Vicky Unwin with her daughter Louise

• I WANT to applaud you for your front page story, (Mother of art student who died after taking ketamine warns: ‘War on drugs’ has been lost, December 31).

Vicky Unwin’s brave indictment of the drug war was a much-needed reality check, after reading fear-filled / hateful drug user-phobic chats in other local media.

While a part of the psychoactive drug market has been handed over to organised criminal fraternities, with escalating violence and corruption, in law enforcement, cheaper, more effective drug treatment services have been depleted in quality.

People in Camden – and all over the world – have written publicly about the failure of the war on drug-using communities that arises as we have tried to address addiction to illegal drugs with the blunt instrument of law enforcement for decades; including John Mordaunt – Facing Up to AIDS – a beloved Camdenite, killed 1995.

The UK has had but two changes in marijuana policy in that time.

The first one was supported by a campaign backed by the Independent; and more recently when a child who suffered from grand mal seizures featured on the front pages of the tabloids having therapeutically benefited from its medicinal use.

His mum had put herself at great risk of arrest to save her son’s life, so Sajid Javed legalised (albeit expensive) medical marijuana.

Meanwhile, in Glasgow, our brother and hero, Peter Krykant, opened a safer drug use room, also alluded to in your article. These health care facilities have been saving lives for decades.

I spent over a year trying to get Sir Keir Starmer to think beyond making jobs available to young people when leaving school, and apprenticeships at school – his worthy attempt at diverting youth from drugs.

I wanted him to see that the way we address the drugs issue right now is unnecessarily punishing, expensive in lives and prison management – taxpayers’ money – not to mention the rest of the high-end artillery of the drug war. What are those helicopters doing waking up hard-working, stressed out, neighbourhoods, grieving Covid-19 losses?

And that we could emulate Portugal. After 16 years of decriminalising all personal use of drugs, they have reduced street crime, AIDS, and deaths.

Sir Keir may well be our next prime minister, and he should know that millions of people have accepted criminalising some drug users at the alter of a false morality; (whisky on the shelves at supermarkets); bad economics (prison beds cost taxpayers much more than medicine, befrienders, and clean needles).

And OD deaths have been escalating in the UK & USA. All drug users deserve clean drugs, of known quality and quantity, so we can bring drug-related deaths down again.

At a time when Covid-19 is increasing the mental health service burden, we could act compassionately and enable many people to volunteer and offer life-saving help.

ANDRIA EFTHIMIOU-MORDAUNT
Usersvoice.org