Paul Thomas: Fergie should try drug dealing

It's been a rough week for two grand institutions.

The War on Drugs is a mere pup compared to the ancient and august British Monarchy, but what it lacks in history, it more than makes up for in extravagance.

From time to time there are complaints about the cost of the royal family, which supporters put at $80 million a year and abolitionists at three times that amount.

That's partially offset by the monarchy's contribution to British tourism - besides, heads of state, whether hereditary, elected, or installed by force, don't come cheap.

Whatever the figure, it's minuscule in comparison with what taxpayers fork out to fight the drugs menace. For example, the US Drug Enforcement Agency, just one component of one country's anti-drug apparatus, has an annual budget of $3.5 billion.

When Australian police seized 4.4 tonnes of Ecstasy in 2008, politicians claimed it would save the country $1.6 billion in health and social costs.

They didn't put a figure on the cost of the police operation which involved 400 officers, 185,000 telephone intercepts, 10,000 hours of surveillance and agencies from five other countries.

This week it was Jamaica's turn to become a battleground in the War on Drugs with troops being sent after drug kingpin Christopher "Dudus" Coke. (Any novelist who gave that surname to a fictional drug world Mr Big would be curtly instructed by their editor to try again.) Also this week Russia, the world's biggest per capita user of heroin, criticised US-led forces in Afghanistan for failing to stem opium output.

Which raises the question - if military occupation can't stop a "broken 13th century country" (as the new British Defence Minister described it) exporting drugs, what on earth can?

The Mexican experience is instructive. In late 2006 the Mexican Government launched a crackdown on the drugs trade.

Thus far it has resulted in 22,743 deaths and 121,000 arrests. In the first three months of this year Mexico had 3365 drug-related slayings, only 161 fewer than were killed in the struggle for Northern Ireland between 1969 and 2001.

And after all that the Mexican drug cartels are more powerful than ever.

What has the War on Drugs achieved? In 2005 the US Drugs Enforcement Agency seized $705 million of illegal drugs. The American Government estimates illegal drug transactions in the US total about $95 billion a year. In rough terms that's a 1 per cent success rate.

Marijuana is now America's most valuable cash crop, worth more than corn and wheat combined.

It's estimated that drug syndicates now control about 8 per cent of global gross domestic product which makes them more powerful than many nations - nations such as Jamaica, which can now be added to the growing list of failed states.

The profits earned by the drug gangs have been partly used to corrupt state institutions and buy the loyalty of a section of the community who view the choice between drug money and poverty as no choice at all, hence the fierce resistance met by the army when it tried to enter the spectacularly misnamed Tivoli Gardens slum district of West Kingston.

Gang warfare over the spoils of the drug trade has made Jamaica a world leader in murder. Last year this nation of 2.8 million people had 1680 murders, most of which haven't been and won't be solved. New Zealand had 65.

No doubt exhaustive reports analysing the catastrophic failure of the War on Drugs and the whole theory and practice of prohibition are gathering dust in government archives set aside for inconvenient truths.

But the short answer lies in a little black book in the hands of the Sydney police.

It records the transactions of Richard Buttrose, son of an economist, nephew of legendary journalist and publisher Ita Buttrose, cocaine dealer by appointment to Sydney's eastern suburbs smart set.

The word is that Buttrose's clientele included socialites, MPs, businessmen, lawyers and a sprinkling of the idle rich.

To make matters worse for the in-crowd, for several months before his arrest, Buttrose had been under police surveillance as he did his delivery runs around the mansions of Bellevue Hill.

If Sydney society has no moral issue with narcotics, why should we expect it of Afghan peasants or Jamaican slum kids? As long as the demand is there - and it's huge and growing - there will be plenty of people happy to service it, especially as their earnings are tax-free.

The appalling Sarah Ferguson attributes her latest assault on the House of Windsor's tattered reputation to money troubles. She should become a coke dealer. The amount of cash police found lying around Buttrose's house would comfortably clear her debts.