugs is not worth the risk. Any person convicted of supplying banned substances must be forced to spend an absolute minimum of five years in prison.

Any person reckless enough to be convicted a second time would serve a life sentence. Their assets would be seized and used to fund the increased expenditure on the prison service.

There would be no possibility of remission in either case. The same terms would apply to any person found importing such substances into the UK.

The government has just appointed a new team to tackle the drug problem. This is headed by Mo Mowlam, who is to be assisted by Charles Clarke and Ian McCartney (whose own son died of a drugs overdose).

Following her achievements in Northern Ireland, it seems that Ms Mowlam is more than capable of tackling the problem head on.

The state of the city ghettos in the USA, and so many of the Asian cities, provide us with a vision of what could lie ahead.

This is where armed pushers rule the community, where even the few members of the police force not in the pocket of the drugs barons, dare not tread.

The elderly people of this land deserve the right to live without fear, to know that they are safe within their homes, safe on the streets, that their grandchildren will enjoy the same peace of mind - over to you Mr Straw?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.