POLICE SHOULD DROP DRUGS SUPPORT ROLE, SAYS FORCE CHIEF

POLICE should concentrate on catching drug dealers and leave support
for addicts to health workers better suited to dealing with substance
misuse, says one of Yorkshire's top policemen.

Tim Hollis, Chief Constable of Humberside Police, believes officers
should stick to law enforcement while other agencies deal with the
impact of addiction.

Writing in today's Yorkshire Post, he also renews his support for
cannabis to be reclassified from a Class C to a Class B drug.

"Not because it will solve the problems, it is more complex than
that," he says, "but because such a move would send out a clear
message to young people that cannabis is harmful and to criminals that
the UK do (sic) regard it as a serious problem."

Mr Hollis is the Association of Chief Police Officers' spokesman on
drugs, and his comments come as Ministers prepare to announce
guidelines for the state's response to drug issues for the next 10
years.

He writes: "Policing has, in reality, developed significantly over the
years. Many more young people who use drugs and come to the notice of
police are not criminalised.

"I personally need a lot of convincing that the criminal justice
agencies are best placed to deal with the harms people inflict on
themselves, their families and communities by the personal use of drugs."

But Keith Hellawell, a former chief constable of West Yorkshire Police
who was the Government's "Drugs Tsar" from 1997 to 2001, said it would
be a "retrograde step" if the police were to divorce themselves from
drug treatment work.

Mr Hellawell, who resigned as Drugs Tsar after cannabis was
reclassified from Class B to Class C, called for the police to
continue in their "cohesive" role of co-ordinating the drugs strategy
by working alongside other agencies.

"If Mr Hollis is saying we should disengage from that and say
responsibility for safe treatment is someone else's, I think that
would be a retrograde step," Mr Hellawell said.

"What I did was introduce drug treatment into the criminal justice
system so that ea ch police station will have a drugs worker; their
job is to assess people who come in for a crime to see if that crime
was caused by an addiction to a substance.

"If it is, and the offender has committed the crime to fund their
habit, I put a process in place where they can link in with agencies;
the police play an essential part in dealing with that.

"And the co-operation of the police in educational projects and school
programmes is an essential part, in my view, of policing.

"If Mr Hollis is suggesting that all of that should be disintegrated,
it fundamentally undermines the co-ordinated approach that is
necessary for a co-ordinated drug strategy," he added.

The Government is set to unveil a 10-year drug strategy early this
year.

Government figures published in November showed that Yorkshire has
among the highest rates of heroin and crack cocaine use in the country.