UK OUT OF STEP AS EU TAKES NEW APPROACH TO PROBLEM

Europe: Emphasis is shifting away from jailing users

Europe is shifting towards the decriminalisation of the possession of drugs
for personal use, according to an official report on drug policies across
the continent.

The annual report of the EU's monitoring centre for drugs and drug addiction
said that while most member states rejected extreme solutions such as full
legalisation or harsh repression, there was increasing recognition that the
prosecution and imprisonment of individuals with drug problems caused even
greater difficulties.

The report revealed that the hardline UK policy of continuing to criminalise
all those arrested for cannabis possession was beginning to look like an
old-fashioned stance.

But it added that while the trend in many states was to reduce the emphasis
on prosecuting and imprisoning drug users, the number of people arrested for
drug possession offences was increasing across Europe. The report said that
this contradiction suggested some need for "fine-tuning theory and practice
within the criminal justice system".

Although most states continued to ban illicit drug use, the report from the
Lisbon-based institute said there had been a shift to liberalise the
penalties or administrative measures used to enforce it.

At the same time "harm reduction" policies such as needle exchanges,
providing injection rooms or even prescribing heroin, were becoming
mainstream policy in the EU.

The traditional distinctions between illegal drugs such as cannabis and
cocaine and legal recreational substances such as tobacco and alcohol were
also being blurred. In France, Germany, the Netherlands and Austria the
government agencies that provided treatment and prevention programmes
involving illegal drugs now also dealt with tobacco and alcohol.

In Germany the term "addiction prevention" was used rather than "drug
prevention" so as to emphasise the danger of addictive substances regardless
of their legal status.

The report said Portugal was considering decriminalising the illicit
consumption and possession of drugs for personal use as part of reform of
its drug laws. In Belgium the occasional cannabis user, if arrested, would
find nothing more happened than that the drugs were confiscated and a police
report filed. It was a pattern being repeated across much of the EU.

Nevertheless the report said that arrests for drug-related offences had been
steadily increasing since the mid-1980s. This might partly reflect the
increasing use of illicit drugs. The EU estimated that 40m people had used
cannabis in the 15 member states.

The survey said problem drug use was lowest in Germany, Austria, Finland and
Sweden and highest in Italy, Luxembourg and the UK.