IT’S often assumed that hard drugs are a modern plague. But that is not the case.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, opium, sold as ‘laudanum’, was freely available in Britain and used by all classes, even, it is claimed, Queen Victoria.

We fought two “Opium Wars” with the Chinese to keep the trade (and the profits) flowing.

The free-for-all in drugs began to end in 1914. But the tough approach we now have is relatively recent.

As late as the sixties, heroin addicts could register with the NHS and have the drug prescribed from specified chemists.

The queues of addicts outside the 24-hour Boots in Piccadilly Circus even became something of a tourist curiosity.

The tougher regime, reinforced by international treaties, reflected concerns about the burgeoning trade in narcotics, and the view that, with a rise in travel, all societies were vulnerable, whatever their internal system.

I’ve been part of this tougher approach.

Drugs destroy individuals, families, and communities.

A large proportion of offenders in prison are there because of crimes committed to fund their addiction.

But the overriding objective of any policy must be to reduce the harm caused by drugs, directly to the users, and especially to their families and the innocent victims of the crimes they commit.

So we need to keep an open mind on alternative approaches (not dismiss them if they don’t fit with the adjective “tough”).

For four years, the Home Office and the Department of Health has funded research on whether the prescription of heroin through properly regulated clinics, would make any difference to the lifestyles, and above all, the criminal behaviour of addicts.

The potential benefits are huge.

Class A drug use is responsible for an estimated £15 billion a year in crime and health costs.

Early reports from the prescription trials found the number of crimes committed by the addicts dropped from about 40 to six per month after six months of treatment.

A third of the addicts stopped using street heroin altogether and the number of occasions when the rest “scored” dropped from every day, to four or five times a month.

The conditions in which heroin was administered in these trials are not remotely like the “shooting galleries” of the headline writers.

The users are rigorously supervised by health professionals.

Is the research and its government funding an indication that we’ve “gone soft on drugs”? Certainly not.

We need to be both intelligent and imaginative in the search for better and more efficient solutions to hard drug abuse.

There have been great advances in recent years in education, treatment and enforcement. But I would never pretend that the mix of these three is perfect.

The more we keep openminded to new approaches, and research them, the more successful we will be.

The prescription of heroin should not be seen as a magic bullet. It’s a drastic step.

As the National Treatment Agency has said, it would only ever be applied to a minority of addicts.

But for the most problematic heroin users it may be the best means of reducing the harm they do to themselves, and of stamping out the crime and disorder they inflict on the wider community.