INEVITABLY, in the aftermath of the murder of five-year-old Dillon Hull in a turf war between drugs dealers, there come calls from Labour backbenchers for an open debate about the decriminalisation of drugs.

That there should be a debate is paramount.

For illegal drugs now have Britain in the grip of Chicago-style gangsterism.

Thousands are slaves to addiction and even babies - like Dillon's three-week-old brother - are born hooked on heroin.

And the country is paying billions in ransom through drugs-related crime.

But the focus of the debate should not simply be, as Bolton South East MP Brian Iddon and others appear to suggest, about the legalisation of banned drugs.

It should be just one aspect of a total probe - by a Royal Commission, as Mr Iddon urges - into the whole problem.

And from that viewpoint, the negative side of decriminalisation must also be examined against the purported merits that currently-illicit drugs would become affordable and safer, that crime would plunge and that the drugs gangs would be wiped out by a legal market.

For, surely, one certain result of legalisation would be a rise in the number of users and a leap in the social and health problems that go with drug abuse. Already, Ribble Valley Tory MP Nigel Evans is warning that more deaths and more wrecked lives would be the price.

But the debate needs to be far more wide-ranging.

It should examine every experience world-wide in the battle to combat this menace.

It should, for instance, look at the success and failings of "zero tolerance" regimes like those of Singapore and Malaysia where the death penalty awaits traffickers and convicted users face decades behind bars.

It should probe the effectiveness or otherwise of the rehabilitation programmes in this country and abroad.

It should investigate the community-based shop-a-dealer schemes like the one this newspaper has helped to set up.

And, by examining every scheme, theory and proposal, such an all-embracing study would, surely, come up with the most effective approach to combating this evil.

To concentrate on just the one controversial aspect of decriminalisation would be a mistake.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.