MCLEISH PROMISES ZERO TOLERANCE ON DRUGS

THE Government has headed off criticism that it is going soft on drugs by
announcing a zero tolerance policy towards all forms of illegal drug-taking
in Scotland.

The Scottish home affairs minister, Henry McLeish, said yesterday that
taking an ecstasy tablet in Edinburgh was just as illegal and unacceptable
as selling heroin in Glasgow's Easterhouse.

Both put profits in the hands of the dealers responsible for the pills sold
at the gates of schools, said Mr Meleish, speaking at the launch of a
six-month campaign against drugs and housebreaking in Strathclyde.

The tough line will be backed up today by the Scottish health minister, Sam
Galbraith, who will announce extra money for services to wean drugtakers
off their habit. Mr McLeish is also expected to reveal plans to confiscate
the assets of dealers even if they have not heen convicted, in line with
plans for England and Wales.

"I want a much more challenging line on drugs enforcement throughout
Scotland," said Mr McLeish. "Taking any kind of illegal drug is socially
unacceptable in Scotland in 1998. It only supplies profits to the dealer
and destroys lives."

The new stance follows attacks by David Macauley, the former director of
the all-party Scotland Against Drugs campaign, who resigned this year
claiming that Labour had gone soft on drugs and did not have a co-ordinated
policy.

Criticisms were also voiced by the Mothers Against Drugs campaign in
Cranhill, founded in January following the death of 13-year-old Alan Harper
from a drugs overdose - one of 74 drugs deaths in Greater Glasgow so far
this year.

No-one has been charged with supplying the drugs that killed Alan, though
the police made a number of arrests.

Mr McLeish made plain that he had listened to the Cranhill campaigners,
adding: "My experience of Cranhill is one where the area has major drug
problems, and needs collective action."

Cranhill has been targeted in the series of drug raids carried out by
Strathelyde Police in the run-up to its new Operation Spotlight campaign
against drugs and housebreaking.

John Orr, the chief constable of Strathclyde, said that police surveillance
and action would be focused against dealers and traffickers, backed up by
hi-tech computer profiling and DNA swab technology. The local drug action
teams and many other organisations were involved in the community aspocts
of the initiative.

"The public are concerned, worried and sick to death of people selling
drugs and people breaking into houses to pay for drugs," Mr Orr said.

Scottish Gas has paid for a four-week television advertising campaign
against housebreaking - often committed by drug addicts to gain money to
feed their habit - and the Scottish Office is funding a cinema advert about
home and business security.

Gaille McCann, a Glasgow councillor who speaks for Mothers Against Drugs,
welcomed the campaign but criticised the Crown Office for allowing drug
dealers to plea bargain their way to lighter sentences.

Dave Liddell, the director of The Scottish Drugs Forum which criticised
zero tolerance policies in the past, said the Scottish Office should hear
in mind that drugs services such as methadone prescribing had also been
proven to cut crime.

But the response from at least one member of the public was approving. An
81-year-old Glasgow widow invited to the campaign launch after her bedroom
was ransacked by housebreakers said: "I think this campaign is really good.
After being burgled I say you're safe no place, it could always happen but
I find all this very reassuring."

Checked-by: Pat Dolan