BRITAIN’S attempts to curb use of hard drugs over the past 20 years have failed to stop their soaring popularity, an expert report will warn this week.

The study is expected to say that the number of young people using cocaine and heroin has risen sharply despite sustained high-profile campaigns attempting to warn young people of the dangers.

The report by the UK Drugs Policy Commission, whose members include experts from health, policing, drug research and academia, is expected to claim that Britain’s “unusually severe drug problem compared with that of our European neighbours” is linked to social and economic deprivation. It will say punitive laws have had little effect, that police efforts to disrupt the drug trade have failed, and that hard drug use may be linked to violent crime.

The report, launched on Wednesday, will be seen as an indictment of decades of campaigning and government policy. The cost of drug-related crime is now reported at £13 billion a year, linked to the increase in the number of heroin addicts, reportedly up from 5,000 in 1975 to an estimated 281,000 now.

The three main tactics of ministers — media campaigns that heroin “screws you up” in the 1980s, initiatives in schools to educate children as young as seven, and targeting the most at-risk groups — have made virtually no difference, the report claims.

The study, An Analysis of UK Drugs Policy, has been written by Professor Peter Reuter of Maryland University and Alex Stevens, senior researcher at the European Institute of Social Services at Kent University.

“Prevention is cited as the main policy area aiming to reduce drug initiation and continued use. The policy is predicated on the assumption that prevention efforts reduce drug use, but there is as yet no clear evidence showing that prevention has had this effect in the UK,” they conclude.

The commission’s members include David Blakey, a former president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, Annette Dale-Perera, of the NHS-funded National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse, and Professor Colin Blakemore, who leads the Medical Research Council.

A Home Office spokesman said: “The British Crime Survey shows that overall drug use has fallen by 16% since 1998 and drug use among young adults fallen by 21%.

“We are determined to build on this progress by continuing to take more drugs off our streets, put more dealers behind bars and make sure young people are informed about the harms drugs cause.”

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