Three-quarters of police say that drug laws are failing to stem a rising tide of crime and a spiralling death toll, a powerful report has found.
Drugs now account for three times as many deaths as car accidents, with 5,448 people losing their lives last year after taking substances such as cocaine and heroin – a near-doubling in the space of a decade.
Deaths from cocaine alone have risen sevenfold since 2011 to nearly 800 a year.
Polling by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) found that 74 per cent of police think current drug possession policies are ineffective, and two-thirds say cannabis has effectively been decriminalised.
A total of 77 per cent said drug-related crime contributed significantly to their workload.
The report, Still Ambitious For Recovery, concludes that the staggering rate of fatalities is being largely hidden from the public.
Its analysis of jurisdictions where drug laws have been liberalised, such as Portugal and parts of the US, concluded that it would lead to an increase in addictions.
Legalising cannabis in the UK would, it calculates, lead 24 per cent of 18- to 34-year-olds to try the drug for the first time, resulting in up to ten per cent becoming addicted.
This would lead to some 355,000 new people needing treatment for cannabis dependency.
Last night, former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said society needed to become ‘far less tolerant of recreational drug use, especially cocaine, among the middle classes’.
Sir Iain, writing for The Mail on Sunday, said: ‘Snorting a line of white powder at an otherwise respectable party behind closed doors might seem like a victimless crime. It is not.
‘Users of lifestyle drugs are feeding the mayhem on our streets and the lifestyles of drugs barons.’
Sophia Worringer, of the CSJ, said: ‘Pretending liberalisation is the answer is plainly wrong.
‘Only by investing in treatment of addiction can we begin to end the scourge of illegal drug use.’