STRAW AT ODDS WITH CHARITY ON YOUNG USERS

Britain is not losing the war against drugs, the Home Secretary declared
yesterday, highlighting evidence that drug-taking among young people was
stabilising.

Jack Straw promised that a white paper on drugs to be published today would
boost the effort against the problem.

His comments came as a report disclosed that hard drugs were damaging more
of Britain's young people at an earlier age than ever before.

Britain's biggest drugs charity, Turning Point, said that the number of
people it had helped last year had risen by 12 per cent to 29,599.

Not only were there more drug users in need of treatment, they were younger
than ever. At one Turning Point centre in west London, more than half the
new people seen by the charity were under 18.

The proportion of women suffering the effects of drug abuse had also grown,
rising to one in three of the users seeking help.

But Mr Straw, speaking on BBC1's 'Breakfast with Frost' yesterday, claimed
that Britain was not losing the battle against drugs.

He said: "It is not the case that more and more and more young people are
taking drugs. The best evidence based on British crime surveys and other
very independently conducted surveys is that drug-taking among young people
is stabilising.

"There's some evidence to suggest that it has gone down a little."

He said there were no grounds for complacency as "a half of all youngsters
have experimented with drugs and that's far too high a proportion." He
conceded that there was a "very big problem about the association between
hard drugs, and some soft drugs, and crime".

Mr Straw said of the white paper, which involves proposals from from the
Government's "drugs tsar", Keith Hellawell, a former chief constable of
West Yorkshire: "Keith Hellawell's proposals tomorrow will certainly, I
think, greatly increase the effort that we are putting in this country to
deal with the drugs problem."

But he said: "It is quite untrue that we are losing the war against drugs.
And what Hellawell is ther to do... is to increase the effort that we are
putting in and above all, better co-ordinate all the effort and the money
that's being spent."

The Turning Point report found an alarming upward trend in the use of
methadone, a heroin substitute. The number of people suffering problems
from the drug as a result of illegally obtaining it had doubled in size
over the past year.

There had been a 50 per cent increase in ecstasy-related problems handled
by the charity. This was due to the drug's continued popularity and Turning
Point's success in contacting more ecstasy users.

The worsening situation was also reflected in the use of cocaine - both the
crack form and the powdered drug. The number of crack users seeking help
had risen by 37 per cent while users of cocaine powder had shown a 21 per
cent increase.

Turning Point's chief executive, Rex Hewitt, appealed for Government
support to save under-funded drug treatment centres from closure.

Mr Hewitt said: "Our findings do not make happy reading. The hallmark of
drug abuse is all too often no job, no home, contact with the criminal
justice system, as well as social isolation and health problems. But our
research does show that treatment can conquer the problems."

He stressed that drug services across the country faced an uncertain future
because of lack of funding. Some big projects had been forced to close
because of insufficient community care funding for treatment of drug users.

Mr Hewitt called on the Government to respond to a number of key issues.
Often services were funded only on a short-term basis, increasing
uncertainty and insecurity, and long waiting lists for treatment meant that
many drug users continued to obtain drugs illicitly and turned to crime to
pay for their habit.

In addition, people with the greatest need were often denied help because
of the bureaucracy surrounding residential care services, Mr Hewitt said.

The Tory party chairman, Lord Parkinson, voiced his opposition to
legalising cannabis yesterday. Lord Parkinson, speaking on 'Sky News', was
asked if Conservative Party policy reforms should include a debate on
legalising cannabis.

He said: "Not if I have any say about the matter. I think it is a deadly
dangerous approach to a very serious problem and I would argue very
strongly against it."