Noggin - I've worked with drug abusers and have also been a board member of a residential drugs crisis centre and I fully agree with most of what you say.
I'm not sure though about your assertion that:
"The correct solution is to get an independent group together of drug experts, doctors, psychologists, criminologists, etc etc look at the evidence decide what they think is best, implement it despite the political fall out and continue to monitor and tweak."
This has already been done several times and each time the independent reviewing body has recommended some form of decriminalisation (along with other measures). And each time the government of the day has not implemented many of their recommendations, including decriminalisation.
The fact is that decriminalisation is not going to happen in the UK for the forseeable future, because it's simply politically unacceptable - i.e. it'd be a vote loser. You only have to look at some of the comments on here for evidence of that! (Nothing personal Grendel!
) This situation will only change if the wider public are educated to understand this complex issue, which involves choosing 'least worst outcomes'. Unfortunately I don't see this happening anytime soon.