CHILDREN TO GET DRUGS WARNING FROM AGE 5

PROFITS seized by the courts from convicted drug dealers will be channelled
into fighting Britain's £4 billion a year narcotics habit.

Putting to positive use the £5 million seized annually from dealers is part
of a UK anti-drugs strategy for the next ten years, unveiled by the "drugs
tsar", Keith Hellawell.

It is built on four priorities: keeping young people off drugs, treating
addicts, reducing drug-related crime and cutting the supply of illegal
drugs.

Stress will be laid on education, with children learning about the dangers
of drugs from the age of five in primary school classrooms.

The Government hopes that much of the £1.4 billion a year spent on fighting
drugs can be reallocated away from "react-ive" enforcement - the revolving
door of police, courts and prison in which many addicts are trapped -
towards treatment schemes.

Drug treatment and testing orders for criminals, under which addicts are
given help to stay off drugs or face jail, will be piloted across Britain.

The policy will be implemented throughout England, with Scotland
cherrypicking key parts for inclusion in its own plans, the Scottish
Secretary, Donald Dewar, said last night.

"I expect the Scottish Office, with advice from the Scottish Advisory
Committee on Drug Misuse, to look for aspects of the new UK strategy which
we should pick up ," Mr Dewar said. "We have our own distinctive approach
to tackling drug misuse in Scotland."

Scotland's anti-drugs strategy was set out in a 1994 ministerial drug
taskforce report.

The white paper admits that spending on drugs had been "ad hoc, complicated
and random" and there had been a "lack of co-ordination between objectives,
resources and outcomes". In future, cash would go to programmes that got
results.

The white paper, Tackling Drugs to Build a Better Britain, was introduced
to parliament by the Leader of the House of Commons, Ann Taylor, and then
promoted by Mr Hellawell at the Trocadero mall in Piccadilly.

"We have got to recognise that some people do experiment with drugs and
some people become addicted to drugs. In the longer term we do want to wean
people off drugs," Mr Hellawell said.

Targets had been set to ensure the strategy was working, including:

Cutting the proportion of under-25s using illegal drugs.

Cutting reoffending among drug users.

Getting more drug users into treatment, including those in prison.

Reducing access to drugs among 5-16-year-olds.

Later, Mr Dewar announced a £200,000 Scottish Office grant to expand the
Scottish drug misuse database, creating an information strategy which would
give a clear picture of Scotland's drugs problem.

Mr Dewar said that this information strategy would also allow Scotland to
set targets and measure how well it was doing at tackling drugs.

The cash was welcomed by David Macauley, the director of the official
anti-drugs fund-raising body Scotland Against Drugs.

He said: "I would like the database to be used for evidence-based analysis
of problems, so for the first time we know what's working and what isn't.

""If half what I hear is true, a lot of the money we are spending on drugs
programmes is being wasted."

Mr Macauley called for Scotland's criminal justice system and drugs
services to act in a more "sophisticated" way, seeking to rehabilitate
addicts rather than simply jailing them again and again.

The 1994 Scottish task force report had recommended rehab services in
Dundee and Aberdeen, yet both cities had still to see them, he added.

David Liddell, the director of the Scottish Drugs Forum, said Scotland's
new information strategy should take care to measure meaningful factors,
such as whether the number of drug-related deaths was rising and falling,
to show whether policies were really working.

"We are particularly keen for the database to use more anecdotal
information from drug users groups, drugs services and the police, as well
as hard statistical data, to provide a better picture of what's going on,"
said Mr Liddell.

Some Scottish drugs groups, which refused to be named, were sceptical about
the new UK strategy.

One warned there was no proof that schools-based drugs education had any
effect in "innoculating" youngsters against future drug use. Another said
the strategy was the same old rhetoric as before, with its pledge to be
tough on dealers.