Leading Article: If the money stops, so will murder

REACTION to the shocking murder in south London this week of a well-liked neighbourhood policeman, Patrick Dunne, has concentrated on the desirability of arming the police. Yet if the relentless increase in drug-related shootings is to be contained, three related questions should also be considered: the control of firearms; the length of prison sentences for serious drug offences compared to those for homicide; and the case for tackling the root cause of this violence - the huge profits being made from drugs.

Despite the outrage prompted by PC Dunne's murder, there has been broad agreement, from the Government as well as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Paul Condon, that to arm all police officers would be counter-productive. Experience in the United States shows that where all police are armed, so are most criminals. Those who carry arms, be they police or civilians, are tempted to use them. As various tragic mistakes by British police have shown, in tense situations, even experienced policemen on specific dangerous missions are liable to shoot the wrong person. If criminals know that any policeman they face is armed, they will be tempted to get in the first shot. The more criminals arm themselves, so the general level of fear rises and ordinary citizens living in rough districts are tempted to go to bed with a pistol under their pillow.

The most obvious way of reducing the spread of arms might seem to be to ban the sale of all guns other than sporting shot-guns: if that killed Britain's participation in Olympic shooting events, too bad. At present, only repeating guns are banned. Sadly, the weapons used by criminals are not usually bought over the counter but smuggled into the country - in one notorious instance, posted part by part from Miami. Their supply has recently been swelled by surplus military supplies and exports from Eastern Europe. The traffic is hard to stop within the new single, unchecked European market.

The most ruthless users of firearms in Britain are the Yardies, a brand of criminal rather than an organised gang, originating in Jamaica but now active and widely emulated in London, Manchester and other cities. Under-educated, unemployed youths with no prospects are inevitably attracted by the lifestyle of wealthy drug-dealers, with their flash cars, clothes and girls. And so the violence spreads as dealers fight each other for the big money, too often entrapping a chance intruder.

The use of arms is likely to increase if prison sentences for serious drug trafficking are as long or longer than for murder. If murder means just eight to 10 years in jail and big-time drug dealing 15 or 20, it pays dealers to kill actual or potential informers, even a policeman. In the US, mandatory sentences for selling drugs can mean up to 40 years inside, twice as long as murder: a discrepancy increasingly seen to encourage killings.

Yet all such considerations pale beside the evil at the heart of all this darkness: the huge profits that come from the drugs trade. These billions of dollars finance organised crime across the world. As long as drug dealing is a short cut to wealth - be it several years' wages in a single deal or a vast fortune over a longer haul - dangerous drugs will be peddled, non-users will be hooked in and lives ruined. Attempts either to reduce consumption through rehabilitation or to impound imports can only nibble at the problem, however large the consignments seized.

That leaves either a gigantic exercise in social engineering to eliminate the ghettos of urban poverty in which drug trafficking thrives; or the transfer of profits from dealers to the state by some form of licensed, decriminalised sale. True, that would shift the burden from the police to the NHS, as the level of addiction would doubtless initially rise. Yet not even to debate the effect of such a change shows a collective lack of nerve among this country's politicians. Only if serious crime moves from the ghettos to middle-class districts is such action likely to be contemplated.