This month EHJ looks at the culture behind graffiti and what can be done to stamp it out in the run up to the launch of a government-backed anti-graffiti campaign. It aims to persuade local authorities to adopt a zero-tolerance approach to the urban scrawls that blight communities and hamper regeneration. The argument against graffiti is persuasive. Firstly there is the cost of cleaning it up, around £1bn a year. Then there is the overall sense of decay and intimidation created in graffiti-strewn areas and the attendant social problems it causes. 

So "smashing the myth" that graffiti is art is a laudable enough objective for the campaign, which aims to stamp out what most people see as a significant antisocial problem. 

Except, it might be too late to adopt quite such a blunt approach. To tackle graffiti we first have to understand it. Like it or not, it is a sophisticated sub-culture that has had around 40 years to develop. It is a scene which takes its history seriously and has its own heroes and martyrs. It is a sub-culture that is not just populated by disaffected teenagers, but also by well-educated men in their thirties with good jobs. Graffiti artists like Banksy, who started in the Bristol scene and then moved to London, are courted by multinational companies to endorse products like Nike trainers or Play Station. He has been interviewed by the Guardian and has had an exhibition of his work with some of his prints reputedly selling for upwards of £10,000.

This, of course, does not excuse the distress that graffiti causes. It is just that with such a well-developed scene by successfully banning it in one place you may just drive it elsewhere.

We can learn from the US experience. In New York in the mid 1980s tough legislation and increased fines drove graffiti artists to concentrate on subway trains. Across the country other artists followed suit, targeting freight trains. When the Metropolitan Transit Authority got tough the artists moved on to America's highways.

Yes, councils should get tough on graffiti and magistrates should apply the polluter pays principle. But local government should also, if possible, try to work with the artists and with business, providing dedicated spaces where they can find expression. Perhaps we should look to the Philadelphia experiment, which our story reports on, as a more inclusive approach to what is a serious social problem.

Finally, the editorial team would like to welcome two new additions to EHJ this month. Nargis Kayani, an EHP with 16 years experience, joins us as a regular columnist and Mike Atkinson, an EHP from Torbay Council, will be providing a regular cartoon strip, the sanitary inspectors.                      

Stuart Spear
Editor