The launch of a 'war on drug users' covered in our last issue (Monkey 3) is justified by the argument that heroin, rock and polydrug users are all grafting like mad to support their habits. And the government and their 'experts' have all kinds of statistical 'facts' to hand to support the argument that you lot are all bang at it. As a 19th century British Prime Minister once wrote 'there are three kinds of lies; lies, damned lies and statistics'. We thought we'd have a regular feature in which we played with some of these lies, er facts. One of the favourite figures currently being quoted to justify a 'get tough' approach is the one below. Taken from the National Treatment Outcome Study (aka NTORS) being run by the Maudsley Hospital in London. According to NTORS data: 664 addicts committed 70,000 offenses in 3 months.

Okay. So over a 12 MONTH PERIOD we could then reasonably expect that these 664 BAD BOYS AND GIRLS would commit 280,000 OFFENSES.

Right, divide 280,000 OFFENSES between our original 664 JUNKIES and we get an estimate that 1 ADDICT commits 421 OFFENSES A YEAR.

Okay? With us so far? Let's use this average figure to estimate how many offenses the total addict population commits every year. Now, nobody knows how many junkies the UK has. Estimates vary between 100,000 to 200,000. Let's take the most conservative estimate and say there are 100,000 ADDICTS in this country. So how many crimes will this lot commit if the NTORS figures are right? Well, multiply 421 BY 100,000 and we get an annual figure of 42 MILLION OFFENSES. Thus the addict population of this country commits an average of 42 MILLION OFFENSES A YEAR . Shocking, terrible, shouldn't be allowed. Lock 'em all up!

The only problem is that the total number of offenses (and this is all offenses) notified to the police for 1998, the most recent year we have figures for, was just under 5 MILLION (4,930,700 TO BE PRECISE). That means one of two things. Either NTORS is a LOAD OF BOLLOCKS or the British public failed to notify the police about a staggering total of 37 MILLION OFFENSES committed by drug-crazed scum. Well, NTORS can't be wrong, so all you law-abiding non-drug using citizens had better dial the Dibble fast in future!

IT'S NOT DRUG USERS WHO NEED LOCKING UP BUT YOU LOT! TOO IDLE TO REPORT CRIME. SHAME ON YOU.