POLICE TO GET NEW DRUG TEST POWERS

Police will gain sweeping powers to impose mandatory drugs tests on
people arrested for criminal offences, under a government drugs
crackdown condemned yesterday as an infringement of human rights.

Under measures disclosed by Tony Blair and due to be implemented in a
crime and justice bill at the heart of the forthcoming Queen's speech,
persistent cocaine and heroin users would be denied bail after being
arrested in an effort to prevent further drug-linked crime.

The announcement, which will be seen as a significant hardening of the
government's already tough stance on drugs, took campaigners and civil
liberties groups by surprise. Campaigners attacked the proposals as
"superficial macho rhetoric" and called for legislative measures to be
backed up with further resources.

The prime minister, revealing the plans on the BBC's Breakfast with
Frost on the opening day of Labour's annual conference, said the
planned legislation would cover key problems all governments had
"ducked", including mandatory drugs testing. He pointed out that in
some inner-city areas 50% of those arrested had drugs in their system.
"One of the biggest single problems we have in this country today is
crime and drugs."

He said: "People are petrified about drugs. I'm petrified about drugs
in respect of my own children and other people's children."

Home office sources said police would gain powers to test people they
arrested, though the intention was that they would use them
selectively. "The idea is to find out early whether someone is a
regular user of heroin or other Class A drugs related to crime," the
source said. Findings from urine tests, carried out at police
stations, would be passed to prosecuting authorities.

The home secretary, Jack Straw, who will bring forward the new
legislation, said the link between drug users and crime was "huge and
very disturbing".

He said it was estimated that there were up to 200,000 problem drug
users in England and Wales, of whom between 50,000 and 60,000 were
arrested each year.

"Each of those, typically heroin addicts, will have been committing
scores, if not hundreds, of crimes each year in order to feed their
habit," Mr Straw told Radio 4's World This Weekend programme.

"We're looking at the mand atory testing of all arrestees and if it
turned out that a man or woman before the custody sergeant was plainly
a persistent heroin user, that would argue against bail."

The new bill will also enshrine in law a presumption against bail for
those who test positive for opiates, such as heroin, or cocaine-based
drugs, including crack. That could mean hard drug users are
automatically held on remand before trial, or at least that they are
freed only with tough bail conditions. Holding alleged offenders on
remand will inevitably place increased pressure on already overcrowded
prisons. Government sources last night played down the problem,
saying: "It may have some impact on the prison population and we are
willing to look at that."

Another hardline step will see an extension of mandatory testing,
already in place in prisons for the last five years , to include
offenders on probation.

The plans will also provide for a nationwide extension of a pounds 20m
drug arrest referral scheme currently being piloted in some police
stations. Under the scheme, arrested drug users can gain immediate
help and treatment in police stations.

Government sources last night pointed to crime statistics as evidence
of the link between drug use and crime. According to home office
research conducted last year in five inner city areas, including
Manchester, London and Sun derland, 61% of all those arrested had
taken at least one illegal drug - mainly cannabis - within the last
month. Of those, 18% had taken heroin or another opiate, and 10% had
used cocaine or crack.

A third of the total illegal income gained from crime was spent on
drugs - an average of up to pounds 20,000 a year for heroin and crack
users.

John Wadham, the director of the civil rights group Liberty, said the
proposals were wrong in principle and potentially in breach of the
European convention on human rights. "The link between drugs and crime
is proble matic and needs to be broken, but this is not the way to do
it. Eroding rights won't crack crime and this approach misses the
point, which is to stop people becoming problematic drug users in the
first place. The government should drop the superficial macho rhetoric
and establish a royal commission to undertake a radical review of
drugs policy."

Mark Leech, the director of the National Association of Ex-offenders,
said: "Putting in place legislation to deal with drug crime after the
commission of offences is hopelessly ineffective, unless it is coupled
to the provision of resources to those who want to help themselves."