Nick Clegg says we’re losing the war on drugs. But is there even a war?

This country is losing the war on drugs, according to Nick Clegg. The Deputy Prime Minister told the BBC’s Free Speech programme that he was frustrated that his Coalition partners were not prepared to be more imaginative on the issue, given clamour from other quarters for a new direction:

‘I don’t think we’re winning the drugs war; I think we keep banging our head against the wall and in fact I find it very frustrating that my Conservative coalition partners are not prepared to look more openly, imaginatively. You’ve got very senior police officers now coming out saying that the war on drugs is failing, that we should treat drug addiction as much as a health issue as a criminal justice one.’

But that assumes that there is war on drugs that is being fought at all. A year ago Peter Hitchens argued in The Spectator that this was a myth:

 This country pretends to have stern anti-drug laws, and some people (notably the otherwise astute Sir Simon Jenkins) take this claim at face value.