In his recent report to the profession, Bar Council chairman Nick Green QC attracted headlines by raising the question of whether personal possession of drugs should be decriminalised.Drug-related crime, he said, costs the economy about £13bn a year. He pointed to a growing body of comparative evidence that suggests decriminalising personal use can have positive consequences – it frees up police resources, reduces crime and recidivism, and improves public health.

Among the body of evidence that informed his thinking is a report by libertarian thinktank the Cato Institute on the situation in Portugal.

In 2001, Portugal became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for the personal possession of drugs, including cocaine, heroine and LSD.

The country, which had one of the highest levels of hard drug use in the continent, replaced prison sentences with therapy.

At the time opponents feared it would lead to drug tourism, and increase the country’s drug problem. But the Cato Institute found that, five years after the policy change, the illegal use of drugs by teenagers had declined, and rates of HIV infections caused by people sharing dirty needles fell, while the number of people seeking therapy to get off drugs more than doubled.

Could the government learn a thing or two from this? Faced with having to make enormous budget cuts the Ministry of Justice is keen to find ways to save money.

The scale on which cuts needs to be made demands more than merely tinkering with the system. It requires bold and radical changes that will make a real and significant difference.

Reducing the cost to the criminal justice system (of police time, court time, prison and the cost of reoffending) spent on dealing with people who are addicted to drugs could make a huge difference. And getting people off drugs would benefit the individuals concerned as well as the rest of society.

Echoing the speech made last month by justice secretary Ken Clarke, justice minister Crispin Blunt reiterated the government’s desire for a more constructive approach to rehabilitation and sentencing – its so-called ‘rehabilitation revolution’.

Speaking at crime reduction charity NACRO this week, Blunt commended the approach taken by Winston Churchill when he was home secretary in 1910, to transform the attitude to and treatment of offenders.

Blunt said the current system is failing everyone – those who work in it, offenders managed by it, victims and the public.

The scale of that current failure, he said, is illustrated by the prison population – 85,000 offenders in prison now, and the prediction of 96,000 places required by 2014.

Describing the situation as a ‘national embarrassment’ Blunt again commended the opinion of Churchill, who said the first principle of prison reform ‘should be to prevent as many people getting there at all’.

‘We need a fundamental change to the focus of our system towards rehabilitation,’ said Blunt.

Decriminalising personal possession of drugs could be an effective practical step to turn that rhetoric into reality. But will the government be prepared to make the fundamental change of dealing with drug addiction as a health care rather than a criminal justice issue?