STRAW'S UNSURE TOUCH

JACK STRAW, the Home Secretary, has misjudged the public's mood on whether
there should be a debate on the legalisation of cannabis. Last week, in
response to the publication of Lady Runciman's report, Drugs and the Law,
Keith Hellawell, the Home Office drugs "tsar", made it clear that Mr Straw
would be ignoring all but the most insignificant of the Runciman committee's
proposals. This rebuttal was poorly judged. It is clear that the report
asked sufficiently important questions to warrant a public debate and not a
knee-jerk dismissal from the Government.

It was presumably after realising this that Mr Straw decided to write an
article in yesterday's News of the World to alter the initial impression he
gave that he did not want to discuss drugs further. Rapidly backtracking
from his position last week, Mr Straw tried to reverse the impression that
he opposes further debate, declaring that he was "always up for a debate on
what we do to tackle drugs" and that he welcomed the Runciman report. He
went on to state the case against legalisation, on the grounds of both law
and order and public health.

The Home Secretary had, it seems, reckoned without the Metropolitan Police
Commissioner. While not advocating legalisation of cannabis, Sir John
Stevens none the less said that London's police have more serious crimes to
tackle. "With robberies and murders up," he said, "cannabis cannot be a
priority." Undermanned and demoralised after the allegations of
institutional racism made in the Macpherson report, the Metropolitan Police
certainly does have greater concerns. Yet it should not be forgotten that
Macpherson received strong support from Mr Straw.

This episode joins a growing number of cases in which Mr Straw has not only
mistaken the public mood in his pursuit of an authoritarian image, but also
displayed an unwillingness to use the considerable powers he has as Home
Secretary. From passports to Pinochet, his touch has been unsure. It took a
hijack at a British airport to bring public disquiet over the asylum laws to
his attention. He played up the Macpherson report. He makes light of the
threat to the English legal system posed by the incorporation of the
European Convention on human rights, but also resists more open government.
In short, he has succeeded in irritating or alienating most sections of
society.

Not surprisingly, Mr Straw has been wary of navigating the treacherous
political currents surrounding the question of legalising cannabis. But the
surge in drug-related crimes, the fact that cannabis has now crossed the
generation gap, and the evidence of its use as a valuable palliative in
terminal illness, all make a debate necessary. He received sympathy for his
handling of his own teenage son's brush with the law over cannabis, but
shows little understanding of other parents in a similar predicament. He
says he wants a debate on drugs, but shows no interest in the arguments and
no sensitivity to the public mood. Drugs is a subject on which the public,
particularly parents, want to be taken into the confidence of the
authorities, in the unprejudiced search for a solution.