'The war on drugs didn't help my brother': Billionaire Tetra Pak heir Hans Rausing's sister is 'increasingly convinced' by arguments for decriminalisation

• Wealthy addicts are 'almost untouchable', claims Sigrid Rausing
• She said her drug-addled brother and wife Eva weren't helped by state
• 'War on drugs' and readily available methadone don't help, she argues
• Mr Rausing was arrested after his spouse was found dead at their mansion
• He had covered her badly decomposed body with plastic and clothes
• Mrs Rausing, 48, had been dead for eight weeks after heart rate soared
  
  
  The sister of Tetra Pak heir Hans Rausing today said she is increasingly convinced by arguments for decriminalisation of drugs - because wealthy addicts are almost untouchable by the law.
  She said her billionaire brother and his wife were never likely to be imprisoned for their destructive habits and were given easy access to methadone and morphine by psychiatrists.
  Rich crack and heroin addicts are generally left alone if they have not committed other crimes, such as drug dealing, she said.
  
  

  

  Disturbing: Hans and Eva Rausing (pictured) were left to sink into their addiction, said the wealthy man's sister
  'Wealthy addicts, gripped by paranoia, eroded by drugs, frantic to keep their supplies flowing, are almost untouchable,' added Ms Rausing. 
  
  'Possession alone is unlikely to send you to prison if you are wealthy, because you are deemed unlikely to be dealing.
  
  'Families look on in despair, but the fact is that their addicts already live in a world where drugs are largely decriminalised.'
  In July, her heroin-addict younger brother was arrested after police found the badly decomposed body of his dead wife in the couple's squalid bedroom at their Belgravia mansion.
  
  

  Tragic: Hans Rausing's sister said he and wife Eva (pictured) were almost untouchable because of their wealth
  He had banned staff from entering the couple's 'crack den' in their otherwise-immaculate £70million London home, claiming his wife was ill.
  In fact, Mrs Rausing, 48, had been dead for eight weeks, and her disturbed husband had covered her rotting body with 12 layers of clothes, blankets and plastic, sealed with industrial tape and sprayed with deodorant to mask the smell.
  Ms Rausing, writing in The Guardian today, said that well-off drug addicts like her brother have easy access to large amounts of methadone or morphine from psychiatrists.
  
  

  Despair: Sigrid Rausing said her younger brother already lived in a world where drugs were 'largely decriminalised'
  In a statement read out at his wife's inquest in December, Mr Rausing said he hardly remembered the run-up to his wife's death because he had been taking prescribed morphine for four years.
  The heir to his family's £4.3billion packaging fortune - and one of Britain's richest men - began abusing drugs during several years travelling in India, after he moved from Sweden to Britain in 1982.
  After one stay in rehab, he relapsed while staying with his sister.
  Heartbreakingly, she did not realise what was happening, believing that the plates of rotting food and dirt under his fingernails were just part of who he was - when in fact the dirt was heroin.
  
  Ms Rausing, who gives away around £20million a year to charity, said she does not think the 'heavy hand of the state' or the 'war on drugs' does anything to help people like her brother.
  Police raided her brother's mansion several years ago, after he was spotted driving erratically, and kicked in the door of his locked bedroom, said Ms Rausing, publisher of Portobello Books and Granta magazine.
  Then a year ago, on New Year's Day, she visited her brother while his wife was away, despite having been banned from their house.
  She had heard he was 'not in a good state' and that Mrs Rausing was seriously concerned about him.
  The bedroom door - still broken from the raid - was locked, and though she knew Mr Rausing could be dead or dying inside, there was little she could do.
  'Our only option of outside help at that point was to have him committed, and that, we had learned, was almost impossible,' she said.
  On July 9, he was again stopped while driving his red Bristol sports car erratically - and a warm crack pipe was found in the footwell.
  When police asked where Mrs Rausing was, his eyes welled up as he told them she was in California.
  
  

  Horrific: Mr Rausing was arrested after police found his wife's decomposed body in their Belgravia mansion
  Her body was soon after discovered in their bedroom, which was strewn with rubbish and drugs paraphenalia and swarming with flies.
  Mr Rausing's sister Sigrid is married to former Panorama producer Eric Abrahams. When they moved into their own Holland Park home in 1997, it was reportedly the most expensive house ever sold in the capital, at £20m, with the second-biggest garden after Buckingham Palace.
  Today, Ms Rausing called for addiction to be defined as an emotional illness, separately and beyond drug-use.
  She said studies had shown that a 'culture of recovery' is the best treatment, and addicts who are committed to care have as good a chance of beating their as those who have chosen it.
  Her 49-year-old brother was excused from attending his wife's inquest in December because he is being treated for drug addiction and a mental breakdown.
  
  

  'Unable to cope': Mr Rausing, one of Britain's richest men, was convicted of preventing his wife's lawful burial
  He was instead represented by a phalanx of lawyers and public relations officials, led by the Prime Minister's older brother, Alex Cameron QC.
  He was initially arrested on suspicion of murdering his wife, but was convicted of preventing her lawful burial and handed a ten-month suspended jail term.
  Mrs Rausing was found clutching a crack pipe, after her heart-rate soared to six times its normal level. Her husband said he 'could not face the fact she was dead'.
  In a statement read to the court last month, Mr Rausing revealed that the couple had sunk deep into addiction and barely left his flat.
  He said: 'We both felt that our lives were completely hopeless.'
  The inquest heard police have been unable to discover who supplied her the drugs and her  husband said she had 'her own sources'.