MANY Islanders would happily back the tough stance that our courts adopt when sentencing drug offenders.

The arrest and detention of those who import dangerous drugs is a major line of defence, but the imposition of lengthy jail terms is also an important measure in the battle against this category of crime.

However, as Home Affairs Minister Ian Le Marquand, a former magistrate, has pointed out, there must be a sense of proportion in sentencing policy. In short, the courts should distinguish between drugs couriers – popularly known as mules – and the big players in this rotten business, the suppliers who orchestrate importation and supply on a grand scale.

As Senator Le Marquand has explained, present sentencing policies were framed some 15 years ago with the intention of broadcasting the message that Jersey would deal harshly with all drug criminals. He now casts doubt on the efficacy of this approach, arguing that the message has simply failed to get through in the case of many couriers. This is reasonable. The penalties imposed here are unlikely to be the talk of the town in Liverpool or Amsterdam.

In addition, it is a fact of life that many who conceal drugs to bring them into the Island are desperate people, either frantic to find a way to pay off their own drugs debts or in the thrall of evil, manipulative drugs bosses.

This, of course, is no argument for a general relaxation of our authorities’ attitudes to the drug problem. It is, on the other hand, an appeal to common sense, advancing the entirely reasonable argument that the light of experience should influence the way in which our courts operate.

There is, meanwhile, a further point to be made about the sentences currently being received by many low-level drug offenders. The jail terms that they receive are disproportionate when compared with those imposed on too many perpetrators of violent crime.

We have recently witnessed cases in which, but for relative good fortune, assault victims might easily have been killed. Those found guilty if circumstances had been only marginally different might well have received the ultimate sanction available in this jurisdiction, life imprisonment.

Can it be right that mere chance in the cases referred to meant that the assailants were sentenced to terms far less daunting than those which drug mules stand to receive even if they are mere pawns in an admittedly evil game?