UK ANTI-DRUGS CHIEF TO UNVEIL SPENDING PLANS

LONDON, July 28 (Reuters) - Britain's anti-drugs coordinator, who will
announce on Friday how extra funding in the battle against drugs will be
spent, has insisted his strategy is working and that ambitious targets can
be met.

Keith Hellawell aims to cut the availability of hard drugs by 25 percent by
2005 and by 50 percent by 2008. He is expected to announce more funding for
treatment for addicts and plans for greater international co-operation.

"I'm confident that all the targets can be met," he told BBC radio on Thursday.

"We're already seeing -- through educational programmes, through treatment
intervention programmes, through ratcheting up our international
operations, and through our stronger actions against criminals -- very
encouraging signs of success."

Hellawell, who was appointed by the government two years ago, said
treatment intervention programmes were breaking the link between drugs and
crime and have already prevented thousands of crimes from being committed.

"People who are committing crime because of drug habits are no longer
needing to commit crime because we're providing the treatment, and that
will continue," he said.

Hellawell admitted drug users may still face a long wait for treatment, but
blamed the delays on an initial lack of information on which to plan the
programme.

"We now have that data. We know what the unmet need is, we know what the
delays are, and we are setting about beating those delays," he said.

Hellawell, who visited Russia this week to meet his counterparts there and
see UK-funded programmes at work, said greater international co-operation
would make a "substantial" difference in the war against drugs.

Measures to deal with people smuggling drugs into Britain must be "very,
very tough," he said, adding that he was considering withdrawing their
passports as well as seizing their assets.

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