IAIN Duncan Smith has called for a complete overhaul of the UK's drugs policy - but has rejected new proposals for tackling the problem.
Talking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme,the Woodford Green MP described the government's current strategies as "a mess," but opposed calls by a drugs policy think tank for toleration of low level dealing in some areas.
The idea, put forward in a report by the UK Drugs Policy Commission, would see police leaving certain dealers alone in a bid to reduce violent crime in badly affected neighbourhoods.
But Mr Duncan Smith said the plan would leave the communities affected even more vulnerable to drug-related problems - and called instead for a complete change in policy.
He said: "My problem with these recommendations is that it looked at the existing drugs stategy as though there was some sort of way of containing what is already an existing mess and I think that's wrong.
"I think we require a complete changed drug policy.
"I'm rather tired of this policy being left in the hands of the police, because if they start making decisions about which communities we need to support and which aren't then we leave many communities written off."
Mr Duncan Smith used the example of an inner city community in Birmingham, to show why the policy was unworkable.
He said: "There's a wonderful place I visited called Balsall heath and there the police over a period of time had essentially said they would tolerate drug dealing, and that area became and absolute disaster.
"For all this talk that you can control prostitution and you can control criminality - that simply is not the case.
"It follows like night folllows day that the worst elements of people then arrive in that community and deal.
"In Balsall Heath they actually drove this out themselves, the community had enough, they were fed up with the police they drove it out, they closed the pub down, they drove the prostitutes off the streets and they drove the drug dealers, more importantly, out of their community. They repossessed their community.
"And the police have had to follow them back into that community and police it."
Mr Duncan Smith called for the UK's policy to follow the example of Sweden and Holland.
He said: "Three quarters of their funding is targeted at law enforcement which is cutting off supply - they then make sure that when you arrest people, those who are users get put on full rehabilitation programmes.
"They try and cut the number of people using it, they try and save lives.
"Here you can't get rehabiliation programmes if you try, you get parked on methadone substitute.
"What we need is some real far-sighted thinking, control the number of drugs and control the number of drug users.
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