I disagree with my good friend Alan Lester (Oxford Mail, March 8) and congratulate Chief Supt David McWhirter, of Thames Valley Police, for wanting to raise the debate on drugs policy.

While politicians run scared of proposing radical ideas because of the tyranny of focus groups, the police, as agents who implement policy, can provide the evidence that what they have to enforce, and how, contributes to the deaths of those who have fallen into the often inescapable grasp of insidious addictions. As such, it is bad law.

Further, the law is discriminatory. If you have money to book yourself into the Priory or similar, you get a telling off and perhaps even kudos for doing something about your problem. If you are poorer, you are at the mercy of public treatment and rehabilitation regimes and ultimately more likely to end up in jail.

We should start with some very fundamental questions -- like why are certain things banned, and not others?

Many would be shocked at the racism and prejudice that accompanied prohibition.

Alcohol and tobacco are bigger killers than all illegal substances put together. Sugar, as I should know, is coming up fast on the rails. Millions are addicted to caffeine and thousands to prescription drugs.

Once monarchs, emperors and ministers used opium. Popular pick-me-ups contained cocaine. And whatever effect they had on the individual was nothing compared with the effects of prohibition on society, locally and globally, today.

Jock Coats, Morrell Hall, Oxford