SWEDEN TAKES LEAD ON DRUG LAWS

DESPITE ITS liberal image, Sweden has some of the toughest drug policies in
the world.

Its zero-tolerance approach began more than 35 years ago precisely because
the country realised that a more relaxed attitude had failed. In the 1960s,
amphetamines were decriminalised, enabling doctors to prescribe them to
addicts. Drug use soared from a couple of hundred addicts to 2,000-3,000
within a couple of years. The Government decided in 1966 to treat all drugs
equally, from cannabis to heroin, under a single law. Stop and search laws
were introduced to allow police to stop people they suspected of consuming
drugs and officers could 0enforce compulsory urine and blood tests.

But while the means of catching users is severe, its treatment of them
emphasises rehabilitation rather than inprisonment as a solution.
Persistent offenders are sent for mandatory treatment and drug education
for schoolchildren is compulsory.

The Tories have been most impressed by recent figures which reveal a mere 9
per cent of Swedes had tried drugs, compared with 34 per cent who had tried
them in the UK. However, the party's emphasis on residential-based
treatment, with addicts sent to specialist clinics run by community groups
and charities, is not in line with the Swedish experience, critics claim.

John Mann, Labour MP for Bassetlaw, said the Swedes concentrate instead on
treating heroin addicts with a drug substitute at their GPs' surgery and
they are then given rehabilitation help in the community to get them back
into work.

Mr Mann, who published a report into drugs in his mining constituency last
year, also said he discovered that many residential units for young people
in Sweden were closing down because they are deemed not to be cost effective.

"Mr Duncan Smith is talking nonsense. He has gone to Sweden and heard them
talk about rehabilitation and assumed that means residential centres but it
does not," he said.

"The idea of sending young people to centres in the country is an old, old
idea. It is not the way to treat heroin addiction for a start."