CANNABIS CAMPAIGN: MP HAILS REFORM OF JAIL RULES

The Government's new moves to distinguish between cannabis and hard-drug use
in prisons have been welcomed by the MP for Bolton South East, Brian Iddon.

Mr Iddon was the third Labour backbencher to defy his party line and join
the Independent on Sunday's campaign for the decriminalisation of cannabis
last year and, following the call by Lord Bingham, the Lord Chief Justice,
for a national debate on the issue, he took his concerns to the Home Office
prisons' minister, George Howarth.

"A number of people in Parliament, including Paul Flynn and myself, have
been very concerned about these priorities in the community in general and I
am very pleased to see that Mr Howarth now plans to take action on the
treatment of prisoners," he said.

Last week the Review of the Prison Service Drug Strategy reported that the
introduction of random mandatory drug tests (RMDT) had resulted in a fall in
cannabis use but had not markedly affected the use of more harmful opiates.
In the light of these findings the "drug tsar", Keith Hellawell, plans to
concentrate resources on controlling use of Class A drugs among prisoners.

"We have been suggesting for some months that we take the pressure off
cannabis and stick it on heroin and cocaine," said Mr Iddon, a former
science academic. "If we concentrate in that area we could spend a lot more
on tackling those drugs that do more harm. We could introduce more sniffer
dogs and detect the supplies that are still coming in, in a small number of
cases, through the back door."

The government report has called for "governors to discriminate effectively
within the disciplinary system between more and less harmful drug-related
activity, so that the pattern of punishment, and response by way of
treatment and support, more closely follows that pattern in the community at
large".

Aside from the greater risk to prisoners' health from hard-drugs use,
research by the National Association of Probation Officers has shown that
half of all property theft is carried out by opiate users.

Suggestions that RMDT may have persuaded prisoners to switch en masse to
harder drugs have also been undermined by the findings of the review. While
it is true that opiates are not so easily detected because they do not stay
in the blood as long as cannabis, the National Addiction Centre's research
shows that cannabis positivity rates have fallen whether the opiate status
of the prisoner is positive or negative.

"There is no good evidence of substantial individual shifting from cannabis
to opiate use to an extent that impacts on overall levels of opiate
positivity," the centre's report states.

This backs up Mr Iddon's contention that cannabis users in any environment
are unlikely to fall into hard-drug use unless they already have the kind of
psychological make-up that would lead them to Class A substances in any
case. "The vast majority of people who smoke cannabis do not proceed to
other drugs," he insists.

Checked-by: "Rolf Ernst"