ONE of Ron Hogg’s last major jobs as a deputy chief constable was a drugs bust with 10 forces carrying out simultaneous strikes across the country.

It was so important that the day before the raid, the Metropolitan Police tailed the principal suspect from London to Manchester and onto Birmingham where they “bedded him for the night” so Mr Hogg’s Cleveland Police operation could hit him the next morning.

“The bottom line was that we did that massive job, involving a massive amount of money, but the drugs were back on the street before you could blink your eyes,” says Mr Hogg, who retired from Cleveland in 2008 and was elected as Durham’s first Police and Crime Commissioner in 2012.

“You’ve got to get the bad guys off the street but you realise the futility of it – what was the benefit of it for the drug user?” he asks.

Mr Hogg is speaking in the conservatory of his Newton Aycliffe home having gone public with the news that he has been diagnosed with motor neurone disease, which means he will not be able to contest his third election in May. He is using the remainder of his time in office to raise awareness of the devastating muscle wasting disease, as The Northern Echo reported yesterday, but his biggest impact in his eight years as PCC may be in his calls for a radical reform of British drugs laws and his advocacy of “shooting galleries”.

“I remember the last body I saw,” he continues. “We got a call – neighbours hadn’t seen this lady, we made our way into the house and she was lying on the settee, needle in her arm, the place was in a total mess, overdose.

“We were putting in all that effort on the drugs front but we were still getting the dead bodies.”

As his 30 years as a frontline officer came to an end, he was concluding that Britain’s drug laws were not working.

“The conclusion was that police activity doesn’t really impact the level of drugs on the street, and the severity of punishment has no impact, so you have to take a radically different approach,” he says.

By accident, he discovered the Durham Chief Constable Mike Barton was of the same view. They had both been invited by Durham University Debating Society to speak in favour of the motion that “this house supports the continued prohibition of drugs”. Unknown to each other, they’d both replied saying they’d like to speak against the motion.

The PCC and the Chief Constable then embarked on a controversial crusade to decriminalise the addict, and they visited Switzerland, where there is “heroin assisted treatment”. In more common parlance, these are “shooting galleries”, where an addict, rather than be arrested for possession, is given a medically clean drug and a clean room in which to inject themselves.

“In Geneva, we met Chantelle, a drug addict,” says Mr Hogg. “She would take her children to school, get her injection for the day and go off to work. At the end of the work day, she would get another injection, stabilise, and go and collect her children.

“She does have a drug problem, but she’s looking after her family, she’s contributing to the family and living a fairly normal life.

“The contrast was a woman in County Durham who had five children in care and her purpose in life was to steal to raise money to buy drugs – 45 per cent of all acquisitive crime is committed by heroin or cocaine addicts. We have to break that cycle.

“Do you want to be Chantelle or the poor woman in County Durham: it’s only because of the UK drugs policy that we can’t emulate what’s happening in Switzerland.”

In Middlesbrough, the rate of drug-induced death is 118 per million of population. In the North-East as a whole, it is 82 per million. In Portugal, which decriminalised the addict 20 years ago, it is three per million.

“The death rate is 27 times higher here than it is in Portugal – that speaks for itself,” he says.

A six year trial in Darlington where the most prolific five per cent of addicts were given heroin assisted treatment has been evaluated by academics who discovered a significant drop in usage and crime. Middlesbrough is applying for one of the first licences to take the idea on.

But giving drugs to an addict is seen as being soft and so a vote loser for politicians.

“If I was Simon Henig (leader of Durham County Council) I’m not going to say I’m going to empty your bins one every four weeks but I’m going to give free heroin to an addict,” says Mr Hogg. “In different financial conditions we would have been a lot further forward.”

Indeed, austerity has seen many drugs treatment programmes cut, but perhaps his greatest legacy will be in advancing this powerful, if controversial, argument.

“Prolific heroin users cost the taxpayers over £60,000 a year in terms of medical and social care and in terms of crime and criminal justice – and that’s a do-nothing cost, but if you do something different, heroin assisted treatment might cost you £15,000 per person,” he says.

“We’ve got to accept that whatever we do there will be drugs available, regardless of education and advice people will push to the limits – that’s why mankind climbs mountains or goes to the moon. The question is how can you mitigate against the worst effects?”