AIR PASSENGERS FACE DRUG TESTS ON THEIR TICKETS

EVERY person flying into Britain faces having their air tickets tested for
traces of drugs under ambitious plans being considered by Keith Hellawell,
the government's "drug tsar".

The plan, which is certain to lead to protests from civil liberties
campaigners, follows research which showed that 80% of the banknotes
circulating in central London bore traces of cocaine.

Hellawell is organising trials of a British invention that in just a few
seconds will be able to check tickets for heroin, cocaine, cannabis or
ecstasy residue. The government has cleared the machine, known as a
boarding pass analyser (BPA), to be set up at a British airport later this
year to test for traces of plastic explosives. It is already being used on
trial by the Canadian government and the Federal Aviation Administration in
America.

Under the planned drug-testing trial, passengers will be asked to put their
tickets through the device as they go through Customs.

Hellawell, whose plan has the backing of Pino Arlacchi, the United Nations'
drugs supremo, will tell ministers that anyone handling drugs can expect
residue to remain on their hands for anything from a few days, in the case
of heroin, to several weeks, when cannabis has been touched. He wants to
use the BPA machines to target couriers who have almost certainly had to
handle the drugs they are smuggling.

The UKP200,000 machine, built by Mass-Spec Analytical, based in Bristol,
can detect 0.0000000001% of a gram of drugs at a rate of 1,200 tickets an
hour. It works by passing air across the ticket, collecting molecules. The
molecules are then blasted with electrons which break them up. Because
different substances' molecules break up in different ways, due to the
varying atomic weights, the collected matter can be measured to identify
each substance.

Joe Reevy, an executive at Mass-Spec, said: "The thing works on any
substance and you can put just about anything through it. We can alter the
settings to look for more residue or to ignore certain substances."

If the trials succeed, and ministers can be persuaded to back the plan, new
legislation would be needed to make it compulsory for all passengers.
However, experts warned last week that there could be a number of problems
attached to the idea. They pointed out potential legal difficulties under
European law and also warned that it could lead to a mass of extra work for
police and customs officers.

One drugs worker said: "If this goes ahead, then 80% of people flying home
from a club holiday on Ibiza are going to be getting arrested. It will be
bedlam." Nevertheless, Hellawell remains determined to try the machine as
he battles to stem the increasing flow of drugs into Britain.

He said last week: "We want to try it and see how it performs. It will
certainly have a deterrent effect because we could use it to test
everyone's tickets. I recognise there will be problems, but I want to see
how it operates in the field and then take it from there."

Hellawell, who spoke last week to senior British detectives and FBI
officers when he visited the National Criminal Intelligence Service's
annual conference in Edinburgh, added: "Our main target would be couriers
bringing drugs into Britain for profit."

If Hellawell, whose contract as drug tsar is coming up for renewal,
succeeds in getting his idea backed by the government, it would make
Britain the only country in the world to test arriving passengers randomly
for drugs.