It is clear that a multitude of problems arises out of drug use, especially problematic drug use. Problematic drug use is a health problem, because problematic users do serious damage to their own health. Drug use that is currently non-problematic can become so. The association between drug use and acquisitive crime inevitably means that drugs constitute a criminal justice problem. Not least, problematic drug use points to problems in the fields of education, housing, employment and social care.

A strategy that confronts all these various problems as though they constituted a single problem – and is based on a wholly unrealistic rhetoric – is bound to be flawed.