There have always been issues that one simply doesn't talk about in polite society. A generation ago it was sex; unmarried couples living together, for instance, were simply unacceptable in polite society.

Today it's a different story.

The question of drugs and their abuse is one that troubled the Victorians less than it does this generation. The fact that Sherlock Holmes smoked opium did not deter an avid readership of the Conan Doyle books. It made him all the more exotic and exciting.

However, it would be a brave writer who portrayed a modern detective as a drug abuser.

I was a student in the 60s, seen now as the heyday of substance abuse. I knew many regular users of cannabis and marijuana who evolved from beaming, patchouli reeking, Afghan-coated hippies into lawyers, accountants and estate agents.

No one I knew was drawn into the seedier world of harder drugs.

There is no question that the taking of anything at all that damages our bodies and health is unwise and to be discouraged. But we condone the fairly unrestricted sale of alcohol and tobacco, which both have a considerable human and financial cost to our society.

Government takes an increasing percentage of the revenue of those two drugs and is not seen to be a racketeer, profiting from alcohol dependency and drug addiction.

It is making the industries contribute to the cost of providing health and social care for those damaged by those legal drugs.

But if you argue against the criminalisation of those whose addiction is for drugs that can only be acquired illegally, at great cost, you are seen as reprehensible. Peter Lilley's suggestion that society might benefit from the decriminalisation of the use of soft drugs is seen as a dangerous foray into areas that should not be spoken of.

In fact, many feel that engaging in any kind of debate on the subject is evidence of a dangerous liberal tendency that can only lead to the collapse of decent society.

A retired Merseyside policeman stated recently in a letter to The Guardian that 80 per cent of the prisoners he processed for the court were drug addicts.

They lived in squalor but were not inherently bad or evil they were just dependent on drugs that could only be obtained through illegal sources and paid for from the proceeds of crime.

He felt very strongly that addicts needed help, clean needles, clean drugs and treatment not incarceration where the drugs that caused them to go there are even more freely available than on the outside.

For him the drugs problem is a national health problem that only became a crime problem because of prohibition. His arguments were very persuasive.

He suggested that if cigarettes were £20 each, six months from now otherwise law-abiding citizens might also be jemmying open the windows of their neighbours' houses to nick their electrical goods in order to feed their addiction.

Talk of "legalising drugs" is unhelpful. It is "decriminalisation" we need to consider. There has to be another way. The cost to all of us of drug-related crime is becoming horrendous. What we are doing now is demonstrably making things no better. We need to have an informed debate and to resist the temptation to demonise those who propose radical solutions.