It never ceases to amaze me how much more we spend at the end of the problem than at the beginning – the pruning.

We have all the statistics that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that if you stop a problem from developing, or better still from even starting, you are saving yourself a bucketful of money and headaches.

The Cayman Islands Cadet Corps is one organization that needs a LOT more money than it is getting. In fact there Corps receives less funds. This is where youth get their first taste of adulthood and proper discipline. When you have discipline you learn self control.

Unfortunately discipline is an area that seems to be lacking in the parents of the children so how can one expect a child when he or she becomes an adult to understand discipline.

Without discipline in one’s life you have anarchy. And you will need more police, more judges and more prisons.

And the idiocy in locking up drug addicts over and over again instead of giving them treatment.

One of our stories today makes the same point. See “UK: Leading public health bodies call for decriminalisation of drugs”.

The UK’s two leading public health bodies, Royal Society for Public Health and Faculty of Public Health are making an unprecedented call for the personal possession and use of drugs to be decriminalised. The bodies represent “thousands of doctors and other professionals”.

Their report, “Taking a New Line on Drugs” shows alcohol tops the society’s list of the 10 most harmful drugs, with heroin second and crack cocaine third. Tobacco is in sixth place, while cannabis is eighth.

Professor David Nutt, who heads the Centre for Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, said: “I fully support the recommendations in this report. The current government approach of blindly prosecuting drug users, rather than trying to reduce the rising tide of drug harms, particularly deaths from alcohol, heroin and cocaine, in fact leads to more damage to individuals and society – and more costs to the taxpayer.”

In Portugal drug possession is still illegal, but users are referred to treatment and support programmes, rather than being prosecuted. It argues that prosecution and jail sentences cause further harm, including greater exposure to drugs in prison and the severing of family relationships.

And look what happens to a teen who leaves school and get a criminal sentence for drug use. He cannot get a job.

So, I urge the government to spend MORE money not less on programmes like the Cadet Corps and drug rehabilitation.

Money really is worth far more at the beginning than at the end. Most of the money spent at the end solves nothing. It is a bottomless pit.