WELCOME FOR POLICE SOFT-PEDAL DRUGS POLICY

Ministers React Positively To Chief Constables' Proposals

Home Office ministers last night welcomed the call by chief constables for
some heroin and cocaine users to be given treatment instead of being
punished with a formal caution or a conviction.

The new drugs policy from the Association of Chief Police Officers also
suggests that when the cannabis laws are relaxed later this summer police
officers should get the discretion to issue a summons for possession in
more serious cases, to make up for losing the power of arrest.

Scotland Yard's deputy assistant commissioner, Andy Hayman, chairman of the
Acpo drugs sub-committee, said the law enforcement policies of the past 20
years had failed and it was time to treat a hard drug habit as primarily a
health issue. He said the numbers of people using or trying drugs, or being
engaged with the illegal drugs market, had not fallen. Neither had there
had been a reduction in the amount of illegal drugs entering the UK.

The new policy did not amount to the police "giving up", he added.

Drug reform campaigners welcomed the policy. The Home Office also gave
strong support saying it appreciated the understanding that treatment,
education and harm minimisation all had a place in a drugs strategy.

The Acpo drugs report also backed the proposal from David Blunkett, the
home secretary, that GPs should make wider use of their right to prescribe
heroin to hardcore addicts who failed to respond to methadone treatment or
other therapy. The police say that if scientific and medical evidence backs
wider heroin prescribing they will support it, but add that stricter
controls are needed to prevent substitute drugs leaking to the illegal market.

The police also say the drugs education role they perform in schools needs
to be expanded.

But it is the shift in attitude of Britain's most senior police officers
towards the official treatment of heroin and cocaine users that has sparked
the most controversy.

The policy says that if the appropriate sentencing guidelines are used so
that the gravity of each case is judged, Acpo "looks forward to when
detainees appearing in court, following the misuse of class A drugs, are
able to have the opportunity to immediately access treatment proven to work
... a real option rather than a caution or conviction".

The chief constables made clear, however, that drug treatment services in
England and Wales were not yet ready to put the policy into action; they
would need to be up to standard within two years.

Mr Hayman said that research was needed to find which treatment programmes
worked. At the moment "referrals can take weeks and there are no minimum
standards in place".

More than 80% of people arrested test positive for drugs and Mr Hayman said
he wanted to see a significant majority of them given treatment.

The police document also covers the possession of small amounts of
cannabis. With the law expected to be relaxed this month, officers should
have a sliding scale of options for action over users, the police said.

Roger Howard of the drugs policy advisory body, Drugscope, said: "The
police are recognising that treatment works." But Ann Widdecombe, the
former shadow home secretary, described the move as "the policy of
surrender" and said there needed to be both punishment and treatment.

* Japanese prosecutors indicted a UK tourist yesterday for trying to
smuggle a record amount of ecstasy into Japan on the pretext of arriving to
watch the World Cup. Nicholas Baker, 31, a construction worker, was caught
with 41,000 ecstasy tablets and a kilogram of cocaine at Tokyo airport on
April 13. The drugs had a street value of about UKP 1.1m. If convicted he
faces a jail term of up to 10 years.