SON'S DRUG CASE TESTS BRITISH AIDE'S GET-TOUGH VIEW

Official Embarrassed Into Turning Youth In; Focus Put on Press Laws

As Home secretary, Jack Straw is in charge of Britain's police and prisons,
and there has never been any doubt where he stands on law enforcement.

"Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" was a Labor Party slogan in
the election campaign last spring, and Straw was its most ardent spokesman.
He has been particularly firm on the need for tough measures to deal with
drug abuse.

On Christmas Eve, Straw proved just how seriously he views the problem.

He walked into a London police station with his 17-year-old son and turned
the boy in for allegedly selling drugs.

In fact, he had little choice. The Daily Mirror, acting on a tip, had sent
a reporter to a pub frequented by the teenager, and after she chatted with
him, he took her outside and allegedly sold her a small quantity of hashish
resin for $16.

"Watch this pub, watch this bloke," the tipster had told the Mirror. "Not
only will you be amazed at what he's doing, but you will also be surprised
at who his parents are."

Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan spoke to Straw and told him what had
happened in the pub. He said that he did not intend to publish the story
because of the youth's age.

Morgan said the minister was aware the Mirror's tipster would go elsewhere
if the story were not published. In any case, he knew his son had broken
the law, and he decided his only course of action was to go to the police.

The Daily Mirror duly published the story. Under the law, neither it nor
other English newspapers could name the youth because he is a juvenile and
therefore his father also could not be identified.

That remained true until Friday afternoon, by which time Straw's name was
so widely known that a judge ruled it was pointless to maintain the
secrecy.

Early on in the case, several newspapers made it easy to guess the
minister's identity. In accounts of the youth's arrest, they published
statements Straw had made in the past about drug abuse and carried his
photograph.

He also was identified early last week on the Internet, illustrating the
ineffectiveness of the law in high-profile cases in the modern age of
communications. On Friday, newspapers in Scotland, Ireland and France
revealed Straw's name.

The Sun newspaper, which had hoped to name Straw earlier, was barred by a
court injunction from doing so.

After the Scottish and foreign newspapers had named the minister, the Sun
went back to court Friday and argued for the injunction to be lifted.

The judge ruled in the Sun's favor, and broadcasters flashed the word to
the English nation: The minister was Jack Straw.

The practical and political problems involved in keeping the minister's
identity secret had become apparent Monday when Dawn Alford, the reporter
who had met the boy at the pub, went to police to hand in the half ounce of
hashish resin she had allegedly bought from him.

She was promptly arrested, and Morgan was outraged. He called the arrest
"one of the most disgraceful attacks on investigative journalism I can ever
remember."

The arrest, he suggested, was due to the sensitive position held by the
minister. The implication was that the minister or other officials had
insisted the reporter be arrested.

Morgan publicly called on Straw, as Home secretary, to investigate the
matter but was unable, of course, to reveal that in effect he was calling
on Straw to investigate himself.

In his anonymous interviews, Straw subsequently denied he had ordered
police to arrest Alford.

The Crown Prosecution Service is expected to decide shortly whether to
proceed against the minister's son. It has been widely reported but not
confirmed that he will either be given a warning or no action will be taken
against him--the usual procedure in minor drugs cases.

Under the law, he could be fined up to $3,200 or imprisoned for as long as
6 months.

Newspapers have cited the case as an example of the widespread use of
drugs, particularly marijuana and hashish among British schoolchildren.

A recent study by the Trimbos Institute, an addiction research center in
the Netherlands, indicated that British children take more drugs than their
peers in continental Europe or the United States. Four out of 10 British
teenagers, the study said, have tried marijuana or hashish.

The National Association of Head Teachers estimated several months ago that
a third of England's 4,500 secondary schools have a problem with drugs.

At the school the minister's son attends, the Sunday Times interviewed a
student, who said: "Everyone does drugs here. There is no stigma about
them. The teachers are quite relaxed about it."

Another student denied the minister's son deals regularly in drugs. The
student said the boy fancies himself a ladies' man and was just trying to
impress the Mirror reporter.

The Independent on Sunday newspaper has been campaigning for the
decriminalization of marijuana and has had support from prominent
personalities.

But, three hours before Straw went to the police with his son, he sat in
the House of Commons beside Home Office junior minister George Howarth as
Howarth spoke against the campaign.

He declared that legalizing any banned substances "would be a green light
to all the young people and others who do not take drugs to do so. We are
certainly not prepared to do that."

Straw also has said the case for decriminalization "just does not hold water."