POLICE END CANNABIS SEIZURES

New Effort To Halt Tide Of Hard Drugs

Britain is to abandon the hunt for cannabis smugglers and dealers in
the most dramatic relaxation of policy on the drug so far.

Instead the Government has told law enforcement officers, including
Customs officials and police, to target resources on 'hard drugs',
such as heroin and cocaine.

Under the new strategy - part of the most radical shift in drugs
policy for a generation - large-scale cannabis seizures and
prosecutions will now take place only as a by-product of
investigations into Class A drugs.

Last week with the blessing of Home Secretary David Blunkett, police
in Brixton, south London, abandoned their policy of prosecuting
people found with small amounts of the drug.

The relaxation comes as the law on possession of cannabis faces its
most serious legal challenge. The civil rights group Liberty will
argue in court tomorrow that it is incompatible with the new Human
Rights Act.

The campaign to legalise cannabis gained further momentum yesterday
as Clive Bates, director of the government-funded anti-smoking group
Ash, argued for the legalisation of the drug.

The decision to give up hunting cannabis traffickers was taken by the
Cabinet Office Committee, Concerted Inter-Agency Drugs Action (Cida).
It consists of the heads of MI6, MI5, the Customs and Excise
investigation branch, the National Criminal Intelligence Service, the
police National Crime Squad, and the Association of Chief Police
Officers, plus the permanent under-secretaries of the Home Office,
Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence.

'It's not that we plan to stop seizing cannabis when we come across
it,' one senior Customs source said last night. 'However, the need to
focus on Class A drugs means cannabis seizures will now take place as
a by-product, not as an end in themselves.'

Customs sources say the shift is seen as an 'inevitable consequence'
of the Government's drug strategy, which sets agencies the target of
reducing Class A drug consumption by half by 2008.

'Overall, the Government strategy is about reducing harm,' one chief
police officer said. 'That has to mean placing a priority in reducing
the supply of Class A drugs.'

He said regional drug distributors often 'blurred the boundaries'
between drugs, so that inquiries into cocaine and heroin dealers
might also yield finds of cannabis.

The focus on hard drugs was partly triggered by the first figures for
UK consumption of cocaine and heroin, which show Britons are now
consuming twice as much cocaine as the previous official estimates
for the whole of Western Europe.

The figures, from a Home Office research project, show that last year
British hard drug users took 28,000-36,000kg of heroin and
35,000-41,000 kg of cocaine.

Cannabis was in effect decriminalised in Brixton last week, when
police said they would no longer prosecute people caught with the
drug but give them a verbal telling-off. Last year the Government
said that having a caution for possessing cannabis would no longer
carry a criminal record for life.

The Misuse of Drugs Act, which in 2000 led to 96,000 prosecutions
against cannabis users, will be challenged in Southwark Crown Court
this week when Liberty will claim it is incompatible with the Human
Rights Act.

Liberty will be defending Jerry Ham, former director and founder of a
homelessness charity, who has been charged with possession of small
amount of cannabis. If Liberty is successful, it could make the law
unenforceable in courts.

The relaxation of policy on cannabis follows changing public
attitudes to the drug. This weekend senior Tory MP Alan Duncan
supported Peter Lilley, the former deputy leader of the Conservative
Party, who called for the legalisation of sale of the drug in
licensed outlets.

Ash director Clive Bates said: 'We would legalise cannabis in its
non- smokable forms, such as in cakes, tea or droplets. There's
irrationality and inconsistency in the policy on tobacco, soft and
hard drugs. Even if you legalised cannabis in its smokeable forms you
couldn't come close to the harm done by cigarettes, because no one
smokes 20 joints a day.'