DRUGS TSAR DEFIES SPIN MACHINE

Keith Hellawell is trying to talk sense while walking a tightrope set by New
Labour.

It was meant to be a good news day, a way for Britain's drug tsar to reclaim
the political agenda from what he has come to call, with increasing disdain,
'the spin machine'. Sadly for Keith Hellawell, the spin machine had not yet
finished its cycle.

Before an audience of 100 teachers and drug workers in a motel on the
outskirts of Gloucester last week, the former Chief Constable of West
Yorkshire announced the recruitment of 680 new drug workers. 'pounds 500,000
of government money has been put aside for the recruitment drive,' Hellawell
said. 'And training will be given. I can't say yet what form the training
will take, but it will be paid for out of the seized asset fund.'

He said the same announcement was being made simultaneously by Cabinet
Office Minister Mo Mowlam, to whom he reports. At that moment Mowlam was
appearing on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, but she seemed to have other things
on her mind. While passing reference to the recruitment drive was made, she
used the broadcast instead for something more pungent: an attack on elements
in Whitehall which, she said, 'were trying to put the knife in' by briefing
journalists that her brain tumour illness had left her unable to do her job.

Mowlam's assault on her detractors was widely reported the next day. The
announcement about the recruitment of new drug workers was ignored.

Once again Hellawell had seen significant progress in his war on drugs
obscured by fallout from the Whitehall spin machine. Mowlam is well known to
be less than fond of Hellawell, whom she is said to regard as being 'too
Chief Constable'. She has more time for his deputy, Mike Trace, who comes
from the world of field work with addicts. But Hellawell is more likely to
see it simply as part of a growing problem he has in getting his message
across. He has been derided for allegedly suggesting that the Government
should consider buying Afghanistan's entire opium crop to stop it getting on
to the streets as heroin.

He has been lambasted for apparently suggesting the Internet is encouraging
drug use among young people and criticised for failings in pilot drug
treatment schemes he has introduced.

He will also know that the support he has expressed in today's Observer for
the 'depenalisation' of the possession of cannabis - a recommendation of a
forthcoming report by the Police Foundation - will prove controversial.

He is irritated by the way he is portrayed in the media. 'I do get cross
when I read about what I have or haven't done, said or haven't said,' he
said. 'The spin machine looks like it's trying to pin a tail on the donkey
with its eyes shut. They've found me and decided I'm going to be the target
of derision.'

Yet he still does not feel he can afford to ignore the hacks. In Gloucester
he spent 20 minutes talking to the drug workers who had travelled from all
over the country for a conference on drug use among young people with
special needs. But he gave the smattering of journalists present almost two
hours .

'We're actually doing everything we said we would do and doing it on time,'
he told them. 'People from other countries have seen what we're doing in
Britain and they say they don't understand the stick I'm getting. At the
United Nations congress on drug use in 1998 I was given a full session to
present our programme to 190 nations. Even General Barry Mcaffrey, who's
heading up the American drug programme, was surprised at the speed with
which we've got everything going.'

He launches into a list of successes: the reduction in criminality among
offenders who have been part of referral schemes for treatment, the
introduction of drug-free wings in some prisons, the small reductions that
have been seen in the numbers of people saying they have ever tried drugs.
But mostly he wants to talk about the turnaround in official attitudes to
the problem of drugs.

'Successive Conservative governments stated that the solution to the drug
problem lay with the criminal justice system,' he said. 'Now funds are being
shifted into treatment and education.' Hence the need for 680 new drug
workers: the agencies implementing drug treatment and education policy have
the money to do the job, he said, they just don't have the bodies to do it.
Now that problem would be solved.

He has, he says, managed to get more than pounds 250 million of new money
out of the Treasury to fight his war. His list of achievements is indeed
impressive, but there are still problems. More than 50 per cent of offenders
issued with Drug Treatment and Testing Orders, one of Hellawell's pet
projects, piloted in three areas so far, have returned to using drugs.

'Yes,' he says, 'but the general level of criminality and drug spending
among them has dropped.'

There are also increases in the use of cocaine. This, he admits, is a cause
for grave concern. 'In the last British Crime Survey covering 1996-98 we saw
an increase of cocaine use from 1 per cent to 3 per cent among the 15-29 age
group, mostly around the club scene in London, Liverpool and Nottingham.
This is a threefold increase.

