BRITAIN'S drugs laws are "not fit for purpose" and should be replaced by a system which recognises that drinking and smoking can cause more harm, a high-powered study recommended yesterday.

A more effective drugs policy would focus on harm reduction rather than cutting crime, the two-year RSA Commission on Illegal Drugs argues.

Current laws are "driven by a moral panic", it states. Britain would be in better shape to tackle its drugs problems if the Home Office was stripped of its lead role in drugs policy in favour of drugs teams and local authorities.

"I think there is a real problem about politicians taking sensible decisions in a field as particularly hazardous as this," said commission chairman Professor Anthony King, of Essex University.

"That being said, there is a need to inject into the debate a degree of calm rationality - less foaming at the mouth and more thinking.

"I hope our report will enter the drugs conversation and be taken seriously in that conversation, especially in the Government's thinking as it enters its new drugs strategy from 2008 onwards."

The report recommends the Misuse of Drugs Act be scrapped in favour of a wider-ranging Misuse of Substances Act, abandoning the ABC classification system in favour of an "index of harms".

This would extend the definition of drugs to include alcohol and tobacco - as well as illegal substances which the report says have been demonised.

The main focus of drugs education should shift from secondary to primary schools and so-called shooting galleries - rooms where users can inject drugs - should be introduced.

Often the wrong people are in jail, the wrong people are in treatment and money is wasted on inappropriate targets, the report claims.

Prof King said: "The quickest way into treatment is to commit a crime. That, to us, seems a little bit perverse."

But former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith, chair of the Conservative Social Justice Policy Group, branded the report "worryingly complacent".

He said: "Drug abuse in the UK is a serious and growing problem, wrecking the lives of 325,000 adult drug users and blighting the lives of many more people, be they family or friends or the victims of drug-related crime.

"I find it most disappointing that the RSA report appears to endorse the failed harm reduction strategy of recent years and to ignore extensive evidence that residential rehab can lead to full recovery from drug addiction."