DOWNING STREET HOSTS DRUGS SUMMIT AS CRIME FIGURES SOAR

THE Government will give police and Customs chiefs all the powers and
resources they need to fight the drugs problem, the Prime Minister
promised yesterday. Tony Blair made his pledge at a "drugs summit" in
No 10 as the latest official figures showed a large rise in
drug-related crime. The numbers arrested for drug offences soared by
13 per cent last year, while seizures of illegal drugs rose by eight
per cent.

In both cases the vast majority of crime was accounted for by
possession of or trading in cannabis, despite the Government's
insistence that it is focusing on the menace of hard drugs.

Nevertheless, the number and quantity of cocaine seizures rose by
almost one third, with a correspondingly sharp rise in the number of
offenders. The number of heroin offenders also rose by 30 per cent,
though there was a 40 per cent fall in the amount of the drug seized.

Keith Hellawell, Whitehall's "Drugs Tsar", denied the statistics
showed that his 10-year strategy was not working. He said: "In one way
these figures prove that we are clamping down on drugs with the arrest
of more offenders and more seizures."

The summit was convened to underline Mr Blair's support for Mr
Hellawell in the face of a Whitehall whispering campaign suggesting
that he was ineffective, and continuing controversy over the views of
Mo Mowlam, the Cabinet Office minister in charge of the anti-drugs
initiative. After admitting last month that she had used cannabis as a
student, Dr Mowlam recently refused to rule out the possibility of
decriminalising cannabis at some stage. After what sources described
as a "brain-storming" session which also involved Dr Mowlam and Jack
Straw, the Home Secretary, the Prime Minister asked Mr Hellawell to
investigate new ways of breaking the link between drugs and crime.

One proposal is likely to be the nationwide extension of the
confidential "Rat on a rat" telephone hotline which has resulted in
the arrest of 7,000 drug offenders since it was launched by the
Metropolitan Police. Ministers heard that in the fortnight following
an aggressive poster campaign on London's buses and street corners,
the number of tip-offs leapt from 70 to 2,000. Mr Blair also expressed
interest in "drug courts" being tested in Wakefield, where offenders
are brought speedily before magistrates who have become specialists in
drug-related crime.

Mr Blair also requested a special report on investigating fresh ideas
for amplifying the anti-drugs message in schools. Shaun Woodward, the
former Tory MP who defected to Labour last year, has been asked to
assist Mr Hellawell because of his experience as a former director of
the charity Childline. The Conservatives denounced the summit as "all
talk and no delivery" and said the Government's drugs strategy was
riddled with confusion. Andrew Lansley, the shadow cabinet office
spokesman, said: "They have focused on reducing harm from drug abuse
for habitual users or those committing drug-related offences. It is
important that they also focus effort sufficiently on reducing the
supply of drugs and on drug prevention, especially among young people."