'In the next two years we are going to see a further increase. It's becoming
cheaper and more socially acceptable. Clearly this is bad news for someone
like me in this job.' But, he insists, the important issue is to look at
drug policy as a whole.

'What I have done is lift the stone on the hidden truth about drugs in
Britain, which is that we need to discriminate between different drugs and
the relative harm caused and then talk openly about the difference we can
make. The focus is going to be on the drugs that cause the major harm.'

This means accepting that cannabis use - and even the recreational use of
Ecstasy and amphetamines - is a low priority and that resources should
instead be concentrated on narcotics such as like heroin and cocaine.

The problem is that to talk of such things is seen by Labour to be
politically dangerous, hence the ridiculing of Clare Short when she said it
might be worth considering decriminalising marijuana and the backlash Mowlam
experienced when she admitted having inhaled.

Tony Blair once said his party would 'campaign in poetry but govern in
prose'. The reality is less romantic. New Labour campaigns in thick black
headlines, which is exactly what it did to sell the idea of its war on drugs
during the 1997 election.

'I believe we need to appoint a figurehead in the battle,' he told a
roomfull of fifth-formers who could not vote for him, during a speech at
Dyce Academy in Aberdeen in April 1997. 'Today I am announcing that Labour
will appoint an anti-drugs supremo, what they call in America a drugs tsar,
to co-ordinate our approach.'

Ever since Hellawell landed the job he has been trying to shake the title,
dismissing it as creating a simplistic image of a problem being tackled
through force alone. He says he has been given licence to think creatively
about the problem. He also says he has received endless support from the
Cabinet for his 10-year plan to shift the bulk of the pounds 1.5 billion of
government money earmarked for dealing with drug issues from the criminal
justice system to treatment and education.

But he has been told nothing in the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act is up for
negotiation. So he can never be heard to utter the word decriminalisation -
even for cannabis.

For Hellawell, this is no problem. His mantra from his days as a copper has
been that anything that might encourage more people to take more drugs,
however soft, is a bad idea. And yet he also accepts that locking up people
for possession of cannabis is a poor idea.

In 1990 the number of people cautioned for possession of cannabis
outstripped those prosecuted for the first time, and the gap between the two
groups has widened since. Any form of words that might allow the practice to
continue, without using language that could make the Government look soft on
drugs, would therefore be welcomed.

The forthcoming report from the Police Foundation looks set to provide such
a wording. It will recommend the 'depenalisation' of cannabis possession, so
the worst an offender might suffer is a fine. As we report today, it would
be of a piece with Hellawell's thinking.

But before he can start putting such complex issues before the public he has
to deal with the negative publicity. Sources have suggested former Cabinet
Officer Minster Jack Cunningham was responsible for most of it.

Sometimes Hellawell says it is simply the media misrepresenting him. He says
the story about buying the Afghan crop of opium is a case in point. 'The
issue did arise. I simply asked whether there is any logic to the fact that
the opium crop in some countries is licensed and legal, because it is used
to produce diamorphine for medicinal purposes, and illegal in others. I just
said we might look at this question.'

Hellawell loves talking about studies and reports, to prove how well he is
doing. The journalists in Gloucester who had come to report his visit were
less than interested.

They wanted to know whether he was going to recommend giving more powers to
local police so they could lock up the drug dealers crowding the city's
streets.

These are the questions the public ask. Near the city centre, where the
Starbucks coffee shops and the cosy bookshops and boutiques give way to the
clutter of inner-city decay, is the Vauxhall Inn in Barton Street. Two
months ago the brewery put in a new landlord because of the drug dealing
that was rife in and about the pub.

The windows are now obscured by signs promising immediate police action
against anybody found dealing or taking drugs on the premises. The pub
itself has improved remarkably, but the problem itself still exists.

Around the corner are modern public lavatories which Joe Lynch, the new
landlord, says should never have been built. 'It's a constant menace,' he
says. 'That is the biggest place for taking and receiving.'

Inside, is a yellow plastic box fixed on the wall by the council for used
needles. A general election is expected within 18 months. New Labour will
then seek a second term in government based on its record.

On the doorsteps of Barton Street the small print of Hellawell's successes
is unlikely to be as attractive to the electorate as the headlines
politicians like to use. And the drug tsar knows it.